STRESS AND MARRIAGE:the Conflict-Reducing, Intimacy-Ehancing Problem-Solving Guide to a Better Marriage - Softcover

Lyle Miller; Alma Smith; Larry Rothstein

Softcover

ISBN 10: 067187246X ISBN 13: 9780671872465

Publisher: Gallery Books, 1996

Synopsis

Stress and Marriage uses proven clinical tools to pinpoint sources of stress and formulate a customized action plan to positively transform marriages.

While writing their acclaimed The Stress Solution, husband and wife team Lyle H. Miller and Alma Dell Smith realized that marriage is a potent source of stress, as well as a lifesaving refuge from outside tensions.

About this title

About the Author

Lyle H. Miller and Alma Dell Smith are the authors of Stress and Marriage, a Simon & Schuster book.

From the Back Cover

While writing their acclaimed The Stress Solution, husband-and-wife authors Lyle Miller and Alma Dell Smith realized that marriage is one of life's most potent sources of stress - yet it can also be a lifesaving refuge from outside tensions. Now drawing on their unique resources as directors at the Biobehavioral Institute in Boston and as a couple, they provide invaluable guidance in this reassuring hook. While no intimate relationship can ever be stress-free, Stress and Marriage helps you protect yourself from the devastating physical and emotional consequences of mismanaged, misunderstood, or just plain ignored stress. Use proven clinical tools, including the Marital Stress Inventory and the Making It Better Questionnaire, to pinpoint sources of stress in your relationship and formulate a customized Marital Stress Action Plan. You'll also find case studies throughout that are powerfully enlightening. Stress and Marriage provides clear, practical methods and examples that will help couples understand each other better, significantly relieve the tension in their lives, and positively transform their marriages. Even if your partner never reads a page of this book, you'll learn ways to change your communicating style that will reduce marital discord and lead you to a calmer, happier, healthier life.

Reviews

The truth is, almost everything that goes wrong in a marriage is stress related: inequitable division of labor leads to stress; verbal abuse leads to stress; cultural differences lead to stress; as do bad communication, sexual dysfunction, competition, etc. As a broad general guide to marriage, this latest by the husband-and-wife therapist team who wrote The Stress Solution offers some gritty good sense. They discuss how the fantastical expectations that can scotch reality and the very real stresses that children can bring. They emphasize mutual respect, even saying that "if your spouse doesn't want to get involved, respect their right not to. It doesn't necessarily indicate a lack of commitment." They describe how easily arguments spiral out of control and offer suggestions (some familiar) about how to talk to each other without creating unnecessary hostility. Unfortunately, there is also plenty of filler, with the authors repeating their Marital Stress Plans or their beliefs about relationships and birth order. Clearly, Miller and Smith have plenty of other ideas: twice they mention a paper they assigned to one couple, on "My Wife/Husband as a Cross-Cultural Experience" but provide no details. Like many others, they fall into the trap of cutely named, alliterative plans (e.g., they warn against "the three P soup" of Personal, Permanent or Pervasive criticism), which often come off as more condescending than illuminating.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Gallery Books
• Publication date: 1996
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 067187246X
• ISBN 13: 9780671872465
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 336