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The struggle for intimacy is a complex issue, key to the happiness of every man and woman. It goes on for all of us as long as we live. To be intimate is to be close, to be vulnerable--qualities that are very different from the survival skills we learned. This book will help clarify the issue for you.You can learn to:*Identify family myths that make you wonder whether having a healthy, intimate relationship is possible.*Know the questions to ask to find out whether you and your partner have a long-term future together.*Be aware of misundertandings that can sabotage your relationship.*Express your feelings and fears so as to avoid misunderstandings.*Find out what to do when your relationship is not working.*Create good relationships.Acquiring intimacy skills can be difficult, but with understanding and effort, they can be learned. This insightful book is a good place to begin.

Janet Woititz (1938-1994) is the author of Adult Children of Alcoholics, which was on the New York Times bestseller list for over a year. She wrote several other books, including Lifeskills for Adult Children; The Self-Sabotage Syndrome; The Struggle for Intimacy; Marriage on the Rocks; Healing Your Sexual Self and many others. Woititz was the director and founder of the Institute for Counseling and Training in West Caldwell, New Jersey.

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1Who Do You Pickfor Your Lover?Why Do You Pick the Lovers That You Do?Everything is going wrong with my relationship. I know that it's all my fault. I try everything I know to fix it, but it doesn't work. I'm not even sure if I love him/her. Maybe I don't know what love is. I'm so confused.'Sound familiar? It should. It is almost verbatim the story I hear when an Adult Child of an Alcoholic enters therapy because an intimate relationship is souring. And the story is the same whether the COA is twenty years old and in a first serious relationship, or forty years old and the veteran of one or more failed marriages.'It just has to be my fault. Relationships always go this way. I thought it would be different this time, but it wasn't. Maybe I'm better off alone.'Have you felt that way? We all have and we've all said similar self-deprecating things while in the midst of a troubled or troublesome relationship. Is it a 'normal' way to feel? It depends upon whether you are feeling that way because of the current circumstances or whether these are deep-seated messages which have become a permanent part of your self-image because they were hammered at you time and time again while you were growing up. In both cases, the feelings are equally painful, but they are more difficult to erase in the second case.Read those opening statements again: 'Everything is going wrong. I know that it is all my fault. I try to do everything that I know, but it just doesn't work.'Today you are saying those phrases about your relationship. The context may be new for you, but the phrases and the feelings are not. Once again, you are experiencing the helplessness of your childhood and reacting to an 'old tape.' Nonetheless, the feelings are real, and, oh, so powerful.Other familiar feelings also well up, including confusion, the sense of being stuck, of being unable to change your destiny.This is all part of being in an intimate relationship. It will drag out all things, old and new, that you have experienced and felt before. You will play it all out again. With work, the process and outcomes will be different, but the struggle cannot be avoided. Even those who have not been affected by living in an alcoholic family find one must work to have a good and healthy relationship. You have plenty of company in the struggle!To probe a little deeper into the nature of the struggle you are facing, it is important that you recall some of the early inconsistent messages you were given by your parents. Like it or not, want to believe it or not, these messages are still influencing you on an unconscious level throughout all aspects of your life. To change your life, you must change the message.And, awareness is the first step toward changing the message. The knowledge of how your current patterns were formed will begin to release you from the self-critical indictment which is such a basic part of your nature. Let's take a look at these double-bind messages and how the

Excerpted from Struggle for Intimacy by Janet G. Woititz
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Struggle for Intimacy

Struggle for Intimacy

0932194257

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