Verwandte Artikel zu How We Love, Expanded Edition: Discover Your Love Style,...

How We Love, Expanded Edition: Discover Your Love Style, Enhance Your Marriage - Softcover

Yerkovich, Milan; Yerkovich, Kay

 
9780735290174: How We Love, Expanded Edition: Discover Your Love Style, Enhance Your Marriage
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0735290172 ISBN 13: 9780735290174
Verlag: PRH Christian Publishing, 2017

Inhaltsangabe

Did you know the last fight you had with your spouse began long before you even met?
 
Are you tired of falling into frustrating relational patterns in your marriage? Do you and your spouse fight about the same things again and again?
 
Relationship experts Milan and Kay Yerkovich explain why the ways you and your spouse relate to each other go back to before you even met. Drawing on the powerful tool of attachment theory, Milan and Kay explore how your childhood created an “intimacy imprint” that affects your marriage today. Their stories and practical ideas help you:

* identify your personal love style
* understand how your early life impacts you and your spouse
* break free from painful patterns that keep you stuck
* find healing for the source of conflict, not just the symptoms
* create the close, nourishing relationship you dream about

Revised throughout with all-new material and additional visual diagrams, this expanded edition of How We Love will bring vibrant life to your marriage. Are you ready for a new journey of love?
 
Note: The revised and expanded How We Love Workbook is available separately.

Die Inhaltsangabe kann sich auf eine andere Ausgabe dieses Titels beziehen.

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Milan and Kay Yerkovich are marriage counselors with decades of experience. Milan is a cohost of New Life Live! with Stephen Arterburn. He holds a master’s degree in biblical studies and is the founder of the counseling center Relationship 180. Kay has a master’s degree in counseling and focuses on helping couples create healthy attachment. Together Milan and Kay have developed a method of couples therapy called  Attachment Core Pattern Therapy. The Yerkoviches are the parents of four adult children. They make their home in southern California.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Why Every Marriage Gets Stuck

If we all naturally knew how to love, this book would be unnecessary, and Milan and I would each be out of a job as counselors. All of us who have been married more than a few years will admit it is a bit more challenging than we anticipated on our wedding day. Every marriage has nagging problems calling for our attention. Many people end up thinking their relationship is difficult because they married the wrong person. But the fact that many people are on to their second and third marriages proves that no marriage is tension free. Sometimes our marriages seem to run fairly smoothly—until we hit a crisis or face difficult circumstances. Stress always makes underlying problems more apparent.
 
Over the years many couples have come to us for help with their problems. We routinely ask several questions no matter what situation they describe. Recently, for instance, Hannah and Robert came in for their initial session. I asked them what Milan and I ask all the couples we see in our offices: “Tell me about the chronic irritations in your relationship. Perhaps it’s the same old fight that never gets resolved. Maybe it’s a pattern of relating that occurs again and again. Where do you get stuck?”
 
Hannah looked at Robert, and they laughed. “That’s easy,” she smiled. “It happened in the car on the drive to your office. I’m always the one bringing up the problems, so Robert is always telling me I am controlling. I was mad at him because he didn’t know what he wanted to talk about in our counseling session. He’s too passive. I want him to initiate more and try harder.” Robert chimed in, “I do try. It’s just never enough for you, Hannah.” Hannah looked at me. “See? Now he will pout and withdraw, and nothing
 
will get resolved.” I summarized, “So no matter what problem you want to discuss, this is your same old dance, the pattern that happens over and over. Is that correct?”
 
Robert and Hannah both nodded. They had pinpointed their core pattern. Some couples who are just dating can already describe their core pattern. A core pattern is the predicable way you and your spouse react to each other that leaves each of you frustrated and dissatisfied. Some are married a few years before it is apparent but sooner or later couples can readily identify the same old place when they get stuck. Maybe it’s the same complaints that come up again and again without every getting resolved or a familiar pattern of fighting, no matter what the topic. Milan and I are no different. We were married in 1972, and by 1976 we had discovered the classic scene that would play itself out over and over for ten more years of our marriage.
 
