Authored by Bryce Kaye in association with Allied Psychological Services and The Marriage First Aid Kit

Some time ago you requested to be placed on our newsletter list. Apparently, you liked our website "The Marriage First Aid Kit". We are therefore sending you these newsletters which will actually contain preliminary chapters from our evolving book "The Marriage First Aid Kit". We invite you to give us feedback and recommendations on each chapter so we can evolve the book to suite the majority of our readers. If you choose to give us feedback, you will be participating in a kind of e-focus group. Even if you don't give us any feedback, we hope you find the chapters even more helpful than the original web site. We'll be going into much more depth about what makes relationships work and how to improve them.

The initial chapters are the most theoretical. We hope that you find them "eye-opening" in terms of what's really going on in your relationship. As we evolve the book, there will be more specific strategies and exercises. However, we want to do a thorough job so understanding should come first. So, here goes if you're still interested:

If you picked up this book because of your own relationship, then your simple act has already indicated two important things about you. First, it indicates that you’re in pain. I’m not talking about the obviously physical just-cut-your-finger kind of pain. I’m talking about the kind of emotional pain that hurts somewhere in your spirit and soul. Even though your pain is emotional, if you carefully examine it you will find that it can be described in physical terms. For example, if your relationship is in acute crisis then the pain may feel sharp and piercing or perhaps “gut-wrenching”. If your frustration is chronic then the pain may feel like a dull ache or maybe like a more subtle empty, hungry kind of sensation. Another possibility is that it may be a heavy, stifling, suffocating kind of feeling. You may associate it with your chest, your heart, the pit of your stomach, the back of your neck or even your head. But whatever it feels like, wherever you feel it, you’re in pain. You may have a sense that your life wasn’t supposed to turn out this way. You started this marriage with dreams that you hoped your relationship would fulfill. You wanted love, respect, and a soul-mate with whom to share your life experiences. You not only wanted to be loved but you wanted to be appreciated for being the loving person who you knew you could be if you were just given the right opportunity. And you now fear that that opportunity is passing you by.

The second thing indicated by picking up this book is that you still harbor hope. Maybe it’s not a lot of hope. Perhaps it’s just the tiniest fraction of hope but it’s hope nonetheless. After all, this isn’t a book about divorce, suicide or homicide. You’re probably also hoping that this book will give you help that is efficient and effective. You didn’t pick up a book with this title because you thought it would be a tome of esoteric trivia. You want this help to be practical because you’re concerned about results. You don’t want mild or vague practicality. You want nuts and bolts practicality. You’re probably tired of skimming the plethora of self-help books that speak of the 8 principles of this and the 6 rules of that but that still leave you with unsettling questions of how to get from here to there. Questions like: “HOW can we work on emotional intimacy when all we do is fight?” or “HOW can we stop fighting after it starts?” or “HOW can we rebuild this relationship when all I ever get from my partner is the feeling that I’m never enough?!!”

I promise you, this book will get practical. You can expect to learn the following:

You will learn about the five most common forms of conflict and best strategy for handling each one:

You will also learn the best way to approach conflict in order to improve your chances for positive results.

In this book you can learn all of these things. You may even learn them thoroughly. Your perspective and understanding may become crystal clear. And even if your vision becomes clear, even if you clearly see your past mistakes and now see the better path, even if all this happens and you rely on this knowledge but only on this knowledge to help you, then you will probably fail. That’s right, fail. Not that I want you to fail. In fact I’m going to do my very best to help you successfully improve your relationship. But if you rely only on your insight and knowledge to help you then you will probably fail because the biggest obstacle we all face in emotional intimacy is not our ignorance. It’s our fear. And we usually fear ourselves most of all. If you’re going to successfully improve your marriage, then you will need more than knowledge. You will additionally need courage and faith to help you face what you fear most about yourself.

