Customer Reviews

Big Picture Partnering: 16 Weeks to a Rock-Solid Relationship

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What's great about this book is that it's not a solve-the-problems-in-your-relationship kind of book. It seems to be for couples who are doing just fine, they just want to kick it up a notch: reconnect, re-evaluate, and look at where they want to go together. This was an invaluable read for us (we both read it)- and we find ourselves really enjoying exploring places outside of our daily lives- the plans and goals we talked about when we first got together.

This isn't a book about finding a mate or falling in love, or even about keeping a relationship alive. It's about something much bigger.

Big Picture Partnering starts with the assumption that you're already with the person you want to be with for the rest of your life. (So if you don't want, plan, or hope to be with your partner over the long haul, forget this book.)

But if you're serious about creating a lifelong partnership, and want it to be something special, this is the book to get.

This is not a book of quick fixes or easy answers. Instead, it is full of approaches and activities that can help any couple build trust, communication, understanding, commitment, and real, lasting love (the kind where both of you have your heads in the clouds AND your feet on the ground). After working through this book together with your partner, you won't need quick fixes or easy answers, because what you have won't need fixing. And you'll have each other, for real and for a lifetime.

Thinking I had it all figured out, I only picked up Big Picture Partnering at the insistence of a good friend. After devouring it in a weekend, I can't stop telling people (my husband first and foremost) what I've learned. Every marriage or relationship can use a little new energy, or some new skills so partners can take things to a new level--this is exactly what I found in Big Picture Partnering. The author offers real world specifics to help you enjoy the good times, see through the hard times, and always keep your big picture in mind.

In Big Picture Partnering:16 Weeks to a Rock-Solid Relationship, Dr. Hoistad shows couples how to move from a relationship that works to a relationship that rocks! Most loving couples want a relationship of partners, but the skills for nurturing and encouraging the healthiest and most exciting of relationships are not skills we're born knowing. Dr. Hoistad leads us through them, step by step, helping couples identify the diferences between being a true partner and being less than adult. However, she does all this without guilting or blaming either partner, which keeps both halves of the couple engaged in the entire process. She calls on us to become fully mature adults, an exciting journey but one too few of us know how to take -- for that help alone, this book is worth the read! Her guidance is practical and easy to follow, her exercises fun and rewarding. If you read through this book together and work through the exercises together, your relationship WILL change -- there is no way it cannot. Along the way, she delivers pragmatic assists to tackling the real life problems that can trouble even the most loving of couples and shows us how to make our relationships far more than good - they can be great!

Pamela Hill Nettleton
author of Getting Married When It's Not Your First Time and How to Live with a Middle-Aged Man

I loved this book. It is a practical guide for two people who are interested in building a strong and satisfying partnership. I especially like the pacing. It is a 16-week process that introduces new concepts and exercises each week that build upon the previous week.
I also found this book to be very uplifting. You won't spend time allocating responsibility for the problems in your relationship, but will instead focus on building positive and useful ways of paying attention to one another.
As a recently divorced person, I wish this guide had been available to me earlier. But I find it very useful as a single person as well. I will go into my next relationship with knowledge of how to build and sustain a happy realationship.

For me, the "recipe" style one size fits all approach felt too simplistic to be of value to me. I prefer material that promotes deeper thinking about relationships.

BEWARE of her new book titled "Romance Rehab" copyright 2010 that is almost word for word the SAME AS THIS ONE. Shame on you Jan and your publishers for misleading readers into thinking this is new material.