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answer about half the questions as a giver and half as a taker? That's
a good place to be. Evatt and Feld recommend only one basic solution-
-givers should learn to take and takers should learn to give more.
Books, books, and more books about love relationships
before and after marriage
Books about love relationships before and after marriage
A survey by Santrock, Minnett & Campbell (1994) shows that
mental health professionals consider four books (out of 100's) to be
exceptionally useful in understanding love and intimacy: Lerner
(1989), The Dance of Intimacy, Hendrix (1988), Getting the Love You
Want, Scarf (1986), Intimate Partners: Patterns in Love and Marriage,
and Sternberg (1987), The Triangle of Love. Three of the four
emphasize how our family relationships and childhood needs or
conflicts influence our choice of lovers. Awareness of these motives,
which we are usually only vaguely conscious of, might help us
understand and cope with our attraction to certain people. Besides
clarifying for you exactly what is going on--what are the hidden
agendas (Potash, 1991) in the search for love--there are many other
approaches to dealing with specific problems that plague love
relationships (to be reviewed in the next two sections).
Probably no other area has mystified us as much as love. So, there
are lots and lots books filled with theories... and cases to prove the
theory. No doubt these books sell but we must get beyond theory in
order to change a relationship. We must recognize, of course, that
men and women often have different views of marriage (Sangrey,
1983). So, several excellent female authors have focused on
understanding women's conflicts between submissively loving a man
and being their own independent person (Horner, 1990; Lerner, 1988;
Paul & Paul, 1983). The ideal egalitarian marriage is described by
Fishman (1994), Schwartz (1994), Schwebel (1992), and others.
Others offer help in building true intimacy (Emmons & Alberti, 1991;
Young-Eisendrath, 1992; Gray, 1994; Napier, 1994, and see the
discussion later under maintaining intimacy). O'Hanlon and Hudson
(1995) try to get you away from "analyzing" and start you changing. I
consider the books in the last two paragraphs to be the most helpful.
Of course there are more abstract, theoretical books about love
(not just sexual attraction), including Erich Fromm's classic The Art of
Loving. Focusing more on romantic love, Nathaniel Branden (1980,
1981) gives us insight into our feelings of love. And, Hendrick and
Hendrick (1992) have a new book about liking and loving.
Love relationships change from one stage to another. Campbell
(1980) sees the stages of increasing intimacy as steps toward inner
growth and wholeness. The early stages are scary and sometimes
