Secrets of Strong Couples: Personal Stories and Couples Communication Skills for Long-Lasting Relationships
188
Secrets of Strong Couples: Personal Stories and Couples Communication Skills for Long-Lasting Relationships
188eBook
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Overview
“Written by a licensed relationship therapist and a divorce attorney, if you read this book, you won’t need the services of either! ” ―Becca Anderson, author of Let Me Count the Ways
#1 New Release in Sociology of Marriage & Family
Couples communication and relationship experts David Bulitt and Julie Bulitt share their relational knowledge in this book that may save your marriage. With stories and marriage help tested by real couples, learn how to survive and thrive after relationship and marriage fights, becoming parents, deaths, and other struggles.
Get partnership and marriage help tested by real couples. The relationship experts behind the bestselling The Core Conversations for Couples put together another essential couples book for relationships. Secrets of Strong Couples shows you how real couples have made it through to the other side of real crises—together.
Learn how to overcome couples communication hardships, marriage fights, and more. Walk alongside committed partners as you learn how to fix your marriage or relationship, no matter what life throws at you. Whether you’re dealing with infertility, job loss, infidelity, grief, or other relationship strife, these personal stories provide all the relationship and marriage advice you need to thrive!
Inside this essential couples gift, you’ll find:
- Practical advice from authors experienced in couples, marriage counseling and divorce law
- Examples of how to persevere through life’s most difficult trials without losing each other
- Real couples communication help from partners who are not afraid to share their difficult stories
Readers of books like This Is How Your Marriage Ends by Matthew Fray, Marriage Be Hard by Kevin Fredericks & Melissa Fredericks, or Communication Miracles for Couples by Jonathan Robinson will love Secrets of Strong Couples.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781684812219 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Mango Media |
| Publication date: | 06/27/2023 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 188 |
| Sales rank: | 329,448 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
About the Author
Julie Bulitt is a licensed clinical social worker with more than 25 years of experience working with individuals, couples, and families. Her private practice focuses on family, couples and individual therapy, ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) and Executive Functioning coaching. She has served as a Clinical Supervisor and Early Childhood Mental Health Consultant for the Montgomery County (Maryland) Mental Health Association, an Adoption Therapist for the Center for Support and Education in suburban Washington DC. She currently is an in-house therapist for The Discovery Channel in Silver Spring, Maryland.
David Bulitt is a partner in the Washington DC Metro law firm of Joseph, Greenwald & Laake, PA. For more than a decade, he has been chosen as one of the Washington area’s top divorce lawyers by multiple publications, recognized as one of the “Best Lawyers in America” and a Washington DC Metro “Super Lawyer.” Praised as “the lawyer who epitomizes stability and old fashioned common sense” by Bethesda Magazine, David has a particular interest in families with special needs children as a result of personal experiences in his own family. He is a published author of two fiction novels, multiple articles in legal publications and has appeared as a special guest on several local television shows.
Karen Benjack Hardwick, M.Div., MSW, is a global leadership consultant, coach, and clinically-spiritually trained psychotherapist with master's degrees from both Princeton Theological Seminary and Rutgers. She works with Fortune 1,000 leaders, teams, and entrepreneurs around the world on how to become Connected Leaders.™
A pioneer in the field of Thera-Coaching and Thera-Consulting, Karen blends the science of Self-Discovery and Spirituality into a path that helps leaders awaken, heal, and courageously lead.
Karen is the author of The Connected Leader: 7 Strategies to Empower Your True Self and Inspire Others. She hosts the Saving You a Seat podcast and speaks to many audiences on how the power of connection transforms the leadership landscape and elevates our well-being, engagement, and empowerment.
Read an Excerpt
Every relationship, every couple has a story to tell.
In some iterations of poker, players get to toss out the cards that they don’t want and replace them with others from the deck. When people in relationships lay their cards on the table, they don’t get replacements. They can either lose—or find a way to win.
The couples who persevere through life’s most difficult trials find a way to play those cards they are dealt—together. They gather their chips and stay at the table and prepare themselves for the next hand.
In The Five Core Conversations for Couples, we took a broad look at the basics of successful relationships—how to identify, manage, and push through the primary quandaries that most couples face at one time or another. In these pages, the digging here is deeper. We tackle issues and mine holes that many couples cannot climb out of or solve and are unable to escape.
Have you ever thought about it? How do they do it? How is it that some relationships not only survive but even thrive after a crisis, while others wither and flame out because of a bad weekend or a seemingly benign disagreement? How did Mary and John’s marriage survive their son’s death? Sam had an affair, yet he and Jennifer seem happier now more than ever. Even though Janice is an alcoholic as well as addicted to pain medication and has been in and out of rehab for several years, she and Joe made it through and are still together. The Thompsons have a transgender teen; Annie was open and understanding, but Jack shut down, got angry, and wouldn’t talk about it. No problem. There they are—holding hands and taking nighttime walks together.
Most of us have heard the term “widow-maker” in reference to a deadly heart attack. A widow-maker can occur when the major descending artery that serves as a pipeline to the heart gets blocked and the heart stops beating. The way for cardiology patients to avoid a widow-maker is to have a bypass procedure to get the blood flowing around the blockage. Working through a traumatic injury to a relationship seems to require the same sense of urgency, the same need to find a way to bypass the issue, fix it, and move on.
