The Marriage Checkup Practitioner's Guide

Book excerpt: Although relationship science has shown that relationship health is as real as mental and physical health, and that relationship health has powerful effects on mental health, physical health, and the health and welfare of children, relationship healthcare remains decades behind dental and physical healthcare. This is especially true when it comes to regular preventative care and early intervention. Like all the systems within our bodies, our relationships require attention in order to thrive. The Marriage Checkup (MC) is one way clinicians can create spaces where partners can, for a moment, leave the busywork of daily life behind and reenter the intimate space between them with loving attention. The MC is a short, two-session, assessment and feedback marital health check designed to help couples confront their problems on an annual basis. It provides partners with a regular forum in which to examine that for which they are most grateful and that about which they are genuinely concerned. Designed to foster and deepen intimacy, the MC provides couples with feedback from which they can discover new ideas about how to best serve the health of their marriage and the intimacy of their connection. In this book, James V. Cordova describes how clinicians can encourage partners to maintain their marital health by attending to their strengths, managing their areas of conflict gracefully, and regularly providing the relationship with loving attention. He also shows how to prevent marital health deterioration by attuning partners to corrosive patterns in their relationship. Useful early interventions are described and illustrated generously with case examples. Therapists working with partners who are already severely distressed when they present for their Marriage Checkup will learn how to motivate them to seek out more extensive tertiary care.