Description
Why is love so difficult? Is there such a thing as a soulmate? Why can’t I find someone to love me just the way I am? Why does the person I gave my heart to in the early days now feel so distant or even dangerous? When love goes bad, is there a way to turn things around? If we lost each other along the way, can we find each other again? In the wake of betrayal, can trust ever be rebuilt?
In this helpful and enlightening book, expert couples therapist, Dr. Chelsea Wakefield, explains why couples who begin with such hopeful expectations become disenchanted, withdraw into self-protection or become entangled in unresolvable conflicts. She provides step by step guidance out of these shadowlands, and teaches six essential “love capacities” any couple can develop that will open the path to a soulful, enduring relationship.
Table of Contents:
Introduction
PART ONE
Chapter 1 – Enchantment
Chapter 2 – Disenchantment
Chapter 3 – Attachment
Chapter 4 – The Inner Cast of Characters
Chapter 5 – The Swamplands of Love
Chapter 6 – Misbegotten Solutions
PART TWO
Chapter 7 – The Labyrinth
Chapter 8 – Commitment
Chapter 9 – Courage
Chapter 10 – Curiosity
Chapter 11 – Communication
Chapter 12 – Compassion
Chapter 13 – Creativity
PART THREE
Chapter 14 – The Labyrinth of Sexuality
Chapter 15 – Faithfulness and Fidelity
Chapter 16 – Interpersonal Dreaming
Chapter 17 – The Soulful Relationship
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Praise for The Labyrinth Of Love
“This wise, comprehensive, and well-written book will intrigue partners who are looking for a soulful, reparative, and life-long commitment to love. It will be helpful also to those individuals who are looking for love in all the wrong places. Chelsea Wakefield has done all of her homework and even more of her inner work. Her voice resonates with an awakened wisdom about what is possible in personal love in regard to individuation and the development of humanity in all of us. If you are interested in deepening your relationship or the topic of love itself, this extraordinary book is for you!”
-Polly Young-Eisendrath, Ph.D., Author of Love Between Equals and Dialogue Therapy for Couples and Real Dialogue for Opposing Sides (with Jean Pieniadz)
“We say we value relationships so much, but why are so many distressed, so many ending in bitterness and recrimination? Wakefield’s Labyrinth of Love brings together the best thinking of many depth psychologists who address this dilemma, and adds her own personal and clinical experience to provide a rich source of information, insight, helpfulness, practical guidance, and finally, wisdom, for the reader. Any reader will leave this book more informed, more thoughtful, and more equipped for the adventure and accountability that relationship asks of us.”
-James Hollis, Ph.D., Jungian Analyst and author of Prisms: Reflections on this Journey We Call Life
“Dr. Wakefield’s Labyrinth of Love is a journey of soul and connection. While there are many good books about improving your marriage by solving problems, there are few that help you realize the full potential of why you got together. If you are a reader who wants to understand how to thrive amongst the challenges of intimacy, you will find your answers here. Get this book immediately and travel with Chelsea as she helps you build an inspired future of communication, deep connection and creation.”
-Ellyn Bader, Ph.D. & Co-founder of The Couples Institute
“Dr. Wakefield shares her gems of wisdom and knowledge gained from an impressive and diverse career guiding couples through what they may often feel are dead ends to ultimately discover their relationship center. Readers will benefit from her savvy analysis and sound advice for their relationships, gleaned from a broad range of approaches in the couples therapy field. Importantly, Dr. Wakefield devotes significant portions of her book to sex and intimacy, an essential integration for couples derived from her expertise in both couples and sex therapy approaches. The Labyrinth of Love is the book couples need now to help guide them on their pathway toward a better relationship.”
-Travis Atkinson, LCSW, Director of the Schema Therapy Training Center in New York, featured author in Creative Methods in Schema Therapy
“Dr. Wakefield’s book The Labyrinth of Love is the book you need to study if you want a successful, fulfilling, long-term relationship. She draws from multiple theoretical traditions and combines her wide and deep understanding of these principles with extensive and profound clinical experience to develop an understandable guide through the labyrinth that many couples fail to complete. This highly readable book and the capacities she teaches will enrich the practice of clinicians specializing in couples therapy and support any couple seeking to develop a deeper understanding of what it takes to create a meaningful, enduring relationship.”
-G. Richard Smith, M.D., Chair of the Department of Psychiatry, Director, UAMS Psychiatric Research Institute, University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences
“In my work at the Haden Institute I encounter individuals who have the desire and courage to do their inner, psycho-spiritual work to become their most authentic Self. The transformation that occurs, while deeply satisfying for the individual, can be disruptive for primary and other close relationships. The Labyrinth of Love is an elegant guidebook for restoring and deepening an intimate, soul-to-soul connection. For those seeking a Soulmate, this book offers guidance for avoiding the usual blind alleys that result in heartbreak. In this single volume, Chelsea Wakefield brings decades of clinical experience as a Jungian-oriented couples counselor to create a practical, content-rich roadmap for satisfying, loving relationships.”
-Allen Proctor, Director, The Haden Institute
“Chelsea Wakefield has engaged in a thorough contemplation about the transcendent nature of Eros, sexuality, marriage, and soulfulness. In this labyrinth there are no dead ends, just turning points toward wholeness.”
-Pittman McGehee, Episcopal Priest, Jungian Analyst, and author of The Paradox of Love
“Chelsea Wakefield knows from her own stellar marriage and shining relationships with others what deep relationship entails. This book is super charged with the wisdom of modern-day masters of couples therapy and as well as her own sensitive, spiritual, and surprising insights about commitment, courage, curiosity, communication, compassion, and creativity. Packed with everyday actions any couple can take, walk The Labyrinth of Love with her into depths and joys never imagined.”
-Susan Sims Smith, M.Div., LCSW, Founder of the Arkansas House of Prayer
“Chelsea Wakefield has written an extraordinary book about couples and love. Throughout one feels the presence of her wisdom, compassion, and faith in the process of ‘individuation in connection,’ expressed through an astounding wealth of detail as to how this process actually works, or does not, and then how to work to support it. Chelsea cites many valuable resources for this demanding ‘inner work,’ but most impressive is her own capacity to hold the whole endeavor in a context that embraces all levels of our experience, from sexuality to soul. She is a master in this important work of nourishing and sustaining the art of human love in couples.”
-Thomas Yeomans, Ph.D. Founder of the Concord Institute and author of Holy Fire: the Process of Soul Awakening
“Chelsea Wakefield has given the world a truly precious gift with this inspirational, and much-needed, book! In a lyrical, yet crystal clear fashion, she shows how to live life with another in an ever-evolving relationship that allows each person to grow as an individual. She uncovers the ‘inner cast’ that is determining their actions as they navigate the Labyrinth of Love. She shows how to untangle conflicts, separate from old patterns, and allow the relationship – and the challenges it inevitably brings – to open doors into new realms of consciousness, creativity and soulful connection.”
-Sidra Stone, Ph.D. Author of The Shadow King: The invisible force that holds women back, Co-creator of ‘Voice Dialogue and the Psychology of Selves’
