ExcerptWorking on Your Relationship—AloneFirst, it’s important to make sure your mate really doesn’t want to go. Lorna Hecker, Clinic Director of the Marriage and Family Therapy Center of Purdue University, lists these tips for asking your partner to join you in marital/relationship therapy: • Ask your partner to join you in therapy. Most people are just afraid to ask. Express your concern about your relationship in a non-blaming way. Don’t let the myth that “he/she will never go to counseling” dissuade you. As a therapist, I hear this all the time, and 90 percent of the time, it just isn’t true that someone will never go to therapy. • Don’t let your partner pull you into an argument. Try a broken record technique such as: “We disagree; and we disagree a lot. That’s why I would like for us to go to marital therapy.” Say it over and over (like a broken record), rather than get pulled into an argument. Also, ask for what you do want from your partner, rather than what you don’t want.
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