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Has sex with your partner become routine or unfulfilling? Can you say just what you want in bed or let your partner really see you during an orgasm? Spicing up your love life involves more than mood music and clever techniques. Every sexual exchange, from kissing to daring erotic behaviors, is a picture of your entire relationship--a reflection of how you and your partner feel about yourselves, and each other, outside the bedroom.As renowned sex and marital therapist David Schnarch reveals in this revolutionary book, keeping passion and intimacy alive requires facing the anxiety of defining yourself while getting closer to your partner. Sexual encounters provide perfect opportunities to do this and to develop the strength to love deeply.Mixing humor and compassion, Schnarch describes couples' explicit sexual encounters and dramatic therapy sessions to demonstrate how they found personal, marital, and sexual fulfillment far greater than they ever dreamed possible. He goes beyond simply curing sexual dysfunctions to help people achieve their sexual potential. In this invigorating look at adult sex, he seeks to bring out the best in each of us.… (more)
User reviews
I refer to Schnarch more than any other figure in my work as a
What I like about this book is that it is both theoretical and practical. It works. Not all the time, but more than most books. I would recommend it to people getting married, and they were usually blown away by it.
If you like the theory behind his ideas, I recommend going deeper with The Sexual Crucible, but it is more for professionals, and not the lay reader.
The Passionate Marriage, on the other hand, can be read, enjoyed and and put to use by any intelligent person who wants to work on their marriage.
"When we believe that hormones run the show, we send kids the unconscious message that we don't really expect them to control their crotch while they have zits on their face. We give kids a double message: we'd like you to delay first intercourse, but we think it's
"Low sexual desire is almost always considered a problem. (I've found it often reflects good judgment: healthy people don't want sex when it's not worth wanting.)"
"Expecting your partner to sacrifice for you in the name of love KILLS marriage, sex, intimacy, and love."
"We often feel afraid to say things that might affect our marriage, and in our fear we withhold information. Then we look with disrespect upon our partner, who we assume couldn't handle what we fear to say! The best sex and intimacy in marriage often come out of mutual respect. Respect is a bond of the highest order."
I highly, highly recommend this book. It has been a paradigm changer for how I think about relationships and sex. I couldn't read more than a few pages at a time when I normally fly through books because it prompted so much thought and processing of what I read. This book cuts straight through the fluff and gets to the details of why and how to fix a relationship. I think that this might be the best book I have ever read about committed relationships and sexuality, and I have read a lot on this subject.