Intimacy & Desire: Awaken The Passion In Your Relationship

I've been blown away by so much of what this book presents. It's been one of the most helpful books for me on the question of how human relate not only to each other in intimate relationships but also to the rest of the world. Even though the author is a secular writer I think what he explores is helpful on so many other levels. Here's a blog post I wrote relating some of what I learned from Schnarch with other things I'm thinking and reading. [...]Amazon struck the link, which I understand so I'll just embed my posting. Hope its helpful. pvkIntimacy and Desire is the most helpful book I've read on theological anthropology in a long time. That may sound strange because the book is written by a secular sex therapist who bases his findings on science and his experience as a clinician.The Reflected SelfThe phrase in David Schnarch's book that rocked my world was his observation "your first self is a reflected self."I had to sit and ponder that statement for a few moments. What did that mean? I wasn't sure but I could sense it was important.I thought about an infant that knows nothing but its own young history outside the womb. It's learning about temperature, sounds, colors, and a whole new tactile world. It's learning how to move its hands, its body, how to find the nipple and how to nurse. It's been hearing and recognizing sounds and voices since before it was born but soon she will learn to focus her eyes and she will come to know faces, especially the faces of Mom and Dad.In most robot apocalypse movies the crucial launching moment of the plot is the moment of self-awareness. Human beings arrive at this moment early. Soon the baby will learn that she is distinct from Mom and the rest of the world and that she is a self.The world of "self" for a small child is one of discovery. Soon the child will learn that the child has power to choose, to do, to impact. The child will also learn that she lives in a large world where there is "no", frustration, pain, and other things. The self the child continues to discover and develop is in fact a reflected self. The child can't see or experience the self much apart from others. At first most of the reflection is coming from parents and care givers. Increasingly it starts coming from classmates and friends. Soon it will start coming from strangers.The Self-constructed, Reflected SelfWhy do people think they often need to strike out from their community of origin to "find their selves?" It is because they are looking for more, new and different mirrors than what they've had. Often they will go to a big city because each mirror out there makes the self look a bit different. We are in fact constructing our "selves", our identities from the things we find around us. From our friends, from the stuff around us, from our relationship. It isn't dissimilar from trying on new clothes and looking in the mirror to see how the new clothes make us look. We do all of this implicitly.One of the major changes in developmental human history is the invention of the constructed identity. People of course have long been doing it but one of the geniuses of our contemporary culture is our capacity to popularize and multiply what in past centuries was only the advantage of the elite. People used to receive a full, rounded identity by virtue of their birth. Your gender, your father's occupation, your class, your caste, your ethnic group, your place of birth, the loves, religions and hobbies of your parents established your identity. You would in term go forward, supplement it, develop it, etc. but for the majority of people the parameters were fairly fixed and the variety of influences that a common person might encounter would be limited.Identity from a clean sheet of paperAll of this has changed and a good bit of what marks our own social situation is the construction of identities. Certainly many of the received aspects of our identities are still quite powerful and determinative for our outcomes, but part of what is central especially to the American dream is that you can make yourself into whatever you want to be. This cultural ideology is a religion of choice. If you want to this narrative says that you can self-construct or re-construct almost all of the aspects that past generations simply accepted as received.Choose your gender, your ethnicity, your vocation, your self. You do this by re-arranging the mirrors around you by which you construct your self. You used to have to move to a big city in order to do this, but today you can get most of the pieces you need via the Internet. You can be who you want to be and most of us pretty clearly see that the Army would only be one of a myriad of choices.Reflected Selves in Intimate RelationshipsSchnarch's book is all about how this plays out in the context of marriage. In the initial stages of infatuation and attraction the other is desired not necessarily for his or her self, that self in fact can hardly be seen or known initially. That object of romantic desire is valued for his or her capacity to shape our reflected self. To be in an intimate relationship is to be deeply validated and affirmed and for our hungry, reflected selves this is one of the greatest most powerful drugs we can imagine. Through this object of our affection we see ourselves as valued, as worthy, as loved, as desirable. Our romantic partners become the mirrors that seem to improve and address the failures, insecurities and disappointments of our pasts. (See Harville Hendrix' work on why we pick who we attach with.)In time we begin to realize that people aren't really the best mirrors from which to construct our reflected selves with. The person, the real person over time begins to assert themselves and we stop receiving the reflected selves that we were first so attached to. Initially there is plenty of accommodating so that both sides can simultaneously self-construct their reflected selves but at some point the whole thing starts to break down. Schnarch sees this not so much as a failure, but rather an opportunity to get beyond your reflected self and to begin to become a more solid, flexible self.Schnarch's Four Points of BalanceSchnarch asserts that most relationships will break down into gridlock where eventually neither partner can no longer finally finesse their way out of the inevitable impasse and what is required is that one or both people need to develop what he calls the 4 points of balance:1. Solid Flexible Self(tm)--the ability to be clear about who you are and what you're about, especially when your partner pressures you to adapt and conform.2. Quiet Mind-Calm Heart(tm)--being able to calm yourself down, soothe your own hurts, and regulate your own anxieties.3. Grounded Responding(tm)--the ability to stay calm and not overreact, rather than creating distance or running away when your partner gets anxious or upset.4. Meaningful Endurance(tm)--being able to step up and face the issues that bedevil you and your relationship, and the ability to tolerate discomfort for the sake of growth.Schnarch, David (2011-07-01). Intimacy & Desire (p. 72). Beaufort Books. Kindle Edition.Solid selves and the capacity to love (rather than to be loved)Those of us who live from our reflected selves live the quest to get our partners, our kids, and much of the rest of the world to reflect back to us the self we wish be. This will almost always lead to conflict because people are not mirrors or outfits we try on in order to construct our "selves", they are people, often consumed by their own quest of self-construction.Part of the irony of the reflected self is that this self has little capacity to love. It has an enormous hunger to be loved, to be affirmed, to be constructed by arrange people or partners perceived to be mirrors around us in such a way as to feed our hunger to be the glorious centers of the universe. We long to be loved but only a more solid self can actually have the freedom and capacity for love.Mirror Reflecting God's GloryIt is here that I begin to put together Schnarch and CS Lewis. Lewis has a great conclusion to a chapter in Mere Christianity where he says this.The command Be ye perfect is not idealistic gas. Nor is it a command to do the impossible. He is going to make us into creatures that can obey that command. He said (in the Bible) that we were `gods' and He is going to make good His words. If we let Him--for we can prevent Him, if we choose--He will make the feeblest and filthiest of us into a god or goddess, a dazzling, radiant, immortal creature, pulsating all through with such energy and joy and wisdom and love as we cannot now imagine, a bright stainless mirror which reflects back to God perfectly (though, of course, on a smaller scale) His own boundless power and delight and goodness. The process will be long and in parts very painful, but that is what we are in for. Nothing less. He meant what He said.Lewis, C. S. (2009-05-28). Mere Christianity (pp. 205-206). Harper Collins, Inc.. Kindle Edition.We were made to be mirrors and our selves our first selves are reflected selves on purpose. I've got much more work to do in working through and assimilating Schnarch's insight but one of the areas I wonder about is not how solid we will become but how singular our self will every become. I think by virtue of the stickiness of our selves we were in fact made for relationship but our flimsy reflected selves are poor ones.Looking for the only safe, off-shore mirrorSchnarch understands marriage, marriages in which people don't give up, as a great engine for human development. This engine can produce solid people (again, CS Lewis' Great Divorce) who actually have the capacity to love rather than the addiction to constantly attempt to construct their identities by using the people and things around them. That habit of using people and things to construct ourselves is idolatry and we can never grow up and become solid until we stop using.The irony of the situation with having a reflected self is that I don't think we finally lose it. Learning to become a reflected self from Christ is a similar but safer process, not unlike what the woman in Tim Keller's sermon illustration performed. Grounding our identity in the love and commitment of Christ towards us affords us a more solid self from which we can develop the capacity to love the other here around us and the good and beautiful things that the creator has lavished upon our planet.Schnarch has a lot of helpful things to say in his book in terms of finding your 4 points of balance, and if I have time and desire enough hopefully I'll write more.

