Love Cycles
The Five Essential Stages of Lasting Love
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4.7 • 6 Ratings
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
In Love Cycles, veteran couples therapist Linda Carroll presents a groundbreaking model of the five natural stages of romantic relationships — the Merge, Doubt and Denial, Disillusionment, Decision, and Wholehearted Love — and a guide for navigating through them toward lasting love. Love Cycles helps readers understand where they are in the cycle of their relationship and provides a clear strategy for how to stay happy and committed, even in difficult times.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this dynamic guide to developing healthy relationships, Carroll, a couple's therapist, elaborates on the development of relationships by examining a common, fundamental problem among them humans want to form connections but also maintain their independence. As a relationship grows, each partner journeys through the five cycles of love: the merge, when each partner is wholly obsessed with the wonder and delight of the new relationship; doubt and denial, when the rational mind attempts to point out flaws with the other partner while the heart still clings to the unrealistic perfect relationship; disillusionment, in which conflicts have grown; decision, when the partners are forced to come to terms with the realities of their not-perfect partners and make a decision about the future; and wholehearted loving, in which the two partners have decided to work hard on the relationship and embrace all its joys and difficulties. Carroll's interpretation is highly relatable: it is at once a relationship book as well as a sort of self-help. Readers looking to experience a rewarding relationship will also come away with a better sense of self.
