Married to Distraction for Valentine's Day?

Married to Distraction: Restoring Intimacy and Strengthening Your Marriage in an Age of Distraction, by Ned and Sue Hallowell, with Melissa Orlov, is being released on March 16th.  It's available for pre-order right now, and one of Dr. Hallowell's assistants put together a Valentine you can print out if you wish to order a copy for your Valentine to him or her know you were thinking about them.  It's a terrific book (I've read the whole thing) which got a starred review in Publisher's Weekly.  Here's a good description from Random House:"Modern marriage is busy, distracted and overloaded to extremes, with ever-increasing lists of things to do, superficial electronic connections, and interrupted moments.  Married to Distraction explains the subtle but dangerous toll today's overstretched, undernurtured lifestyle takes on our most intimate relationship.  The good news is that there are straightforward and effective ways to maneuver your marriage out of the destructive roadblocks created by the avalanche of busy living.  Just thirty minutes of effort a day for thirty days can restore and repair communication and connection, resurrect long-buried happiness and romance, and strengthen - even save - a marriage.

We deal with overload by tuning it out, but the repercussions on couples and commitment are serious.  Without attention, there is no intimacy.  And without intimacy, there is no connection.  So how do couples find their way back?

• Observe the natural sequence of sustaining love: attention, time, connection, and play.
• Develop and nurture empathy-the essential building block to healthy communication.
• Carve out small moments of uninterrupted attention for each other.
• Identify the pressures that our crazybusy lifestyles put on love and marriage, and fight back with tenderness and appreciation.

All of us who have been part of a couple for more than a few years will recognize ourselves in this reassuring book. Complete with scripts, tips, specific communication and interaction techniques, and a detailed 30-day reconnection plan, as well as inspiring real-life stories from relationships that were brought back from the brink, Married to Distraction will set couples on a course of understanding, healing, and love."

A note from Melissa here: This is not a book dedicated to the topic of ADHD and marriage, but to the more general topic of keeping a marriage healthy when distraction is rampant.  It's a great read for couples in which ADHD is a factor but stays away from the specifics of ADHD.  How I describe reading the book is this - it's like being in Ned Hallowell's living room with a cup of hot tea while he shares his brilliance on the topic of marriage.  It's intimate, comfortable and inspiring.  You feel privileged to be there.

The book can be pre-ordered online at any online book seller.