Peter Fraenkel – The Last-Chance Couple: Saving Relationships on the Eve of Destruction

The Last-Chance Couple: Saving Relationships on the Eve of Destruction – Peter Fraenkel

Unhappy couples often present in ways that offer little promise their relationship can be saved, leaving the partners feeling helpless and the therapist feeling stumped. But hope can spring anew when we have a toolbox of techniques to help these couples interact in different ways, turning even the most toxic marriage, full of disdainful feelings, into one of positive growth.

Watch Peter Fraenkel use recorded demonstrations that focus on four types of last-chance couples, and show how to engage them in transforming their relationship.

1. Articulate clinical strategies to create open communication and safety between couples as it relates to treatment outcomes.
2. Evaluate implicit time problems versus explicit time problems between a couple to inform the clinician’s choice of treatment interventions.
3. Analyze the efficacy of introducing reframes of problem patterns for purposes of restoring positivity within the couple’s relationship.

Get The Last-Chance Couple: Saving Relationships on the Eve of Destruction of author Peter Fraenkel

Four Types of Last Chance Couples

• High conflict couples
• Couples where there has been a value or safety violation
  • Domestic violence
  • Infidelity
  • Gambling
  • Abuse of substances
• Couples where partners have mismatched personal time lines/life goals
  • Explicit Time Problems
  • Implicit Time Problems
• Couples with little to know passionate connection
  • Burned out and conflict avoidant couples

How to Engage the Partner Who is Ambivalent about Staying in the Marriage

• Inviting and validating the partner’s ambivalent feelings
• Creating Comfort and Safety with the Committed Partner
• Self-Disclosing

Techniques that Restore Hope and a Possible Better Future

• Teaching communication and problem-solving skills that restore hope
• Introducing reframes of problem patterns that restore a sense of the positive qualities of the relationship
• Gratitude Writing

Ideas that Encourage Couples to Try New Patterns of Interacting
Communication Techniques

• Brief introduction to research-supported communication and problem-solving techniques
• Techniques for Restoring Pleasure and Passion
• The Sixty Second Pleasure Point activity
• The Silent Shared New Experience activity

Get The Last-Chance Couple: Saving Relationships on the Eve of Destruction of author Peter Fraenkel