Intimacy & Desire presents Dr. Schnarch’s unique understanding of the way marital impasses are a natural path to relationship growth. In each chapter you meet a couple in-depth and share their journey resolving a different desire problem. You see how their conflicts and struggles unwittingly push both partners to grow (co-evolve). The sexual desire everyone wants has nothing to do with hormones and sex drive, because we want to be wanted and chosen (not just needed), which only comes from your partner’s heart and mind, and ability to want.
Section One of this ground-breaking book addresses one of the major problems in dealing with sexual desire issues: Typically the partner with low or no desire feels defective and withholding, and the high desire partner takes it personally. But Intimacy & Desire starts off showing how the low-desire partner always controls sex, whether they know it or like it or not. It shows how “high desire” and “low desire” are positions in a relationship, and there is a low desire partner in every marriage!
Why and how did humans evolve this way? Intimacy & Desire’s answer lays groundwork for succeeding chapters. It shows how desire became entwined with humankind’s emerging “self” millions of years ago, which makes human sexual desire absolutely unique. The rest of the book explains how to use desire problems to become a more solid person, and how to use this personal growth to resolve desire problems, based on methods developed from 30 years of clinical practice.
Section Two introduces the Four Points of Balance™, Dr. Schnarch’s proven method for turning desire problems into personal growth, lasting desire, hot sex, and profound intimacy (i.e., “sex worth wanting”). You see how your Four Points of Balance are the cause, solution, and outcome of sexual desire problems. You realize sexual desire is a system, and marriage is a people-growing machine driven by differentiation over millions of years. The Four Points of Balance and differentiation framework continue throughout the book.
Section Three shows you how your personal history fits into this amazing picture of love relationships. You watch partners confront themselves and each other about who they really are, resolve their desire problems and their issues from their past, and change their lives. Their Four Points of Balance are always involved.
Drawing upon 30 years of experience, the Four Points of Balance, and cutting-edge research on brain-change psychotherapy, Section Four offers powerful things you can do to improve your desire, intimacy, relationship, and change your mind—and maybe even your brain. These range from non-sexual Hugging till Relaxed to a cure for noxious touch that’s 100% effective. This journey of sexual desire, self-exploration and personal development culminates with explicit mind-blowing erotic sex. Intimacy u0026amp; Desire delivers on its promise of more meaningful desire for your partner, feeling better about yourself, a more resilient relationship, and greater zest for life.