This is an excellent book whose greatest gift is that it makes the vast ground plowed 13 years earlier in the author's 2nd book, Passionate Marriage, readily accessbile. The latter was a great book but a dense, difficult read that gave its greatest gifts only after repeated readings. This book, in contrast, makes the author's approach to self and relationship development easily understood. It brings his theory down to earth and gives guidence in applying it to one's life. I highly recommend it.The book is, indeed, fun to read. Schnarch can deftly shift between transcribing the words & thoughts of a counseling session to his principles of human interaction & growth, and on to sometimes salacious stories of couples getting it on -- not only sexually but mentally & emotionally, and in a more open, enlightened way. He breaks into a mercifully short few pages of techno-babble at the beginning of one chapter to show his inclusion or understanding of brain science, but that is the only lapse in the smoothly flowing writing in this book.Schnarch presents a number of "moving parts" within our relationships that work to grow us personally & as a partner. And his approach is generally at odds with the common approach within our culture of accomodation or withdrawal from conflict. Instead, he suggests that confronting one's issues -- from one's family of origin or from one's current partner (and commonly they are one & the same) -- is the real path to growth. The process involves these key variable:* All key dimensions of activity, including sex, have a high & a low desire partner.* Our sense of self can be based on others' opinion (other validated) or on our own heart (self validated). Both are valid, but if one is predominantly other-validated, then one becomes reluctant to say or do things that will endanger our partner's good opinion of us. And that creates major problems often to the extent of losing our self in the process.* The tension between autonomy & connectedness provides the opportunity for personal growth: the authors Crucible Approach (which he's trademarked).* Mind mapping is the core process of understanding the thoughts & intentions of another. Only where you allow another to honestly & fully know you can you have that deep connection most of us seek.* Mind mapping as well as personal integrity is intimately involved in maintaining collaborative alliances with your partner. Being able to maintain such a collaborative alliance most of the time over a prolonged time is what makes for a "good relationship."* Being psychologically prepared to sustain an alliance, and the integrity necessary for it, requires individual skills that were collectively called "differentiation" in Passionate Marriage and are here more usefully detailed as his Four Points of Balance on page 72.* Marriage is a people growing system. One of its key mechanisms is to give you 2 Choice Dilemmas, forcing choice between alternatives that are both desirable. It forces growth where we might otherwise be tempted to complacently stay within our comfort zone -- and thus stagnate within relationship.* Desiring your partner is one such Choice. And positively choosing your partner is a key part of fully participating in relationship.Reading this book or any book won't cure a troubled relationship. But it will give you guidence on how to face your own part in your troubles and, very importantly, give meaning to the fact of your relationship struggle. Yes its hard, but yes it is the felling of growth. Find that meaning and the hardship becomes very tolerable.I highly recommend this book (and Passionate Marriage).

