No one in school ever teaches us how to handle and navigate relationships.
Love is one of the most important areas in our lives and yet we spend most of our time on earth without having the knowledge and skills needed to make it last.
Don’t you agree?
Love seems to entail so many complexities and unanswered questions; so many underlying sensations, often incomprehensible and uncontrollable.
Do you know what helped me navigate my relationships better? Seeking advice from people smarter than me between the pages of a book.
So, what follows, is a list of truly important books, by people smarter and more knowledgable than me, that massively helped me approach, navigate, and work on my relationships in a smarter, healthier, and more effective way.
I hope they’ll be helpful in your love journeys as well.
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#1. Hold Me Tight by Sue Johnson
Ideal for: understanding attachment and bonding, identifying emotional patterns in your relationship, and learning to create more secure bonds Length: 300 pages
Rating on Goodreads: 4,10 stars
The book’s main focus:
The author, based on 25 years of clinical research, first introduced in this book the idea of Emotional Focused Therapy to the world. EFT is a type of short-term therapy used to improve adult relationships by focusing on solving emotion-related issues.
The book’s most important takeaway(s):
Modern societies are obsessed with the idea of emotional independence and self-indulgence. However, as the book explains, humans need each other. It’s actually perfectly healthy to need your partner.
Apparently, what we all crave from our partners is to show us they’re gonna be there for us no matter what. The question that’s burning us deep inside and we’re dying to ask them is, “Will you come when I need you?”.
Another valuable takeaway is that great things happen when both you and your significant other learn to observe, maintain and deepen your emotional bond. It takes time, but it’s worth it.
Practical skills the book teaches you:
a) how to identify the emotional patterns that emerge in your fights with your partner
b) how to change those patterns
c) how to enhance your and your partner’s communication and level of understanding
d) how to deepen your emotional bond and build a secure emotional attachment
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#2. On Love by Alain de Botton
Ideal for: getting a deeper understanding of the whole process of falling in love, gaining a realistic perspective on love, learning to recognize mature vs immature love
Length: 194 pages
Rating on Goodreads: 3,98 stars
The book’s main focus:
On Love is essentially a deconstruction of romantic relationships. Following two young people, who meet on an airplane and fall in love, the author puts the beginning, middle, and end of their relationship in a philosophical context, and analyzes in-depth the emotions involved in every stage.
The book’s most important takeaway(s):
Love stories are never as pure, ideal, or even simple as fiction books and movies have led us to believe. Between the good and the bad times, there’s also awkwardness, embarrassment, and selfishness — and all because we are flawed humans.
Partners often adopt each other’s habits and quirks because even though we wouldn’t admit it, we need others to secure our own sense of identity. That’s also the reason we feel like a part of us dies after a breakup.
Our relationships are not as unique as we’d like to think.
Practical skills the book teaches you:
a) how to approach your relationships with a more realistic perspective
b) how to break the habit of idealizing your partners
c) how to make better decisions regarding matters of the heart by training yourself to give a second thought to your first impulses
d) how to keep an open mind after the end of a relationship
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#3. Modern Romance by Aziz Ansari & Eric Klinenberg
Ideal for: people who struggle with online dating, people who want a better understanding of the modern dating game
Length: 279 pages
Rating on Goodreads: 3,81 stars
The book’s main focus:
Ever find yourself contemplating how the digital age has changed modern relationships? That’s the issue the book explores. It’s an analysis of the modern dating culture and how online dating has altered the way young people find and approach love.
The book’s most important takeaway(s):
On average, people nowadays are marrying about five years older than the generation that married in the 1950s, but are far more likely to marry for love.
When it comes to modern-day relationships, men and women are more alike than we think.
No dating service on this planet can do what the human brain can when it comes to finding the right person.
The ambiguous nature of texting is the source of most misunderstandings.
Practical skills the book teaches you:
In this case, the book teaches you not exactly skills, but life/dating lessons, that have practical applications. Some of the most, ΙΜΟ, important are:
- Texting isn’t a form of dating per se, but a simple tool to actually arrange real-life dates. Spend less time on endless back and forth texting, and more time on actual meet-ups.
- Be specific. Generic texts come across as lazy rather than laidback.
- The abundance of choice when it comes to modern dating does you more bad than good in the long term (due to the paradox of choice). Stop trying to explore as many romantic choices as you can, and start making an attempt to properly invest in one person at a time.
- Most of the time, a person’s online identity has nothing to do with who they are in real life. Read that again.
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#4. What Makes Love Last? by John M. Gottman & Nan Silver
Ideal for: learning how to deepen the emotional intimacy between you and your partners, building more trust in a relationship, repairing a broken relationship
Length: 304 pages
Rating on Goodreads: 4,22 stars
The book’s main focus:
A psychologist and couples counselor shares the results of his research along with a series of insights into what makes love last, how to identify a relationship that’s heading for disaster, and what you can do to repair it.
The book’s most important takeaway(s):
Unresolved issues lead couples to a downward spiral because the Zeigarnik effect comes into play (our tendency to remember interrupted and uncompleted tasks better than the completed ones).
When we let our partner’s hurtful actions pile up instead of confronting them about them, we’ll inevitably enter NSO (negative sentiment override) and start interpreting all their actions in a negative light.
Asking open-ended questions is a crucial skill for having emotionally intimate conversations.
Practical skills the book teaches you:
a) how to communicate better
b) how to argue in a way that minimizes regrettable outbursts
c) how to deepen the emotional intimacy between you and your significant other
d) how to identify and avoid relationship killers
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#5. The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman
Ideal for: identifying your partner’s needs, gaining more insight into your own needs in a relationship, creating more meaningful relationships
Length: 232 pages
Rating on Goodreads: 4,26 stars
The book’s main focus:
You know no relationships-books list would be complete without this multi-million bestseller. In case you haven’t read it, it analyzes the five love languages people use, which are essentially the five different ways they express their feelings and receive love and affection.
The book’s most important takeaway(s):
We all express and receive love in different ways. If you learn what love language your partner speaks, you’ll improve your level of communication and understanding.
You can’t make your partner feel understood, without taking the time to actually learn and memorize what’s important to them.
A long-lasting love requires doing the things you did at the beginning of the relationship.
Love is always a choice.
Practical skills the book teaches you:
a) how to better understand your partner’s attitude towards love and relationships
b) how to identify and fulfill your partner’s needs
c) how to understand yourself better by determining your own love language(s)
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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Photo credit: Toa Heftiba on Unsplash