Married to Distraction: Restoring Intimacy and Strengthening Your Marriage in an Age of Interruption

Edward M. Hallowell, M.D., Sue Hallowell, Melissa Orlov

Random House Publishing Group, Mar 16, 2010 - Family & Relationships - 240 pages

Are you more distant from your spouse than you’d like to be? Do you or your spouse waste time 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. The good news is that there are straightforward and effective ways to restore communication and connection, resurrect happiness and romance, and strengthen—even save—a marriage.
 
• 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.

Complete with scripts, tips, communication techniques, and a detailed 30-day reconnection plan, as well as inspiring real-life stories, Married to Distraction will set couples on a course of understanding, healing, and love.

Contents

• MODERN ISSUES IN INTIMACY: 3
• Struggle Stoppers: 69
• Eliminate Toxic Worry: 84
• When Your Spouse Has True ADD: 89
• When Your Spouse Feels Like Your Child: 98
• The New World of Affairs: 105
• Time for Sex 12: 112
• Just How Neat Musta Person Be?: 118
• Managing Anger and Frustration: 121
• PROMOTING PASSIONATE CONNECTION: 127
• An Unfamiliar Key to Empathy: 129
• Specialize: 135
• Building Romance: 146
• The Unexpected Gift: 150
• Finding Hope: 159
• What Makes It Worthwhile: 166
• Ten Reasons Not to Get Divorced Ten Reasons To Get Divorced and Forty Ways to Make Your Marriage Great: 178
• THIRTY MINUTES THIRTY DAYS A workbook for Modern Marriage: 187
• Notes 225: 190

About the author

Edward M. Hallowell, M.D., was an instructor at Harvard Medical School for twenty years and is now the director of the Hallowell Centers in Seattle, San Francisco, New York City, and the Boston area. He is the co-author of Driven to Distraction, Delivered from Distraction, and Answers to Distraction, as well as the author of CrazyBusy, The Childhood Roots of Adult Happiness, and Worry, among other titles. He also hosts a weekly podcast called Distraction that offers practical solutions on how to focus and regain control in today’s digital world.
 
Sue George Hallowell, LICSW, has been a practicing couples’ therapist for more than twenty-five years. The Hallowells are the parents of three teenage children. They live in Arlington, Massachusetts.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Married to Distraction: Restoring Intimacy and Strengthening Your Marriage in an Age of Interruption
• Authors: Edward M. Hallowell, M.D., Sue Hallowell, Melissa Orlov
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group, 2010
• ISBN: 0345519310, 9780345519313
• Length: 240 pages
• Subjects: Family & Relationships / Marriage & Long-Term Relationships; Psychology / Interpersonal Relations; Self-Help / Personal Growth / Happiness