In addition to teaching you new behavioral strategies, this book will also help you to prepare for the emotional challenge ahead. Most self-help relationship books shy away from this topic. A few exhort you to get your external life in order and focus on your interests or behavior. That’s OK advice but I’m more concerned that you get your internal life in order. Relationship change strategies usually fail a person who is emotionally unprepared. In fact, most surveys of couples in marriage counseling indicate only a third of them report significant improvement. My own interpretation of this disappointing percentage is that most people unknowingly sabotage their attempts at marital improvement. And they do so because of emotions they don’t understand or even recognize. The reason why these emotions are so enigmatic is because we don’t want to talk about them. We're afraid of them. We collectively keep each other in the dark because we all act as if these emotions hardly exist. The emotions I’m talking about are both shame and the fear of shame. And an interesting thing about shame is that, like mold, it grows in the dark.

If there were ever such a thing as a worldwide conspiracy it would be this: That no one wants to admit that we are all influenced by fear throughout our everyday existence….that along with the more positive emotions such as love, curiosity, sensuality, and the desire for pride and self-actualization, we are similarly motivated by the fear of shame that both nips at our heels and narrows our vision of opportunity. But a conspiracy involves people getting together to covertly communicate. What do we call it when people are secretive about something and they covertly discourage communication? Perhaps an “Un-conspiracy” like the “Un-Cola?” Somehow, that doesn’t quite get it. For want of a better name, I’ve resigned myself to calling it "The Great No No.” If anyone has a better suggestion I’m open to it.

At this point, let me invite you to get a more personal feel for this subject. The following self-exam lists personal challenges that we all experience to some degree. The items are framed in the collective first person “We” instead of “You” because I didn’t want you to feel individually targeted as if the rest of the human race doesn’t struggle along with you.

For each item, write in a “0”, “1”, or “2” to indicate how frequently or how relevant each item pertains to you. Use the following key:

_____	_____	We don’t try something new because it might feel “silly”
_____	_____	We keep focusing on responsibilities because they seem all important
_____	_____	We don’t take time out to wonder and explore
_____	_____	We consider fun to be unimportant
_____	_____	We hesitate to pursue our heart’s desire because of other people’s opinions
_____	_____	We don’t request a “favor” from our partner because it might be turned down
_____	_____	We accuse our partner of being selfish or insensitive so that we don’t have to make a request
_____	_____	We only comply with our partner’s expectations and don’t initiate our own plans
_____	_____	We don’t take time in our day to daydream about possibilities
_____	_____	We raise our voice while arguing
_____	_____	We focus on how to change our partner instead of how we want to be
_____	_____	We try to show how independent and strong we can be
_____	_____	We focus on our partner’s forgiveness instead of devising a plan for correction
_____	_____	We refuse to acknowledge a mistake even though we’re aware of it
_____	_____	We wake up in the morning and initially feel uneasy and anxious for no reason
_____	_____	We make pride the most important thing in our lives
_____	_____	We insist that our partner must change before we do
_____	_____	We don’t tell our partner when we’re angry because it wouldn’t be nice
_____	_____	We try to make our partner love us by sacrificing what is important to us
_____	_____	We make approval more important than truth
_____	_____	We let obligations control our time and we don’t
_____	_____	We use sarcasm against our partner
_____	_____	We dredge up old resentments as weapons
_____	_____	We invade or refuse our partner’s privacy
_____	_____	We fail to establish our own privacy
_____	_____	We hold onto unrealistic hope in a truly abusive relationship
_____	_____	We hide lying or dishonest behavior

_____	_____	(Total: Sum up each column when finished)

The purpose for this exercise was to let you to confront some of your own defenses, not for you to obtain a score. However, I know that some of us (particularly among us men) have a proclivity towards measuring things. Therefore, let me interpret the following. If you score 10 or less then your defenses are so strong that you’re probably deceiving yourself. If your score is above 40 then you’re experiencing a lot of defensive inefficiency. Your life may be disrupted in a number of spheres. Most people score between 20 and 40.