Take Back Your Marriage: Sticking Together in a World That Pulls Us Apart

193 Pages·2001·0.49 MB·English

by  William J. Doherty

Take Back Your Marriage
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Take Back
Your Marriage
Sticking Together in a
World That Pulls Us Apart
William J. Doherty, PhD
The Guilford Press
New York / London
© 2001 William J. Doherty
Published by The Guilford Press
A Division of Guilford Publications, Inc.
72 Spring Street, New York, NY 10012
www.guilford.com
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or
transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
microfilming, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the
Publisher.
Printed in the United States of America
This book is printed on acid-free paper.
Last digit is print number: 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Doherty, William J. (William Joseph), 1945–
Take back your marriage : sticking together in a world that pulls us apart /
William J. Doherty.
p. cm.
Includes index.
ISBN 1-57230-459-6 (cloth)
1. Marriage. 2. Commitment (Psychology) I. Title.
HQ734 .D66 2001
306.81—dc21 00-065407
Who else? For Leah
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Contents
cst
Introduction 1
chapter one Take Back Your Marriage 11
chapter two Resisting Consumer Marriage 26
chapter three Don’t Lose Your Marriage 48
to Your Kids
chapter four Take Back Time for Your Marriage 61
chapter five Resist Family and Friends Who 73
Would Undermine Your Marriage
chapter six Resist Therapists Who Threaten 90
Your Marriage
chapter seven Preventing Unnecessary Divorce 106
chapter eight Intentional Marriage 125
Connection Rituals in Everyday Life
chapter nine Intentional Marriage 137
Love Rituals
vii
viii Contents
chapter ten Intentional Marriage 149
Anniversaries and Other Special Occasions
chapter eleven Every Marriage Supported 159
by a Community
chapter twelve Taking Action for Your Marriage 172
Index 181
About the Author 184
Introduction
cst
On the way back from a coffee shop in Santa Fe
where I had been thinking about this book, I
stopped on the Plaza to watch an outdoor wedding ceremony. It was
a twenty-first-century wedding for sure. On the stage officiating
were a judge and a rabbi. The judge was formal and serious; the
rabbi was informal and funny. The prayers and readings were in Eng-
lish, Spanish, Hebrew, and a translation from Apache. The bride’s
and groom’s children from previous marriages gathered around on
a dais that was almost too crowded. The invited guests, in suits and
dresses, sat on chairs in the front, and the uninvited guests like me
stood behind them in our shorts and tee shirts. A portable organ
played traditional wedding music, while a traditional Mexican band
hovered in the background ready to perform when the ceremony
was over.
In some ways, this wedding could not have been more differ-
ent from my own wedding nearly 30 years ago. But in other ways it
was unmistakably the same. Beneath the trappings, and despite the
different histories of the couples, the vows were still about forever,
about forsaking all others, about being most important to each
other, until death. Marriage is a battered institution these days, and
yet most of us yearn for the kind of permanent bond publicly
launched on that warm Santa Fe afternoon. The couple was intro-
duced at the end as Mr. and Mrs. Trujillo. I wish them happiness to-
gether, along with their children, and I beg their indulgence for be-
ginning this book with their wedding story.
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