Do You Hate the One You Love?
Strategies For Healing and Saving Your Relationship

Book Cover: Do You Hate the One You Love? By Joan E. Childs

Do You Hate the One You Love:
Strategies For Healing and Saving Your Relationship

Do You Hate the One You Love? Strategies for Healing and Saving Your Relationship is a groundbreaking book that explores the opposing feelings of love and hate in intimate relationships and offers steps to build resilience, intimacy, and healing.

Available for order at Amazon, Barnes & Noble and your favorite bookstore.

Do You Hate the One You Love: Strategies For Healing and Saving Your Relationship is a groundbreaking book that explores the opposing feelings of love and hate in intimate relationships and offers steps to build resilience, intimacy, and healing.

Available for order at Amazon, Barnes & Noble and your favorite bookstore.

About the Book

Do You Hate the One You Love? Strategies For Healing and Saving Your Relationship draws upon Joan E. Childs’ 46 years of experience in private practice counseling couples. It includes real-life case studies and the work of renowned therapists and researchers to provide evidence-based solutions for maintaining healthy relationships. Joan explores conscious relationships, self-discovery, mindfulness, and the importance of introspection and forgiveness in personal growth.

In the book, Childs offers valuable insights, practical tools, and actionable strategies, including:

Identify why some individuals resist therapy while others are eager to address relationship issues.
Discover the pervasive issues of abuse and power dynamics in relationships, supported by personal stories and societal influences.
Explore the complexities and emotional challenges of modern dating, such as relationship dynamics, feelings of abandonment, and recurring patterns of heartbreak.
Understand how emotional differences can lead to ineffective communication, contaminating the relational space and triggering crises.
Learn about the importance of active listening, comprehending the relational space, and effectively resolving relationship conflicts.
Understand how both partners must fully commit to repairing their relationship to achieve meaningful results.

Do You Hate the One You Love? is available for order at Amazon, Barnes & Noble and your favorite bookstore.

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MEET THE AUTHOR

Meet Joan E. Childs, A Leader in Relationship Healing and Personal Growth

Joan E. Childs is a certified coach, inspirational speaker and author. She has been in private practice in South Florida since 1978, specializing in both individual and couples therapy. Her books include Do You Hate the One You Love? Strategies for Healing and Saving Your Relationship, WHY DID SHE JUMP? My Daughter’s Battle with Bipolar Disorder and THE MYTH OF THE MAIDEN: On Being a Woman.

After nearly 47 years in private practice healing the wounds of clients whose lives had been fractured from personal traumas, she has taken her personal and professional knowledge, skills, and experience to serve as a writer, certified coach, and inspirational keynote speaker, specializing in women’s issues, couple and family relationships, self-actualization, grief and loss, she has the qualifications and credibility to impact her audiences and effect positive change.

Joan has appeared before live audiences on many radio and television shows, including Oprah. She produced her television show, SOLUTIONS, to provide the community with education and resources on mental health.

Joan was chosen to be the first affiliate of the John Bradshaw Center in the United States and consults to many corporations, hospitals, universities, and academic institutions.

“I believe that by sharing my professional and personal journey, I can inspire positive change and help others lead more fulfilling lives. It’s my mission to motivate people to break free from pain and create the supportive relationships they deserve,” states Joan.

Book Reviews

Praise for Do You Hate the One You Love: Strategies For Healing and Saving Your Relationship

A breezy and opinionated guide to improving marriage.

Childs—who has been in clinical practice for more than 40 years, holds numerous therapeutic certifications, and is “multi-divorced”—distills her personal and professional experience here into a chatty self-help guide. The catchy chapter titles give a sense of her upbeat style: “Why Can’t a Man Be More Like a Woman”; “The Power of the Penis, the Patriarchy, Politics, and the Pocketbook”; “Where, Oh, Where Has My Sexy Self Gone?” Asserting that the patterns she sees in her practice confirm the truism that “Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus,” she walks the reader through the reasons why relationships fail (patterns and traumas experienced in childhood unconsciously carry over to the “relational space”) and what it takes to create a successful “conscious relationship.”