I rarely rate a book with four points, but this is a self help book which actually might help. It is an easy read but still has enough depth.While many tell you that if desire is dead it will remain dead, Schnarch has a very hopeful approach. Maybe a bit too hopefull because right in the beginning he tells you that he can help you with your problem.The centerpiece of the book is what he calls "the four points of balance". While he describes them very nicely my critique is that he does not give enough practical approaches or exercises how to strengthen these four points of balance.The whole "how-To" practical side of the book could be more elaborated, more concrete. Not everyone can afford to visit his workshops or simply does not live close enough that this would make sense.There's a second point which I really didn't like: the trademarking of names. It simply seems so business-like, as if he mainly wants to make money, which actually isn't necessarily true.Otherwise it's a great book.The book would have profited a lot including methods like mindfulness meditation and such, the exercises he invented are not really great and certainly not the only tools for mending such a problem, it needs more. I think Schnarch makes the same mistake modern psychologists do, thinking if you can understand a problem you can solve it - in most cases you can't.

Fascinating deep and enlightening. Schnarch doesn't shy away from topics that others skirt. Excellent use of case studies. A bit of a complex read for those who might not spent time processing such concepts. Worthwhile for those willing to look in a mirror and tackle the inevitable issues of long term relationship.

"Intimacy and Desire" gibt jedes Paar was miteinander zum Durcharbeiten.Die Störungspunkte von Beziehungen werden als Herausforderungen der Liebe möglich.

If you're in a long term relationshipt, or even if you're not in a relationship at all, this book is the best thing you'll ever read about how to have good relationships with everybody you know. No easy quick fix solutions, but a sound and well formulated philosophy for life if you have the desire to change.

Why has it taken me so long to find this? Truely enlightening and hopeful if not an easy read it is inspiring.

For years I've been looking for a new take on understanding relationships. All the typical relationship books just seemed to fall short to me. This is finally the book/theory that I've been looking for. It gets down to the real issues of understanding the deeper dynamics. It's been very helpful for me on different levels.