Intimate Partners: Patterns in Love and Marriage

By Maggie Scarf

Book Overview

"Anyone involved in, embarking on, or yearning for, an intimate relationship should buy, borrow or steal Intimate Partners." -New Woman What goes on in our intimate attachments? What patterns of relationships do couples tend to follow, and why? The bonds we create affect every aspect of our lives, and yet our grasp of them is limited by our emotional reactions and learned responses. Now, in Intimate Partners, bestselling author Maggie Scarf gives us the classic book on marriage-on how love relationships are formed and how they change over the course of the marital cycle. Here you'll discover - how to understand one's inherited emotional history-and how fits with a partner's - the fascinating ways in which power and control, and intimacy and autonomy exert strong effects upon the kind of partnership two people create - surprising observations on the role of sex and the impact of children on marriage - why change can be experienced as a form of betrayal-and how to ensure that a relationship matures with, and is not impeded by, each individual's growth - simple exercises that couples can do to resolve tensions and change the nature of the world they share - verbal and physical techniques to cope with sexual difficulties and enliven a couple's connection during sex - straightforward methods for how to engage in healthy-not dysfunctional-quarrels Intimate Partners is a book that changes not only how we view love relationships, but also how we live them. "Every marriage contains a story, and it begins long before the wedding, Maggie Scarf tells us in her ambitious, thought-provoking . . . ultimately compelling study. . . . Read it and feel consoled." -USA Today "Listen to Maggie Scarf . . . and you'll come away thinking that yes, marriage can be tough, living long-term with another person is one of the greatest challenges there is, but it's well worth the effort." -Chicago Tribune "Provocative . . . Scarf writes lucidly and convincingly." -The Washington Post Book World

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0345418204
• ISBN13: 9780345418203
• Release Date: September 2008
• Publisher: Ballantine Books
• Length: 448 Pages
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.1" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

Every couple gets a copy

Maggie is a tremendous writer and so respected in the field. This book is the book that I give to every couple who comes to me for therapy because why write the book twice when she already did it and so wonderfully well! For the record, everything she writes is on my bookshelf because Maggie cuts to the chase and helps us all to grow bigger and better. I'm grateful for everything she has taught me. Mary Jane Hurley Brant [...]

Covers important territory in why marriages fail & how to save them

There are lots of books that address how external events such as illness or the loss of a loved one can affect one's marriage. This book explains in depth how patterns from your partner's family or your family of origin can impact your marriage without your even being aware of them. With the techniques Scarf describes it's possible to bring these to light and break the hold they have on your relationship. Not a really easy read but most definitely worth it. I have a copy but it's never on my bookshelf -- always loaned out!

well-written by a non-clinician

Good stories of partners and their conflicts.... As I've seen when doing couples therapy, we do indeed tend to carry each other's unacknowledged "stuff"...which of course is part (not all!) of the initial attraction, the unconscious logic asking: who can give this back to me? Krishnamurti had a nice image: relationships as mirrors.

Valuable Insight

MS Scarf writes a captivating, engaging, book using real life (they feel quite real) couples to illustrate many of the relationship dynamics she explains. The center piece of Intimate Partners is the examination and application of the notion of projective identification. This notion is common in the psychological discussions under different names. MS Scarf introduces the notion clearly. Other notions she uses are family of origin implications and genograms. The book heavily relies on acceptance of general psychological theories. This is not an easy read. It is worthwhile, valuable, contimplative and, most of all, useful in the context of daily life. If you are looking for spoonfed, formula solutions go somewhere else.

as useful as a year of therapy

This book changed my life and the way that I look at my marriage. Scarf summarizes family therapy, but she does it with so much life that it's as riveting as a soap opera. Reading this book, I had dozens of "aha" moments when I finally recognized and understood what was going on in my marriage -- ahas that enabled me to break old destructive patterns