The Three Desires - by Christa Hardin (Paperback)

About the Book

The Three Desires provides strategies to help married couples get in tune with their individual needs for self-care, sensuality, and socialization.

Book Synopsis

Realize the Love and Marriage Your Heart Desires

Too often, married couples find themselves growing apart after the honeymoon dies down. They stop feeling like their own desires are seen and honored, begin to resent their spouse's differing interests, and stop meeting each other's needs in their quest for happiness. It shouldn't be this way, but it happens to many couples--from newlyweds to empty-nesters.

Relationship coach Christa Hardin helps couples to achieve their own personal deepest longings for love while honoring one another's hopes and ideals in The Three Desires: Reshaping the Connection, Intimacy, and Teamwork in Your Marriage.

Christa explains that people enter romantic relationships hoping to have three primary needs met:

• The self-preservation desire for safety, order, and wellness

• The sexual desire for attracting one another and merging with intimacy

• The social desire for attunement, connection, and purpose

In an expedition that takes readers far beyond encouragement and inspiration, Hardin offers hard and fast tools developed through her popular Enneagram + Marriage programs, including resource-rich appendices that include a Three Desires Tracking Chart, Sequencing Tools, 10-Minute Practices for Blind Spots, Conversation Activities, Attachment Styles Guide, and a Marriage-Based Enneagram Assessment.

These desires show up differently in each of us, depending on many factors such as one's Enneagram type or family upbringing. But Christa offers assurance that it's possible for couples to meet these needs in a balanced, integrative, and meaningful way, bringing a culture of appreciation and fulfillment to their relationship and greater good to the world.

Review Quotes

Christa has a way of taking something that can feel frustrating in marriage and making it make sense. She helps you understand the three core desires in a way that's easy to grasp, while giving you practical tools you can actually use to better understand each other, communicate more effectively, and build a stronger relationship. If you've ever felt stuck or wondered why you keep missing each other, this book will leave you with more clarity, more compassion, and hope for what's possible.

--Ashton Whitmoyer-Ober "Speaker, author, consultant"

Christa has created a rich and deeply helpful resource for those who want to understand themselves and their partner! This is not just a marriage book, this is a deep dive into why we are the way we are and how we can move forward together.

--Elisabeth Bennett "Author and Enneagram teacher"

Christa Hardin has done a magnificent job explaining how healthy self, sex, and social desires work together to form a thriving relationship. This book is for anyone who wants to move beyond routine and into a relationship where the satisfaction of growing together takes center stage. This book is beyond theory; the checklists allow for practical application of the wonderfully explained concepts.

--Dan Purcell "CEO, Date Your Spouse"

Christa Hardin has done something genuinely rare. She's taken the rich, mysterious territory of human desire and made it understandable without reducing it to simplicity or shallowness. The Three Desires is wise, warm, and eminently practical. Read it with your spouse or partner. Then read it again!

--Ian Morgan Cron "Author, The Road Back to You"

Christa Hardin is the real thing. As someone who has sat across from her, we can tell you that what she writes is exactly who she is--warm, wise, and disarmingly honest. The Three Desires does something we rarely see in marriage books: it goes underneath the conflict to find what is actually driving it. After fifteen years of working with couples, we thought we had heard it all. Christa gave us new language, new insight, and a deeper framework for understanding what husbands and wives are really longing for. This book belongs in the hands of every couple as well as every therapist, coach, and pastor who sits with them.

--Casey and Meygan Caston "Cofounders, Marriage365"

Christa Hardin's The Three Desires is a thoughtful and engaging guide for couples seeking deeper connection, emotional safety, and renewed intimacy in their relationships. Drawing on themes related to attachment, nervous system regulation, and relational patterns, Hardin encourages readers to reflect on how our experiences shape the ways we connect, communicate, and respond to stress. This book offers practical insights and compassionate encouragement for couples at any stage of their journey together. As both a neuroscientist and an educator in mental health, I appreciate the way Hardin makes complex ideas about emotional connection and nervous system regulation accessible and relevant to everyday relationships. I highly recommend this book to couples and anyone interested in strengthening relational well-being.

--Dr. Krissy Doyle-Thomas "Neuroscientist and mental health professor"

From the first words of this profound and delicious book, you are going to climb into terrain that most marriages avoid. Differences in desire across the entire spectrum of life are inevitable, and for many, create distance and division. Differences demand deep understanding and care to move us into greater intimacy and not division. Christa tenderly and wisely walks with us, offering not only a map but also the intimate knowledge gained from hard-earned living to guide us to a vista that will change your life and marriage. Take a walk on the wild side of wonder and gratitude for the way you and your spouse were written by God. You will never regret the goodness you will gain.

--Dan B. Allender, PhD "Seattle School of Theology and Psychology"

Most of us don't lack information about ourselves; we lack language for what's actually happening beneath the surface. The Three Desires provides that kind of language. As someone who has used the Enneagram for years to help women go deeper in their identity work, I found Christa Hardin's framework immediately clarifying! It's not just for marriage, but for understanding the desires that shape all of our closest relationships. This is the kind of book that makes you feel seen and offers practical insights.

--Amy Wicks "Author, Wholehearted Enneagram"

About the Author

Christa Hardin is a best-selling author, podcast host, and Enneagram in Marriage relationship coach as well as the owner of Reflections Counseling and Coaching, LLC in Lakewood Ranch, Florida. She earned her MA in Clinical Psychology at Wheaton College. Her mission is to reflect Christ by helping others to see their life in a new light. Christa is passionate about helping hurting couples find their way back to each other, integrating psychology and personality tools with Christian principles. Over the last two decades, her work has led thousands of couples to endure together, enjoying their relationships across seasons. Christa and her husband Wes have three children: Hannah, Melody, and Jack.