What makes stepmothering so hard? And why are we, as people and a culture, so hard on stepmothers? How can we make it easier? Stepmonster is a truly unique and groundbreaking book for women with stepchildren, men with kids who repartner, adult stepchildren, and anyone who cares about them. It is a comprehensive, cross-cultural, research-based reconsideration of stepfamily dynamics - from the perspective of the stepmother.

Blended families face unique challenges, and sadly, good intentions aren’t always enough. With so many complex relationships involved, all the normal rules for family life change, even how you apply something as simple as the five love languages. That’s why Gary Chapman, the best-selling author of The Five Love Languages and national expert on stepfamilies, Ron Deal, join together in this book to teach you how the five love languages can help your blended family.

The Happy Stepcouple is a comprehensive, practical self-help book designed to help couples with children from prior relationships thrive despite the complexity of stepfamily life. More than two thirds of stepcouple relationships break up within the first few years of committing to each other. With these terrible odds, every stepcouple needs an arsenal of tools necessary to sustain a loving relationship. The Happy Stepcouple gives them everything they need to navigate complex stepfamily dynamics with confidence and kindness, allowing them to build a happy, fulfilling life.

In Co-Parenting with a Toxic Ex, a nationally recognized parenting expert offers you a positive parenting approach to dealing with a hostile ex-spouse. You'll learn to avoid the most common mistakes of co-parenting, how to avoid "parental alienation syndrome", and effective techniques for talking to your children in a way that fosters an open and honest response. In addition, you'll learn how to protect your children from painful loyalty conflicts between you and your ex-spouse.

Leading stepfamily expert Ron Deal offers a revised and expanded edition of his signature resource, which addresses key concerns and practical issues facing every stepfamily.

This best-selling classic by internationally acclaimed experts on communication between parents and children includes fresh insights and suggestions, as well as the author’s time-tested methods to solve common problems and build foundations for lasting relationships.

Just as Masters and Johnson were pioneers in the study of human sexuality, so Dr. John Gottman has revolutionized the study of marriage. As a professor of psychology at the University of Washington and the founder and director of the Seattle Marital and Family Institute, he has studied the habits of married couples in unprecedented detail over the course of many years. His findings, and his heavily attended workshops, have already turned around thousands of faltering marriages.

Dr. Ross Greene, a distinguished clinician and pioneer in the treatment of kids with social, emotional, and behavioral challenges, has worked with thousands of explosive children, and he has good news: these kids aren't attentionseeking, manipulative, or unmotivated, and their parents aren't passive, permissive disciplinarians. Rather, explosive kids are lacking some crucial skills in the domains of flexibility/adaptability, frustration tolerance, and problem solving, and they require a different approach.

With this book, you’ll find powerful mindfulness skills for calming your own stress response when difficult emotions arise. You’ll also discover strategies for cultivating respectful communication, effective conflict resolution, and reflective listening. In the process, you’ll learn to examine your own unhelpful patterns and ingrained reactions that reflect the generational habits shaped by your parents, so you can break the cycle and respond to your children in more skillful ways.

In No One’s the Bitch, ex-wife/stepmother team extraordinaire Jennifer Newcomb Marine and Carol Marine take you for a straight-talking, hand-holding walk through what is typically a very lonely minefield. Whether you just want to create a neutral, “business” partnership with the “other woman” in your life—or actually, gulp, become friends—they show you how to reach your goal through 10 powerful steps.

Instead of presenting love as an ethereal concept or a collection of cliches, Jay Shetty lays out specific, actionable steps to help you develop the skills to practice and nurture love better than ever before. He shares insights on how to win or lose together, how to define love, and why you don’t break in a break-up. Inspired by Vedic wisdom and modern science, he tackles the entire relationship cycle, from first dates to moving in together to breaking up and starting over. And he shows us how to avoid falling for false promises and unfulfilling partners.

Stop the yelling, lose the guilt, and become a calmer, happier parent. Drawing on evidence-based practices, here is an insight-packed and tip-filled plan for how to stop the parental meltdowns. Its compassionate, pragmatic approach will help listeners feel less ashamed and more empowered to get their, ahem, act together instead of losing it.

A stepmother constantly sees to others' needs - those of her spouse, her kids, his kids, their kids. She also has to work so hard to maintain her marriage or deal with the emotional turmoil that can follow divorce and marrying again, that she may neglect her own needs. It's no wonder, then, that stepmothers often ask: Who's taking care of me? This is where Sue Patton Thoele steps in, offering practical advice and emotional support in a new edition of her book, The Courage to Be a Stepmom.