We had just put the kids to bed and collapsed on the couch. I picked up a magazine and began to thumb through it, and Milan sat quietly watching me. This was a familiar feeling; I knew he was taking my emotional temperature. I was hoping he would pick up the remote and turn on the television.
 
“How are you doing? Did you have a good day?” he asked.
 
I could feel myself getting annoyed. “Why do you keep asking me that? You already asked me that question two times since you came home from work. It’s the same answer: I’m fine.”
 
We were starting the wearisome dance that would send us both to bed angry and frustrated. I tried to derail the invitation. “I think there is a game on TV tonight.”
 
Milan was undeterred. “If you’re fine, then why did it bother you when I hugged and kissed you when I came home from work? I’m happy to see you, and you act like it’s a chore to give me a little affection. You have been distant all evening. What’s going on?”
 
I sighed. I wish you would go away and let me read my magazine, I thought. For some reason, I began to explain, knowing it wouldn’t help. “I’ve had kids hanging on me all day. When you got home, I was in the middle of cooking dinner and supervising homework, and you want me to drop everything. Why do you always have to make such a big deal?” The next steps of the dance were predictable.
 
Milan would give me examples of my lack of affection and attentiveness, and I would tell him he was too needy and made me feel smothered. If you have been married for a few years, you can probably describe your own recurring fight, the discussion you’ve had over and over that never gets resolved. You can probably also describe the ways you avoid dealing with problems, and they may be some of the same lines we hear in our offices every day.
 
• “I try hard to make you happy, but you are never satisfied.”
• “I feel like I’m walking on eggshells with you.”
• “I’ve told you over and over what I need, and you just won’t do it.”
• “Why can’t you be more spontaneous and passionate?”
• “If you would listen and do what I ask, I wouldn’t be angry.”
• “I’m happy with the way things are. You’re the one who is always bringing up problems.”
• “You say you’re sorry, but nothing changes.”
 
Are any of these steps in your same old dance? Maybe, like us, you find yourself locked in the same tiring dance over and over. Maybe you’ve tried to change your marriage and have been disappointed with the results. Much marriage advice focuses on treating symptoms and surface issues. You think, If it were possible to simply stop certain behaviors and do something different, it would be that easy. But trying to change the things on the surface misses the underlying issues. Occasionally, the adjustment brings good results, and the annoying problem dies down. But it always comes back because there are source patterns guiding those bumbling steps, and until you address them, the dance won’t get any
better.
 
Marriage is the most challenging relationship you will ever have, and to think otherwise is to live in denial. When you are with someone day in and day out, you can’t hide. Your weaknesses become quite visible, and old feelings from the distant past are stirred. The close proximity of our mates triggers old feelings as we look to them to meet many of the needs our parents were originally supposed to meet. Milan and I spent the first fourteen years of our marriage trying to change our destructive pattern, but we were only addressing the obvious issues that constantly surfaced. We listed the problems and searched for solutions. After fourteen years, though, a huge change took place when we discovered the unseen forces that determined how we loved. We realized our lessons in love didn’t start in marriage. They started in infancy and lasted for all the years we lived with our parents. Our experiences growing up, good and bad, left a lasting imprint in our souls that determined our beliefs and expectations about how to give love and receive love. Milan and I had different lessons about love, which resulted in different imprints, and without realizing it, we were dancing to different tunes. No wonder we were stepping on each other’ s toes. Lasting change became possible when we made that revolutionary discovery.

THE REVOLUTIONARY TRUTH

What are these imprints—these earlier dance lessons that healthy or not form our beliefs and expectations about love? All of us have an imprint of intimacy, the sum of our learning about how to love.1 Our imprint determines our love style—how we interact with others when it comes to love. For a...

„Über diesen Titel“ kann sich auf eine andere Ausgabe dieses Titels beziehen.

Verlag
PRH Christian Publishing
Erscheinungsdatum
2017
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0735290172
ISBN 13 
9780735290174
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
352
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Nicht verfügbar