RELATIONSHIP RESCUE --- A SEVEN-STEP STRATEGY FOR RECONNECTING
WITH YOUR PARTNER by Phillip C. McGraw. Hyperion, 2000
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
PROLOGUE --- GET REAL! --- "reconnecting" with your core! (p1-4)
This book gives you straightforward, no-nonsense answers that work!
But there is a serious precondition that you have to meet --- if you expect to successfully rescue your relationship and reconnect with your partner!
You have to "GET REAL" about YOU! You have to get "no-kidding" real, with no defensiveness, no denial --- only total honesty!
Reconnecting with your partner CANNOT and will NOT happen --- if you do not "reconnect" with yourself first! You can change your partner from daylight to dark or dump your partner and trade up to a better one --- but it will NOT make a damn bit of difference unless and until YOU DECIDE TO CHANGE YOURSELF FIRST!
You have to take your power back and become the kind of person who commands quality, inspires respect, and settles for nothing less than an active and abiding love. The change begins from the "inside out" as you get back in touch with who you are and as you decide what to do with your love, your life, and your vision.
Your clarity and your purpose must become crystal clear. The "fix" or "rescue" depends on you! To proceed with any other mind-set is to guarantee failure, miserable failure.
If you were in a relationship that went awry, a relationship that was laced with pain, confusion, or emptiness, then by definition, you have lost touch with your own personal power, your own dignity, your own standards, and your own self esteem. In fact, you may have allowed yourself to accommodate pain and disappointment and some self-destructive attitudes. Most important, you may have mistreated yourself in the process. You may have blamed your partner or other circumstances for your place in life rather than making the effort to find the TRUE ANSWERS within yourself!
You may have lost touch with your CORE OF CONSCIOUSNESS, which is that place within you where you are absolutely defined --- which is the place where your greatest strengths, instincts, values, talents, and wisdom are centered. Successful people who overcome immense challenges are so aware of their self-worth and their sense of personal value that they now only treat themselves with enormous self-respect --- but they inspire others to treat them with equal respect! Successful people live with an empowering inner clarity that gives them an unshakable confidence that they alone can determine the quality of their life. They have tapped into their individual CORE OF CONSCIOUSNESS, thus claiming their right to a fulfilling life. They have refused to accept anything less for themselves or their families!
Sometimes the TRUTH is not easy to hear. But it always remains the TRUTH anyway. If you do not scrape away all of life's layers of distortion, negative input, and doubt-inducing messages, and get back in touch with your CORE OF CONSCIOUSNESS, then no matter what else you LEARN, you will have such low standards that you will continue sabotaging your relationships. You may remain mired in pain, guilt, anger, fears or confusion.
You can and must reclaim your power and strength so that you can build something extraordinary for yourself. This power will not give you more control over others in your life or to win more arguments, but it is the power to give and to lift up those around you!
This power comes from depth and conviction. It is the power to inspire and create and experience your life and relationships at a totally different level. It is the quiet, calm power of dignity and self-worth. The precondition for understanding the ideas in this book is that you must become aware of and tap into your CORE OF CONSCIOUSNESS as you start creating your future at a new higher level. Your whole world, including your friends, relatives and relationship partner will start to relate to you differently!
Tapping into your CORE OF CONSCIOUSNESS will make it possible for you to rediscover your inner strength and drive for greatness or success. This action can be the single most significant act of your life, and become your greatest gift to your relationship partner!
1) It's your time --- it's your turn! (p5-19)
[1] It's a wonder you've made it this far (p8-11)
[2] Rescuing your relationship means rescuing you (p11-14)
This "relationship rescue" approach is designed to meet you at whatever point you find yourself in your relationship and to give you the power to make changes! It is the kind of "power" that can come only if you learn the absolute naked, unvarnished truth about yourself. You are closer to success than you could ever imagine --- if you just have the courage to "get real" with yourself!
The RESCUE STRATEGY involves the following SEVEN STEPS:
(1) Focus on defining and diagnosing where your relationship with your partner is now, because you will never be able to change what you do not acknowledge. Only if you are able to define specifically, precisely what is wrong with you --- as well as what is wrong in your relationship --- will you be able to set reasonable goals for change. Only when you figure out what the problem is can you match a solution to it. You will be amazed at the power this NEW KNOWLEDGE gives you as you pursue the rescue of your primary relationship or relationships!
(2) You must rid yourself of wrong thinking. You have not simply suffered just an absence of information, but you have also suffered a poisoning of your thinking by an infusion of wrong information! The wrong information has sent you down the wrong road, pursuing the wrong alternatives to poorly defined problems. You have probably misdiagnosed your relationship problem and unknowingly embraced faulty thinking in popular relationship myths or explanations. You may be resorting to the wrong treatment for the wrong problems!
[3] It is essential for you to "blow the whistle" on your own negative attitudes and behaviors and the specific ways you do irreparable harm to your own adult relationships. You may be interacting in ways that are in direct opposition to the HEALTHY SELF that is defined in your CORE OF CONSCIOUSNESS. It is only when you start understanding how and why your relationships are not what you want that you will be able to start shaping new adult relationships that will fulfill you. The fact that YOU are the focus should be great news because you can control you!
(4) You must internalize a set of "Personal Relationship Values" that will become the new foundation for your adult relationships. These PERSONAL RELATIONSHIP VALUES will lead you back to your CORE OF CONSCIOUSNESS and emotionally tune you into the best parts of yourself! This process will make it possible for you to give your partner POSITIVE THINGS to respond to in your future relationships.
(5) This is the most basic and powerful formula which is active at the core of successful human functioning.
(6) Reconnection process --- whether preventative or remedial, this step will be the time to reopen negotiations with your partner or other adults in your life. You will need to work through a series of critical issues in order to learn how to deal with your own needs and your partner's needs in a way that sets you up for success. A useful mantra is "YOU HAVE TO NAME IT BEFORE YOU CAN CLAIM IT." To reconnect successfully, you will have to go through a highly structured and powerful 14-day program where you and your partner begin to enact your new life together!
(7) The last step in RELATIONSHIP RESCUE is to learn how to manage your relationship once you have reconnected with your partner or other adults in your life. You may consider typical issues that define day-to-day life in a committed relationship, including topics as intimate as sex and as volatile as fighting and abusive behavior.
[3] Bucking the trend --- you can make your relationship work! (p14-17)
[4] Relationship --- project status (p17-19)
2) Defining the problem (p20-38)
3) Blowing up the myths (p39-63)
4) Eliminating your bad spirit (p64-93)
5) Reclaiming your core --- the personal relationship values (p94-122)
6) The formula for success (p123-161)
7) Reconnecting with your partner (p162-179)
8) Fourteen days of loving with honesty (p180-209)
9) Red alert --- relationships are managed, not cured! (p210-224)
10) The "doctor" is in (p225-249)
CONCLUSION --- a personal letter from me to you! (p250-254)
APPENDIX (p255)
Go to: Brainpower Issue at Work
Go to: Change Issue at Work
Go to: Feelings Issue at Work
Go to: Success Issue at Work
Go to: Leadership Control Essay
Go to: Home Page Index
Go to: Interactive Index