Contents

Contents – Growing Yourself Up

Introduction
Who’s willing to work at growing up?

Part 1 Understanding the relationship foundations of adult maturity
1. Becoming a self in our relationships
2. Real maturity or pretend maturity
How to tell the difference
3. Family ties that bind
Understanding our family of origin

Part 2 Maturity for the first half of adult life
4. Leaving home and growing up
Out into the big wide world
5. The single young adult
Learning how to relate wisely to yourself
6. How marriage can grow people
Changing yourself and not your spouse
7. Sex for grown-ups
Two contrasting bedroom stories
8. Grown-up parenting
Setting an example for the next generation

Part 3 Being a grown-up beyond our family
9. Off to work we go
Maturity gaps in the workplace
10. Developing mature beliefs
Compliance, rebellion or examination

Part 4 Nurturing maturity in the face of setbacks
11. Separation and divorce
Getting beyond blaming
12. Symptoms and setbacks
The uneven playing field of maturity

Part 5 Maturity enhancement in the second half of life
13. Midlife
Crisis or an opportunity for growth
14. Ageing well
Retirement, the empty nest, relating to a third generation
15. Old age and facing death
Denial or honest preparation

Reflections on the lifelong journey of maturity from the inner child to the inner adult

Epilogue

Society and self: the bigger picture of maturity

Appendix 1: Six marks of relational maturity
Appendix 2: Mature connection and separateness
Appendix 3: What are guiding principles?
Appendix 4: Differentiation of self as a continuum

Notes
Bibliography and further reading
Acknowledgments
Index

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