Love Skills (The Keys to Unlocking Lasting, Wholehearted Love)

Linda Carroll’s first book, Love Cycles: The Five Essential Stages of Lasting Love, describes the five stages of intimate relationships in detail, illuminating the behaviors associated with each stage and strategies for successfully navigating them. This companion workbook, Love Skills, is a practical guide to help readers design their own toolkit for creating and maintaining a loving relationship. It’s a do-it-yourself version of Carroll’s Love Skills program, which she teaches to couples around the country, one that readers can use at their leisure. Exercises, activities, self-assessments, and other tangible tools allow readers to understand where they are in their relationship. Critical questions are addressed, including the loss of sexual energy, why what once seemed endearing is now annoying, and the many ways that family history and personality type can wreak havoc in relationships. Specific, effective solutions to the most common struggles of couples provide a clear map for moving forward. Most important, Carroll’s couple-tested techniques allow readers to deal with conflict without losing connection. Well-researched practices help keep love alive in the midst of small and large, seemingly intractable differences. Most productively and profoundly, Carroll’s tools show that conflict, when navigated properly, can lead to renewed closeness an unprecedented connection.