POST-ROMANTIC STRESS DISORDER (PRSD)

What to Do When the Honeymoon Is Over By John Bradshaw

Visionary John Bradshaw Offers A Step-by-Step Program for Deepening Mature Love and Intimacy

Deerfield Beach, FL, February 17, 2015 – Most divorces could be prevented if couples knew what to do “when the honeymoon is over,” visionary counselor, theologian, bestselling author and addiction specialist John Bradshaw explains in a new book, POST-ROMANTIC STRESS DISORDER (PRSD): What to Do When the Honeymoon is Over (HCI Books, Publication Date: November 2014, ISBN-13: 9780757318139, $15.95).

Based on Bradshaw’s new research, PRSD is a very real and serious psychological disorder destroying relationships unnecessarily. In the book, however, he offers a step-by-step program for deepening mature love and intimacy, as well as an easily mastered series of exercises for becoming a better partner.

Couples just don’t know how to navigate the emotional swings that almost every marriage creates, he argues. If couples learn and understand the concepts Bradshaw presents in his book, the portrait of the family unit could have a whole new landscape. In POST-ROMANTIC STRESS DISORDER (PRSD), Bradshaw explains the brain circuitry that connects us to love and romance.

It was Bradshaw, in his groundbreaking work HOMECOMING, who helped us understand and heal the wounded and vulnerable “inner child.” His dynamic therapies are practiced all over the world. A much sought-out speaker, Bradshaw has truly touched and transformed the lives of millions. Bradshaw’s other best-sellers have included HEALING THE SHAME THAT BINDS YOU and CREATING LOVE. He has combined his exceptional skills in the role of counselor, author, management consultant, theologian, philosopher, and public speaker, becoming one of the leading figures in the fields of recovery, family systems, relationships, spiritual and emotional growth and management training.

In POST-ROMANTIC STRESS DISORDER, this great teacher opens the gate to a new frontier, tackling issues that threaten and endanger so many modern relationships. As he so brilliantly observed some time ago, “As the health of the marriage goes, so goes the health of the family.”

John Bradshaw is available for interviews. For more information, to request a review copy, or to arrange an interview, please contact Sandra Goroff at 617-750-0555 or via email at sgma@aol.com or Kim Weiss (at the publisher) at: 800-851-9100 x. 212 or kimw@hcibooks.com.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

John Bradshaw has combined his exceptional skills in the role of counselor, author, management consultant, theologian, philosopher, and public speaker, becoming one of the leading figures in the fields of addiction recovery, family systems, relationships, spiritual and emotional growth and management training. His dynamic therapies are practiced all over the world. A much sought-out speaker, Bradshaw has truly touched and transformed the lives of millions. Bradshaw is The New York Times bestselling author of Healing the Shame that Binds You, Homecoming, and Creating Love.
He has presented more than 500 keynote speeches, workshops and talks. He has hosted, appeared on, and been interviewed by more than 800 TV and radio shows, including: Oprah, Politically Incorrect, GMA, CNN News, the BBC, and Sirius Radio. Bradshaw has also been interviewed by, or written articles for, more than 500 publications, including Newsweek, Rolling Stone, People, Chicago Tribune, and the Boston Globe.

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AUTHOR INTERVIEW:

1. What do you hope to achieve with this book?

With a divorce rate of 51% and 17% of those staying married claiming to be unhappy, I’m hoping to stop people from throwing away perfectly good marriages!

2. Explain how people are throwing away perfectly good marriages?

Essentially it comes from a confusion of love and being in-love. In over a hundred research studies, over 50% of the people interviewed said that true love was being in-love with its amazing sex.

3. You’re saying that people who have lost the kind of sexual desire they had while in-love, no longer love each other?

That’s exactly what 50% of people believe!

4. Why is that an enormous belief?

New research (especially Helen Fisher’s, one of the leading anthropologists in the United States) has shown convincingly that we have three innate programs; one for lust, one for being in-love, and one for attachment.

5. What is the difference between lust and being in-love?

Lust involves the simple desire to have sex with someone. It involves a lot of control. After sex, a lusting only partner wants to leave. Not so when you are in-love. You are “out of control” and you want to be with your beloved all the time. Lust can lead to falling in-love and falling in-love can lead to lust.

6. What do you mean by “attachment?”

Attachment flows from being in-love and having great to amazing sex. As lovers move toward the end of the in-love cycle, and think about settling down and having offspring, new brain chemicals, vasopressin and oxytocin (the cuddle chemicals), reduce dopamine and norepinephrine which are the chemicals responsible for the energetic, high testosterone behaviors that characterize being in-love. They move a couple to settle down and to consider offspring.

7. So what is Post Romantic Stress Disorder?

The in-love brain program lasts from 12 to 18 months and when it ends—a person’s testosterone (the sex chemical)—goes back to normal levels before falling in love. The low T partner loses sexual desire first and after months of automatic and routine sex, says, “let’s just cuddle tonight” or some statement denying sex. I call this the “sexual breach” which is mild to severe for the high T partner. In-love is an altered state of consciousness—once it ends, a couple returns to their normal lives before they fall in-love. This can be an enormous stress for those who are highly dependent or have shame-based personalities.

8. The second part of your book is based on three other new discoveries. What are they?

a. The neuroplasticity of the brain
b. The human will as a physical force that can change the very structure of the brain
c. The primacy of affects (feelings)

9. Comment on the will as a physical force that can change the structure of the brain?

The work of Dr. Jeffrey Schwartz at UCLA (and his colleague Sharon Begly) with OCD patients, using a four affirmation set over ten weeks, showed that the willed affirmations had changed the part of the brain responsible for the obsessive compulsions. Schwartz and his team did MRI brain scans before and after the ten week program.

10. You present a three stage model of how true mature love grows. Comment on that please.

Stage One: Family of Origin
Conflicts-Rules: both (overt and covert) work through blocks from your past (especially childhood)
Stage Two: Independence
The stage wherein we facilitate each other’s solid sense of self. Must be independent before you can be interdependent.
Stage Three: Interdependence
The world of “ours,” where what we have and do is not mine or yours, it’s ours.