When Love Hurts: 10 Principles to Transform Difficult Relationships
Do you have a difficult relationship with your spouse, ex-spouse, partner, parent, sibling, child, stepchild, in laws, stepparent, grandchild, grandparent, friend, coworker, or anyone else? If you find yourself wanting to change, fix, control, appease, or rescue, this book offering Christian relationship help is for you.
When Love Hurts offers 10 Relationship-Changing Principles that will truly transform your difficult relationship. As you apply these biblically-based Principles to your unique situation, you will be able to respond differently to the many dilemmas you face and be empowered to live your life fully in spite of the problems—whether the other person changes or not.
Here are the 10 Relationship-Changing Principles:
- Understand Scriptural Truths. Shows how biblical love does not mean tolerating sin, passivity, endless sacrifice, and enabling. It does involve compassionate toughness, healthy sacrifice, boundaries, and respect.
- Reach Out. Encourages you to reach out for support in a variety of ways including counseling, support groups, friends, family, and by becoming informed about the specific problems you are dealing with.
- Change Yourself, Not Them. Provides ideas on how you can take the focus off of changing your difficult person and put it onto changing yourself.
- Detach with Love. Explains how you can stop enabling while treating the person with kindness and compassion and detaching from the anger, moods, threats, arguments, blame, and crises.
- Nurture Yourself. Suggests ideas for how you can take care of your emotional, physical, spiritual, and mental needs in the midst of your difficult relationship.
- Face Your Fears. Describes specific fears that you may be dealing with in your difficult relationship and shows how you can face those fears by doing the right thing in spite of them.
- Speak the Truth in Love. Helps you to know your own truth and then speak that truth to other people effectively.
- Set Boundaries. Defines boundaries, teaches how to set them, and then lists specific considerations for setting boundaries in various areas.
- Offer Forgiveness. Explains what forgiveness is and how you can apply forgiveness in your difficult relationship.
- Enter God’s Rest. Shows you how to enter God’s rest by surrendering the things you cannot change.
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Book Reviews
“When Love Hurts helped me through a difficult time in my marriage by giving me tools to detach from my wife, speak my truth, set boundaries, and to let go when things didn’t happen exactly the way I needed them to. I have gained insight into myself, my wife, and our relationship. I highly recommend the Christian relationship help this product offers.”
Rick V.
“My dad was the alcoholic and my mom the enabler. I had tried to change them for all my life. Yet, here I was, a 24-year old adult, still doing the same thing! I felt guilty, responsible, and angry. When Love Hurts helped me see that it wasn’t my job to fix my parents; it was my job to live my own life. It gave me the ability to have a relationship with them without feeling responsible for them.”
Susie R.
“There is so much my husband and I learned from this book! For me, two of the biggest principles are to detach from the difficult person and to look at my part and what I can change. I didn’t think it was possible to feel God’s peace and live my life normally, but I was able to not take everything so personally and even treat the difficult person with respect and caring. This book is extremely practical. I have already referred back to it many times and know I will continue to do so. Anyone dealing with a difficult relationship who knows what it feels like to have love hurt needs to read this!”
Marsha J.
Customer Review from Amazon.com
“Karla knows what to do when love hurts. Denise and I have five adopted kids. Their names are ADD, ADHD, Bipolar, Autistic, and Marijuana. They are all young adults and the guilt piles on along with the desire to be there for them by bailing out the water in their lifeboats while they drill new holes in different places and then blame us for their sinking lives. This has been the biggest challenge in thirty years of pastoral ministry. When Love Hurts helped us more than any other book outside of the Bible.”
Pastor Garry Ansdell
Hosanna Christian Fellowship
“Throughout my separation from my husband, my loved ones kept telling me to ‘Let go and to let God.’ When Love Hurts presented me with a pragmatic approach to letting go and letting God through a practical application of the 10 Principles. Although my marriage was not salvageable, I continue to reference this material to ensure that I deal with my ex-spouse in a healthy and godly manner for my sake and the sake of my children.”
Briana O.
“There wasn’t a day that went by that my heart didn’t break over my adult daughter. My attempts to fix her were ruining our relationship and making me crazy. When Love Hurts helped me let go of the guilt, the obsession, and the control and replace them with acceptance, respect for my daughter’s right to make her own choices, the ability to live my own life, and trust in God. If there is anyone in your life that you want to fix or change, this book will help you stop!”
Judy M.
