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How much can we know about what other people are feeling and how much can we sympathize or empathize with them? The term "intimacy" captures a tension between a confidence in the possibility of shared experience and a competing belief that thoughts and feelings are irreducibly private. This book is an interdisciplinary study of shared feeling as imagined in eighteenth-century ethics, romantic literature, and twentieth-century psychoanalysis. Original interpretations of Hume, Rousseau, Kant, Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Austen show how mutual recognition gives way to the appreciation of varied, nonreciprocal forms of intimacy. The book concludes with accounts of empathy and unconscious communication in the psychoanalytic setting, revealing the persistence of romantic preoccupations in modernity. Yousef offers a compelling account of how philosophical confidence in sympathy is transformed by literary attention to uneven forms of emotional response, including gratitude, disappointment, distraction, and absorption. In its wide-ranging and eclectic engagement with current debates on the relationship between ethics, affect, and aesthetics, the book will be crucial reading for students of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century culture, as well as for literary theorists.
What does it really mean to love another person? Is there such a thing as the 'perfect' partner? How does infatuation differ from the real thing?The need to love is central to our idea of happiness, yet it sometimes seems that the more we reflect on it the more elusive it becomes. In this lucid and graceful meditation on the deeper meanings of intimacy, John Armstrong explores the ideas that have shaped how we view affairs of the heart. Drawing on poetry, novels, philosophy, paintings and music, he shows how love is inextricably bound up with perception and the imagination: that loving a real, complicated person and being understood and valued by them in turn is not something we find, but rather something we create.
Love and Intimacy in Contemporary Society reflects on relationships in contemporary society and the role of love and intimacy in framing lives. The book draws on sociological perspectives, cultural sociology and gender theory perspectives. It looks at how love and intimacy is experienced differently and intersected by gender, ethnicity, race and sexuality. This book aims to encourage people to understand theories of intimacy, emotions and desire by examining these concepts contemporaneously and cross-culturally. It also explores how love and intimacy is experienced by young people and how it is impacted by age. It looks at its representation in the media and film and focuses on how gender, ethnicity and sexuality offer different perspectives on love and intimacy. The book shows how relationships are impacted by social networking and new technologies and the opportunities and challenges posed by these new platforms for building relationships. Finally, the book examines how intimacy has become commercialised in late capitalism and how that acts to change relationships. The book is written in an accessible way and explores a range of theoretical debates and contemporary research around emotions, which can be useful for undergraduate, postgraduate and doctoral study.
This exciting new text on counseling African American couples outlines critical components to providing culturally-sensitive treatment. Built around a framework that examines African American couples’ issues as well as the specific contextual factors that can negatively impact their relationships, it: • Addresses threats to love and intimacy for Black couples • Provides culturally relevant, strengths-based approaches and assessment practices • Includes interesting case studies at the conclusion of each chapter that illustrate important concepts. The chapters span the current state of couple relationships; readers will find information for working with lesbians and gays in relationships, pastoral counseling, and intercultural Black couples. There is also a chapter for non-Black therapists who work with Black clients. Dispersed throughout the book are interviews with prominent African American couples’ experts: Dr. Chalandra Bryant, relationship expert Audrey B. Chapman, Dr. Daryl Rowe and Dr. Sandra Lyons-Rowe, and Dr. Thomas Parham. They provide personal insight on issues such as the strengths African Americans bring to relationships, their skills and struggles, and gender and class considerations. This must-read book will significantly help you and your clients.
The sexual revolution: an evocative term, but what meaning can be given to it today? How does 'sexuality' come into being and what connections does it have with the changes that have affected personal life on a more general plane? In answering these questions, Anthony Giddens disputes many of the dominant interpretations of the role of sexuality in modern culture. The emergence of what the author calls plastic sexuality - sexuality freed from its intrinsic relation to reproduction - is analysed in terms of the long-term development of the modern social order and social influences of the last few decades. Giddens argues that the transformation of intimacy, in which women have played the major part, holds out the possibility of a radical democratization of the personal sphere. This book will appeal to a large general audience as well as being essential reading for students and professionals.
