by Ann Gadd
144 pages paperback, 5 black & white illustrations
Why relationships fail and how to heal them?
Is your relationship joyless? Do you often feel isolated and alone? Do you battle to maintain fulfilling relationships? Does your relationship lack real intimacy? Do you live for the day your partner’s behaviour will change?
Initially his laid-back lifestyle may attract you. Years later you see ‘laid-back’ as ‘lazy’ and find it frustrating. Often, then, what initially attracts us to another ends up repelling us. By understanding the balances in relationships as expressed through various roles or archetypes we assume, we can work to bring balance and harmony into our relationships and create the love and intimacy we all desire.
There are numerous self-help books about relationships.
Generally they look at the origins in individuals of the dysfunction. However, because the desire is always for the partner to change and because one can’t force change on another, as insightful as they may be, they offer few tools to really alter the relationship dynamics.
Instead of looking at relationships as the addition of two individuals, this book examines the opposite interconnections between these individuals, with the understanding that if one person changes it must bring about change in the other. Creating the relationships we want then becomes an active principle we can use rather than passively sitting around hoping that our partner may change. In doing so we move from being the victim in a relationship to empowering ourselves to change the dynamics involved.
Opposite pairs of Archetypes, for example Child and the Parent, or the Damsel in Distress and the Knight in a Shining BMW, are used to demonstrate why we are attracted to our opposite.
This new paradigm of seeing relationships as balance seeking mechanisms - a see-saw scenario – will allow you, the reader, to realize that for the relationship to change, the power is within you. (i.e. sitting back in the hope that your partner will one day become who you would like him/her to be will not work!) By shifting position on the seesaw, you can bring about the change you desire.
What went wrong with Mr Right? allows us the opportunity to escape the problems we experience with those close to us. With great wisdom, sensitivity and empathy, Ann Gadd goes right to the core of so many of the difficulties we experience in relationships - responsibility! She encourages us to take on that responsibility by truly getting to know ourselves, and in that way acknowledging that we have the ability to shift and change any relationship.
Written in a way that makes reading easy and accessible, using practical examples and vignettes, Ann Gadd has us moving onto a path of self-discovery , exploring the roles we play within our relationships, and the history of their development. She gives us the courage and the tools for critically examining these and making the changes necessary to alter these, finding our authentic voice so that we can live more honestly and freely within fulfilling relationships.
This book will be one that will remain next to my bed for easy reference, to be dipped into again and again!
Jenni Normand: Clinical Psychologist
Displaying 1 to 5 (of 5 reviews)
