Love Cycles: The Five Essential Stages of Lasting Love

Love Cycles: The Five Essential Stages of Lasting Love

Carroll presents a groundbreaking model of the five natural stages of romantic relationships — Merge, Doubt and Denial, Disillusionment, Decision and Wholehearted Love — and a guide for navigating through them toward lasting love.

by Linda Carroll —

Carroll presents a groundbreaking model of the five natural stages of romantic relationships — Merge, Doubt and Denial, Disillusionment, Decision and Wholehearted Love — and a guide for navigating through them toward lasting love.

The notions that passion always peters out, that there is a seven-year itch and that honeymoons are over once reality sets in are clichés with truth to them.

But that does not mean that long-term love is impossible.

Carroll, a veteran couples therapist, shows that the love cycles, including Doubt and Denial, are part of genuine intimacy, rather than signs of its demise.

She asserts that it is by courageously moving through what comes after the rapturous initial Merge cycle that we achieve an authentic intimate relationship.

As crucial as our willingness to navigate stormy waters of the Disillusionment and Decision stages, it is embracing the inner personal development that is both a reward of and prerequisite for Wholehearted Love.

The goal is to become your best self and share that self — joyfully and honestly — with another.

The book helps readers understand where they are in the cycle of their relationship and provides a clear strategy for how to stay happy and committed, even in difficult times.

$14.95 — New World Library, 14 Pamaron Way, Novato, CA 94949.

Reprinted from AzNetNews, Volume 33, Number 5, October/November 2014