Open Hearts

By Debra Laaser, Mark R. Laaser, Patrick Carnes

Book Overview

When a couple first comes together, the knee-weakening, heart-stopping, pants-dropping passion exhilarates. But turning that love into an intimate bond comes no more naturally than learning to ride a bicycle or use chopsticks. What we are socialized to assume should be spontaneous and effortless requires patience and learned skills. Worse, should any problems erupt we fear the relationship and ourselves are irrevocably broken. We need help.

Though written by two noted psychologists, Open Hearts is not technical but gentle and uplifting. Patrick Carnes, along with Mark Laaser and Deb Laaser, share how they found their way to joyous and fulfilling intimacy. While these concepts originated in the recovery movement, they can transform any couple seeking renewal or trying to restore a broken relationship.

Open Hearts starts with basic truths:

- We can only work on a relationship when we're in that relationship. Running away never solved anything
- If we have not resolved childhood developmental issues, we will seek out partners we think will resolve them
- It's perfectly healthy to fight. We just have to learn to do it better.
- As partners w'ere often stuck in "coupleshame." However, working through it leads to true intimacy

Open Hearts is a book a couple reads together. It takes techniques that Carnes and the Laasers developed in their psychotherapy practices and weaves them into a series of individual and joint exercises. It looks at tough issues: shame, anger, money, betrayal, sex, parenting. It encourages fun: drawing up a family motto, expressing spirituality together, taking gentleness breaks. It works.

Open Hearts addresses coupleship to show how a relationship, no matter how imperfect or new, can be transformed and restored to loving intimacy.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1929866003
• ISBN13: 9781929866007
• Release Date: January 1999
• Publisher: Gentle Path Press
• Length: 230 Pages
• Weight: 1.39 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 8.1" x 10.0"

Customer Reviews

Zero stars if I could

This book is written using the codependent model instead of betrayal trauma. It is absolute garbage. If you are a betrayed wife, stay FAR AWAY from anything by Patrick Carnes. He will lead you to believe that your husband's addiction is, in some way, your fault. If I had realized that he had co-written this, I would not have bought it.

really helped my marriage

We had really hit a hard spot in our marriage, and working through this book together has helped tremendously. It's not easy work, but well worth the result at the end. Your husband does have to work it too though, and you have to dig deep. I have been to numerous 12 step meetings, but there's always another layer of the onion

healing for couples recovering from sex addiction

Patrick Carnes is a "founding father" in this field and does not disappoint. He displays complete understanding and guides gently on the path to wholeness for couples. Double WOW!

Gently healing your intimate partnership using the 12 steps

This is a lot of value for a very small price. You can embark on a life changing journey utilizing these pages. This is a book that makes large, emotional issues approachable for couples, and makes sense out of the often baffling conflicts and complexities of intimate relationships. It is largely based on a twelve-step recovery program, RCA, Recovering Couples Anonymous, but is written for any couple's use, as long as the desire to reach for something better is sincere. The first few chapters explore important issues and concepts, and my husband and I have gained a lot of confidence in the book from reading these chapters aloud to one another. We gained a number of valuable and helpful insights as well, about ourselves and one another.It is written in a realistic, insightful and respectfully caring style, that we found encouraging. The rest of the book is in a workbook format, with exercises that are geared to helping a couple understand themselves and the entity of the relationship and bring all the pieces together in an honest way that can, I believe, lead to healing. The exercises are accompanied by guiding explanations. I have not worked these exercises yet, but my husband and I intend to do so when we're through with the readings.