This title explains the often distorted expectations that adult children of divorce bring to romantic love.Romantic love is often an elusive, fragile, and tenuous state, difficult to maintain across years without regular nurturing and attention. The rates of divorce, re-divorce, relationship violence, and abuse today attest to the fact we are, to put it mildly, failing at romantic love. And love can be especially elusive and baffling for teen-aged and adult children of divorce. Because they have no template of a satisfying, firm romantic relationship derived from experience with and observations of their own parents, children of divorce are left to create their own template, or avoid romantic relationships altogether. In this work, psychologist Geraldine Piorkowski explains how being a child of divorce affects us, and how we can change our thinking, to break the cycle of poor choices and broken relationships. She also explains how our cultural models, from movies and books to television shows, give us no better models on which to base a loving, romantic relationship.Making wise partner choices - finding and keeping romantic love - is not magic. Nor is storybook love the stuff of real life, the author explains. Adult children of divorce who pursue romantic love often create an idealized image that serves as the standard for their own relationships, an image that may be drawn from idyllic scenes of unwaivering bliss and passionate sex presented in movies, soap operas, and novels. The expectation for 'true love' to be every moment, never fluctuating, becomes a source for disillusionment and despair. The meaning of love is confused. But with this book, adult children of divorce can start recognising how they have been affected by their experiences, and develop new thinking.