100 books like The Transformation of Intimacy

This book taught me a huge amount about the history of love and marriage. Who knew that, prior to the nineteenth century, the idea of marrying for love was so rare? With this historical insight in mind, it became clearer to me why marriages based on love, with their high expectations for life-long partnership, sexual compatibility, and emotional intimacy, are so challenging—and often end in divorce.

Stephanie Coontz makes these topics entertaining and accessible, from marriage in the ancient world, to 1950s-era nuclear families, to the challenges and opportunities that lovers, spouses, and families face in the twenty-first century.

I love this novel because of its ravishingly beautiful prose and deep insights into sexual selfhood. Set one day in June 1923, this book takes us into the mind of its middle-aged heroine, Clarissa Dalloway, as she prepares to host a party and reminisces about her life three decades ago.

As a teenager, she loved a daring, aristocratic woman (Sally), a passionate but troubled man (Peter), and a comparatively boring but dependable man (Richard, to whom she has long been married). What did love mean to her thirty years ago, and what does it mean now? Did she make the right romantic choice, given the constraints of her society? Virginia Woolf leaves her readers space to ponder these questions for themselves.

I love this novel’s insights into human psychology and society and its sense of humor. When its two main characters—young women from a sensitive, artistic family—fall in love with men from a hard-hearted, business-oriented family, sharp observations about English society in 1910 unfold. But so, too, do probing love stories.

What if you learn that your fiancé is hypocritical—can you love him anyway? What happens when love for your family tugs against love for your spouse; what do you learn about yourself? E. M. Forster explores these questions in a witty, urbane narrative style that is one of the novel’s main charms.

This book got me thinking about the future with its bold claim that today's best marriages are the best ones the world has ever known—because (some) spouses are freer and more compatible than those of earlier eras. But it also got me thinking with its claim that for the less fortunate members of today’s societies, including people struggling with poverty, marriage can be very hard.

The book also ranges back in time to show what marriages were like—and what people expected from them—in past eras. These history lessons are super-valuable. Also, even though this isn’t primarily a self-help book, it gave me lots of food to think about my marriage and why it’s so valuable to me.

This is an excellent book about relationships and attachment theory, which describes our attachment styles in relationships. I loved reading this book because it taught me about my own attachment style and how I am in relationships.

This is a must-read for anyone who wants to learn about themselves in relationships. I enjoyed the concepts in the book and how relatable it was. I recommend this to every human being who would like a relationship. It is a great way to learn about yourself.

I first learned about Logan Ury listening to the podcast This is Dating. While I was waiting on the second season to drop, I learned about Dr. Ury’s book.

I’m not trying to be ageist, but it was refreshing to hear dating advice from a professional that isn’t older and hasn’t been married for decades. Ury’s dating years being more recent meant she gets the landscape modern daters are struggling to find love in. Her perspective was instantly more relevant to me.

There were also several knowledge gems that she dropped throughout her book that I’d already learned the hard way, which gave me more confidence in giving the new-to-me information she presented a shot.

It is not easy to write a self-help book without sounding pompous or unrealistic. This is why The Dance of Intimacy became a model for my own self-help books.

Lerner’s writing is straightforward, personal, and practical. She is, as am I, an unabashed feminist who understands that strengthening and/or healing relationships require the participation of both partners. First published in 2009 I have recommended this wise book to hundreds of clients. 

I love how this book presents several different types of couples. I also really appreciate the shared, true conversations between couples. It brings some of the most challenging relationship hurdles to the forefront with an explanation of how to navigate through them.

Since reading this book, I am confident that I at least know what direction to go in when things come up. 

I love this anthology by women over fifty because it offers such a wide range of truths about our experiences with sex and intimate relationships.

More than fifty essays and poems cover a variety of honest reflections on the exquisite, the good, the not-so-good, and the challenging parts of older women relating sexually to men, to women, and to themselves.

Feelings expressed range from the ambivalence, disappointment, and ecstasy of dating, to the pleasures of being single, to the joy of long-term sex and commitment, to the acceptance of the sometimes sudden movement between these states. Can be read in one or two delicious gulps! 

If you're looking for a book that captures the zeitgeist of contemporary relationships, here it is, well before the reign of Facebook. Calling upon social commentary, psychoanalysis, psychology, sociology, feminist theory, anthropology, family theory, and linguistics, the author presents a broad-based, scholarly, and sobering analysis of the toxic trends and processes in our society which are casting Americans adrift from their emotional and psychic moorings, and leaving them unable to initiate or sustain meaningful relationships.

Because of the ever-growing impersonal nature of our society, it has become more difficult to begin and sustain intimate relationships. Indeed, it seems as if modern life is represented by a series of relationships of convenience that often lack substance. These kinds of insights make this book very appealing. The author contends that we're losing our overall ability to be involved in meaningful relationships and instead are relegated to something less. Most important, the author… show more.