Married to Distraction: How to Restore Intimacy and Strengthen Your Partnership in an Age of Interruption - Softcover

Hallowell M.D., Edward M.; Hallowell, Sue; Orlov, Melissa

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0345508009 ISBN 13: 9780345508003

Verlag: Random House Publishing Group, 2011

Inhaltsangabe

Are you more distant from your spouse than you’d like to be? Do you or your spouse waste time mindlessly viewing email or surfing the Web? Welcome to the club! Modern marriage is busy, distracted, and overloaded to extremes, with ever-increasing lists of things to do, superficial electronic connections, and interrupted moments. The good news is that there are straightforward and effective ways to restore communication and connection, resurrect happiness and romance, and strengthen—even save—a marriage.
 
• Observe the natural sequence of sustaining love: attention, time, connection, and play.
• Develop and nurture empathy—the essential building block to healthy communication.
• Carve out small moments of uninterrupted attention for each other.
• Identify the pressures that our crazybusy lifestyles put on love and marriage, and fight back with tenderness and appreciation.

Complete with scripts, tips, communication techniques, and a detailed 30-day reconnection plan, as well as inspiring real-life stories, Married to Distraction will set couples on a course of understanding, healing, and love.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Edward M. Hallowell, M.D., was an instructor at Harvard Medical School for twenty years and is now the director of the Hallowell Centers in Seattle, San Francisco, New York City, and the Boston area. He is the co-author of Driven to Distraction, Delivered from Distraction, and Answers to Distraction, as well as the author of CrazyBusy, The Childhood Roots of Adult Happiness, and Worry, among other titles. He also hosts a weekly podcast called Distraction that offers practical solutions on how to focus and regain control in today’s digital world.
 
Sue George Hallowell, LICSW, has been a practicing couples’ therapist for more than twenty-five years. The Hallowells are the parents of three teenage children. They live in Arlington, Massachusetts.

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Chapter One


 The Anatomy of Modern Love  

   Praised be the fathomless universe, For life and joy, and for objects and knowledge curious, And for love, sweet love--but praise! praise! praise! --WALT WHITMAN    

You've picked up this book for a reason. Your concern is love.   

You've likely hit a snag, maybe a small one, maybe large. Human intimacy is so complex, so coiled and convoluted, that it's hard not to hit a snag. Most of us hit snags all the time in our dealings with others, especially those we are closest to. So, ifyou've hit a snag, just hang on. Keep up the effort. Anyone who tells you it's easy to stay together over the long haul has never done it. If you're still taking it seriously and working at it, your efforts will pay off as long as you have a plan that makessense. It's not enough just to take it seriously and work at it. Some people work at it their whole lives long and get nowhere. To help your efforts to keep your love alive and your marriage intact, we offer a plan based on what we know works best.  

When a couple is in a good place, each partner feels secure and fulfilled. To feel secure and fulfilled in a relationship, both people need to feel:    

* that the other person thinks highly of them. * that the other person cares deeply for them. *that the other person thinks they are proficient at something.  

Beyond that, for love to become what we all want it to become, a smile should cross your face when you think of your mate. You ought to think of him or her as someone you have fun with, someone you look forward to seeing, someone who for an undefinablereason makes life feel special. You want to feel that he or she casts a glow into your life that makes you feel good, no matter what else might be going on.  

When all goes right, a natural sequence of five steps leads to such happiness in love. Each step should usher in the next, but, as we will later describe, modern life tends to snag each one. The steps are:    

1. Attention 2. Time 3. Empathy 4. Connection 5. Play    

Love begins in attention. Love begins when you notice another person. Love starts with a catching of your eye. Be it on some enchanted evening across a crowded room, or via an ad on Match.com, some signal--somehow--draws your attention to one person andnot to another. No one has ever figured out exactly why and how this happens when and where it does--but it does, and has done so since the dawn of time.  

In today's world, distractions interrupt attention all the time. The basic prerequisite of love--attention--can seem impossible to give or get.  

Once you have each other's attention--no small feat--the next step toward love is to sustain that attention over time. Without sustained attention, love cannot grow. On the other hand, too much attention can snuff it out. While some people purport to knowthe right proportions in advance, each love is different, which is why there is no one recipe and why "prescriptions for finding love" offered by "experts" so often fail.  

Giving and receiving attention becomes a kind of dance as love grows. Now you see me, now you don't. Playing hard to get. Don't be too easy. If you want me, you'll have to pursue me. At this stage, attention is often focused on the other in absentia. Resistingpicking up the phone to make the call. Deliberately avoiding the other person while thinking about him or her day and night. Preoccupied by the other person, but keeping a certain distance. This is the dance of developing love.  

Once again, our age of distraction can disrupt the dance. If you don't have time to ponder and wonder, if you don't have time to approach and avoid and put your heart into it, then love will falter here, not because you are a mismatch but because you havenot created sufficient focus for love to grow.  

Attention given and received in proper measure over time, a recipe that varies from couple to couple, leads to a deeper interest in and a greater knowledge of the other person, which constitutes understanding and empathy.  

Mutual empathy creates a connection. It is impossible to overestimate the power of connection at its strongest. It drives life. But it cannot develop if people are unable to sustain attention over time. Such a mundane obstacle--distraction--ruins millionsof potentially intimate relationships in our modern age. 

  But if you are able to create genuine connection, you've got it made. This is the great reward of love. In connection, you feel safe enough to become vulnerable. You feel safe enough to let go and to play. Play is the main action of true love. By playwe mean any activity in which your imagination comes alive.  

Play often begets its cousin, celebration. New research shows that more important than being there for your partner when times are tough is being there for your partner when times are good. The study found that being excited and happy for your partnerwhen he or she brings home good news was a stronger predictor of the strength of the relationship than being stalwart when bad news hits.  

Being able to play and to celebrate--being able to have fun together--are far more important than most people believe. They are a cornerstone of all great relationships.  

As we have mentioned and will continue to show, the conditions of modern life threaten all five of the steps we've named, which in turn threatens the vibrancy and power of your love--not because you are mismatched, not because you are impaired people,but simply because today's world sets unique traps that can derail even the best relationships.  

Of course, we don't know exactly how the help you'll find here will help you because we don't know the particulars of your situation. You may be in great distress, or just a little worried. Whatever the case, you probably want to get more from your marriage(or other close relationship) than you are currently getting. This book will help you in that regard. If you follow the suggestions we offer in these pages, it will be impossible for you not to develop a closer and more enjoyable relationship. And don't worry,the suggestions are not at all difficult to implement. You won't have to learn a foreign language or join a new religion. All you really have to do is set aside some time. Not easy, but possible, right?   You may believe your marriage is basically good, but it could use a tweak. Or you might feel like the person who once said to Ned, "I know my marriage is just fine . . . until I stop and think about it."  

There is likely love in your marriage, and we will build on that love. But even if you think there is no love, we will help you search out what's positive. At the heart of our method is the identification and development of what's already good. You wouldn'tbe with your partner if you didn't once have love, or something like love, but that love might now not be so easy to find.  

As one of Ned's patients once said, "My husband and I work so hard to get everything done, we're like a small business, and businesses don't run on love. Earn the money, take care of the kids, keep up the house, do the holidays and birthdays and celebrations,bake the cookies, do the school and homework thing, keep up with the relatives, you know the drill. With all there is to get done, I sometimes ask myself, 'But where's the love?' You know, like, get real, who has time for that?"  

At times we're simply too busy to pay attention to the people we love the most. We take them for granted. There's just so much to do. You...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Random House Publishing Group
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2011
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0345508009
• ISBN 13: 9780345508003
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 240
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar