Charlie Bloom - Secrets of Great Marriages: Real Truth from Real Couples about Lasting Love

More Praise for Secrets of Great Marriages

This book is an invaluable resource in supporting increased longevity and growth of mature and deep love in the sacred crucible of marriage. Once again, the authors provide an honest assessment in what is troublesome, challenging, and difficult, as well as what is good, true, and beautiful within a marriage. Nowhere else will you find a book that addresses marriage in such a thorough and comprehensive way. It is practical, useful, inspirational, humorous, and invaluable in its contribution to all who value and explore committed relationship.

Angeles Arrien, PhD, cultural anthropologist and author of
The Second Half of Life

Almost as universal as our desire for love is the skepticism about whether a long-term loving relationship is possible. By going to the experts, couples who know how to make it happen because they have made it happen, this book gives us both inspiration and practical ideas for attaining real and lasting love.

Jordan Paul, PhD, coauthor of Do I Have to Give Up Me to Be Loved By You?
and author of Becoming Your Own Hero

This is a wonderfully readable book full of stories that are both heartwarming and instructive. I think we all want to know what its like for other people. What are their heartaches? What are they proudest of? And how do they deal with the inevitable challenges of couplinglike sex, money, and parenting? I have already found myself applying some of the ideas presented here to enhance my own relationship.

Susan Campbell, PhD, author of Getting Real and The Couples Journey

While the secrets of successful marriages are being demystified by contemporary scientific scrutiny, most of the data comes from studying conflicted, often dysfunctional, marriages. The portraits of couples in Secrets of Great Marriages demystify the intimate bond by studying successful rather than conflicted couples and identifying the factors they all have common. 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, PhD, Getting the Love You Want

With this entrancing book, once again the Blooms work their special magic of evoking, appreciating, and analyzing the special alchemy of relationships and their power to test, heal, and transform us throughout life. Each couple in this living collection is vividly uniqueand each is marked by common depths of respect, mutual appreciation, and commitment to a life of learning and growth, which carries them through crises and challenges to fulfillment and new horizons. Read, laugh, and weep in recognitionand learn nuggets you can use immediately in your own practice, and your own life.

Gordon Wheeler, PhD, president of Esalen Institute
and author of Beyond Individualism

Praise for 101 Things I Wish I Knew When I Got Married

Practical, easy-to-understand nuggets that can help every marriage grow.

Gerald G. Jampolsky, MD, author of Love Is Letting Go of Fear

Filled with many wise words on sustaining love in marriage.... The Blooms are fine guides to making love last.

Spirituality & Health

Marriage counselors and first-time authors, the Blooms nearly called their union quits in 1987; their anecdotes reflect the acceptance, gratitude, and appreciation that they employed to save it. Some of these honest, candid stories (many from the authors) are more illustrative than others, but most vividly demonstrate that successful relationships require effort.

Library Journal

Were enchanted by the pearls of marital wisdom in 101 Things I Wish I Knew When I Got Married.

Bridal Guide

Well written and a pleasure to read.

Church & Synagogue Libraries

SECRETS
OF GREAT
MARRIAGES

Real Truth from Real Couples
about Lasting Love

Charlie and Linda Bloom

Foreword by John Robbins

New World Library
Novato, California

Copyright 2010 by Charlie and Linda 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 meanselectronic, mechanical, or otherwithout written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

Text design by Tona Pearce Myers

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Bloom, Charlie.

Secrets of great marriages : real truth from real couples about lasting love

/ Charlie and Linda Bloom ; foreword by John Robbins.

p. cm.

ISBN 978-1-57731-678-7 (pbk. : alk. paper)

1. Marriage. I. Bloom, Linda. II. Title.

HQ734.B6572 2010

306.81dc22

2009043050

First printing, February 2010

ISBN 978-1-57731-678-7

Printed in Canada on 100% postconsumer-waste recycled paper

New World Library is a proud member of the Green Press Initiative.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

I m proud of Charlie and Linda Bloom for writing this book because its a different kind of book. It doesnt promise that you will have an extraordinary relationship if only you follow a particular set of rules. Instead, it offers the hard-earned and authentic wisdom of couples who speak in their own voices of their struggles and growth. The result is life-giving because it affirms the possibility of creating joyous and honest relationships that serve the deepest life purposes of each partner. In story after story, you see the miracles that occur when two hearts unite.

The people who share their words and insights here are passionately alive. They dont all have interests in common with their partners, but they are interesting people in their own right, so they bring vitality into the marriage. They have achieved a delicate balance: they are committed to themselves and to the relationship; and they care about their own needs and those of their partners in equal measure, neither putting their own needs first nor sacrificing their needs to attend to their partners.

These are real couples telling the real truth. They have been successful not because they have had blissful, stress-free lives but because they have created relationships that gave them strength during their most anguishing trials and enabled them to emerge from their hardships more whole, freer, and more fully themselves. They have been faced with every conceivable challenge and difficulty, but they were willing to pay their dues, to keep nourishing the relationship, to adjust and adapt as circumstances changed. All the partners have given a lot of themselves to their marriage, unwilling to settle for an okay relationship.

While the Blooms were writing this book and conducting these interviews, they went on a cruise and met a couple celebrating their fiftieth anniversary. Despite the happy occasion, the couple seemed morose, bitter, and critical of each other. Charlie and Linda asked them what they attributed the longevity of their relationship to. Grin and bear it, the woman answered sourly. This attitude is the antithesis of what is embodied by the couples in this book. None of them are staying in a marriage merely for comfort and security. They are seeking growth and consciousness. They are willing to take chances. They are brave in their intimacy with each other.