Relationships Matter

Many couples begin marital counseling with Dr. David Schnarch with their sex lives in shambles, wondering what's wrong with them, considering divorce. One partner will complain that the other doesn't desire him, the other complains that she's married to a sex maniac. During his 30 years in practice as a marriage and family therapist, Dr. Schnarch has discovered that sexual desire problems are normal and even healthy, in committed relationships. In Intimacy and Desire: Awaken the Passion in Your Relationship, Dr. Schnarch explains why couples in long term relationships have sexual desire problems, regardless of how much they love each other or how well they communicate.

Through case studies of couples he worked with, Dr. Schnarch shows why normal marital conflict can be the cause of desire problems and creates a road map for how couples can transform marital conflict into a stronger relationship and a font of new and powerful desire for each other.

Price: $17.13

User Reviews about Intimacy & Desire: Awaken the Passion in Your Relationship

While Schnarch's "Passionate Marriage" was an intriguing book, and gave much room for thought, I struggled with it, and I'm no stranger to psychology-type texts. Intimacy & Desire is MUCH clearer, and more useful to a lay person trying to understand and work with marriage as a "people growing" machine. His "Four Points of Balance" in this book is brilliant...gives you specifics to ponder and help move yourself along. Having read this book, I will go back and re-read "Passionate Marriage" (again). Highly recommend for couples who want to go deeper and (re)invigorate their marriages. -- Better than Passionate Marriage!

I had the pleasure of hearing this quote from Dr. Schnarch as he presented his work from this book at a psychotherapy conference. I have always respected and enjoyed his findings, research and teaching. This book does the an even better job than the rest of his past books describing differentiation. I use his work with all of my couples and find it to be most helpful in working with lesbian couples. I highly recommend this book for therapists working with couples and for the couples struggling to find their way back to each other. -- "You don't work on your marriage, your marriage works on you" David Schnarch

I was knocked out by the smart and sensible perspectives offered in these pages. I've been partnered for 10 years now and we've both had excellent individual and couples counseling along the way from before we met and since (we're in late middle age). And still ... I've been bitter and have felt helpless and compromised for the past few years about our sex life together and the ever-dwindling level of intimacy between us. UNTIL I READ THIS BOOK. Wow. We've got a real chance now of changing lifelong patterns that have hurt us throughout our lives and in relationship with each other and a good shot at the "resilient collaborative alliance" (and better sex!) we've both longed for. It'll take courage and effort but this book gave me the hope I've been desperate for. Whether or not we stay together (and I hope we do) chances are good that I'll have benefited substantially because of having read it. -- invaluable book

It is not just sex. Dr. David Schnarch, a sex psychologist, gets this. Intimacy and desire is all about loving and becoming truly your best. This is Dr. Schnarch's clearest book to date bringing together family system theory and neurobiology research findings to create sense out of the "people-growing" machinery of marriage.

My own 27 years experience as a marriage counselor makes two things increasingly inescapable: Family System Theory is the best way to do family and Schnarch is the only one using it to really do our partner. Intimacy & Desire unravels the mystery. To want to want is faithfulness to grow intimately, live and in person, at home with those who know you best: lovers, family, and friends. The reader gets to know the sexual struggles of real life couples who all discover how true love can change their life, except of course Barbie and Ken who were remained too sadistic to get it.

Dr. Schnarch is the only writer out there in the wilderness of self-help books, who graphically demonstrates how humping says something about who you are and how you family. He shows how f**king (see Chapter 14 for "The hardest person to f*** is your spouse"), having oral sex, solving premature ejaculation, overcoming tickles, and engaging in normal marital sadism affects how you are you and how lovingly you are married. In so doing, you find you have to have a solid sense of yourself, discover how to own and regulate all of your passions, wisely act (rather than blindly react), and hold on and hang in there when growing gets uncomfortable.

As the only book about intimacy you will ever need, Intimacy & Desire gets five stars. But be careful what you wish for. Intimacy and desire will make you become more yourself and give more than you ever thought you could love. And that can happen when you do not have sex with your partner and also when you do. It is all about sex, too. Just read Schnarch. -- It's not just sex