Will Our Love Last?: A Couple's Road Map

Am I with the right person?

Will our love last?

Men and women in love are haunted by these questions. Love — especially why it blossoms in relationships and why it later dies — is a mystery to them. "Will Our Love Last? A Couple's Road Map" solves this mystery by giving readers a new understanding of love — an understanding they can actually use to evaluate the soundness of their relationships and to answer confidently the crucial questions that mystified them before.

Based on hundreds of cases in his twenty-four years as a marital therapist and twenty-nine years in his own happy marriage, Sam R. Hamburg, Ph.D., explains how compatibility is the key to lasting love. He shows how compatibility on three major dimensions — the Practical Dimension, the Sexual Dimension, and the Wavelength Dimension — is essential to the mutual understanding and affirmation that keep love alive, and he leads readers through a simple but systematic procedure for assessing their compatibility with a romantic partner in these crucial relationship areas.

Dr. Hamburg introduces a new technique, "The Hand Rotation Exercise, " to help readers express their degree of compatibility and then convey that visually to their partner. In addition, he presents two new original techniques for working through relationship conflicts and coming to agreement on difficult issues: "His Way/Her Way" and "The Long Conversation."

Written in a clear, direct style that is free of jargon, "Will Our Love Last?" empowers readers to make important relationship decisions that are intellectually and emotionally informed. "Will Our Love Last?" will help couples trying to decide if they should take the next step to a more committed relationship. It will aid individuals embarking on a new relationship, or who are between relationships, to evaluate the rightness of a new or prospective partner. And it will assist people who are already in committed relationships to make an honest assessment of their prospects for happiness with their current partner.

People have it in their power to make sure that they truly are with the right person. "Will Our Love Last?" shows the way.

Includes bibliographical references (p. [235]-236).

Sam R. Hamburg, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist and marital therapist in private practice. He is a lecturer in the Department of Psychiatry of Pritzker School of Medicine, The University of Chicago, and is a member of the adjunct faculty of The Family Institute at Northwestern University. Dr. Hamburg is also on the executive committee of the Marjorie Kovler Center for the Treatment of Survivors of Torture, an agency that offers pro bono psychotherapy and rehabilitation to individuals who have been subjected to torture and other traumatic events. Dr. Hamburg, his wife, and their daughter live in Chicago.

Contents

Author's Notes

Acknowledgments

Part One: Marriage and Happiness

1. The Question: What Makes Marriages Happy?

2. The Answer: Compatibility

3. How Love Fits In

4. Love Is Private, Marriage Is Public

5. Different Kinds of Marriages

6. Filling in the Details: Your (My) Questions Answered

Part Two: Choosing the Right Person

7. Avoiding Bad News

8. Feeling Your Compatibility

9. The Practical Dimension

10. The Sexual Dimension

11. The Wavelength Dimension

12. Yikes! What Do We Do Now? And Your (My) Other Questions Answered

13. After You Get Married

14. Devotion

Endnotes

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