If you are considering remarriage and want to do everything you can to ensure a happy and fulfilling union, turn to Ron Deal and the Smart Stepfamily series. This is the ideal book for engaged or pre-engaged couples who have at least one child from a previous relationship, offering premarital counsel about how to prepare to blend family relationships, parenting, finances, rituals, and daily routines for your new life together.

For the past 35 years, John Gottman’s research has been internationally recognized for its unprecedented ability to precisely measure interactive processes in couples and to predict the long-term success or failure of relationships. In this groundbreaking book, he presents a new approach to understanding and changing couples: a fundamental social skill called “emotional attunement,” which describes a couple’s ability to fully process and move on from negative emotional events, ultimately creating a stronger relationship.

As Dr. JoAnne Pedro-Carroll explains with clarity and compassion in this powerful book, parents can positively alter the immediate and long-term effects of divorce on their children. The key is proven, emotionally intelligent parenting strategies that promote children's emotional health, resilience, and ability to lead satisfying lives. Over the past three decades, Pedro-Carroll has worked with families in transition, conducted research, and developed and directed award- winning, court-endorsed programs that have helped thousands of families navigate divorce and its aftermath.

Everyone faces the challenges of making relationships work. Whether with spouses, family members, friends, lovers, or colleagues, relationships have the power to make one feel happy, frustrated, or miserable. In Relationship Breakthrough, Cloe Madanes - an expert in creating healing, empowering relationships - gives listeners vital tools to transform their relationships and their lives. Madanes's cutting-edge methods produce real results and create rewarding, sustainable relationships.

Love Is Never Enough explores the most common problems in marriage: the power of negative thinking, disillusionment, rigid rules and expectations, and miscommunication. These issues can be approached through cognitive therapy, in which thinking through and reasoning are used to counteract the poor communication that so often erodes relationships. With eloquence and accessibility, Aaron T. Beck, MD, shows how effective communication can restore and strengthen the ties and bonds between couples.

Elizabeth Earnshaw is here to help. The renowned Gottman therapist, founder of A Better Life Therapy, and influential Instagram therapist behind @lizlistens has helped to transform countless relationships. With I Want This to Work, she presents for today’s generation the most effective and proven steps for relationship success.

Psychotherapist and breakup expert Rachel A. Sussman, LCSW, reveals the secrets every woman needs to get her life back on track. Drawing on hundreds of counseling sessions she's conducted with women at all stages of recovery, Sussman developed a proven three-phase process for healing from a breakup.

In I Love You, but I'm Not in Love with You - a real-life relationship guide from couples' counselor Andrew G. Marshall - partners and individuals who have "fallen out of love" or want to rekindle the love that once was will learn how to use Marshall 's program with impressive results. This is a much-needed book to help men and women of all ages in any type of committed romantic relationship to truly understand love and to point out the everyday habits that undermine growing together.

When you said, “I do”, you entered marriage with high hopes, dreaming it would be supremely happy. You never intended for it to be miserable. Millions of couples are struggling in desperate marriages. But the story doesn’t have to end there. Dr. Gary Chapman writes, “I believe that in every troubled marriage, one or both partners can take positive steps that have the potential for changing the emotional climate in their marriage.”

We’ve all had friendships that have gone bad. Whether it takes the form of a simple yet inexplicable estrangement or a devastating betrayal, a failed friendship can make your life miserable, threaten your success at work or school, and even undermine your romantic relationships. Finally there is help. In When Friendship Hurts, Jan Yager, recognized internationally as a leading expert on friendship, explores what causes friendships to falter and explains how to mend them - or end them.

Your ex-spouse is bad-mouthing you to your children, perhaps even trying to turn them against you. If you handle the situation ineffectively, your relationship with your children could suffer. This groundbreaking work gives parents powerful strategies to preserve and rebuild loving relationships with their children and provides legal and mental health professionals with practical advice to help their clients and ensure the welfare of children.

In this supportive and straightforward guide, Lundy Bancroft, the author of Why Does He Do That?, and communication specialist JAC Patrissi offer a way for women to practically take stock of their relationships and move forward, with or without their partners.

Based on the most detailed survey of long married people ever conducted, 30 Lessons for Loving shows the way to lifelong, fulfilling relationships. The author, an internationally renowned gerontologist at Cornell University, offers sage advice from the oldest and wisest Americans on everything from finding a partner, to deciding to commit, to growing old together.

In Ten Stupid Things Couples Do to Mess Up Their Relationships, Dr. Laura Schlessinger calls for a return to traditional courtship. Courtship allows couples and their families to get acquainted with each other over a longer period of time, and provides structure and guidelines for that important process.