The book combines client stories, inspiring quotations, takeaways from research in neurobiology, and references to famous psychologists (from Carl Jung and Alice Miller to John Gottman and Esther Perel) to explain the principles of “encounter-centered” couples counseling. She also provides descriptions of “rituals” (exercises) including “presencing” and “crossing the bridge” with enough detail to allow readers to experiment with them on their own. Although Childs asserts that “love-hate relationships can happen in any environment” and that she isn’t “male-bashing,” her focus is centered squarely around women in heterosexual relationships. A short list of references offers several suggestions for further reading.

Child’s writing style is entertaining, humorous, and informal—reading her prose is like talking with a smart girlfriend or big sister. She sprinkles exclamation points liberally throughout and doesn’t shy away from colorful language. (One client says, “When he’s not acting like a dick, I find him lovable,” and another’s anger is dramatic: “Her inner beast rose from the coals of hell, blowing dragon fire from the depths of her being.”) The text is occasionally rambling or repetitive (for example, quotes by Albert Einstein and M. Scott Peck appear twice), and there are a few mistakes (mistaking Glenda for Glinda of Oz, regatta for regalia, and willful for willing) and some lapses into the passive voice. Such quibbles aside, the book is relatable and reassuring.”

– Kirkus Reviews

Down-to-earth advice for bridging the divide between Venus and Mar

“With great skill and compassion, Joan E. Childs has written a thoughtful and insightful exploration of intimate relationships, complete with the struggles, conflicts, and disappointments that few of us can escape. She presents steps we can all take to build resilience and intimacy. Her message is clear, inspiring, and instructive. I encourage women everywhere to abandon their guilt and grab a hold of this book! If you’ve ever thought of leaving the man you love—the same one who can drive you to orgasm and anger in the same day—this book is essential reading.”

— SUSAN G. FURMAN,
Psychologist, Psychoanalyst, Couples’ Therapist

She combines that with a charm and witty sense of humor...

“Leave it to Joan E. Childs to come up with a book title that could make most people say, ‘Yes!’ She displays a passionate attention to detail that matches her extensive training in the field, along with her keen interest and expertise in working with couples. She combines that with a charm and witty sense of humor, making her latest book an entertaining, compelling, and ultimately helpful read.”

— EILEEN J. COHEN, LMFT, MCAP

Academic and practical and will touch every reader...

“In Do You Hate the One You Love?, a unisex and omnisexual journey to benefit us all, Joan Childs summarizes the many lessons and daily obstacles that derail couples, families, and individuals. Gleaned from her long personal and professional challenges, the book is academic and practical and will touch every reader who will recognize and find aid for familiar situations.”

— AVRAM M. COOPERMAN, MD, FACS

Delves deep into the soul of our human connections...

“If you are looking for an informative, comprehensive, and practical book about the essentials of a conscious relationship, look no further. In Do You Hate the One You Love?, Joan E. Childs delves deep into the soul of our human connections. She eloquently illuminates the complex paradoxes of love, as well as the multigenerational secrets of Re-Pair, restoring our airship. Weaving together psychological insight, science, practical examples, and storytelling, Joan richly gifts us with ‘new eyes’ to successfully navigate our journeys toward relational maturity.”

— HEDY SCHLEIFER,
Master Relationship Builder, Founder of EcT (Encounter-centered Transformation), and Author of The Diary of an Amazon: Joining the Clan of the One-Breasted Women

Provides the tools we need to repair and renew our union...

“With sensitivity and skill, Joan E. Childs gets right to the heart of the stumbling blocks all couples inevitably encounter in long-term
relationships. The title of the book says it all. Sometimes we really do hate the one we love! Through fascinating case studies and exercises, Childs provides the tools we need to repair and renew our union.”

— CHRISTINE BELLERIS,
Senior Editor at Health Communications, Inc.

Joan leads us on a fascinating journey that is pragmatic and mystical.

Joan E. Childs is a generous friend, a trusted colleague, and an admired mentor. She continues to bless us with her wisdom and experience. In her latest book, Joan captures the essence of what it means to be female and our struggles to understand complex love and our attachment to men. Through theoretical and case studies, Joan leads us on a fascinating journey that is pragmatic and mystical. She’s a great writer, and this is a book worth reading and saving on your bookshelf.

— MARY KAY COCHARO, LMFT,
Certified Imago Relationship Therapist and Practitioner of Encounter-centered Couples Therapy