Happily Ever After…
and 39 Other Myths about Love:

Breaking Through to the Relationship of Your Dreams

By Linda and Charlie Bloom

According to married couple and bestselling authors Linda and Charlie Bloom, it’s not so much the things we don’t know about relationships that can hurt us but rather the things we THINK WE KNOW. These myths, from “they lived happily ever after” to “love means never to having to say you’re sorry” to “once a cheater, always a cheater,” permeate our culture and take root in our minds, preventing many couples from doing the work required to build a good, lasting relationship. The Blooms take on these myths, showing how they can destroy a relationship and how they are harmful to long-term success. That’s just the beginning; they go on to demonstrate how to use these debunked myths as a starting point toward a better understanding of what it means to build a healthy, thriving relationship.

Going beyond just challenging the validity of these myths, the book offers valuable suggestions for replacing them with more realistic and practical behaviors that enhance and strengthen intimate relationships. Each chapter presents an alternative to the myth and offers tools and suggestions for disproving harmful assumptions and instead adopting practices and skills that will keep your relationship growing. Happily Ever After . . . and 39 Other Myths about Love contains easily absorbed nuggets of wisdom and entertaining anecdotes, stories, and vignettes that illustrate the essential messages contained in each chapter.

Some of the myths included are: “Frequent arguing is a sure sign that you’re married to the wrong person.” “Marriage is a fifty-fifty proposition.” “All the good men / women are taken.” “Once you’ve lost that loving feeling, it’s gone, gone, gone.” “Little things aren’t worth getting upset about.” These and many other relationship myths are ever-present in Western movies, pop music, romance novels, and self-help books, yet they have little substantive foundation beyond a willingness on the part of the general population to accept them as factually true. As the Blooms’ book reveals, such unexamined acceptance can lead to disastrous consequences in the context of intimate partnerships. Fortunately, even die-hard believers in relationship myths can avoid these consequences and become free from the grip of these and other misconceptions.

Happily Ever After . . . and 39 Other Myths about Love identifies and challenges these beliefs by providing compelling reasons why they are not valid, and does so with engaging and entertaining writing and story-telling. The book show readers how they can recognize and free themselves from the limits of these beliefs. After reading this book, couples will find new ways to strengthen and heal their relationships and move toward the type of love they thought only occurred in myths!

This book, published in January, 2010 is entitled Secrets of Great Marriages, Real Truth from Real Couples about Lasting Love. This book features conversations with 27 couples, who have been married an average of 30 years, all of whom have exemplary relationships. These couples share the intimate and often surprising details of their experience together, revealing their secrets of lasting love. Each story contains valuable insights into their accumulated wisdom that will enrich any committed partnership.

Any couple reading these stories will be inspired, challenged, and guided toward the relationship of their dreams. I highly recommend it to all couples, successful or unsuccessful.”–Harville Hendrix, Ph.D Author of ‘Getting the Love You Want’

Reading this incredibly enthusiastic, confident celebration of marriage is a total joy! Every couple is unique. Every story is engaging. The level of candor in which matters both tragically dire and delicately intimate are presented is thrilling. The message — commitment to love supports and sustains through difficulties — resounds throughout.”–Sylvia Boorstein, author of Happiness Is an Inside Job: Practicing for a Joyful Life’

Read, laugh, and weep in recognition – and learn nuggets you can use immediately in your own practice and your own life.”–Gordon Wheeler, Ph.D. President of Esalen Institute and author of Beyond Individualism’