A behavioral scientist explores love, belongingness, and fulfillment, focusing on how modern technology can both help and hinder our need to connect. A Next Big Idea Club nominee. Millions of people around the world are not getting the physical, emotional, and intellectual intimacy they crave. Through the wonders of modern technology, we are connecting with more people more often than ever before, but are these connections what we long for? Pandemic isolation has made us even more alone. In Out of Touch, Professor of Psychology Michelle Drouin investigates what she calls our intimacy famine, exploring love, belongingness, and fulfillment and considering why relationships carried out on technological platforms may leave us starving for physical connection. Drouin puts it this way: when most of our interactions are through social media, we are taking tiny hits of dopamine rather than the huge shots of oxytocin that an intimate in-person relationship would provide. Drouin explains that intimacy is not just sex—although of course sex is an important part of intimacy. But how important? Drouin reports on surveys that millennials (perhaps distracted by constant Tinder-swiping) have less sex than previous generations. She discusses pandemic puppies, professional cuddlers, the importance of touch, “desire discrepancy” in marriage, and the value of friendships. Online dating, she suggests, might give users too many options; and the internet facilitates “infidelity-related behaviors.” Some technological advances will help us develop and maintain intimate relationships—our phones, for example, can be bridges to emotional support. Some, on the other hand, might leave us out of touch. Drouin explores both of these possibilities.
A guide to building a better, more intimate relationship with your significant other from the author of Coming Apart and The Future of Love. Whether your relationship is just beginning, or you are celebrating your twenty-fifth anniversary, A Lifetime of Love offers sixty-five prescriptions for helping you achieve lasting love. You will discover how to have deeper intimacy, transcendent moments, and a wonderful soul connection. Follow the light of love with your treasured one. Work on your relationship through self-improvement, whether you have just started dating or have been in a marriage for years. Author Daphne Rose Kingma provides tips and pointers on ways to keep the romance alive such as dinner conversation starters. She wants you to feel the fire but also learn how to commit fully and gladly. Learn about intimacy through vulnerability, and ways to trust and love your partner and encourage longevity in your relationship. Praise for A Lifetime of Love “In a series of brief and enchanting essays, Daphne Rose Kingma delineates the spiritual dimensions of an intimate relationship. The challenge is to cherish each other’s souls and to champion each other’s spiritual growth. This means attending to the unfolding of your relationship with heart; sharing transcendental moments; learning the language of intimacy; being gentle, patient, and kind; practicing the art of empathy; and integrating the divine erotic. Kingma believes that mutual spiritual growth involves grace, hope, and wisdom. A Lifetime of Love shines a light on the path to the spiritual possibilities of love.” —Spirituality & Practice
Schaef applies the addictions of sex, love, romance, and relationships to her broader addiction theory and clearly defines and contrasts the relationship addictions.
This book explores the meaning of love and intimacy from a variety of perspectives, specifically philosophical, psychological and cultural. This volume is a focussed study on what makes them and what may break love and intimacy. Love and intimacy are central to us, is sought by almost everyone, and while we seem to know what they are, they are not easily described. The present volume includes eleven chapters which are divided into two parts. The first part describes the meaning of love, intimacy, and romantic relations, and the second highlights what may go wrong in such relationships, and why. The book explores theoretical debates and contemporary research around emotions and will be of interest to students and researchers of psychology, philosophy as well as sex, marriage and family therapists and counselors. The chapters in this book were originally published in The Journal of Psychology.
An unlikely pair of voices-the world's most recognizable beauty icon and "America's rabbi"-comes together to diagnose how meaningful, passionate sex is on the decline in Western culture, and what is necessary to save it. Sex is dying in America. Inundated with sex and starved for it, obsessed with it yet clueless about it, we are slowly forgetting how to make love. The crisis of modern sexuality is seen in high divorce rates, in the degradation of sexuality through pornography, and tasteless displays of empty, counterfeit erotica. Most of all, it's seen in sexless marriages and platonic relationships where cybersex has become more addictive than the real thing. Sex has become so trivialized, coarsened, and vulgarized that couples no longer feel its pull. The once powerful and irresistible magnetism of sex is being diluted and drained. The authors propose replacing the 1960s' sexual revolution with a new sensual revolution, a rediscovery of intimacy that encourages and ennobles human relationships, elevates healthy lust, and gets us from looking up from the glowing screens of our smartphones to the people around us, most especially the people we love the most. Lust for Love embraces the idea that what our most important relationships need most is lust. It is necessary to rediscover what's sexy again, how to bring back romance, and to understand that in addition to love, we need lust to repair our unfulfilling sex lives and broken relationships. Lust for Love proposes a return to what lovemaking was always meant to be: a desire to know and experience another person in the deepest possible way.