Learning to Love: From Conflict to Lasting Harmony

By Don Rosenthal and Martha Rosenthal

Book Overview

Most of us yearn for intimate relationship, believing it to be the path to happiness. Yet experience suggests that in the real world, harmonious relationships are rare. No sooner do we enter into intimate partnership than we are set adrift on an ocean of turbulent, often painful emotions. While these feelings may be inevitable, how we deal with them is not. The way we respond to negativity will determine whether it erodes love and trust or becomes the raw material for mutual compassion. For nearly two decades, Don and Martha Rosenthal have helped couples of every description and at every stage of relationship to work productively with their difficulties. Learning to Love: From Conflict to Lasting Harmony summarizes the insights that have grown out of their highly successful couples workshops, as well as their own 35 years as committed partners. Written in clear, accessible language. Learning to Love assists couples in finding and releasing the blockages to their love. It does this by directly confronting the central dilemma of relationship: how to allow the messy imperfection of our humanness-all our anger, pettiness, judgment, fear-to be present, while preserving an atmosphere of emotional safety in which all this can be experienced wdthout threat. A wealth of hands-on material helps couples work through typical impasses by questioning the voice of fear, releasing guilt, and-the supreme challenge-learning to open the heart when it wishes to close. This book is a rare combination of timeless wisdom and practical guidance. It addresses fundamental spiritual issues without being vague or simplistic, and the harshest realities of relationship without gloom or despair. Its unique strength is in showing couples how to use their inevitable conflict and difficulty as the means to a deeper intimacy. And by holding to the light the full range of our feelings, from our noblest impulses to our deepest confusions, it speaks compassionately to the human condition we all share. Book jacket.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1402745273
• ISBN13: 9781402745270
• Release Date: March 2007
• Publisher: Sterling
• Length: 254 Pages
• Weight: 0.78 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.3" x 8.2"

Customer Reviews

Learning to Love

Easy to read. Contains heartfelt information and a mean to gain understanding with a partner. Don and Martha have described a process that can defuse any tense situations that arrive in relationships. It is an opportunity for to turn conflict into win-win situations where both partners benefit as a couple and as individuals. This is a good resource for growing healthy and satisfying relationships and getting the love you desire and deserve.

Practical and life changing

The work of Don and Martha Rosenthal has changed my life -- and pointed me in the direction of deep, meaningful love, wholeness and peace. And as lofty as that sounds, they present their lessons with sincerity, gentleness, and a genuine understanding of the difficulties regular people face in their daily lives. This book shows the reader the language and practice that has helped couples all around the world. Accessible and pleasant to read, these stories and direction are a must for all people interested in moving toward having wonderful relationships.

A self-help book that really helps!

Our world would be a better place if everyone could read this book! Don and Martha's insight into working together goes far beyond intimate relationships. Their understanding of what makes us tick helps you in dealing with your spouse, lover, children, family, friends, and all those you share a relationship. I especially appreciate the easy to follow exercises; they truly have made an impact on my life. It is with much love and appreciation that I recommend Don and Martha's work to all.

Buy this book

I have never read a book on relationships that has impacted me and my marriage so profoundly. The book persuasively and sagely illustrates how self knowledge and compassion are critical components toward wisely and lovingly navigating the many challenges of intimacy and in growing in emotional maturity. "Learning to Love" offers a myriad of teachings and exercises which demonstrate how relationship can be consciously employed as an accelerant to achieving self knowledge as a more enduring relational purpose. The authors have masterfully mixed western and eastern phychology and spirituality in a manner that is highly readable and free of psychobabble and spiritual chiches. This book is a must for anyone who realizes that learing to love is the only life endeavor that truly has the potential to make one happy. ML

Don and Martha Risk Their Relationship So You Can See How It's Done

If you're like me, you've read so-called Self-Help books for a long time. Usually they're told in the third person -- the author tells you how things should be. Sometimes they're written as an expose -- it's always easier to tell on someone else, especially the other sex. But Don and Martha let you see inside their heads, inside the skin of their relationship. They put themselves at risk and bring themselves to the edge of their relationship where they live the lessons they demonstrate for the reader -- how to let go of ego and "being right" until all that is left is an open-hearted acceptance of themselves individually and of each other. Once you've read their book you'll want to do their course. We did. Don and Martha gave us the tools to take our long-term relationship -- which had been going pretty well -- to a new level of appreciation and skill so we could get past the stops faster, with a sense of humor about it all. Go for it. If you're wondering, Don and I are not related. We grew up together fifty years ago and haven't known each other's whereabouts since. What a pleasure -- what a contribution -- to have met this way.