When a child is hurting, it can be the most painful challenge a parent will face. With compassion and perspective, Dr. Brad Reedy offers hope and wisdom for children who struggle and the parents who love them. The Journey of the Heroic Parent will take you on a journey to a happier, healthier relationship with your struggling child - and yourself. Through lessons learned, mother, father, and child will achieve greater understanding, love, and humanity - no matter what the outcome.

It's a fact that parenting is hard enough in a family where two parents love and respect each other. After divorce, when the respect has diminished and the love has often turned to intense dislike, co-parenting can be nearly impossible, driving one or both parents to the brink of insanity. Joint Custody with a Jerk offers many proven communication techniques that help you deal with your difficult ex-husband or ex-wife.

Men are right. The "relationship talk" does not help. Dr. Patricia Love’s and Dr. Steven Stosny’s How to Improve Your Marriage Without Talking About It reveals the stunning truth about marital happiness: Love is not about better communication. It's about connection.

Blended families face unique challenges, and sadly, good intentions aren’t always enough. With so many complex relationships involved, all the normal rules for family life change, even how you apply something as simple as the five love languages. That’s why Gary Chapman, the best-selling author of The Five Love Languages and national expert on stepfamilies, Ron Deal, join together in this book to teach you how the five love languages can help your blended family.

What makes stepmothering so hard? And why are we, as people and a culture, so hard on stepmothers? How can we make it easier? Stepmonster is a truly unique and groundbreaking book for women with stepchildren, men with kids who repartner, adult stepchildren, and anyone who cares about them. It is a comprehensive, cross-cultural, research-based reconsideration of stepfamily dynamics - from the perspective of the stepmother.

If you are searching for a book to help you through being a stepmother, you're in the right place. As a mother for two amazing stepchildren, I wrote this book to help stepmothers that may be in the same situation I was faced with when I first met my husband, who had two kids of his own. By the time you've finished listening to this guide, you'll have the tools you need to navigate life as a stepmom and face any difficulties with clarity and confidence. Always bear in mind that you are not alone, and that there's no such thing as the perfect parent or stepparent.

You've met the partner of your dreams and have gotten your happily ever after, but now you've taken on a new role: stepmom. And you have no idea what you signed up for. Or maybe you've been a stepmom for a while now, but things are getting you down. Who do you turn to for help? Where is the stepmothering support group that'll give you the advice you need? A book for all the ins and outs of having a blended family? Who actually gets how hard being a stepmom can be?

Leading stepfamily expert Ron Deal offers a revised and expanded edition of his signature resource, which addresses key concerns and practical issues facing every stepfamily.

In January 2010, founder of ArtLeadHer Mashonda Tifrere and music producer Swizz Beatz finalized their divorce. When Swizz married award-winning singer/songwriter Alicia Keys, a new dynamic was born - three adults who loved and were deeply committed to raising Mashonda and Swizz's four-year old son Kasseem. In Blend, Tifrere draws on the insights they gained from their journey as well as advice from family therapists, parenting experts, and other blending families, to provide an invaluable resource for blended families.

If you are a stepparent, you may know how challenging a role it can be. It takes more than the will to make it work. Stepparents must apply a range of skills to keep their families together, and they have to be prepared to be flexible in the process.

What’s missing in your stepfamily? If you’re in a stepfamily, you may feel as if something is missing. You can’t put it into words yet, but you know it’s a problem. Maybe you’re new to this. Maybe not. Still, everything from badly-behaved exes to parenting rifts causes squabbling that disrupts the harmony in your home. The Stepmom’s Book of Boundaries helps you thrive despite rocky relationships, schedule snafus, and more.

You’ve met someone! And they have a kiddo (or a few) and you’re wondering what that’s going to mean for your relationship. Or perhaps you’re the one with a kiddo (or a few), and you want to be sure you get this part right for both your dating partner and your child. The Stepfamily Handbook: From Dating, to Getting Serious, to Forming a “Blended Family” provides essential guidance to parents who are dating and to those who are dating a parent. From those very first dates to including the kids to progressing to that big step of living together - this book is for you!

If you are considering remarriage and want to do everything you can to ensure a happy and fulfilling union, turn to Ron Deal and the Smart Stepfamily series. This is the ideal book for engaged or pre-engaged couples who have at least one child from a previous relationship, offering premarital counsel about how to prepare to blend family relationships, parenting, finances, rituals, and daily routines for your new life together.

Your ex-spouse is bad-mouthing you to your children, perhaps even trying to turn them against you. If you handle the situation ineffectively, your relationship with your children could suffer. This groundbreaking work gives parents powerful strategies to preserve and rebuild loving relationships with their children and provides legal and mental health professionals with practical advice to help their clients and ensure the welfare of children.