How's Your Marriage?

A Book for Men and Women

Michael F. Myers, M.D.

1998
238 Pages
Editorial Reviews

ISBN 978-0-88048-695-8
Item #8695

List Price: $63.00
APA Members: $50.40
APA Resident-Fellow Members: $47.25

Description
Contents
Editorial Reviews
About the Authors

Like gardens, all relationships require care, patience, and nurturing to flourish. Because we are beset with the demands and frustrations of daily life, however, we often put off the hard work and care that are needed to ensure bountiful and harmonious marriage. As a result, seemingly minor tensions and problems that simmer beneath the surface can become major difficulties that affect the stability of the union.

Written by an experienced marital therapist, How's Your Marriage? is an indispensable guide that can help you and your partner build a lasting, healthy relationship while easing tensions and resolving troublesome issues. Using the insight gained from over two decades of practicing couples therapy, Dr. Michael Myers examines common difficulties—sex, life-cycle changes, infidelity, drinking, mental illness, and concerns about children—and how these difficulties can affect your marriage. He offers sage advice and guidance on how you can resolve these problems while at the same time enhancing communication with your spouse, an essential part of a solid, loving, and fulfilling relationship.

Dr. Myers also uses numerous case examples and question-and-answer sections to illustrate common complaints and ways to resolve them. He examines the role gender plays in developing the different perceptions and misunderstandings that lie at the root of so many relationship problems and offers practical solutions to these differences.

How's Your Marriage? explains how you can detect the warning signs of possible marital woe and the steps you can take to resolve these problems at their source. To allay the anxiety that you may have regarding marital therapy, Dr. Myers discusses therapy in great detail. He describes the different therapeutic techniques and the types of therapists who use them. He also includes lists of suggested readings, self-help groups, and national associations for marriage therapists that can help you take the right steps to resolving problems or troubles in your marriage.

Armed with this advice and guidance, you and your partner can work together to strengthen and improve your relationship, to weather the inevitable troubles that will occur over the course of your marriage, and to create a loving, lasting, and harmonious union. You will come away from this book with new understanding, courage, and hope. This is truly a book that you and your partner cannot be without.

Introduction. Communication. Marriage and the life cycle. Sexual problems. Extramarital relationships. Excessive drinking in marriage. Psychiatric illness and marriage. The role of children in marital disharmony. What about separation and divorce? What you can do to help yourselves. Basic information about marital therapy. Marital therapy: benefits and barriers. The outcome: expectations and reality. Index.

Michael F. Myers, M.D., is Director of the Marital Therapy Clinic at St. Paul's Hospital in Vancouver, Canada and Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the University of British Columbia Faculty of Medicine. He has been practicing and teaching marital and family therapy for 25 years and has held numerous offices in medical associations in Canada and the United States. Dr. Myers has written two previous books, Doctors' Marriages: A Look at the Problems and Their Supporting Solutions and Men and Divorce, and several scientific publications on marriage, divorce, physician stress, sexual assault of women and men, AIDS, the stigma of psychiatric illness, and gender issues in health care and delivery.

Easy to read and full of illuminating insights, How's Your Marriage is the most helpful home repair kit imaginable.—Maggie Scarf, Author of Unfinished Business: Pressure Points in the Lives of Women, Intimate Partners: Patterns in Love and Marriage, and Intimate Worlds: Life Inside the Family

This thoughtful book dissects, enlightens, and guides couples through the process of bonding and development of a coalition not only through expected developmental phases, but also through the unexpected problems and stresses encountered in the course of a relationship. Because of its solid theoretical foundation and practical approaches, it will be invaluable not only for mental health professionals but also for their patients.—Ira D. Glick, M.D., Professor of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, California

In this age of information overload here is a book that speaks equally to men and women, and to them as couples. Truly a 'guide', the readers will feel that they are in close communication with a friendly and very experienced professional who talks to them in a clear, caring and gentle way about their intimacy, their frustrations, their disappointments and their hopes. From issues of communication to sexuality, from fears of separation and divorce, to despair of ever finding intimacy and love, from concerns about children and worry over drug abuse and mental illness, Dr. Myers shares his wide clinical and professional experience, and his warmth and concern as a person to provide a rich trove of experience and advice which will be welcomed by those many who increasingly despair of finding resolution with their partners, and renewed hope for a fuller life.—Ian Alger, M.D., Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, The New York Hospital - Cornell University Medical Center, Fellow, American Marriage and Family Therapy Association, New York, New York

Dr. Michael Myers, a skilled clinician and psychotherapist, should be congratulated on having written a clear, concise, and useful guide for men and women experiencing marital difficulties. Consideration of psychotherapy can be frightening, and thoughts of marital therapy can be very frightening to both partners. Dr. Myers demystifies common marital problems with a common-sense approach to understanding marital therapy and the processes and potential results. Couples will find this book engaging and practical. Many therapists will be comfortable sharing this well written explanation of marital therapy with their patients.—Elissa P. Benedek, M.D., Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, University of Michigan Medical School, Ann Arbor, Michigan

In this easy-to-read, practical, and informative guide, Dr. Myers offers a much needed introduction to the world of marital and relational problems. Considering the endemic amount of marital distress, emotional pain, and divorce in our postmodern culture, nothing could be more relevant. Dr. Myers's observations and generous suggestions come from his years of experience in dealing with marital problems. This book is quite unique in its consideration of marital problems from the vantages of the life cycle, gender, and the presence of psychiatric problems. Dr. Myers introduces and explains the burgeoning field of marital-relational therapies and does this in a way that demystifies and destigmatizes and hence will allow many more suffering couples and individuals to avail themselves of much needed help.—Richard A. Perlmutter, M.D.Psychiatrist, Private Practice, Author of A Family Approach to Psychiatric Disorders, Towson, Maryland, A

Clear, practical, and sound clinical advice from an experienced marital therapist and psychiatrist about relationships. Men and women will find answers to many of their questions concerning a variety of problems including extra marital affairs, sexual difficulties, excessive drinking, and psychiatric disorders. Issues of separation and divorce are discussed and the benefits and process of marital therapy are explained. I recommend it!—Judith H. Gold, C.M., M.D., F.R.C.P.C., Psychiatrist, Private Practice, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada

This book is a practical and easily read introduction to relationship issues for couples who have not been in marital therapy.—Canadian Journal of Psychiatric Medicine, 3/1/2003