New AARP Magazine Article By Dr. Pepper Schwartz! "Relationship Advice and Strategies for Couples"!

Dr. Pepper Schwartz, my friend and co-author to Snap Strategies for Couples: 40 Fast Fixes for Everyday Relationship Pitfalls, has just published a column for AARP Magazine!  She quickly goes over five of the Snaps from the book.  Check it out!

Here's a taste:  "One of the surest predictors of a breakup, says psychologist John Gottman, is when a couple comes to feel that certain problems have attached themselves to the relationship like crusty, stubborn barnacles.

After turning this truism over in my mind for some time, I decided to collaborate with psychologist Lana Staheli to see if we couldn't find some everyday solutions to relationship stalemates. The result, published this year, wasSnap Strategies for Couples, a book that aims to help you modify your individual reactions to "partner aggro" so that the two of you can avoid repeating the same-old-same-old arguments and actually untangle a deadlock.

Unless the communication tools we devised were easy, however, we both knew they were unlikely to be used. Snap Strategies therefore offers what Lana and I consider to be "fast fixes" for common but persistent relationship problems — you know, the kind that threaten to escalate into "coupled chaos." The book identifies ways to solve more than three dozen relationship issues pragmatically and respectfully, without the need for lengthy — and expensive! — therapy sessions or long hours of agonizing emotional discussions.

Though the book was written primarily with long-term couples in mind, we both feel it applies to daters — and even extended family members. And because many of the issues in the book are experienced almost universally in ongoing close relationships, I thought I'd share our five most widely applicable strategies."

(Full Article)