How we relate to others depends to a great extent on how we relate to ourselves. It is often only when a relationship breaks up that people are forced to face themselves as individuals. The aim of this book is to encourage us to take more responsibility for our own psychological and emotional development and not to be driven by the collective myth that it is unhealthy to be single or alone. This theme is set within an overview of the way modern relationships are developing, with a growing number of people choosing to stay single and an increasing number of whom are separated or divorced. Among the topics addressed are: facing aloneness, the single option, falling in love, re-parenting our inner child, facing the shadow and taking back our projections, life purpose, sex and belonging, finding new models of relating, becoming whole and our responsibility for the planet. Based on the wealth of her experience as a practising psychotherapist, Linda Sheppard has written an eminently practical book on how to achieve mature relationships.