The two of us thought a lot about these couples and their relationships. We wondered about all those questions and how it was that some people were able to avoid the relationship widow-maker and successfully navigate that bypass. Then we went out and did what we like to do: We talked to people. We were often saddened by the stories, but at the same time uplifted by their tenacity and courage. There also turned out to be an unexpected consequence of the many hours of conversations—they turned out to be a two-way street. Julie and I got much of what we were looking for—some insight into how these couples made it through, their relationships damaged and listing in some cases, but still afloat. And for those who shared their stories, it was often cathartic, a deep breath released. They felt better after opening up, letting it out, and telling their story.
There is pain in these pages, plenty of it. At the same time though, there is also resilience and determination. There is loyalty and courage. There is love. It is our hope that you will find comfort in these stories and experiences and the strength to push your relationship forward even in the toughest of times.
--------------------We talk a lot about our ‘Three C’s to a Successful Relationship’: communication, connection, and consistency. When we did not communicate, our relationship faltered. When we went our own way and ignored what was going on with the other, our relationship was weakened. When we were inconsistent and not available to the other, when we ignored the other’s feelings and opinions, our marriage was in distress. But when we paid more attention, talked more, and connected consistently, we were able to repair some of the damage we had inflicted on ourselves, get closer again, and put ourselves in a better place to move our lives forward.
All of the couples in this book experienced trauma and discord, stretching and fraying of the ties that bind relationships. The similarities that each couple has shown are simple and direct. All of our couples found a way to communicate and connect. A great deal of that was drawn from their faith, their belief in a higher being and a divine plan. These couples ultimately found a middle ground, and even solace, not only in each other but in a strong core belief in God.
Our couples all expressed a need to protect each other, a desire to stay connected and find the best in each other. For some couples, it was sex and intimacy that helped to keep the relationship engine running. Others turned outward for someone to help them find their path and move forward, in therapy, couples counseling, or faith-based support. Each couple found a way to mend and repair the damage and overcome the hardship that the relationship had endured, be it an illness or addiction, infertility or gender conversion, a meddling parent, the uncertainty derived from ambiguous loss, a cheating spouse, or even the death of a child.
“I will take you, to have and to hold, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, until death do us part. I will love and honor you all the days of my life.” We all recognize those words, we are familiar with these vows. Many of us have repeated them ourselves. We also know that saying them is a lot simpler than being true to them. The fact is that not all of us can honor our partner and show them love every day. To be fair, most of us don’t. But what these couples and their stories show us is that while on some days we may fall short of those vows and our commitments, that does not mean that the buzzer has sounded and the game is over. There is still time to find our way together, to put in the work to understand each other, to show patience and be respectful of each other. Like the couples in this book, stay strong through the stresses and have the courage to stand up to challenges and fight through the failures. Keep the faith even in the darkest of nights. After all, if they can do it, why can’t we?
Table of Contents
ContentsIntroduction: Drilling Down
The First Conflict: Becoming a Parent
- Karim and Natasha: Finding the Same Page
- John and Jennifer: Infertility, Adoption and the Second Time Around
- Megan and Sean: Religion, Family, and IVF
- Torrence and Tamika: Maybe It’s Not Meant to Be
- Brittany and Nicholas: Can We Go Thru It Again?
- Bethany and George: Yours, Mine, Ours?
The Second Conflict: Illness, Death and Loss
- Barbara and Steve: Silence and Strength Carry Them Through
- Linda and Matt: Our Boy Has Cancer
- Sarah and Michael: She’s Crazy. I Love Her.
- Jeff and Dana: It’s Not Jeff. It’s Someone Else. Someone I Don’t Know.
- Brandon and Lauren: Why Can’t He Be Normal?
- Tony and Nicole: He Used to Run. Now He Sleeps.
- Becca and Ron: She Won’t Get Better. And Then She’ll Die.
The Third Conflict: Jobs, Careers, and Money
- Ty and Candice: It’s a Man’s Job. I Failed.
- Randi and Jake: He Needs to Get Back to the Office
- Kyle and Morgan: I Thought It Was a Good Idea. Then the Credit Cards Got Maxed.
- Juan and Vanessa: Kids Are in School. I’m Back to Work.
- Noah and Lindsey: We’re Broke. Are We Broken?
- Troy and Angel: Up in Smoke
The Fourth Conflict: Frequent Fractures
- Kimberly and Ben: Only a One Nighter. Or Was It Two?
- Pam and Ryan: His Mom Makes Our Bed
- Gina and Todd: It Used to Just Take a Stiff Wind
- Christie and Jim: Another Dead Soldier
- Tristan and Carly: He Gambled. We Lost.
- Keith and Anna: I Have Three children. Didn’t Ask for a Fourth.
The Fifth Conflict: Living Your Life
- Aimee and Claudia: Yes, We’re Gay. Yes, That’s Our Son.
- Max and Inez: We’re Jewish. He’s Black.
- Maya and Howard: It’s Not as Sweet as a Cookie
- Jamar and Nichelle: He Should Be Hammering Nails, Not Painting Them
- Cam and Erin: Black Plus White Equals What Exactly?
- Corey and Scott: It’s Not the 1950s. Or Is It?
The Takeaway
About the Authors