Is lasting love magic, logic or luck?

Posted by Danielle Harvey on 6 November 2023

couple on roof at sunset with candles around Credit: Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash

front cover of book Does it matter how a couple met? Contented Couples, a new guide to long-term relationships, features candid, intimate interviews with eighteen couples, based in the UK and USA. Each pair tell of how they met, how they formed a relationship and how they've thrived to become a truly happy union.

One couple met and married within a month, whilst another two were thrown together repeatedly by a matchmaker who refused to give up - and it is not only guy meets girl either. The couples speak from an array of circumstance, culture and sexual orientations, including arranged marriage, friends-to-lovers and dating apps.

In the pages, couples (or those still hoping to find lasting love), will find real-life anecdotes, testimony and wisdom on every stage of long-term love from each partner. From their first meet and transition through the 'love bubble' of dating to selection, attachment and commitment, and woven throughout are jargon-free explanations of how couples form a bond from renowned couple therapist and writer on attachment styles, Anne Power. The interviews even recount examples of how the couples handled fights, money, relatives and sex in a way that isn't shared normally outside of a therapy session.

Each chapter ends with questions which invite us all to reflect on our own relationships and learn by eavesdropping on contented couples in a way that, for most of us navigating long-term relationships, is rare. Contented Couples has been prepared for anyone seeking lasting love, greater insight into their own coupledom, or indeed anyone who works with couples regularly and could use some more context on how this type of relationship actually works.

Anne Power is a couple therapist who writes and speaks regularly on attachment issues. She has clinical qualifications from The Bowlby Centre, Westminster Pastoral Foundation, Tavistock Relationships and Relate and she has experience with clients in the NHS, in prisons and in voluntary settings, including the Terrence Higgins Trust.
Across three decades of practice as a therapist, she has written over twenty papers for publication in academic and professional journals, which all explore the meaning of attachment in the consulting room and in the supervision relationship. Her second book, Contented Couples: Magic, Logic or Luck? reflects on interviews with eighteen long-term couples for a general audience interested to know how attachment styles play out in our long-term relationships and marriages. Contented Couples: Magic, Logic or Luck? was published by Confer Books and it is on sale now.