Beyond the Chase: Breaking Your Obsessions That Sabotage True Intimacy

For centuries, stories of romance in literature, movies, and on television have equated true love with 'happily ever after,' perpetuating the myth that once one meets the love of one's life, the rest is easy. In reality, it is when this initial attraction dissipates that the real work begins; building and maintaining true intimacy can be one of life's great challenges—and rewards. Among the most difficult barriers to achieving this are the hidden, unresolved obsessive behaviors and patterns of thinking that we bring into our relationships from our past.

In Beyond the Chase: Breaking Your Obsessions that Sabotage True Intimacy, renowned therapist and national media commentator Carla Wills-Brandon gives readers tools to develop and maintain close, lifelong relationships by helping them identify and work through the most common patterns that people fall into as they continue to make the same mistakes from relationship to relationship, hoping for different results. This book teaches readers—whether they are in search of a mate, caught up in the passion of a burgeoning romance, or well along a committed path—how to weather a variety of storms by working through those aspects of their lives that prevent them from achieving the close relationship that they desire. Readers learn to

• Recognize ways that they isolate themselves through work, food, cybersex, emotional and sexual affairs, parenting
• Establish healthy boundaries
• Distinguish between lust and love
• Communicate effectively
• Respect their partner sexually
• Fight fairly
• Understand how past pain impacts relationships