Angry Marriage: Overcoming The Rage, Reclaiming the Love

by Bonnie Maslin

Overview

Turn the anger in your marriage into a positive force. Anger is a gift, according to the author, and can be one of the most effective and constructive forms of communication. Since anger is inevitable in a marriage, how a couple uses that anger can mean the difference between an exciting, fulfilling relationship, and a destructive, painful one. In this book you will learn how to reclaim the love in your relationship by discovering how to identify the six angry "lovestyles", to decode complaints, to confront and conquer the invisible, angry marriage and to replace anger with compassion and goodwill.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780786880690
Publisher:	Hachette Books
Publication date:	03/01/1995
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.25(h) x (d)
Age Range:	13 - 18 Years

About the Author

Bonnie Maslin holds a Ph.D. in educational psychology from NYU and practices as a psychotherapist in Manhattan. She is the co-author, with her husband, Dr. Yehuda Nir, of Loving Men for All the Right Reasons and Not Quite Paradise: Making Marriage Work, and is a frequent guest on Donahue, Oprah, Joan Rivers, Geraldo, and Today.

Editorial Reviews

Couples trapped in ``angry'' marriages express their discord in a variety of ways, shows Maslin ( Loving Men for All the Right Reasons ). The author, a psychologist, here groups angry couples into six types: expressors, who are given to perpetual quarreling; provokers, pairs in which one spouse causes fights and the other plays ``the innocent''; suppressors, who bury upset beneath a facade of calm; enactors, who displace anger into such pursuits as overeating, workaholism or adultery; symbolizers, whose anger manifests symbolically as illness; and displacers, who direct their wrath at an outside target (a horrible boss, for example). For each category, Maslin includes a case history and psychological analysis of how the representative couple's marriage became ``toxic.'' She contends that not all angry marriages are hopeless. By identifying the suppressed needs underpinning their behavior, couples can use their insights to create an ``atmosphere for change'' and free themselves from unhealthy anger. This simple and practical guide should prove useful to troubled couples and marriage counselors alike. Author tour. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

Maslin ( Not Quite Paradise: Making Marriage Work, LJ 12/86; Loving Men for All the Right Reasons , LJ 2/1/82) aims to help one assess one's marriage and find out how to ``fix'' it. To that end, she identifies six ``angry lovestyles,'' which characterize the behavior of venters, provokers, suppressors, enacters, symbolizers, and displacers. The key to breaking the deadlock of an angry union, she claims, lies in uncovering the unrequited unconscious needs of both partners. Maslin's proves a bit repetitious in the early chapters, and much of it is either self-evident or has been said before. Public libraries serving self-helpers may want to consider buying a copy, but ultimately this is not an essential purchase. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 11/1/93.-- Scott Johnson, Meridian Community Coll. Lib., Miss.

Library Journal