Daring to Love

When it comes to finding love, are you standing in your own way? Daring to Love will help you identify the internal barriers that cause you to sabotage your love life, open yourself up to vulnerability, and build the intimate, lasting relationship you truly desire.

After a breakup, most of us spend a lot of time thinking long and hard about what the other person did to cause it, rather than reflecting on ourselves. It seems self-evident that we want our romantic relationships to work, and that love and long-term commitment are our ultimate goals. But what if our desire for love is actually not as straightforward as our emotions make us believe? What if, instead of pursuing love, we are unconsciously pushing it away?

In Daring to Love, Tamsen and Robert W. Firestone offer techniques based in Robert Firestone's groundbreaking voice therapy-the process of giving spoken word to unhealthy patterns-to help you understand how you are getting in your own way on the quest for true love. Love, the Firestones argue, makes us vulnerable and triggers old defenses we formed in childhood, causing us to sabotage our relationships in myriad subtle-and not-so-subtle-ways. Using the voice therapy strategies in this book, you will be able to identify your own defensive patterns and uncover the destructive messages your critical inner voice is telling you about yourself, your partners, and your relationships.

If you're struggling to cultivate lasting relationships, this book can help you embark on your next romantic journey with more openness and self-knowledge.

“Robert Firestone, clearly one of the most influential therapists of our generation, and Tamsen Firestone, have teamed up to write Daring to Love. This book is the definitive guide for integrating voice therapy into relationships. Since the text is packed from cover to cover with valuable journal exercises, it is a wonderful reference for therapists as well as clients who can use it for bibliotherapy. The key insight is that most individuals need to stop pushing away love, and this book provides a wealth of useful interventions.”
—Howard Rosenthal, EdD, author of Encyclopedia of Counseling and Encyclopedia of Human Services

“Daring to Love is a wonderfully wise, beautifully written, and eminently practical book for anyone wishing to establish and maintain deeper, richer, and more lasting close relationships. It distills decades of research and clinical experience aimed at understanding and overcoming personal and relational barriers to happy, psychologically healthy living. The book contains many useful, personally engaging exercises based on the authors’ voice therapy, organized around specific barriers to intimacy. As a relationship researcher who frequently writes about attachment theory and close relationships, I receive numerous requests for books that help a person overcome relationship problems. Daring to Love will now be on my short list of enthusiastic recommendations.”
—Phillip R. Shaver, PhD, distinguished professor of psychology emeritus, University of California, Davis; coeditor of Handbook of Attachment; and coauthor of Adulthood

“This book invites us into raw vulnerability only made possible by the competent, compassionate hands of two authors who have lived—and loved—the principles they set forth. Perhaps the last paragraph of this book explains why it deserves to be read, integrated, and actualized into practice: ‘Love is worth believing in. Love is worth fighting for. Love is worth the personal challenge. No other endeavor offers higher rewards.’”
—Pat Love, EdD, LMFT, author of The Truth About Love