The Dance of Intimacy audiobook

You can't fix a relationship by focusing on the relationship. Since it is an act of teamwork, it can never be controlled by only one of its parts, and can never be more than the sum of those parts. But when one individual envisions what a healthy relationship is, and creates and acts out that vision on their end, many times the other half is inspired to follow and complete the vision. That is the idea behind this book, that strengthening the self will help so that self can be emotionally connected yet neither under- nor overpowering in a relationship. It is all a person can do to strengthen a relationship. It is all a person should do.The under- or overpowering drives of a person are born from anxiety, which creates either fight or flight. This anxiety can be about the relationship itself, but most often springs from other aspects of that persons life, which are brought into a relationship where they do not belong.When one person over- or under-functions in a relationship, they invite the other person to polarize and do the opposite. Then the two become caught in their fixed positions too long, often involving a third party (friend or other family member, often a child) to help solidify and validate their polarized positions more permanently.If you want to know how to make a relationship better, not just with spouses but also family and even friends, then this is a simple and powerful how-to. It can improve any relationship by showing you how to be more yourself and less the player of a particular role.

Another book I read and discussed with my daughter when she was in middle school.Excellent

The Dance of Intimacy is written as a guide for women who are seeking to deepen the intimacy in their important relationships. It had a lot of great advice and insight, and I found it to be equally applicable to my situation as a man. The author takes a perspective that is strongly feminist and also very compassionate towards individual men.The author starts from the perspective that having intimate relationships with others requires first having a strong connection with yourself. She talks about being self-focused without being self-centered. She next discusses the fact at you can't change other people, you can only change your own behavior. If someone makes changes to be more self-connected and open to connection with others, that can make it easier for others to connect.A lot of the book focuses on how current problems with intimate partners can be caused by past problems in a person's "first family". If someone has a poor relationship with their parents, for example, that can manifest as strain in their current relationship. The author believes this is so important that she advises people to create charts showing the major life events of all family members going back three generations. That's a bit much for me right now, but all of the other advice she gives seems very usable.The book also has a focus on triangular relationships that can result when a third party is pulled in to stabilize the relationship between two people. While this kind of triangle can be stabilizing, it can also freeze the original relationship into a state that can't improve.The book is a very compassionate look into how people can make changes in themselves that may result in better relationships with others. It doesn't give a step by step process to change. Instead, it focuses on ways that relationships can often develop or get stuck, and gives insight into things that can lead to more intimacy. I highly recommend it.

Perfect book for improving one self on how to be intimate with others. I love the section on how to do self focus. I have a difficult time with this. I tend to do the whole "You do this and this.." whereas I need to focus on my self. "I feel this.." "I feel so and so.." I also like the section on settings limits. I like how she uses examples of different people and their relationships. It really shows how people react differently to situations and how like for instance where the daughter was reacting to her alcoholic father and how it affected her.. how he caused her stress, problems, etc. However, when she placed her limits on him and then this caused the rest of her family to change.. this then caused her father to change himself.I really like this book.

I first became interested in "family systems process" through Rich Bledsoe. This particular book, despite a "chick-ish" title, was very helpful as an introduction to family systems, overfunctioning, underfunctioning, and triangulation. The theory of family systems process counseling revolves around the idea that there are multigenerational patterns of dysfuction in family history. The suggestion is that at moments of great crisis and anxiety in our past families we tend to fall into similar patterns. Often the "problem" person in a family is falsely labeled that, and that person is simply the scapegoat and focal point for the stress and anxiety of the family triangle. Thus, if such can be identified, the system imprisoning the individuals may be broken and better social functioning established.

This was a tremendously beneficial read for me. Harriet Lerner develops and shares a conceptual and practical framework regarding relationships and communication towards intimacy that really hit home. She uses case studies to show familial interactions that impede or destroy the development of true intimacy. Within these case studies I could view bits and pieces of inappropriate reactions and interventions I so often resorted to in dealing with my loved ones.This book was a wake up call at best as Lerner offers so many valuable ways to bring fuller personal intimacy to one's daily life if one has the courage and commitment to employ her techniques.

Outstanding book. Keeper. A woman's guide to courageous acts of change in key relationships. In the Dance of Intimacy, the bestselling author of the Dance of Anger outline the steps to take so that good relationships where intimacy is most challenged by distance, intensity, or pain and she teaches us about the specific changes we can make to achieve a more solid sense of self and more intimate connectedness with others. Combining clear advice with vivid case examples (love it) Dr. Lerner offers us the most solid, helpful book on intimate relationships that both women and men may ever encounter.

This is one of those books that I wish I haven't read! It clearly exposes the patterns and unconscious behaviours we engage in in our relationships. And once exposed I can't just keep doing the same old thing and have to change. And change is difficult, like the book keeps emphasising over and over again. Read at your own risk, recommended only for those motivated to work to make their relationships more harmonious and to maintain the illusive balance between "I" and "we".

harriet lerner macarthur genius grant WHEN!!! she does such a good job of laying out the frameworks of human relationships, their stakes, and our patterns of dysfunction within them. intimacy can’t exist without both self and connectedness—this book is likely more useful to people who find themselves usually compromising the self for supposed connectedness (like me), but i think it is valuable even to those who tend to sacrifice connectedness for greater experience of self. a key principle to much of her work is that we are responsible for how we feel and others are responsible for how they feel; if a pattern of behavior someone else engages in consistently derails how we feel, it is up to us to clearly, calmly, and firmly express what changes we require for our own wellbeing. even if you believe that such a demand on you is not fair (after all, you make the active effort to look out for them! why can’t they do the same for you?), it is still your responsibility to preserve your own wellbeing, fair or not. change is a long and difficult process and not without its ruptures and failures, but it is one we usually have to commit to in order to truly realize intimacy in all relationships, romantic or otherwise.

Normally, I find 'self-help' books a struggle to read and, even if they are informative, I am usually very glad to finish them as the reading is so dry. Not so with Harriet Lerner's books. Whatever book I am reading of hers is always my favorite. The Dance of Anger is excellent in addressing overfunctioning/underfunctioning roles. This book continues to deal with influencing change by focusing on yourself but deals more with understanding triangles. I have already downloaded another Harriet Lerner book to my kindle from the library as I love all of her books.