Modern love is complicated. All the rules have been broken and it seems that anything goes: starter marriages, open marriages, life partners, separate bedrooms, living apart together (or L.A.T.), decidedly single, internet dating. We enter relationships with emotional baggage, commitment phobias, and abandonment issues. The mystery of physical attraction can be explained by pheromones and dopamine, and even love has been classified as an addictive substance capable of causing dangerous dependencies.

When it comes to romantic relationships, all roads are open for exploration, making the quest a journey worthy of a Global Positioning System. One-size-fits-all exists no longer; status quo is open to interpretation. This leaves us to create our own unique relationship maps, because chances are that our voyage through coupledom will look nothing like that of our parents or our neighbors or even our best friends.

Today relationship books are filled with findings from researchers, advice from experts, and tell-all anecdotal stories about how “real life” individuals are wading through the often murky waters. These books can be an invaluable resource. The only problem is that with countless titles ranging from sincere to sarcastic, from researched to off-the-cuff, a consumer may find navigating the relationship section of a bookstore to be just as dizzying as navigating a flesh and blood relationship.

Look a little closer, however, and you will see that the relationship books currently on the shelves are not as haphazardly organized as they might appear on first glance. Trends are forming, credible information is emerging, new techniques are being tested. With a little research and help from an educated bookseller, individuals and couples can turn to modern relationship books to find essential tools for building their own modern love compass.

New emphasis on desire for greater intimacy

In the 1990s, relationship books focused primarily on communication. With titles like Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus, How Can I Get Through to You, and The Five Languages of Love, these books suggested that men and women were different species hailing from different cultures, speaking different languages. These books helped couples to bridge the abyss separating the sexes by encouraging more effective communication between partners.

While the’90s focused on the gender differences, new works give less attention to these differences, putting greater emphasis on men and women’s shared desire to experience greater intimacy within their relationships. The new books drop the old, “When you do that thing, I feel this way,” style of communication and purpose new ways to achieve understanding.

In Why Talking Is Not Enough: 8 Loving Actions That Will Transform Your Marriage (Jossey-Bass, 978-0-7879-9529-4) Susan Page, who also authored How One of You can Bring the Two of You Together and If I’m So Wonderful Why am I Still Single, empowers individuals to take charge of their relationships. Offering couples what she calls a “Spiritual Paradigm,” Page urges individuals to take the initiative and begin the process of change on their own, without waiting for their partner to agree.

A similar philosophy is espoused in Patricia Love and Steven Stosny’s book, How to Improve Your Marriage Without Talking About It: Finding Love Beyond Words (Broadway, 978-0-7679-2317-0). While Love and Stosny do spend time discussing the biological differences between men and women, they use these differences as platforms for building effective, action-oriented models to achieve intimacy rather than bedposts of blame. Drawing upon an array of stories from couples, this book hopes to show readers that love is not about better communication, but about better connection—and better connection is achieved not through talking, but through action.

In their book Ten Lessons to Transform Your Marriage (Three Rivers Press, 978-1-4000-5019-2), John Gottman, Julie Schwartz Gottman, and Joan Declaire debunk myths that “emotionally intelligent” marriages are ones in which couples talk about every aspect of their relationship. Having spent years extensively researching couples at the Gottman Institute, these authors conclude that it is not disagreements that make or break a couple, rather it is the way in which disagreements are handled.

Getting the Love You Want: A Guide for Couples by Harville Hendrix (Pocket Books, 978-0-7434-9592-9) and The New Rules of Marriage: What You Need to Know to Make Love Work by Terrence Real (Random House, 978-1-4000-6401-4) are also based on years of clinical practice. Drawing upon their extensive work with couples, both authors offer techniques for deepening intimacy in relationships. For Hendrix this means encouraging individuals to make peace with childhood hurts in order to move past relationship dysfunction and enter into a “practice of becoming passionate friends.” For author Real, this means helping couples understand that marriage is no longer what it was twenty-five years ago. He encourages women to take a more dominant role in making themselves happy in marriage, and urges men to work toward the changes needed to make their wives—and themselves—feel content and connected.

