My top 10 books on Love & Relationships

In our busy lives we often do the necessary and focus on issues to be fixed and logistics to be arranged. Fun and pleasure come at times and primarily, on holidays.

The same strategies we seem to apply to books. Daily we read the news or learn tools we need for work and only occasionally when we have energy and time (which is scarce for most of us these days) we can indulge in a good read.

How about we reverse the order of priority and start with reading amazing & fun books first? And not just books. Books on one of the most important topics that can make us happier: love & relationships.

Here are my top 10 books on love & relationships:

1. Anatomy of Love: A Natural History of Mating, Marriage, and Why We Stray by Helen Fisher. If you want to learn more about our evolutional ancestry and how we can use it to understand why we behave the way we do while choosing partners and making relationships work long-term. Full of powerful insights.

2. Sex at Dawn: How We Mate, Why We Stray, and What it Means for Modern Relationships by Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jetha. This is an amazing New York Times Bestseller that gives a controversial, thought-provoking line of evidence for matters that we rarely consider to be natural, such as alternatives to monogamy and gives plenty of scientific and anthropological examples from the animal and human kingdom where these arrangements have been the foundation for social life.

3. Mating in Captivity: Sex, Lies and Domestic Bliss by Esther Perel. A powerful exploration of erotic intelligence and how we can reconcile the domestic and the erotic. How we can bring lust home. A sexy, straight-talking and sensational book by one of my mentors and colleagues.

4. The 5 Love Languages: The Secret to Love That Lasts by Gary Chapman. An international bestseller that talks about different kinds of love to help us understand that what we want may be different to what our partner wants and how to reconcile the two.

5. Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus: A Practical Guide for Improving Communication and Getting What You Want in Your Relationships by John Gray. A classic in the relationship domain that has helped millions of men and women to understand each other better and deepen the relationships.

6. Turn Your Mate into Your Soulmate: A Practical Guide to Happily Ever After by Arielle Ford. It is what is says on the cover, it contains a step-by-step process to help live happily ever after, in a long-term relationship.

7. Why Him? Why Her? How to Find and Keep Lasting Love by Helen Fisher. This is a wonderful guide for finding the right partner. Based on psychobiological studies, Helen has found a way to match different types of people to create better relationships.

8. Why Men Don’t Listen and Women Can’t Read Maps by Allan and Barbara Pease. A fun and interesting way to look at differences in feminine and masculine energy and learn to communicate effectively.

9. Vital Friends: The People You Can’t Afford to Live Without by Tom Rath. This goes beyond romantic relationships and focuses on the workforce friendship. An eye-opening research is based on the Gallup studies.

10. The Secrets of Happy Families: Improve Your Mornings, Tell Your Family History, Fight Smarter, Go out and Play, and Much More by Bruce Feiler. Another New York Times Bestseller toolkit for a happy family life with smart solutions and amusing anecdotes.

These books have added to the quality of my life and I hope will do so for you too.

I would love to hear from you now. What books have impacted your life and which ones would you recommend for me to read?

Happy reading!

With love

Darya

XO