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Reader Recommendation: Starting Over (after divorce)

Wesley's picture

"I bought a fantastic book to help me put things into perspective, its the 'starting over' book by the same author as Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus."

This passage is from a participant in the MLC or Just Fallen Out of Love discussion group. The book they are referring to is "Mars and Venus Starting Over: A Practical Guide for Finding Love Again After a Painful Breakup, Divorce, or the Loss of a Loved One" (linked below). Amazon says this about the book:

A breakup, divorce, or loss of a loved one isn't just the end of your relationship with that person. It's a continuation of every feeling of abandonment you've ever suffered. It's the loss of a system of approval you'd come to depend on. The struggle, as Gray points out in Starting Over, isn't just to find a new partner, but to get over those feelings of abandonment or loss or anger or whatever else gets dredged up by the end of a relationship.

Perhaps the book's most crucial chapter posits that the best way to get over the loss of love is to focus on the "love" more than the "loss." That may seem impossible, especially if the bum took off with your best friend, your life savings, and your Lyle Lovett CDs, but Gray didn't get to be a household name because the advice in his Venus and Mars books doesn't work. Remembering only the bad parts, Gray says, leaves you with an important part of your emotional being closed to new business.

In addition to the LifeTwo reader who suggested it, the reviews on Amazon were generally positive saying things such as "goes beyond simple positive thinking" and another one calls it a "breakup Bible".

If you have a book that has helped you through a particularly difficult period, then please do as our reader did and let us know.

Amazon link: Mars and Venus Starting Over: A Practical Guide for Finding Love Again After a Painful Breakup, Divorce, or the Loss of a Loved One

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Anonymous's picture

Breakup book

The best book I've stumbled across is "Uncoupling: Turning Points in Intimate Relationships" by Diane Vaughan. It helped me understand some of the more painful behavior my ex was engaging in - very hurtful stuff that I just couldn't understand until I read this study of how people break up. Reading it after the fact was soothing for me, but I wish I'd read it before the break up so that I might have recognized more of the (seemingly universal) patterns that surround this process while they were happening and while I would have had opportunity to intervene.. perhaps.

Everyone should read this book regardless of the current state of their relationship.

Editor addition (Amazon link): Uncoupling: Turning Points in Intimate Relationships

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