Susan Campbell - Truth in Dating

Inspiring, practical and a pleasure to read. Susan Campbell repeatedly shows us that our willingness to be open and transparent with others opens the way to heartfelt, loving relationships whether we are single or with a primary partner.

Whether you are single or in an intimate relationship, this book is an important resource for you. In page after page of clear insight, Susan Campbell provides a much-needed map to a territory still largely unexplored: authenticity in our romantic relationships.

Truth in Dating is just plain sane guidance for singles who understand that to find lasting love, theyre going to have to practice a sometimes uncomfortable realness in that strange dimension we call dating. Bravo to Susan Campbell, especially for first walking the talk by testing her recommendations in her own life. And her Ten Common Myths about Sex and Intimacy ought to be reprinted on its own and distributed to every sexually active person alive!

Dating itself or the prospect of dating can tumble anyone into a well of unconsciousness and fear. But take heart! Susan Campbells new book, Truth in Dating, skillfully offers a step-by-step guide through the perils and pitfalls of the dating process. Youre sure to rediscover the thrill of getting to know someone new while expanding your capacity to love and be loved.

Encyclopedic in scope, packed with wisdom, and generously sprinkled with real-people examples... For anyone navigating the dating maze, this is a gem of a book.

An H J Kramer Book

published in a joint venture with

New World Library

Copyright 2004 by Susan M. Campbell

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 as to the effects of the use of the recommendations can be given nor liability taken.

Front cover design by Mary Ann Casler
Text design and typography by Tona Pearce Myers

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Campbell, Susan M.

Truth in dating : finding love by getting real / Susan M. Campbell.

p. cm.

ISBN 1-932073-06-X (Pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Dating (Social customs)United States. 2. Man-woman

relationshipsUnited States. I. Title.
HQ801.C2738 2004
646.7'7dc22 2003018061

First Printing, January 2004
ISBN 1-932073-06-X
Printed in Canada on partially recycled, acid-free paper
Distributed to the trade by Publishers Group Worldwide

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

W hether you are single or in an intimate relationship, this book is an important resource for you. In page after page of clear insight, Susan Campbell provides a much-needed map to a territory still largely unexplored: authenticity in our romantic relationships.

Like many of you, I was given no training in high school or college about how to communicate with the interior of myself, or how to communicate with any degree of authenticity with other people around me. In research done with several thousand couples for our book Lasting Love, my wife, Kathlyn, and I found that 98 percent of them had, like us, never received even ten minutes of instruction about how to communicate or solve problems in a close relationship. If the same level of training were given in driver education, the roadways would be as clogged with wrecked cars as our courts are with divorce petitions.

Its time for change, and now Susan Campbell has given the millions of people who start new relationships every year a powerful way to make those changes. This book offers a great deal more than just the notion that honesty is a good idea. It offers communication skills and awareness practices that make it much easier and safer to navigate the sometimes tricky passages of honesty in relationships.

If you will take to heart the lessons in Truth in Dating, you can solve what I consider to be the single biggest problem that keeps people from experiencing lasting love. Susan puts it this way:

Most people look for love in all the wrong places. They seek a person who is attractive, who is worthy of their love, and who loves them in return all positive things. But they do not know how to be in a state of love themselves. So, even if they are lucky enough to find somebody to love, their attention is not really free to love this person because most of their attention is on avoiding some feared consequence (like being criticized, hurt, abandoned, not seen, et cetera). When your attention is dominated by fear, love gets squeezed out of the picture.

Truth in Dating not only busts up the dangerous mythology most of us inherited, it also gives us the power tools to create something radically new.

Practicing the ten truth skills in the book will help you to stay in the present, open to the reality of right now, rather than trying to control the outcome of the moment by presenting a false image of yourself. If relationships can begin in authenticity, their chances of success are remarkably enhanced. In this spirit of learning from every moment, it truly doesnt matter whether the date lasts an hour or leads to a romance that lasts a lifetime. What matters is that you use the process to become more transparent to your own essential depths and create an open space for your companion to make the same benign leap into discovery.

Truth in Dating is an essential guidebook for the journey.