A Marriage of Equals: How to Achieve Balance in a Committed Relationship

by Catherine E. Aponte PsyD

Overview

Negotiating collaboratively in your committed relationship is a new way to achieve individual and marital goals, to resolve differences equitably, to manage conflicts, to create and sustain a satisfying sex life, to figure out where you stand on fidelity, to think about having and caring for kids, and to have committed careers and a satisfying family life. Negotiating collaboratively supports you and your partner seeing yourselves simultaneously as individuals and as a couple—enhances the sense of “being in this together” while also having individual life plans. Negotiating collaboratively supports valuing each other as individuals before seeing each other as husband and wife, and allows modern couples to challenge old gender trappings that can undermine the achievement of balance in a committed relationship. Straightforward and accessible, A Marriage of Equals offers couples a road map for how to negotiate collaboratively around the most essential aspects of a committed relationship—and, in doing so, create the equitable marriage they long for.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781631524974
Publisher:	She Writes Press
Publication date:	05/28/2019
Pages:	248
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x (d)

About the Author

Catherine Aponte is a clinical psychologist who is married to a clinical psychologist, Joseph F. Aponte. They married in 1960, a time of significant social change. She and her husband embarked upon a marital journey guided by the basic principle that neither one of their careers was more important than the other’s. She trained as a psychologist at the University of Florida, Duke University, and Spalding University, and worked with couples for more than thirty years in Louisville, KY as a practicing psychologist. During her professional career both as a clinician in private practice and an adjunct professor of clinical psychology at Spalding University, she made numerous presentations about her work with couples. Both her master’s thesis at Duke Universityand her doctoral thesis at Spalding Universityfocused on gender and marriage. Aponte was awarded a USPHS Traineeship covering the four years she was a graduate student at Duke University, and had the privilege of chairing eight doctoral dissertations at Spalding Universitytesting various aspects of her theoretical model of relationships.

Table of Contents

Foreword 1

Preface 1

Introduction 5

Part I The Revolution At Home

Chapter 1 A New Perspective 13

Chapter 2 The Negotiation Process 25

Part II The Personal Revolution

Chapter 3 Taking Care of Your Personal Issues 45

Chapter 4 Where Do Insecurities Come From? 59

Part III The Revolution In The Bedroom

Chapter 5 Enjoying Sex 69

Chapter 6 The Unexamined Male Libido 95

Chapter 7 Choosing Fidelity 105

Part IV The Revolution At Work

Chapter 8 Balancing Family and Work 117

Chapter 9 Sharing Parenting 137

Part V How The Revolution Can Stall

Chapter 10 Gender Traps 159

Chapter 11 When Your Spouse Is Mentally Ill 183

Conclusion 193

Appendix A The Unfinished Revolution 197

Appendix B Important Marital Issues to Negotiate 201

Appendix C "Taking Things Personally Worksheet" 209

Appendix D Articles on Living with a Mentally Ill Spouse 213

Endnotes 215

Bibliography 227

Acknowledgments

Editorial Reviews

Included in BookBub's "10 Books That Could Actually Improve Your Life" and Parade's "10 Books That Will Help Declutter Your Entire Life, Marie Kondo-Style "ThirdPath Institute works with couples who aspire to create A Marriage of Equal. This book will now become the resource I strongly recommend to help them achieve their goals. In a world with very little guidance, and lots of obstacles, Catherine Aponte provides straight-forward advice to help couples stay on track to creating healthy and happy relationships. First describing the beauty and strength of collaborative negotiation, then explaining how conflict often escalates to self-protective strategies that derail creative problem solving, A Marriage of Equals then outlines a number of antidotes to avoid this problem. Thank you, Dr. Aponte for creating such an important resource for couples who are looking for a new and better way to live happily every after." —Jessica DeGroot, Founder and President, The Third Path Institute (www.thirdpath.org) “What a pleasure to find such an insightful, helpful, and realistic discussion of what it means to have an equal marriage and what it takes to create one. If you are seeking an egalitarian partnership and a set of concrete strategies to achieve it, this is the book to read.” —Kathleen Gerson, Ph.D., Professor of Sociology and Collegiate Professor of Arts and Science at New York University, and author of An Unfinished Revolution: How a New Generation is Reshaping Family, Work, and Gender in America “A Marriage of Equals does what no other book available does—speak to today’s heterosexual couples who want to have an egalitarian marriage. In clear and respectful language, Catherine Aponte walks men and women through having thoughtful conversations that address gendered expectations and stereotypes that still plague couples no matter how much they want to live differently, and gives them the tools to make that happen.” —Vicki Larson, award-winning journalist and co-author of The New I Do: Reshaping Marriage for Skeptics, Realists and Rebels “Based on decades of clinical practice and supervision, [Aponte] has written a wise book that is theoretically sound (neo-cognitive and interpersonal), with fresh insights on sex and monogamy. As a practicing psychologist who specializes in couples, I will enthusiastically recommend this accessible, compelling and relevant book to any couple—especially young couples!” —Scott Salathe, Psy.D., Salathe Behavior Health, Individual and Couples Therapy, Clinical Faculty School of Professional Psychology, Spalding University, Louisville, Ky. “I loved the Takeaways at the end of each chapter and wish every self-help style book did this. You discuss many different points that can strengthen a marriage. I liked the idea of collaborative negotiation and how positively it can impact all marriages. Couples do need to recognize that to flourish as a couple, they need to flourish as individuals. This book made me realize how critical self-reflection is, the importance of identifying insecurities and working through them, and how we need understand each other’s concerns.” —Greg W., Construction Company Project Manager, lives in Louisville, Kentucky. “Dr. Aponte’s ‘collaborative negotiation’ approach has the potential to really shift dialogues and dynamics in couples just beginning their partnerships, as well as help ‘seasoned’ couples who are stuck in conflict. The book is a challenge to all of us to not let societally proscribed gender roles dictate our expectations of ourselves and our partners in marriage. In short, this book answers the question about how to create a more equitable, just society related to gender. Her work gives me hope that such societal change is possible. She has certainly impacted how I think about and engage in marriage, and I trust everyone who reads her book will be impacted as well. I would recommend the book to couples considering marriage, those wishing to enhance their marriage, as well as to therapists who work with couples in distress and academicians who are teaching the next generation of therapists how to do couples work.” —Brenda Futrell Nash, Ph.D. Director of Clinical Training, School of Professional Psychology, Spalding University, Louisville, KY.

From the Publisher