This book is designed to help couples with communication and that in turn will help their relationship both socially and sexually.

Filled with commonsense ideas that can apply to any relationship, this guide will help anyone interested in improving communication with their partner. It emphasizes that communication is the key to a good relationship, and that an inability to understand one another is the main reason most couples enter into therapy with a professional counselor. It offers twenty tips that are likely to improve the way couples talk and listen to each other.

This third edition of Couples in Treatment helps readers conceptualize and treat couples from multiple perspectives and with a multitude of techniques. The authors do not advocate any single approach to couple therapy and instead present basic principles and techniques with wide-ranging applicability and the power to invite change, making this the most useful text on integrative, systemic couple therapy. Throughout the book the authors consider the individual, interactional, and intergenerational systems of any case. Gerald Weeks’ Intersystems Model, a comprehensive, integrative, and contextual meta framework, can be superimposed over existing therapy approaches. It emphasizes principles of therapy and can facilitate assessing, conceptualizing couples’ problems, and providing helpful interventions. Couple therapists are encouraged to utilize the principles in this book to enhance their therapeutic process and fit their approach to the client, rather than forcing the client to fit their theory.

The process of finding and making the best possible match is not an easy one. On the contrary, from an emotional perspective finding, making, maintaining, and enriching an intimate partnership is one of the most challenging tasks an adult faces. There must be an attraction or a spark for a true match to be made. When a couple comes for counseling, they come with the hope that their relationship can be renewedthat they can capture the heat and the emotion that they once had together. The Couples Match Book: Lighting, Rekindling, or Extinguishing the Flame explores relationship theory and research. Including self-assessment activities to help determine what actions to take to improve relationships, this guild offers information that focuses on understanding and respecting personality differences, role perceptions, communication, and problem-solving. The balance of the book shares personal stories written by couples detailing their own experiences in an effort to help others in improving their intimate relationships. The Couples Match Book: Lighting, Rekindling, or Extinguishing the Flame can be used as a supplemental text in marriage and family courses, as well as a primary resource in couples counseling and marriage and family therapy.

The SAGE Encyclopedia of Marriage, Family and Couples Counseling is a new, all-encompassing, landmark work for researchers seeking to broaden their knowledge of this vast and diffuse field. Marriage and family counseling programs are established at institutions worldwide, yet there is no current work focused specifically on family therapy. While other works have discussed various methodologies, cases, niche aspects of the field and some broader views of counseling in general, this authoritative Encyclopedia provides readers with a fully comprehensive and accessible reference to aid in understanding the full scope and diversity of theories, approaches, and techniques and how they address various life events within the unique dynamics of families, couples, and related interpersonal relationships. Key topics include: Assessment Communication Coping Diversity Interventions and Techniques Life Events/Transitions Sexuality Work/Life Issues, and more Key features include: More than 500 signed articles written by key figures in the field span four comprehensive volumes Front matter includes a Reader’s Guide that groups related entries thematically Back matter includes a history of the development of the field, a Resource Guide to key associations, websites, and journals, a selected Bibliography of classic publications, and a detailed Index All entries conclude with Further Readings and Cross References to related entries to aid the reader in their research journey

Since the first edition of this practical book was published in 1990, a number of important developments have taken place and have been incorporated into the new edition. There are now many kinds of "non-traditional" relationships that accompany an increasing divorce rate and the shrinking number of marriages. Co-habitation, remarriage, step-parent/step-child relationships and their implications for the extended family, their strengths and areas of tension are examined. Accompanying these changes has been a development in therapeutic approaches and additional outcome data is now available. Rapid progress has been made in treatments, and their implications are described. In addition the therapeutic managing of separating and divorcing couples, domestic violence, and the aftermath of sexual and physical abuse are discussed.

First Published in 2001. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.