Relationship Rescue: A Seven-Step Strategy for Reconnecting with Your Partner (Paperback)

~ Ph.d., Phillip C. Mcgraw (Author) "It has been fifteen years since I sat with Carol and Larry in my psychology office..." (more)
Key Phrases: eye contact for two minutes, timer handy, partner profile, True False, Personal Relationship Values, Carol Ann (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

As a follow-up to his bestselling book Life Strategies, Oprah acolyte Phillip C. McGraw, Ph.D., moves from aiding the aimless individual to coaching the disconnected couple. McGraw has distilled his more than two decades of counseling experience into a seven-step strategy he calls "Relationship Rescue."

"I'm prepared to kick a hole in the wall of the pain-ridden, unhappy maze you've gotten yourself into, and provide you clear access to action-oriented answers and instructions on what you must do to have what you want," says Dr. Phil. His aim is to expose and eliminate the saboteurs that cause senseless damage to already-fragile marriages, and, like an emotional root canal, to replace them with values he says provide positive results. If you follow Dr. Phil's strategy, he will lead you on a precise journey to uncover your heart and then share it with your partner as part of taking the "risk of intimacy."

Dr. Phil leads you to "reconnect with your core" in the first five steps of his seven-step strategy. By no means a quick fix, there are in-depth and rigorous questionnaires, surveys, tests, and profiles that require a "brutally candid" mindset, with such fill-in-the-blanks as "List five things that today would make you fall out of love with your partner." With this internal work accomplished, you'll then move on to reconnecting with your partner during a two-week, half-hour-a-day short course. As a "dyad," you and your loved one take turns giving monologues on topics such as "The most positive thing I took away from my mother and father's relationship was..."

Once the "reconnection" has been established, Dr. Phil says the work shifts to a management role, as relationships are always a work in progress. Dr. Phil humorously refers to his own marriage throughout the book, sharing his mishaps and victories in learning to accept and enjoy what he sees as fundamental but complementary differences between men and women. --John Youngs --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Publishers Weekly

Oprah's relationship expert and the author of the hugely popular Life Strategies, McGraw offers a challenge to readers in troubled marriages. (Though he refers to "relationships," his comments about the roles of men and women make it obvious that McGraw has mostly traditional marriages in mind.) With typical frankness, the Dallas psychologist declares that the underlying reason that "your relationship is in trouble [is] because you set it up that way." Traditional relationship counseling doesn't work, McGraw says, so he dares readers to follow his multistep plan for "reconnecting," which demands honest exploration, through exhaustive self-tests and questionnaires designed to define each partner's needs and expectations. The last step of McGraw's program is probably the most difficult and rewarding: 14 days of structured reconnection exercises in which the partners share their deepest feelings. By participating with the required level of commitment, candor and seriousness, couples would seem to guarantee enhancing their relationships. Despite the strengths of his program, McGraw's compelling television presence doesn't translate well to the page. He reminds readers so often that the "reconnecting" process will not be easy or fun that at times he seems more hectoring than persuasive--not that this is likely to matter to his viewers and fans. One-day laydown on February 8; television and radio satellite tours. (Feb.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Hyperion (September 19, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0641692072
• ISBN-13: 978-0641692079
• ASIN: 078688598X
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (113 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #82,612 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

235 of 240 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Relationship Foundation, Improvement, and Rescue, June 21, 2000

By	Professor Donald Mitchell "Jesus Makes Me a P... (Boston) - See all my reviews (TOP 10 REVIEWER)

This review is from: Relationship Rescue: A Seven-Step Strategy for Reconnecting with Your Partner (Hardcover)

This book deserves many more than five stars. It is as close as you can get to having a hands-on guide to improving your relationships as you can get without having a trained counselor present.

It's too bad that most people will take on this book because they have a bad or failing relationship. It would be much better to start with this approach in the beginning. I hope marriage advisors, parents, living together couples, and engaged people will become familiar with this book and recommend it to others.

The book is extremely direct. The author makes it clear that you have to first change yourself before you can change you relationship.

