Are you more distant from your spouse than you’d like to be?
Do you sometimes get into big struggles over what amount to
mere administrative details? Do you or your spouse waste
time “screensucking”—mindlessly viewing email or surfing the
Web? Welcome to the club!Modern marriage is busy,
distracted, and overloaded to extremes, with ever-increasing
lists of things to do, superficial electronic connections,
and interrupted moments. Now Edward M. Hallowell, the
bestselling co-author of the hugely popular Driven to
Distraction and Delivered from Distraction, teams
up with his wife, Sue George Hallowell, a couples’
therapist, to explain the subtle but dangerous toll today’s
overstretched, undernurtured lifestyle takes on our most
intimate relationship. The good news is that there are
straightforward and effective ways to maneuver your marriage
out of the destructive roadblocks created by the avalanche
of busy living. Just thirty minutes of effort a day for
thirty days can restore and repair communication and
connection, resurrect long-buried happiness and romance, and
strengthen—even save—a marriage.
We deal with
overload by tuning it out, but the repercussions on couples
and commitment are serious. Without attention, there is no
intimacy. And without intimacy, there is no connection. So
how do couples find their way back?
• Observe
the natural sequence of sustaining love: attention, time,
connection, and play. • Develop and nurture empathy—the
essential building block to healthy communication. •
Carve out small moments of uninterrupted attention for each
other. • Identify the pressures that our crazybusy
lifestyles put on love and marriage, and fight back with
tenderness and appreciation.
All of us who have
been part of a couple for more than a few years will
recognize ourselves in this reassuring book. Complete with
scripts, tips, specific communication and interaction
techniques, and a detailed 30-day reconnection plan, as well
as inspiring real-life stories from relationships that were
brought back from the brink, Married to Distraction
will set couples on a course of understanding, healing, and
love.