5/26/11

Love Shrinks: A Memoir of a Marriage Counselor's Divorce

Sharyn Wolf

Show Description:

Because I was successful as a psychotherapist and marriage counselor, i.e. my couples got better, I held to the belief that any marriage can be fixed if the partners really want to fix it. That’s what I said on Oprah. That’s what I said on CNN.

Thus, it was a shock to discover that my own marriage was so troubled that nothing I said or did helped even though my husband and I loved each other in many ways. We couldn’t cooperate to buy furniture. Our dining room table was piled so high with papers that we never ate at it. We’d only had sex three times in the last thirteen years.

This was a risky book for me to write because psychotherapists listen. We don’t reveal what has happened in our own lives—even if that is how we learned to be good at what we do. In LOVE SHRINKS, I do reveal as I explore the theme that, for some, love isn’t always meant to last forever and hoping that it can is a painful mistake.

As I began to compare my patient’s lives to my own, I was forced into the self inquiry that transformed me. I invite the reader to take this journey which interweaves my patient’s stories with my own and to learn more about the emotion that is central to all of our lives: love—what goes right and just how much can go wrong.

http://www.sharynwolf.com

Guest Bio:
Before turning to memoir, Sharyn Wolf, LCSW, wrote five self-help books including This Old Spouse: Tips and Tools for Keeping that Honeymoon Glow, How to Stay Lovers for Life: Discover a Marriage Counselor’s Tricks of the Trade, Guerrilla Dating Tactics: Strategies, Tips and Secrets for Finding Romance, 50 Ways to Find a Lover and So You Want to Get Married: Guerrilla Tactics for Turning a Date into a Mate.

Sharyn has been a guest on more than four hundred television and radio shows including Oprah, where on her first of eight visits, she was featured one on one with Oprah for fifty minutes. She has also been interviewed by Katie Couric, 48 Hours and CNN. Her work has been profiled internationally in newspapers and magazines including, The Wall Street Journal, The Boston Globe, The Washington Post, The Seattle Times, and The New York Times as well as magazines such as Redbook, Cosmopolitan, Glamour, Men’s Health, and Self. Her books have been translated into Chinese, Brazilian Portuguese, German, Korean, Dutch and Thorson’s published British Editions.

She is a New York State licensed psychotherapist in a twenty-year Manhattan based private practice working with individuals, couples and families. In this capacity she has been a frequent media commentator on celebrity marriage and divorce. After 9/11 she spent four months working at the Family Assistance Center treating family members and survivors. She has continued to do trauma and grief work.

In the corporate sector, Sharyn has done numerous satellite tours and appeared as a spokesperson for companies such as Proctor & Gamble, Carnation, Hewlett Packard, Pfizer and Durex, speaking about products from cocoa to Viagra.

Sharyn was a jazz, big band and R&B vocalist for seventeen years. She performed as an opening act for such artists as B.B. King, Taj Mahal, The Climax Blues Band, David Brenner and Victor Borge.

As a jewelry designer/maker, her work was featured in Vogue, Barney’s New York, Self Magazine and the Katharine Butler Gallery. She worked with unusual materials including ice age mammoth ivory, dinosaur bones and antique African trade beads.

In 2005, she took a solo bike trip from Astoria, OR to Crescent City, CA, carrying her tent and her sleeping bag and 50 pounds of gear, and she made a similar trip to Alaska in 2007.

She lives in New York City where she continues to work in private practice and for the Jazz Foundation of America.