Loving People

How to Love and Be Loved

By: John Townsend

Narrated by: Matthew Josdal

Your personal guide to learning how to love.

When you say or hear the words "I love you", it can change your life forever. Love is one of God's most important gifts to anyone, yet there are many misunderstandings about how to make love work in our families, friendships, marriages, and dating relationships.

In Loving People, best-selling author Dr. John Townsend teaches you that love can actually be learned and gives you the steps and tools to become skilled in love. Using his trademark stories to flesh out the important principles, Dr. Townsend covers receiving love, connecting love, healing love, confronting love, romantic love, and surrendering love. Through his teaching, listeners will discover - and start enjoying - the words, actions, and experiences of authentic love.

©2007 Dr. John Townsend (P)2018 Tantor

I got so much out if this book!

The concepts in this book are not widely known or taught in any church I've been to. It contains instructions on setting limits and how to be loving while growing into a person who protects the good.

Awesome book...

don't let the narrator turn you off, great advice on love and loving! Learned a great deal on the right way to love and let go.

Very insightful

Contains a lot of useful information about how to love and to improve your relationships with other people. It really managed to show me things about human behavior I had not considered.

My only minor issue is that many things are explained in kind of a "list" format which leads me to wonder if I may have been better off getting the physical book. However this can be solved by simply taking notes which is what I did. Perhaps they should include a pdf of this lists with this book.

Good Read - Insightful

While it started out slow, I really enjoyed the material, message and insightful references Loving People provided. It was a recommendation from my daughter which I’m very grateful for because I likely would not have discovered it on my own. I’ve already begun to leverage it to help grow/enhance my relationship with my spouse. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Best!! GH

Loved It

Deep, insightful, helpful, and personal book that has challenged me to become a better person.

Impactful. Balanced well with psychology, truth and their connect with Faith principles

Usable, examples and scripts that help me to have new tools in my toolbox for being able to love people well. Deals with all kinds of love situations. Helps with balance in loving others as in loving self. My only personal complaint is the tone and inflection of the person reading. Having heard Dr Townsend before, it lacked his emotion and seemed stoic and dry. Overall, I found this to contain a great deal of wisdom from his experience, humility in mistakes, and practice. It also supports and aligns with the other non-faith based research and principles I have read. There are a few places I don’t agree fully with his theology component, but that is to be expected in life. It was delivered in a way that I didn’t receive as beating me over the head which I value as someone who doesn’t respect that method or feel it emulates the character of God. It was so full of wisdom and help in loving people well in my world. Love that he addresses so many different areas for exhibiting love.

Great content if you can get past the narrator

The narrator, while having a strong voice, gives the "ick" feeling when he uses the "S" sound. This was difficult for me to overcome, as I would turn it off or walk away from the program fairly often. I do enjoy Dr. Townsend's books, but the narrator , I could definitely do without.

Great Principles! Rough Narration.

Essential viewpoints that I wish I'd been aware of years ago. Emphasis on what is real and truly works is what brings value. Frequent stories gave time and context for the points to sink in.

The narration voice quality was good but the performance was tedious. Particularly the cadence. Was repetively rythemic like wind battering a shutter night and day. Wishing I'd read the book instead of listening to it.

Good Nuggets With Long Delivery

This was my first experience with a Dr. Townsend book. I knew of his work with Boundaries as the book was recommended by a lot of people as a great resource working with youth. I decided to give this one a try as I was in the middle of preparing a sermon about loving our neighbors.
There were some great insights with ideas on how to love people more effectively. What really got me was this seemed to be a group of stories about how Dr. Townsend had a therapy session with this one person and this is how we worked through the situation. The formula became a little stale as the book went on. I got to the point where I really didn't want to finish the book as it was becoming story, how I fixed it, what happened repetitively.
Recommended for those who are looking at becoming more loving in their lives who need stories to help them along the path.

The narrator ruins it

It was hard for me to listen to this audiobook and stay focused on what was being said because all that I could focus on was the narrator’s weird enunciations of every word and how he drags out the last sound of every word. The way he speaks makes it sound like he thinks he’s narrating a dramatic thriller or something. The content that I could force myself to focus on seemed alright, but I didn’t really get anything out of it because the narration was so bizarre.