Couple Skills: Making Your Relationship Work

Couple Skills is different from other relationship books because: The focus is on action and change rather than theory. You can pick and choose what you most want to learn, focusing only on skills and chapters that are relevant to your needs. Each chapter has a standardized format and covers one skill. Here's what's covered: listening skills, expressing feelings and scripting needs, reciprocal reinforcement, clean communication, identifying and changing cognitive distortions, negotiation, problem solving, assessing and changing aversive strategies, coping with anger, coping with an angry partner, time out, identifying schemas about your partner, old tapes: separating your partner from your parents, coping with your defenses, identifying and intervening in your couple system, expectations, rules, and acceptance.

Matthew McKay, Ph.D., is a founding director of Haight Ashbury Psychological Services and codirector of Brief Therapy Associates in San Francisco. Dr. McKay is co-author of eleven popular books. In private practice he specializes in couples therapy as well as the treatment of anxiety and depression.

Patrick Fanning is a professional writer in the mental health field and the founder of a men's support group in northern California. He has co-authored eight self-help books.

Kim Paleg, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist in private practice in San Francisco and El Sobrante, California. She is on the faculty of John F. Kennedy University. Dr. Paleg is a contributing author to the self-help classic When Anger Hurts and co-edited a widely used professional text, Focal Group Psychotherapy. She specializes in couples and family therapy and conducts workshops on parenting.