HAPPILY EVER AFTER: A Therapist's Guide to Taking the Fight Out and Putting the Fun Back into Your Marriage

If you can't get to a marriage counselor or even if you can, this book will do two things for you: act as a surrogate for the real McCoy, or be a salubrious backup and resource. The author's work as a psychotherapist makes her as good a preceptor as any in unraveling the secret game plans, behaviors and emotions that complicate the marital bond. She cautions the reader to take her advice in small doses and to practice what she preaches the same way. Often minor adjustments in the behavior of one spouse cause an immediate improvement in a relationship. Her self-diagnostic charts, helpful hints and unfailing humor will convince the meekest, the most perplexed and depressed that they can change enough to spruce up the love nest and put some fun back into the tottering state of wedded bliss. Her analysis of the games people play is interesting and perceptive, and her section on communication clarifies what people are usually up to in their conversations. She is practical and supportive as she gives specific, down-to-earth suggestions. The use of positive/negative stroking complete with a chart for record-keeping is typical of her approach. If you keep a record, you become conscious of how many nice or nasty things you did for your dearly beloved. Americans have an insatiable appetite for how-to books of every sort, especially of the pseudo-psychology genre. This one might have seemed part of that hoary tradition were it not for its eminent good sense. The author is neither a cultist nor pop-psycher, but rather a solid therapist with good credentials. . .who happens to write well indeed.