Maximizing Happiness Through Intimate Communication

From the Authors This book teaches how to improve communication in intimate relationships. These include marriages, "significant others," gay partnerships, close friendships, and in the long-run relationships with your children. Enjoying the greatest rewards of being together requires only that you both respect the other's values, feelings, desires, and needs. You must care deeply about each other's happiness. The ideas and examples we offer are gleaned from more than four decades practicing as a psychiatrist and family physician. Our experience includes advising readers of our syndicated newspaper column about sex-related problems; leading seminars on relationship issues for groups ranging from university students to church congregations; providing intensive singles and couples therapy for patients facing more serious challenges; and training other professionals in the field, including two years with the Masters and Johnson Institute. In all, we've found that what most people want is confidence that whatever life brings you, the two of you will face it together. These are the couples who learn, and never stop learning, their own strategies for intimate communication. Whether your relationship is in serious trouble, or you face nagging problems that seem to defy solution, or you'd simply like to add some rich icing to your cake, this book is for you. It is not a "one size fits all" telling you what everybody else should do, but rather a means to becoming the experts of your own relationship. Through principles, examples, and understanding, we will show you how. Section I briefly details our basic assumptions about intimate communication. All "experts" and their material have points of view, so we believe it is important that you recognize ours. Use this opportunity to examine your own assumptions. If there are areas where you do not agree wit