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By Dr. Diane Ernstoff Kramer, Psychologist and Marriage Counselor for fifty years
A dirty plate, still on the counter. A silence that fills the whole evening. An argument two people have had so often that each of them knows the next line.
Every couple has its own version. For some it is the dishes or the money. For others it is sex, the children, work, or how much time to spend together. Whatever yours is, the problem is real.
Here is the question I learned to ask:
Why doesn’t this problem ever get resolved? Why does it keep coming back?
Here is what I found, again and again.
The way each person reacts to the other becomes a second problem. Before long, the two of them are reacting to each other more than to the problem that started it. And their reactions often keep the same shape. One attacks and the other goes quiet. Or both attack. Or both go quiet. There are other shapes too, but these three are the ones I saw most often.
This book helps you see your part in that back-and-forth, understand and challenge the roots that drive it, and learn other ways to respond.
You can do that even if your partner never reads a page.
This book helps you see your part in that back-and-forth, understand and challenge what drives it, and learn other ways to respond.
You can do that even if your partner never reads a page.
And if you are on your own, whether after a relationship that ended or before one has begun, this book is for you too.
Already have Chapter 1? Information about my free Facebook reading group is further down this page.
The book itself is coming to Amazon on November 30. I will email you when it is there. The Kindle edition will be $0.99 for its first two months.
One week the argument is about Saturday plans. The next week it is money. Then a phone at the dinner table. A forgotten errand. A tone of voice.
Different subject. Same ending.
That repetition is the clue.
I call it the Couple’s Vicious Cycle. What one of you does sets off the other. What the other does sets you off again.
From Chapter 3. Laura and Ben, going around for the hundredth time.
Underneath the reaction there is often an old conclusion that feels completely true. In fifty years I have heard three of them more than any others:
I don’t matter.
I’m not good enough.
I can’t depend on anyone.
Many relationship books are written for two people to work through together. This one does not require that.
You can read the book, work through the journal questions, and change your part of the pattern without your partner taking part.
Sometimes, when one person stops making the familiar move, the other person responds differently. Sometimes they do not. Either response gives you information.
The goal is not to make your partner change. It is to become clearer about what belongs to you, change what you can change, and then see more accurately what your partner and the relationship are able to give back.
The book is for people who are married, living together, or dating. It is also for people whose last relationship has ended, however it ended, and who do not want to carry the same reactions into the next one. And it is for people who have not yet had a relationship and want to begin well.
If your partner is violent, forces you, or frightens you, or uses force, threats, or control to make you follow their choices, this book is not enough on its own. Your safety comes first. Please get help from someone trained in helping people in abusive relationships. In the United States, the National Domestic Violence Hotline is 1-800-799-7233, any hour. If you are in danger right now, call 911.
If you are a therapist, counselor, or coach, you can also use the book alongside your work with clients. A section for professionals appears at the back.
You can read this book in a few evenings. But it is meant to be used, not simply read.
Near the beginning, you choose one real moment from your relationship: an argument, a silence, or a distance that keeps returning. Then you carry that same moment through the journal questions at the end of every chapter. A few questions at a time, you begin to see more.
Chapter 1 — When Old Patterns Shape Love. Why can a small moment have so much power?
Chapter 2 — Picturing Your Extraordinary Relationship: Your North Star. Describe the relationship you want to grow toward, and what it would feel like to live inside it.
Chapter 3 — The Couple’s Vicious Cycle: When the Dance Becomes the Problem. See the repeating exchange that keeps pulling you back to the same painful place.
Chapter 4 — Self-Protecting Patterns. Discover what you automatically do when something important feels threatened, and what that reaction has been trying to do for you.
Chapter 5 — From Limiting Beliefs to Liberating Beliefs. Find the old conclusion underneath your reaction, question it, and begin building a new belief and new reactions.
Chapter 6 — Your Blueprint for Change. Learn EASE, a four-step practice for catching the old response early enough to choose another one.
Chapter 7 — From Vicious Cycle to Circle of Mutuality. Bring your new response back into the relationship, and see whether both of you, and both of your needs, can be valued.
Chapter 8 — Building an Extraordinary Relationship with Yourself. Meet the Inner Judge that criticizes you, begin turning that voice into an Inner Coach, and notice what changes between you.
Chapter 9 — Hold or Fold? When Growth Leads to Difficult Choices. You have changed. Now look clearly at what the relationship is showing you.
Chapter 10 — Living From Your Extraordinary Self. Carry what you have learned into ordinary life, one choice at a time.
Five short appendices give you more Self-Protecting Patterns and Limiting Beliefs to explore, more guidance, and a note for professionals.
Year after year, I sat with couples who were having the same argument for what felt like the hundredth time.
Again and again, I saw that the subject mattered. But I also saw something else. Old fears were being touched. Old beliefs were coming alive. Familiar ways of protecting ourselves were taking over.
I learned this as a psychologist. And during thirty-three years with my late husband, Fred, I learned it at home.
Knowing what helps and being able to do it in the middle of a difficult moment are two different things. That is why I wanted this book to be practical enough to use when it matters.
Catching yourself in the moment will not happen perfectly, or every time. But it will happen sooner, and more often.
The couples you meet in the book come from fifty years of clinical practice and from the people who took part in the Extraordinary Self Programs. Names, details and circumstances have been changed to protect confidentiality.
“It gave me a better sense of having a relationship with myself, and also to take a step back and breathe when I am feeling uncomfortable in a communication situation. There is no shaming in your words or way of being.”
Lorraine M., who has read “fifty or so” self-help books
“I realized that patterns develop early, and the longer you allow them to continue, the more difficult it is to break them. The information in this book should be required reading for anyone in a committed relationship.”
Tracy H.
You can do this work on your own. And you do not have to do it alone.
You can join our private Facebook group called Toward an Extraordinary Relationship. Only members can see what is posted, and you are welcome to read without posting a word.
A new chapter opens for discussion each week, and every chapter stays open after that. So you can join the conversation on whatever chapter you are reading, whenever you get to it. I read everything, and I answer in every chapter.
The group is free. You can join whether you have the book already or have not started it.
Toward an Extraordinary Relationship will be available in Kindle and paperback editions. For its first two months, the Kindle edition will be $0.99.