Marriage of Equals

How to Achieve Balance in a Committed Relationship

Young men and women of today want a committed, equitable, and vibrant family and work life; here clinical psychologist Catherine E. Aponte presents a vision of how to achieve this goal through collaborative negotiation.

Negotiating collaboratively in your committed relationship is a new way to achieve individual and marital goals, to resolve differences equitably, to manage conflicts, to create and sustain a satisfying sex life, to figure out where you stand on fidelity, to think about having and caring for kids, and to have committed careers and a satisfying family life.

Negotiating collaboratively supports you and your partner seeing yourselves simultaneously as individuals and as a couple–cultivates the sense of "being in this together" while at the same time having individual life plans. It also supports valuing each other as individuals before seeing each other as husband and wife, and allows modern couples to challenge old gender trappings that can undermine the achievement of balance in a committed relationship.