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    Getting the Love You Want: A Guide for Couples: Second Edition
    Unavailable
    Getting the Love You Want: A Guide for Couples: Second Edition
    Unavailable
    Getting the Love You Want: A Guide for Couples: Second Edition
    Ebook485 pages7 hours

    Getting the Love You Want: A Guide for Couples: Second Edition

    By Harville Hendrix, Ph.D.

    4/5

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    About this ebook

    REVISED AND WITH A NEW FOREWORD

    ARE YOU GETTING THE LOVE YOU WANT?

    Originally published in 1988, Getting the Love You Want has helped millions of couples attain more loving, supportive, and deeply satisfying relationships. The 20th anniversary edition contains extensive revisions to this groundbreaking book, with a new chapter, new exercises, and a foreword detailing Dr. Hendrix's updated philosophy for eliminating all negativity from couples' daily interactions, allowing readers of the 2008 edition to benefit from his ongoing discoveries during his last two decades of work.

    Harville Hendrix, Ph.D., in partnership with his wife, Helen LaKelly Hunt, PhD., originated Imago Relationship Therapy, a unique healing process for couples, prospective couples, and parents. Together they have more than thirty years' experience as educators and therapists and their work has been translated into more than 50 languages, with Imago practiced by two thousand therapists worldwide. Harville and Helen have six children and live in New York and New Mexico.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMacmillan Publishers
    Release dateDec 26, 2007
    ISBN9781429923934
    Author

    Harville Hendrix, Ph.D.

    Harville Hendrix, Ph.D., is the author of Getting the Love You Want: A Guide for Couples, a New York Times bestseller that has sold more than two million copies. He has more than thirty years’ experience as an educator and therapist. He specializes in working with couples in private practice, teaching marital therapy to therapists, and conducting couples workshops across the country. Dr. Hendrix is the founder/director of the Imago Institute for Relationship Therapy. He lives in New Jersey and New Mexico.

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    Reviews for Getting the Love You Want

    4/5

    94 ratings5 reviews

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    • 5/5
      If you're going through a divorce or marital troubles, this book makes sense of why things are not going well.
    • 5/5
      After over 20 years, my wife and I still use this book.
    • 5/5
      Simply put: a must. Everyone- married, engaged, or even single- should read (no, study) this book. It will inform and enrich the reader's life, giving an understanding where there had been before.
    • 4/5
      A superior book about couple building, and very helpful at the time.
    • 4/5
      I have some reservations about Hendrix, his endlessly multiplying books, and the Imago Therapy industry that has grown up around them. Having said that - and I will come back to it later - it must be said that there is a great deal of substance to his theories and these books. His basic premise is that there is an unconscious element to romantic attraction. There is no controversy here. What Hendrix has done - based on extensive couple therapy - is to peel back the layers of behavior and motivation to get at a workable hypothesis of what is really going on. He notes that people entering into a romantic relationship (or failing to do so) often seem to have a sense that the other party has (or had) the potential to heal or complete something that was damaged or absent in themselves. Hendrix´s particular genius was to realize that this could be true and not true at the same time. True in the sense that the other person is the key to healing or completion; but not true in the sense that they will provide it to you by simply being there or by giving it to you as a gift. Hendrix´s theory is that you might unconsciously select someone whose makeup/personality is perfectly suited to ´pressing all those buttons´ that are linked to issues inside yourself that your unconscious would like you to address. So the job of the other person is to press buttons (and you to press theirs), and the job of each person is to address their own issues. Hendrix´s therapy essentially involves stepping back from seeing the other person as the one with the problems, or the one causing the problem, or the one who is going to (or should) give you the solution to the problem. He suggests that you treat the irritations of a connected life (once that blind romantic stage fades) as pointers (and a motivation) to do work you need to do on yourself. Which involves a lot (a very great many) of exercises that can by very uncomfortable. And like physical exercise it is easy to fail to do it properly and give up. But like physical exercise it is often easier to do it together with other people (not necessarily your partner), and if you persist with it my experience is that you will see at least some benefit.What don´t I like about Hendrix? He has a conversational style of writing, rather than an academic one. Which is great, but sometimes I feel that it is a rather rambling conversation and I yearn for some dot points. I´d love to see Hendrix say in less than ten thousand (or a hundred thousand) words, ´This is the essentials of what I´m talking about.¨ His analogies are great, his case studies support his arguments, and I have no argument with him expressing his strong Christian faith. It is just that they make reading him an effort, which I find wearying, knowing that the exercises he prescribes will be arduous enough. That said, he has set himself the challenge of trying to get across an abstract idea that is a little counter-intuitive to an audience that have hugely varied experiences, belief systems and appreciation of the workings of the unconscious. Which explains the multiple books, and the effectiveness of the group seminars where facilitators can ´bring people along´ with the theory and exercises.What else don´t I like? Most of all that Hendrix says this only works in deep romantic (love) relationships. I don´t think he has an issue with same sex relationships, but the books of his I have read (and this one) don´t give them any focus. As a theory it would be more interesting if he had looked at long term friendships and even our relationship with animals, with inanimate things and ideas, and with work and our position in society. Essentially his theory pins everything on the unconscious, and provides (apparently) useful exercises to satisfy it, but does not wrestle with what is going on in the unconscious - the way it represents the external world and it´s capacity for confusion, self-deception and displacement. And last of all, while the development of his theory is well anchored in real life couples experience, I sometimes miss some explanation or reflection on how his therapy can be effectively introduced to couples: how it leaves them ´on the far side´, and how it relates to the wider family (children, in-laws, etc) and situations where there is real mental illness. But worthwhile? Yes. Read it, put it down, come back to it and think about it. Accept its limitations, take advantage of what it has to offer, don´t expect a silver bullet. Try and be nice to your partner, and yourself.