Description:
What do partners do after a fight? If they're like most people, they apologize: "I'm sorry. I had a bad day and I took it out on you." Or, they wake up the next morning and pretend that nothing happened, hoping their partner will do the same. In neither case do they talk about the fight. They're too afraid that doing so will simply rekindle it--and they're right; it probably would. But since they don't talk about the fight, nothing ever really gets resolved.
Daniel B. Wile, author of Couples Therapy and After the Honeymoon, devotes this entire book to an analysis of a single night in the life of a couple, Marie and Paul. By tapping into their self-talk (their ongoing conversations with themselves), he discovers what starts, escalates, and rekindles fights--and also, what potentially allows for a useful conversation about a fight. Wile reveals the half-thoughts and half-feelings that generally go unnoticed: the anxious flashes; depressive waves; two-second, self-directed diatribes; and two-second mental divorces.
Review Quotes: "An inspirational book. It is one of the most unique and creative books about couples I have ever read. It captures not only the subtleties of couple interactions, but also the nuances of couples therapy. I plan to assign this book to all of my graduate students, and will open it myself whenever I need to be reminded of how exciting it is to study and treat couples." --Neil S. Jacobson, Ph.D., University of Washington
"Reading After the Fight is the next best thing to being in the room with Daniel Wile, widely renowned as a creative and masterful couples' therapist....Wile shows a remarkable capacity to put words to the vague and amorphous thoughts of the partners as well as the therapist.... He lets us in on his innermost thoughts and quandaries as a therapist and offers a multitude of examples and direct dialogue to make his approach come alive." --Gayla Margolin, Ph.D., Professor of Psychology, University of Southern California