Based on decades of academic research, this book presents practical and pragmatic “how-to’s” to prevent and reduce the conflict and resolve the inevitable differences and disagreements that occur in marriage. Get your copy today!
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The Road to Marital Success is Unpaved: 7 Skills for Making Marriage Work
By Kenneth Waldron, PhD and Allan Kortzinsky, JD
Ron Johnson, PhD
Psychologist Kenneth Waldron and attorney Allan Koritzinsky have together provided the populace a fine book that can greatly add to the psychological literature aimed at establishing, enhancing, sustaining, and improving marriages.
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The book is grounded in decades of experience, available psychological literature, and theory that provides a practical, yet necessarily courageous approach couples can find to truly develop ongoing improvement in a marriage or established relationship.
The authors begin by identifying “five myths of marriage” that many people believe, including the myth that a good marriage is without conflict, a marital partner has to be the perfect mate, and that love is enough to establish and sustain a marriage. They authors write that the key to dealing effectively with marital conflict is how it is handled, not that it doesn’t exist. Rather than having a perfect mate, they suggest that individuals see each other, always more and more, which will lead to deeper understanding and love.
Waldron and Koritzinsky move beyond the myths to the “seven skills of successful couples” including both theoretical and practical approaches to marriage, like “overcoming personal bias, managing deep feelings, learning to be vulnerable, and embracing necessary conflict without assault of one another. In this section of the book the authors suggest simply having fun together, realizing that a good marriage takes hard psychological work, and realizing that no two people are exactly alike, but the essence of “marital work” is learning to see and understand each other, and consequently love each other better without having to like everything about one another.
Throughout this book the authors have simple, profound statements that can enhance a marriage and prevent unnecessary damaging conflict:
Waldron and Koritzinsky see the problems that many people have in marriage and committed relationships and approach the danger of excessive emotion by suggesting a factual, rational, honest approach with a heavy emphasis on the normalcy of conflict and how to manage it.
You might be about to embark on one of the most, if not the most, important journeys of a lifetime. You might be considering marriage, are already engaged, are newly married or have been married for a while. You might be married for a while, and reasonably pleased, but wish your marriage was a little better. You might be married and dissatisfied but not wanting to give up. Or, you might be at the point of considering a divorce, but willing to give your marriage one more effort at improvement.
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There are several aspects of this series of Lessons that are important for you to know at the outset:
These lessons are designed for both spouses, not for just one spouse. Building a successful marriage is necessarily a team effort. The lessons are designed for both spouses to participate together at the same time.
How quickly you progress through the lessons depends on how long it takes for both of you to master each lesson. There is no “quick” path or fix to a successful marriage, particularly if the starting point is a marriage that has significant problems or obstacles.
These lessons are designed to be fun. A successful marriage is fun most of the time, and therefore, “playing” to improve a marriage should also be fun, not work. That does not mean that you will not have some serious steps to take, but it is like learning to play a sport, develop a hobby or learn to play a complicated game of cards. There are tasks, but these lessons are designed to make those tasks as much fun as possible.
It does not take a long time to improve a marriage. In fact, the day you start these Lessons, you should notice some improvement.
a. We ask you to forget everything that you think that you know about marriage. This is particularly true if you are already married and are having serious problems. The early lessons will teach you what a marriage really is so that you can learn to play marriage well.
b. If you are in a marriage that is not going very well, you will especially be asked to forget why you think that is. The reason is quite simple: you are very likely wrong, even though you might have completely convinced yourself that you are right. This is especially true if you blame your partner or believe that your unhappiness is the result of who your partner is. The same is true if your partner blames you or that the problem is who you “really” are.
c. Everyone has positive characteristics but also negative characteristics. There might be some exceptions on both ends of this continuum, i.e., all good or all bad, but most people have both. A poorly going marriage simply brings out the worst in people, and the people who have the skills to play marriage well bring out the best in one another.
a. These lessons are based on the results of research on marriage. They are not just someone’s opinion or temporary feel-good exercises. The lessons focus on our nine essential ingredients of a successful marriage and how to handle the real challenges of marriage well.
b. No marriage is without serious conflict. All marriages face gut-wrenching disagreements. The difference between a successful marriage and an unsuccessful one is simply the percentages of time spent having meaningful experiences. e.g., raising children, having fun and managing gut-wrenching disagreements. A successful marriage should be about 90% of the time a combination of taking care of business and having fun and 10% resolving challenging disagreements. An unsuccessful marriage is spent managing disagreements most of the time, without reaching solutions, either in open conflict or in steaming silence and a cold war.
c. What you will learn in these lessons is what marriage really is, what it can be, what it is not and what it cannot be. You will learn that all nine ingredients of marriage must be present in a marriage for it to be successful. You will learn the source of all marital conflict, and you will learn the skills to manage normal marital conflict so that the conflict is not only not damaging, but also that the resolution of that conflict actually improves the marriage.
d. Research tells us that spouses have differences, some of which add quality to the marriage but some of which lead to gut-wrenching disagreements. Common sense tells us that all people have a collection of positive and negative traits. The key to a successful marriage is having the skills to resolve common but emotionally challenging disagreements. Spouse who have the skills, resolve disagreements quickly, with little harm to one another and with solutions that accomplish most of what both spouses want to accomplish. The rest of the time in the marriage is spent taking care of marital and family business and having fun. This brings out the best in one another, rather than the worst.
The lessons begin by focusing on mistaken beliefs about marriage that many people, particularly people in troubled marriages, share. One of those “myths” is the belief that a divorce is always a tragedy. The reality is that sometimes a divorce is the best and healthiest decision, because some problems in marriage simply have no other solution.
The lessons also describe developmental stages of a marriage, with a key focus on the stage when spouses start to have serious problems. We explain in detail what is so challenging about that stage in a marriage and how to meet that challenge successfully. Research tells us that the top four types of disagreements in marriage are:
a. resolving different wants and needs for a physical relationship (sex and affection),
b. money,
c. social relationships and activities and
d. parenting.
However, every marriage is unique, and the most difficult disagreements can be about just about anything that is emotionally important to one or both of the spouses.
a. The first step in meeting the challenges of the difficult stages of a marriage is to determine if you have the nine essential ingredients of a successful marriage. This is like a recipe list of ingredients for a cake. If the marriage is missing any one or more of the ingredients, the cake won’t bake or taste good. Guidelines are provided for introducing to your marriage the ingredients that are lagging or lacking.
b. The second step is learning about and using our seven skills to resolve disagreements. The Lessons focus on those skills in a particular order, provide comprehensive definitions so that they can be understood and exercises and drills to learn the skills. This is the heart of a good marriage. i.e., the ability to resolve disagreements that work well for both spouses.
Finally, the lessons will wrap things up with some shortcuts and a description of the depth and breadth of a successful marriage and why most people dream of getting to the last stage of a marriage which is the pot of gold and why it is worth pursuing. However, we do have a few warnings.
The Lessons we introduce are very much like that. You will understand what a marriage is and is not, learn the nine essential ingredients and the seven skills needed to achieve a successful marriage. That is it. After that, all you need to do is practice the skills until you are really good at marriage.
This book works to:
This book is an expansion on the author’s’ book, Game Theory and the Transformation of Family Law. However, it is not a restatement of it. While some of the same territory is covered, and readers of this book will recognize Principles explained in Game Theory, the exploration is from a different angle and includes new information.
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