Welcome Have you ever found yourself in the presence of someone you love dearly and had nothing to say? The silence not indicative of your care for the other, nor of your desire to connect with them, and yet there were no words you could grasp to articulate the depth or quality of your connection to them? Or have you found yourself in the same looped pattern of conversation with someone you love? Feeling as though you were treading the same path repetitively and it was simply exhausting? Even worse, it was deteriorating your connection. Have you found yourself so in love that you want to forge an even deeper connection but are unable to find the tools or the experiences to help you build the next, greater version of what you sense is possible? Have you questioned the value of intimate relationships? Or what intimacy really means? What is it in essence? How does it affect one's life? How do you build it? How do you maintain it? And on a more rudimentary level, what's the payoff? Welcome. It is not a mistake you are reading these words. However you came to this book, there was something in you craving a new way to experience love, connection, and intimacy. I hope you're ready to take a deep dive and be open to the transformational power of deeper connection, because you are in the right place. *** For the last ten years through the Emmy Award winning project {{THE AND}}, I have been studying and watching humans of all types, and in all kinds of relationships, simply talk. But there is more to it. I've crafted the space for powerful, cathartic conversations to occur. I've created the questions that spark those experiences for the participants. I've trained others to hold the space, write the questions, and ultimately create these powerful moments for people across the gender, social, economic, and cultural spectrums to connect in new and profound ways. I have spent thousands of hours watching the video recordings of those people in these exchanges. And I've learned a lot. I've learned about the human condition and it's craving for raw and real connections with other humans. I've learned that we all yearn that connection whether we know it or not. I've learned how the power of questions can change your whole perspective and thus how you experience your life . I've learned how challenged we are as a culture to be vulnerable with one another and the payoff when we do. I've learned what listening, really listening, looks like. I've learned that the heart is built to love, and yet has to traverse through rugged terrain to find another loving heart. And I've learned that every relationship has its own unique space between that if accessed can provide rich nutrients to fuel growth and elevate a relationship to deeper levels reminding us of the beauty of what it means to be alive. All these lessons have changed me. Through them, I've learned about my own life's journey which has led me to this place. I am going to share with you the learnings I've absorbed from witnessing over one thousand conversations and the lessons from my own first hand experiences. You will walk away with the awareness and the tools of how to deepen your connections with those most important to you. As couples therapist and author, Esther Perel famously put it, "The quality of our relationships determines the quality of our life." But what determines the quality of our relationships? I'd argue that it's the conversations we share with our partners; the depth and connection we cultivate and discover as we speak to our loved ones within a shared space. So what determines the quality of those conversations? What allows them to offer us a space for exploration, discovery, and connectedness? The quality of the questions out of which they arise. *** I am going to offer you 12 meaningful questions to ask and the tools to create the space in which to answer them in a powerful way. Thank you. I am grateful you are here. With that, I invite you to explore the space between. Excerpted from 12 Questions for Love: A Guide to Intimate Conversations and Deeper Relationships by Topaz Adizes All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
