Uncoupling: Turning Points in Intimate Relationships

I'll admit I'm only 1/3 through Uncoupling, which I just opened last night, but after randomly turning on the 1996 movie Swingers with Vince Vaughn this afternoon, I'm compelled to help my fellow broken-hearted compadres by urging you to put down the self help books for a minute and rent, download or stream this movie ASAP. More than any book, blog post, or brainwaves app, this movie will make you feel better IMMEDIATELY! You must commit to pushing through the pain so honestly depicted in the first 1/3-1/2 of the film as a prerequisite for the reward this story offers in the end. Before you even know what's happening, you will be laughing, smiling and perhaps, like me, even feeling the first signs not of hope (which to me is still a victim mentality) but of honest-to-God eagerness and excitement in the face of the new possibilities that have become open to each of us against our wills. Whether you've seen the movie 50 times or have never heard of it, the effect of watching it during this time of intense emotional loss and pain makes the experience an original one.AFTER you complete the above assignment, then I join the majority consensus in recommending this book as a refreshingly unemotional and analytical study of how the breakup process evolves. I am that unusual person who is burdened with an acutely empathetic and emotional nature in constant battle with my demand for reason and logic. As a result I don't have the luxury of dealing with just one or the other, like most people. This book addresses the latter from a sociological perspective and is a great relief from the emotionally demanding yet useful books that address the pain you're feeling and how to move beyond it.Uncoupling has one objective: to analyze the "how," and it persuasively posits that irrespective of age, race, religion, gender, sexual preference, type or length of the relationship, the fundamental process is curiously uniform. With that knowledge, this decidedly dispassionate breakdown ultimately eased my pain in a way the other books could not by making it abundantly clear that I am not alone, my pain is not unique or worse or more intense than yours or his or hers or theirs, even though it feels like it is. I don't think it's that "misery loves company," because I don't wish this torture even on the woman my husband moved in with. Instead, it's about feeling a part of something again, after so many agonizing hours believing I am completely and forever alone with my heartache.I know there will be some who take offense at my unorthodox "review," but those people actually enjoy wallowing in despair and giddily recruit others to join them. For the rest of you, I hope I can help lessen the pain, if even just a little bit or for only a moment. I'm right here with you, friends. If you want to talk, send me a message. But whatever you do, go watch that movie NOW!Cheers

Another reviewer commented: "If you are reading this book, it is probably too late to save your relationship." Or something like that. So true.Vaughn prodigious research unequivocally establishes that people who have affairs ultimately do so by way of a slow but lengthily process of redefining a spouse or partner on negative terms. This enables the "initiator" (i.e., the betraying spouse) to have and justify an affair. Ultimately, the initiator will do the same for the marriage/relationship, then declare it not savable, and finally leave. The process for the betrayed partner/spouse is "unspeakably cruel."Adding insult to injury is the advantage this process gives to the initiator. By the time a betrayed spouse knows something is wrong (or going on), the initiator is months ahead in redefining and creating a new understanding of his/her partner. The betrayed spouse is pulling her hair out trying to understand while the initiator already has (I would say selfishly) his own understanding.All of this is so painfully true.This book will probably not help you save your marriage. It may help you challenge your partner's "negative definitions," leading you to ask them to recall what is good about you (and thereby potentially challenge your relationship's path), but for the most part Uncoupling gives you points to understand the chaos in your brokenness.It will also help you see how you are not "controlling," a bad person, or this or that. Such negative definitions are the product of selfish spouse whose life does not comport with reality.This book is about the process-- from a macro or sociological point of view. It is a must read.

This book was published about three years after i was divorced and I didn't get around to reading it until many years later. When I did, I read it in a single night. It explained everything that had occurred in my divorce. Since then, I have occasionally summarized the book to other people and have yet to meet anyone who does not know one or more married couples who carried out the pattern described in the book and ended up getting a divorce. It turns out that there is a pattern which appears over and over again in marriages where no one is dyfunctional or abusive, but one person (the initiator), nevertheless, is vaguely dissatisfied and doesn't know why, but decides not to tell the partner and instead begins to carry out the pattern. Bascially, the initiator is bored and secretly blames the partner. As the author notes, once the pattern starts it is normally impossible to stop it because whenever the problems raised by the initiator are solved by the partner, the initiator simply invents new ones. At the end the partner has no real understanding of what has happened and is quite devastated, often for years. This book is essential reading for any couples getting married because if both are aware of the pattern, it will not be possible for it to occur. It would also be helpful to those who are married, preferably before the pattern has started, for the same reason. The pattern fits well with what the existentialist Sartre called bad faith or self-deception, since as the author uncovered, many initiators in the study were not even aware what they were doing. It would be a great gift for anyone getting married. Not reading this book is like walking along the side of a cliff blindfolded.

I read this book more than 20 years ago, and I still recommend it to others. It's not the book that will tell you how to save your marriage. It's a book about understanding for those who need to understand and make some sense of the train wreck that is divorce. One of its best features is that you will come to understand that the process is less personal than you thought; and that helps in a profound way.

The book is quite an early edition which wae not mentioned while buying. But I couldn't complain much since I had ordered a second hand version of it.Overall quality of the book is still intact in terms of its pages and structure. Although, the pages have turned a little yellowish but that's because of its age.

This is a great book and details the changes and Turning Points in intimate relationships when one wants to leave a relationship.

Must have for personal growth and hopefully improve future relationships. If your relatioship has just ended it's hard to read though. But it's part of your healing process.

A very real account the signs of a dying relationship. It forces one to look at oneself, even when you weren't the one to end the marriage.