Empowered Love: Use Your Brain to Be Your Best Self and Create Your Ideal Relationship

by Steven Stosny

Ever wonder why your self-control, rationality, and compassion seem to go out the window when dealing with your partner? Couples therapist and relationship expert Steven Stosny explains it all in this revelatory book about the divide between our adult and our toddler brains. Too often, conflict in our intimate relationships reactivates our least-regulated "toddler" side, bringing out an instinctive desire to assert our own way and make everything a zero-sum game. Dr. Stosny shows the way toward overcoming these destructive impulses and nurturing our more loving and clear-eyed inclinations. Drawing upon his decades of experience in working with troubled marriages, he distills his insights into an actionable guide for embracing our best impulses in our relationships.
Empowered Love is a valuable guide for married and live-in couples who struggle with an unhealthy dynamic; those already in individual or couples therapy who want a highly effective aid to help them communicate with their partner; and licensed therapists and counselors looking for an in-depth perspective on the developmental stages in play with relationship strife.

"Readers will garner valuable negotiating strategies, learn interactive exercises (including a 'bedroom scoreboard') to engage more proactively with their partners, and apply practical knowledge on shepherding their own relationships away from destructive behaviors and toward a unifying, durable connection. Readers on the lookout for self-development and a deeper loving connection with their partner will find ideas and guidance galore in this sensible relationship manual." — Kirkus Reviews

"This book is for anyone who wants to learn from their painful relational past; rescue and revive a current relationship; and receive promise and hope for their future. This refreshingly brilliant book not only identifies the bottom line issues in relationships, it provides a concrete formula for creating mature, passionate relationships. In this book Dr. Stosny brilliantly identifies the underlying cause of all relationship dissatisfaction and distress. Refreshingly practical, the book draws a clear line between unhealthy and healthy interactions, enabling the reader to identify and prevent relationships disasters long before they happen. Steven Stosny's work never fails to inform, inspire and draw a clear roadmap to happier, healthier relationships." — Pat Love , Ed.D., LMFT, co-author You’re Tearing Us Twenty Ways We Wreck Our Relationships and Strategies to Repair Them "If you've ever wondered why all of your relationships are a breeze except for your intimate one, wonder no more. Steven Stosny explains how intimate partners often get stuck in repetitive and unproductive ways of interacting, and how, more importantly, to break free of these hurtful relationship habits. If your relationship isn't what it once was or what you hoped it would be, before you convince yourself that you picked the wrong partner, read this book! It combines cutting edge information about how our brains drive our choices in day to day interactions along with Stosny's extensive experience in helping people love each other more. This book is a must read!" — Michele Weiner-Davis , author of　 The Divorce Remedy

"Combining the latest in neuroscience with decades of experience as a couples therapist specializing in the most difficult cases, Steven Stosny has written a clear, practical, immensely readable guide to arm and activate our better angels. Empowered Love is for anyone who wishes to show up more humanely in our closest and most important relationships." — Terry Real , author of The New Rules of Marriage

Genres: Relationships, Nonfiction, Psychology, Love, Mental Health

240 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2017

About the author

Steven Stosny, Ph.D., is the founder of CompassionPower. His recent books are, Soar Above: How to Use the Most Profound Part of Your Brain Under Any Kind of Stress, Living and Loving after Betrayal, How to Improve your Marriage without Talking about It: Finding Love beyond Words, Love without Hurt, The Powerful Self, and Treating Attachment Abuse. He has treated over 6,000 clients for various forms of anger, abuse, and violence. He has appeared on “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” “The Today Show,” “CBS Sunday Morning,” many CNN shows, and in the New York Times, Washington Post, U.S. News & World Report, WSJ, Esquire, Cosmopolitan, O, Psychology Today, USA Today. He has taught at the University of Maryland and at St. Mary’s College of Maryland. He currently has a blog on Psychologytoday.com with over 9 million views.

Reviews

[Armando · Rating 2 out of 5]

The title seemed a bit misleading. A good portion of the book was the author explaining a lot about the child brain mentality for relationships. This is very useful information, but I feel not enough was spent on the tagline of the book. It mentions how to train your brain to be your best self & create your ideal relationship. This information mainly was regulated to the last 70 or so pages. So much of it was a good bit about the training part, but the creating an ideal relationship seemed very short. It's pretty easy to understand anyway, but I just felt a bit too much was explained before the main part of the book came into view. It still gave me a good insight of what to look for in relationships and how to maintain a healthy one.

[Shivani · Rating 3 out of 5]

Overall, this book was did contain some interesting information, but the way the book was written didn’t appeal to me.

Right from the beginning, the author dives straight into a lot of complicated topics and the structure of the book wasn’t very clear until I got farther along.

The book is split into two parts, the first being a lot of information of people/relationships and the second being information on how to actually apply the information in more actionable ways.

The first part of the book did not really hold my interest. It was information overload for me, and especially as I didn’t see how to use the information, it was easy to get lost in the knowledge and feel overwhelmed/forget it. The second part was considerably more interesting and was easier to follow along with. Some of it was information I’d heard before, but there was a good deal of new information as well.

This book was not as actionable as I had anticipated, but overall, did have some good information on human psychology and how it affects relationships.

[Shelbie Nicole · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is my second book that I’ve started reading this year and I absolutely love it. At first I thought it was going to be a hard read since it started out dull, but once I got half way into the first chapter I began to really like the book and learn a lot from it.

I haven’t finished it yet, but definitely is a book I would recommend to anyone, if you want to improve the relationships you have with yourself or even others. It gives so much information, and not only that but ways to take that information to try to implement them into your lifestyle.

Very knowledgeable book, great for any age. To me it’s been a book I haven’t really been able to put down and would definitely buy for myself since I use library books.

[giselle · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Love is like a musical duet. In a duet, both musicians are able to make beautiful music on their own. But together they make something greater than either can do alone: harmony.
Harmony rises from partners attuned to their deepest values, which will necessarily include compassion and kindness for each other. The foundation of relationship harmony is frequent notes of compassion and kindness, focused on the long-term best interests of both partners. Focusing on compassion and kindness, rather than on being right or wrong, creates the sort of relationship harmony that keeps the drives for autonomy and connection in balance, and creates Power love.”

[Amira Belly · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book gives you the best explanation you can find on our daily human behavior by referring to the adult brain and toddler brain. I definitely would recommend this book to any person struggling in their relationship or just looking on to enhancing it. The only point I disliked is the difficulty to keep up with some concepts that goes deeper scientific.

[PabloHabla · Rating 4 out of 5]

Relationship/workbook. Worth a read. ‘The foundation of relationship harmony is frequent notes of compassion and kindness, focused on the long-term best interest of both partners.’ Knows what he’s talking about.

[Christel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Love how they compare working from a toddler mindset vs an adult in order to give and receive the love you need

[Joseph A. Powell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Awesome book the perspective regarding the brain and how we respond based on our adolescence and applying tools to bring about the adult brain way of thinking is revolutionary in my point of view

[Rebekka Steg · Rating 4 out of 5]

Relationships are hard, but this books dives into the way we get stuck into toddler mindsets rather than adult mindsets, especially during fights. While I might not agree with everything in Empowered Love, I took away some really important lessons that I have already put into use in my own relationship. Definitely well worth a read.

*I received a free copy through Netgalley, but the review is my own opinion*