Charlie Bloom - Happily Ever After...and 39 Other Myths about Love: Breaking Through to the Relationship of Your Dreams

Praise for Happily Ever After...and 39 Other Myths about Love

Youll do more than enjoy reading these hope-filled vignettes of couples who were able to discern and overcome the unconscious myth that blocked their loving connection. Youll likely also discern the myth that blocks happiness in your own relationship.

Sylvia Boorstein, PhD, author of Happiness Is an Inside Job

Busting myths about marriage and other intimate partnerships is a creative way to present and promote clear thinking. In their book Happily Ever After, the Blooms have drawn on research, literature, and their own challenging experiences to bring to readers succinct, impactful, and wise truths that dispel the myths that have plagued popular thinking about intimate relationships. And all in one place! Every couple will become wiser by reading this book, and their skills will be better honed by practicing those recommended here.

Harville Hendrix, PhD, coauthor (with Helen LaKelly Hunt, PhD) of Making Marriage Simple: Ten Relationship-Saving Truths

In Happily Ever After, Linda and Charlie Bloom deconstruct the most common myths about love and commitment in a thoughtful and compassionate way. The Blooms deeply understand the obstacles that hold people back from lasting love and provide readers with sensible workarounds to each of these obstacles. This book will challenge some of your most deeply held beliefs about love and marriage, ultimately freeing you to make better choices in love.

Kira Asatryan, author of Stop Being Lonely: Three Simple Steps to Developing Close Friendships and Deep Relationships

Bravo to the Blooms for providing this important clue for removing the invisible roadblocks that prevent relationships from flourishing.

Seymour Boorstein, MD, author of Whos Talking Now: Saving Your Relationship

We applaud Linda and Charlie Bloom for their conciseness, skill, and dedication to myth busting. If you want an authentic relationship, read this book!

Joyce Vissell, RN, MS, and Barry Vissell, MD, authors of The Shared Heart

By dispelling these forty relationship-killing myths, the Blooms have cleared yet another path to cultivate the kind of intimacy that leads to true happiness. Happily Ever After is sure to become a standard for anyone seeking the better version of themselves and their relationship.

Dr. Ken Druck, author of The Real Rules of Life: Balancing Lifes Terms with Your Own

Happily Ever After...and 39 Other Myths about Love courageously turns false beliefs fostered by fairy tales and romance novels on their head. In real life, happy couples can argue, continue appreciating each other over time, and heal from old wounds if they think of marriage not as a fixed destination but as a process to which they commit. Authors Linda and Charlie Bloom encourage us not necessarily to discard the myths but to consider taking on a different point of view. This book is a wise, sensitive guide for anyone committed to keeping a relationship thriving.

Marcia Naomi Berger, MSW, LCSW, author of Marriage Meetings for Lasting Love

Linda and Charlie Blooms eye-opening new book is a marvelous deconstruction of the illusions and sometimes outright fallacies that undermine healthy and nurturing relationships, illuminating the gap between how we imagine love to be and how it actually is and can be. Their faith in the possibility of soul-satisfying relationships is moving in itself. This is a rubber-meets-the-road guide to preparing for the rigors (and rewards) of love. High five to the Blooms for telling it like it is.

Gregg Levoy, author of Vital Signs: Discovering and Sustaining Your Passion for Life and Callings: Finding and Following an Authentic Life

As in their bestseller, 101 Things I Wish I Knew When I Got Married, Linda and Charlie Bloom bring compassionate insight and the hard-won savvy derived from their own enduring veteran marriage to Happily Ever After...and 39 Other Myths about Love. This is a book about the chasm between rigidly held beliefs and authentic experience, about what is possible in relationships when partners are willing to suspend conventional wisdom and clichd sentiment. It is in many ways a survival manual for the committed couple.

David Kerns, MD, retired Stanford medical professor and author of Standard of Care and the forthcoming Fortnight on Maxwell Street

Long-term relationships are more challenging than ever. Happily Ever After...and 39 Other Myths about Love, like the Blooms previous books, is filled with gems of relationship wisdom to help make the journey joyful and deeper over time. They offer readers of all ages valuable guidelines and tools that are certain to enhance their ability to create lasting and fulfilling relationships.

Ken and Maddy Dychtwald, cofounders of Age Wave

Happily Ever After is a true myth buster. Linda and Charlie Bloom skillfully challenge, one by one, relationship myths that do more damage than good. Their grounded, compassionate, and effective approach to creating great relationships will prove an essential guide for many people who sincerely seek a sustainable, loving relationship.

Judith Bell, MS, and Daniel Ellenberg, PhD, Rewire Leadership Institute, authors of Lovers for Life

Linda and Charlie Bloom have written a fantastic book! It is wise, honest, personal, and deeply engaging. They have dispelled the cultural myths about love that cause the most trouble and replaced them with wise and honestly earned truths. This much-needed book is recommended for singles and couples alike.

Linda Carroll, author of Love Cycles: The Five Essential Stages of Lasting Love

The Blooms latest book, Happily Ever After...and 39 Other Myths about Love, is another brilliant contribution by this remarkable couple to everyone struggling to create a relationship that works. The book acknowledges some of the biggest pitfalls couples fall into when they fail to challenge the conventional thinking about relationships. The authors call into question these all-too-common cultural beliefs and, more importantly, offer compelling ways to avoid being possessed by them. This is a book about freedom about transformation and its a must-read for anyone seeking to create a truly fulfilling partnership!

Lynne Twist, author of The Soul of Money

Happily Ever After...
and 39 Other Myths
about Love

Also by Linda and Charlie Bloom

101 Things I Wish I Knew When I Got Married

Secrets of Great Marriages

Copyright 2016 by Linda and Charlie Bloom

All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, or other without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

The material in this book is intended for education. No expressed or implied guarantee of the effects of the use of the recommendations can be given or liability taken.

All the stories and conversations in this book are re-creations of actual couples situations and conversations. Names and other identifying details have been changed.

Text design by Megan Colman

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Bloom, Linda, date. | Bloom, Charlie, date.

Title: Happily ever after...and 39 other myths about love : breaking through to the relationship of your dreams / Linda and Charlie Bloom.