Building on truth and honest expectations

For Robin Smith, intimacy is built on truth. In her book Lies at the Alter: The Truth about Great Marriages (Hyperion, 978-1-4013-0897-1), Smith—who is a regular on television shows from Oprah and the Today show, to The O’Reilly Factor—shows couples how they can use traditional wedding vows as a foundation for building strong and honest marriages. Rhonda Britten, star of a United Kingdom reality show entitled Life Doctor, also claims that “truth” is an essential tool for helping individuals reach the deep level of intimacy they crave. Her book, Fearless Loving: Eight Simple Truths that will Change the Way You Date, Mate and Relate (Hodder Mobius, 978-0-340-82804-5) works to discredit common myths so that individuals can approach their relationships with honest expectations.

If action—not words—is the quickest path to creating closeness in a relationship, then sex is modern love’s superhighway of intimacy. David Deida offers readers a tender and unconventional view of the therapeutic qualities that sex can offer in Finding God Through Sex: Awakening The One of Spirit Through the Two of Flesh (Sounds True, 978-1-59179-273-4). Deida moves sex from the corporal realm of lust and mechanics into the spiritual realm where two people give and receive unconditionally both in and outside the bedroom.

Clinical sexologist Ian Kerner also places great confidence in the power of sex to transform relationships and foster deep connection. Unlike Deida, however, Kerner focuses his discussion almost entirely on the physical aspects of sex. A self-proclaimed “friendly neighborhood sex therapist,” Kerner uses a light-hearted and accessible tone when discussing—in step-by-step detail—practical techniques for having great sex in his pair of books She Comes First: The Thinking Man’s Guide to Pleasuring a Woman (Souvenir Press, 978-0-285-63722-1) and He Comes Next: The Thinking Woman’s Guide to Pleasuring a Man (Collins, 978-0-06-078456-0).

On dating and being single

Sadly, today’s relationships (no matter how great the sex) often end. Two new books help readers get clear on when it’s time to make up and when it’s time to break up. Too Good to Leave, Too Bad to Stay: A Step-by-Step Guide to Help You Decide Whether to Stay In or Get Out Of Your Relationship by Mira Kirshenbaum (Plume, 978-0-452-27535-5) and Deal Breakers: When to Work on a Relationship and When to Walk Away by Dr. Bethany Marshall (Simon Spotlight, 978-1-4169-3593-3) give readers concrete advice to stand on while pondering the future.

Because so many relationships do come to an end, and because more and more men and women are marrying later, the topic of dating is as popular in the world of relationship books as the themes of building intimacy. Unlike most relationship books which are heavy on the analysis, dating books are often humorous and light-hearted in tone. How To Date in a Post-Dating World by Diane Mapes (Sasquatch Books, 978-1-57061-470-5) supplies comical anecdotes from all types of contemporary singles and the author’s own witty guidelines for finding a path through the lawless world of modern dating. Lauren Frances, who describes herself as a “Ph. Double-D,” brings some clever scrutiny to the discussion. Her book Dating, Mating, and Manhandling: The Ornithological Guide to Men (Harmony, 978-0-307-23804-7) offers women advice on how to deal with men, whose behavior she says can be classified exactly like that of birds. For the single man, humorous dating advice can be found in A Practical Handbook for the Boyfriend: For Every Guy Who Wants to Be One/For Every Girl Who Wants to Build One by actress Felicity Huffman and film producer Patricia Wolff (Hyperion, 978-1-4013-0291-7).

Not all books on dating approach the topic with laughs. All the Good Ones Aren’t Taken: Change the Way You Date and Find Lasting Love by Debbie Magids and Nancy Peske (St. Martin’s Griffin, 978-0-312-37006-0) pushes women to look seriously within themselves for the reasons why they are unable to build lasting romantic relationships. Judy Ford’s book, Single: The Art of Being Satisfied, Fulfilled and Independent (Adams Media, 978-1-59337-154-8) goes on to say that women should construct loving relationships with themselves a priority over searching for men.

So what’s the common theme pervading these books? Very simply that we all long for more love. Martin Neufeld, in his self-published and distributed Hugging Life, (www.hugginglife.com) brings the topic around to a common denominator. Known as “The Hugging Busker,” Neufeld offers readers a simple approach for creating more love in their lives: give hugs. Part memoir, part self-help, part illustrated how-to manual, Hugging Life reminds us that no matter how we label our relationship status, we each can easily cultivate kindness and through communication and touch, celebrate our shared humanity.