Treating Couples Well
A Practical Guide to Collaborative Couple Therapy

Treating Couples Well shows clinicians how to create a collaborative approach to couple therapy, which will empower couples to take charge of their own treatment.

Written in an engaging and conversational style, the book carefully explains how to help couples choose between a variety of clinical approaches and offers effective treatment strategies for a wide range of issues, including infidelity, intimacy and sexuality, communication, mental illness, and addiction. Chapters also explore the importance of considering the therapist?s own life experience and its impact on working with couples. Practical interventions, clinical vignettes, and homework exercises are included throughout to help therapists to successfully support the needs of each couple and to encourage meaningful work between sessions.

Drawing on a plethora of case examples from the career of a leading couple therapist, Treating Couples Well will be a valuable resource to couple and marriage and family therapists at all levels.

Acknowledgements

Introduction

1. The Normal Challenges of Long-Term Relationships

2. Creating Collaborative Couple Therapy: First Interview

3. Effortful Love: Behavioral Change in the Here and Now

4. The Homework That Works Well for My Clients

5. Behind Closed Doors: The Intimacy/Sexuality Conundrum

6. Camp Treadway

7. The Amends and Forgiveness Protocol

8. The Challenges of Infidelity

9. Working with Couples' Family of Origin Issues

10. Divorce: The Sword of Damocles 11. When One Spouse Is the "Problem"

12. Mayhem, Moves, Mistakes, Mismatches

13. The Elephant in the Therapist’s Chair

14. The Therapeutic Use of Self-Disclosure

15. Our Calling

Epilogue

Appendix: Homework Handouts

Bibliography

Index

David C. Treadway, PhD, is a nationally known couple therapist and author who has been teaching workshops and conducting training around the USA for the past forty years. He has written four other books and is the award-winning author of over thirty articles. Dr. Treadway has appeared on Good Morning America, 20/20 and other television and radio shows, and formerly hosted his own radio program on family communications.