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Passionate Marriage: Keeping Love and Intimacy Alive in Committed Relationships | 
 enlarge | Author: David Schnarch
Publisher: Holt Paperbacks
Category: Book
List Price: $16.00
Buy Used: $4.27
You Save: $11.73 (73%)
New (22) Collectible (4) from $8.49
Avg. Customer Rating:  95 reviews
Sales Rank: 1021
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 432
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6.2 x 1.2
ISBN: 0805058265
Dewey Decimal Number: 616.89156
EAN: 9780805058260
ASIN: 0805058265
Publication Date: May 15, 1998
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Help save a tree. Buy all your used books from Green Earth Books. Read -> Recycle -> Reuse!
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Amazon.com
People joke that the start of a couple's marriage means the end of their sex life. David Schnarch, a sex therapist praised by Pepper Schwartz, uses epiphany-laden conversations taken directly from his own marriage and the married couples he sees in practice to help readers defy the myth that marriages are necessarily passionless, and instead prove that the longer a couple has been together, the higher the fireworks can fly. It's especially aimed at older couples who, Schnarch says, are self-actualized and therefore better able to handle intimacy than younger partners. "People have difficulty with intimacy because they're supposed to," he says, and goes on in this inspiring book to combine elements of marriage therapy and sex therapy to bring plenty of practical, fresh ideas to the crowd of mostly vapid relationship books. (Note that despite its title, it's for any emotionally committed couple, not just married folks.) Schnarch says that a man is more likely to let a relationship suffer in order to hold on to his sense of self, while a woman is more apt to let her identity suffer to help strengthen it. Schnarch gives explicit tips on how to alter this pattern, an essential step he calls "differentiation." He also explains why compromise isn't always the best route to take when conflicts arise. The couples profiled here deal with the usual suspects: uneven sexual desire and initiation, battles about oral sex, self-image problems, the "boondoggle" of trust (both of one's self and one's partner), and the specter of divorce. Instead of focusing on each client's weaknesses, Schnarch teaches how to find inner strength and resilience that can be used to reaffirm a relationship and reignite sex. William H. Masters of Masters and Johnson fame calls this book "a classic," and no wonder. --Erica Jorgensen
Product Description
The greatest sexual pleasure in a person's lifetime is possible in one's middle and later years, asserts Dr. David Schnarch, when a mature sense of self has been achieved and genuine intimacy is possible with another person. At his Family Health Center in Colorado Dr. Schnarch works with couples in long-term committed relationships who want to get emotionally and sexually closer. In Passionate Marriage Dr. Schnarch shares what he has learned about how couples can--and must--simultaneously break through the sexual and the emotional blocks that hold them back from total satisfaction. He counsels that every sexual exchange, from kissing to daring erotic behaviors, is a picture of an entire relationship--a reflection of how you and your partner feel about yourselves and each other outside the bedroom. This respectful, erotic, uplifting, and spiritual guide to sexual and emotional fulfillment makes a passionate marriage within the reach of every couple.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 90 more reviews...
 Are you differentiated? May 16, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
If you're not, you need to read this book! The passionate Marriage is an excellent book written in a personable manner with excellent anecdotes that demonstrate the concepts the writer is explaining. Reading this book helped me recognize where I wasn't differentiated and where I needed to do some serious internal work to help myself. It's also helped my marriage a lot, in terms of how my wife and I communicate.
If you're having trouble in your marriage or just want to communicate better and have more intimacy, read this book. It will help both you and your partner(s) connect with each other.
 Passionate Marriage May 15, 2008
2 out of 7 found this review helpful
While the author's knowledge and ideas are on the plus side, his free use of crude and rude...and just plain filthy...language leaves me wondering why a man with a PhD and the years of experience he has must resort to "gutter talk" to make points about relationships.
Due to this, I found myself unable to share it with my wife and just threw the book in the trash....which is, I'm afraid, where it belongs.
 Helpful in the difficult path of relationships. May 8, 2008
0 out of 4 found this review helpful
This book is a bible on the subject of relationships. I enjoyed it from beginning to end. Yes!
 ONE SURE WAY TO MAKE MARRIED SEX BETTER May 6, 2008
I liked the approach this writer took to bringing back the intimacy to a dead marriage. The concrete examples as manifested in therapy sessions held my interest. It's usually better to give an example than to lecture about something. There wasn't a whole lot of new information, but it was presented in an helpful manner. The parts about sex were good, but I kept thinking about the way I saved my marriage. Books such as this one helped, but the one thing that brought my husband and I back together, and created more intimacy than anything we had tried so far, was to perfect our oral sex techniques. Oral sex is perhaps the most intimate of sex acts. If you want to read the book that saved my marriage, check out Was that an earthquake? The Sensuous Couple's (Flip Over) Guide to Seismic Oral Sex. It's great!
Confusing May 5, 2008
4 out of 5 found this review helpful
Dr. Schnarch might be well-served to take a lesson from military briefings: Tell them what you are going to tell them; Tell them; Tell them what you have told them. Never was a big fan of that process, but this book could benefit from it. Indeed, that - combined with the good doctor's appropriation of words for meanings other than that with which they are usually ascribed (the book could use a good definition section) - makes for a confusing lurch through an important subject.
There is language here that can best be described as psycho-babble: "The process of becoming can lead you to act in ways that still exceeds the limits of your self-image." Or: "At another time in another context, [her] statement was the path of differentiation. Now it was the epitome of emotional fusion."
Emotional fusion is bad; "f-ing" is good; one must "differentiate"; one must "self-soothe"; you must survive "crucibles." (Now "crucible" in this context is a seriously intellectual word, but you'd think the author would want to reach a lot more people other than those who understand the word has more meaning that that of a pot used for melting.) I read the whole book - and experienced an almost physical sense of relief when I reached the last chapters where he pulls it together.
The bottom line of what he is saying, in a highly intellectual manner, is that good marriages are those in which people maintain their own independent identity; partners are not responsible for the happiness of their partner; only when you come together - aware of your own needs and wants and intent on ensuring they are met (too), can two people avoid the abyss of emotional fusion. Bottom line: be yourself no matter how scary; don't allow yourself to be made a slave to the idiosyncrasies and vagaries of your partner; own your feelings.
In short, two halves don't make a whole; two wholes make a complete relationship.
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