Essential Humility of Marriage: Honoring the Third Identity in Couple Therapy »

Terry D. Hargrave, Ph.D., is Professor of Psychology at Amarillo College in Texas. Author or coauthor of three previous books, Hargrave also has contributed chapters and articles to dozens of other publications. Noted speaker and presenter, he is well known for his work with intergenerational families and has been featured in numerous national magazines and newspapers, as well as on such television shows as 20/20 and CBS This Morning.

This fresh perspective on what makes marriages work will jumpstart the efforts of every couples therapist. At its core is Hargrave s message that much of what is currently done in couples therapy misses the point, focusing all attention on the need to accumulate more and more skills and to work toward ever-greater self-actualization. While there is a time and place for both of these concerns, Hargrave suggests that the real answer resides in some new math. Where once we believed that two became one, and then, more recently, that two remained two, Hargrave proposes that in strong marriages, two become three.

The Essential Humility of Marriage explores the landscape of you, me, and we. The book clearly ccarves out this third identity, and then describes how its expectations and desires can take precedence over those of the individual partners-without taking away from either one. Why the concept of us plays such a central role in satisfying marriages is explained, and ways in which therapists can help couples first to acknowledge and then to strengthen that us are demonstrated.

Hargrave doesn t offer a single method or technique so much as an entirely new perspective on what healthy, growing marriages have in common, and where foundering marriages have gone wrong. He has written this book to help therapists help their clients to regain -- or perhaps to discover for the first time -- the rich mutual benefits that can come with a long-term relationship.