This book is for spouses who want to resolve existing conflicts and learn how to avoid new ones.
For those who are about to get married and do not plan to become another divorce statistic.
For everyone who wants to understand the nature of relationships in a couple. A classic book on family relationships that has been selling successfully for over thirty years (!) and translated into dozens of languages. It is based on the authors' more than thirty years of experience, which has helped hundreds of couples save their marriages.
A book that can rightfully be called a "legendary bestseller," and that would not be an exaggeration or a cliché.
Harville and Helen survived failed marriages: their previous relationships were not saved by the birth of children or by consultations with psychotherapists. Harville longed to find the answer to the main question: what is the reason for the conflicts, crises, and breakups of spouses who once loved each other so deeply. He felt that, in addition to external problems, there was some underlying cause, and he wanted to study it comprehensively. Helen supported him in this endeavor. They formed not only a personal but also a professional partnership.
As a result of years of research, they came to the conclusion that relationships with partners are strongly influenced by the experience gained in childhood. We choose partners unconsciously, under the influence of images from the past imprinted in the depths of our memory. Therefore, our partners generally combine the negative and positive traits of those who raised us.
Love is the pursuit of finding the harmony we felt while in the womb. When faced with reality, we lose the sense of security with which we enter this world. Every time a parent distances themselves from their child, for example, by not noticing them crying, the child experiences the painful trauma of a broken bond with a loved one, and in love, we try to regain that connection. We reproduce the negative experiences of the past, wanting this time to "emerge victorious" and heal our childhood trauma. However, unconscious expectations are not always met, and as a result, we encounter problems in family life: spouses relive their childhood issues, now in their relationships with their partners. Hence the conflicts, crises, and divorces.
Harville and Helen offer a way to rectify the situation. This is Imago Therapy, which is aimed at improving interaction with one's partner. Dialogue plays a key role in it. The ancient brain encodes positive communication experiences with a partner into new connections between brain cells. The more such positive interactions there are, the stronger the new path becomes, and the old and destructive one—the one that arose in childhood—begins to lose strength (fewer messengers flow between cells) and its ability to interfere with your relationship. As a result, the couple arrives at a conscious partnership—a relationship characterized by mutual support that promotes the psychological and spiritual growth of both partners.
The book contains a theoretical part (helping to answer the questions "What is wrong?" and "Why is this happening?") and a practical part—exercises that will help achieve a conscious partnership, where spouses become one.
Authors: Harville Hendrix, Helen LaKelly Hunt
Translator: Vasily Gorokhov
Pages: 320 (offset). Paperback
Dimensions: 237×163×16 mm