The book is extremely well structured for easy use both as a book and as a workbook. It is divided into seven steps (define and diagnose where the relationship is now; get rid of your wrong thinking about relationships; find out what you are doing to hurt the relationships; internalize the values needed to build and maintain strong relationships; the necessary format for a strong relationship; and how to reconnect and manage the relationship).

Each section is filled with diagnostic questions for you and your partner to use, as well as directions for implementing what you learn.

The process involved is a good one. It begins with identifying stalled thinking, works on stallbusting that thinking, and then builds new habits that will work better.

The steps are extensive, but you can take them in bite-sized amounts. Before you are done, you will be sharing what you have done with your partner. I have to believe that anyone who was told that their partner had been working on these questions and exercises would be very impressed by the commitment to the relationship that this effort represented. It can help overcome a lot of thoughtlessness that may have preceded that sharing.

If your relationship is on the rocks, that idea of reconnecting can be scary. I was impressed to see that the book provides a 14 day program to help you with exercises that help reconnect you emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually. Most counselors would probably not give you this much guidance.

One of the finest things in life is to have a great relationship with other people. This book gives you the necessary background to move in that direction. The rest is up to you, as the author says. Give it a shot! You have a lot to gain!

115 of 115 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Gets Serious, May 27, 2000

By	Daniel Robuck "Culture Vulture" (Campbell, CA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Relationship Rescue: A Seven-Step Strategy for Reconnecting with Your Partner (Hardcover)

As a practicing psychologist, I have seen a number of self-help books that have "useless" written from the get-go. Phil MacGraw's "Relationship Rescue" is NOT one of those useless, quick fix manuals. People who are familiar with Neuro Linguistic Programming will see his models instantly. As other reviewers have mentioned, the emphasis here is that each partner sees how they individually are "at cause" for relationship problems through a series of short and direct questions (i.e. "What did you do today that contributed to or contaminated your relationship?"). This program is not a quick fix, though, and couples may even need to go through the questions more than once. Of most use are the dyads that MacGraw gives couples as "homework" to cover all aspects of what makes a relationship work. And, make no mistake, MacGraw is also quite blunt in his assessment of how men and women view relationships differently, and how often those views are just an excuse for not doing the work. Just as there are different people, there is probably no one book to help people recover from relationship shock, but this is an easy-to-use readable manual that will help the vast majority of people who are ready to end a relationship but do not want to do that until every stone has been turned. Guaranteed to help.

163 of 167 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Doctor Phil tells it like it is - and like it could be!, August 5, 2000

By	Quaker Annie "reader" - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)

This review is from: Relationship Rescue: A Seven-Step Strategy for Reconnecting with Your Partner (Hardcover)

As usual, Phil McGraw is steps ahead of the rest of us in sorting out what is *really* going on in relationships. Refreshingly, he begins the book by questioning the therapeutic standards too often given to the thousands of couples in trouble. "The divorce rate in America refuses to drop below fifty percent, and twenty percent of us will divorce not once but twice in our lifetime. Clearly, pleasant and generic instructions on how to communicate better or theoretical musings that give you great insights about relationships just weren't going to cut it fifteen years ago and won't cut it now. " Obviously (to paraphrase him), couples therapy as we have known it isn't working.

You can watch him often on Oprah, but this book is the next best thing to either watching him there, or having him as your personal therapist.

This book is primarily for relationships 'on the rocks' - the first steps are set up to evaluate and understand what your relationship is, how it got this way (no surprise, it didn't fall apart on its own, or because of your partner). The Seven Steps are not simple or simplistic, but provide structure for thought and more. This book is not about what's wrong with your partner and how to fix him or her. It is about the person reading the book -- you!

This would be a great book for new couples to read together (and for this price, why not order one for you and one for your loved one, and read them first in private, then together), not just before they are in crisis, but before they decide to marry. When the relationship is still strong, new, fresh, it is more likely that both people will be willing to talk openly about what they expect and want, and to be able to use the truly helpful instructions on how to stay together.

For those in a troubled relationship, you might want to read this yourself first, and work on your own issues. Dr. Phil has a directness that can be intimidating to some - but for some of us, we need that extra push. This book is on my must have list for newlyweds as well as those in trouble.

Highly recommended for those who truly want that special relationship to work!