Love is a Verb: How to Stop Analyzing Your Relationship and Start Making it Great! [Hardcover]

Patricia Hudson O'Hanlon (Author), Bill O'Hanlon (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 17, 1995

Are you a co-dependent Cinderella who loves a man who hates women too much? A Peter Pan in denial about his inability to make a commitment? If so, it's time to stop analyzing your relationship.

Even if you've discovered from the talk shows and the self-help books that you're afraid of intimacy or prone to self-destruction because of a miserable childhood, has it really helped? If not, it's time for action; it's time for Love Is a Verb.

Here is a fresh, new approach to relationships. The book goes beyond analyzing relationships to changing them, even if one partner isn't interested. Using a solution-oriented approach, humor, stories, and good common sense, Bill O'Hanlon and Pat Hudson (marriage counselors and husband and wife) show readers how to:

• break free of old patterns in days and weeks, not months or years
• quickly and easily solve relationship problems
• improve their sex life
• increase feelings of love and closeness
• get over past hurts

Lively, upbeat, and future-focused, Love Is a Verb shows readers how to change today's dreams of more romance and happiness into tomorrow's reality.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Many of today's self-help books, according to this husband-and-wife psychotherapy team, try so hard to get readers to find out what's wrong with their relationships that they don't get around to showing them how to improve them. This theme is apparent in the first chapter's humorous title: "The Codependent Cinderella Who Loves A Man Who Hates Women Too Much." By changing unworkable patterns, rewriting their "stories" (false beliefs) and focusing on the future rather than endless analysis of the past, declare Hanlon and Hudson, couples can make love more rewarding-in weeks or even days. Later chapters focus on destructive patterns like abusive behavior, gambling, etc.; "healing rituals" for unfinished business and reconnection; and intimacy and sex. Boxed key points concisely sum up each chapter, and examples from the authors' practice and own marriage lend credibility to this helpful self-help book.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

The authors, nationwide lecturers on making relationships work, will kick off their solution-oriented text on Today.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 185 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company; 1st edition (February 17, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393037347
• ISBN-13: 978-0393037340
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.7 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #929,856 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Bill O'Hanlon, MS, LMFT, has authored or co-authored 30 books, the latest being Quick Steps to Resolving Trauma (W.W. Norton, October, 2010), A Guide to Trance Land (W.W. Norton, 2009); Pathways to Spirituality (W.W. Norton), Change 101: A Practical Guide to Creating Change (W.W. Norton, Fall 2006), and Thriving Through Crisis (Penguin/Perigee; winner of the Books for a Better Life Award). He has published 57 articles or book chapters. His books have been translated into 15 languages: French, Spanish, Portuguese, Swedish, Finnish, German, Chinese, Bulgarian, Turkish, Korean, Indonesian, Italian, Croatian, Arabic and Japanese. He has appeared on Oprah (with his book Do One Thing Different), The Today Show, and a variety of other television and radio programs. Since 1977, Bill has given over 1500 talks around the world. He has been a top-rated presenter at many national conferences and was awarded the 'Outstanding Mental Health Educator of the Year' in 2001 by the New England Educational Institute. Bill is a Licensed Mental Health Professional, Certified Professional Counselor, and a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist. Bill is clinical member of AAMFT (and winner of the 2003 New Mexico AMFT Distinguished Service Award), certified by the National Board of Certified Clinical Hypnotherapists and a Fellow and a Board Member of the American Psychotherapy Association. He is known for his storytelling, irreverent humor, clear and accessible style and his boundless enthusiasm for whatever he is doing.

Find him at billohanlon.com

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars no self help book would ever get a five from me, May 15, 2001

By 

Rebecca G Casey (Concord, Ma USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Love is a Verb: How to Stop Analyzing Your Relationship and Start Making it Great! (Hardcover)

so a four is as high as i go. fives are reserved for literature. my husband and i read this book when we were a new couple (seven years ago). he and i both had alcholic fathers and so we are very familiar with the self help genre. and although it does seem simplistic in some ways, i found it to be a most valuable book. if your relationship is at the point where you are afraid to sleep at night for fear of having your throat cut, this is not the book for you. (in fact there are no books for you run to a therapist) this book helps you become aware of the small things we do and can do for each other to hurt or help intimate relationships. its kind of like a "doc my arm hurts when i do that. so don't do that" book but it focuses on things that you will not see (unless you are more observant than i). if is helpful on a day to day level and my husband and i still pull it out and reread chapters when we find ourselves being testy with each other. i recommend this book to all people.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars fun and practical, October 30, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Love is a Verb: How to Stop Analyzing Your Relationship and Start Making it Great! (Hardcover)

It is a sounding, simple book, but the suggestions are practical. it seems to be "old-fashioned", but in this complicated world, when we all are over-emphasizing internal psychological problems, "behavior-ist" is ignored.

This book reminds us to pick "them" up again and take a look at these simple but yet working principles of human behavior and relationship.

4 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Sounds good----dosn't work in the real world, July 21, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Love is a Verb: How to Stop Analyzing Your Relationship and Start Making it Great! (Hardcover)

This book would cause a relationship fixation and on would loose all "juice" Just another good example of a couple of therapists (whom are no longer married by the way) making money with advice that dosn't work.