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Fire 353-1400 25160 Lahser Rd. • Suite 130 • Southfield, MI Henry Moore Max Ernst Works on paper Special showing from the Henry Moore Foundation Thursday, July 9 4:30 p.m.-10:00 p.m. One day only Danielle Peleg Art Gallery, Inc 5755 W. Maple Rd., W. Bloomfield, MI 48033 (1 blk. W. of Orchard Lk, Rd.) *Refreshments will be served 626-5810 44 FRIDAY, JULY 3, 1987 THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS Marital Gridlock Continued from preceding page make connections between these examples and their own experiences. "Is you hus- band like Marc?" they ask. "Are you like Linda? Is this your husband's past? Is this your past?" Always, they are poking and prodding, drawing out the reader in the same way that the psychiatrist draws out the client in one-on-one therapy. "This insight doesn't mean that things will automatically change," Maslin says. "But once you have it, you have a chance to see things differently, to talk about things a little differently. You can reflect instead of accuse. And these are important parts of the process." Once these destructive patterns of behavior are understood, the next step is to-change them. Maslin and Nir begin with another short quiz designed to cut through to the most basic issue of all — can the marriage be saved? Is there enough feel- ing left to work with? Enough trust? Self esteem? Finally, they lead readers into the realm of "negotiating a loving relationship." Love may be the heart and soul of marriage, but the day-to-day things couples need to do to maintain that love sound more like what you'd hear in a lawyer's office than in a bedroom. Maslin and Nir suggest setting aside special times to meet and negotiate the critical areas of a marriage, away from the demands of everyday life. They list some basic rules for these bargaining sessions: no third parties, no emotional blackmal, no talk just after arguments. "No suc- cessful negotiation can begin in the heat of battle," they write. They also suggest a moratorium on negotiations during major life crises. Thrashing out the issue of better com- munications isn't going to work if you were just fired that morning, or the dog died. Another useful step, they say, is to re- mind each other of the strengths of the marriage — an important bit of reinforce- ment often forgotten in the wake of discord. Couples also need to help each other clarify their expectations — the hopes and dreams that tend to go unsaid, especially when the channels of com- munication have been clogged for some time. Finally, they urge readers to develop a "new language of love." They offer a number of specific suggestions that boil down to one bigc principle: marriage part- ners need to express their own feelings, but in a sensitive, empathetic way that short- circuits the destructive cycle of accusation and defensiveness. This is not something that comes naturally to most people; it must be learned and practiced. "None of these ideas is particularly earthshaking," Maslin says. "But they're essential. Just a simple thing like using 'I feel' instead of 'you are' when you're discussing problems can make a real im- provement in the quality of communica- tion within a marriage." Inevitably, the question comes up about how Maslin and Nir's own marriage in- fluenced the strategies they write about in Not Quite Paradise. "lb a degree, the book represented a setting down of some of the things that we have done in our own mar- riage but hadn't really articulated," Maslin says. "At the same time, some of it filtered back into our marriage. When we would sit down and talk about the ways people can communicate with insight, there's no ques- tion that some of this seeped back into the way I communicate with Yehuda. It helped me become more articulate in expressing my feelings, and I think it did the same for Yehuda. Bonnie Maslin is one of a new breed of public figure: the therapist-as-celebrity. In one respect, it is clear that their mar- riage is a liberated one: Maslin is the one doing the book tour, while Nir — a Holocaust survivor — remains at home with the children. "And quite frankly," she says, "I'm better at it." Maslin declines to speculate about the special problems faced by Jewish couples, except to suggest that the most obvious problems are those posed by intermarriage. "I do find it interesting that we're seeing a lot of anxiety associated with the mikva, in the sense that going to the mikva is a very clear signal in marriage that the woman is ready for intercourse. And my husband sees quite a few Hasidic Jews in his practice. One of the big issues for them