Snap Strategies for Couples by Lana Staheli

Author:Lana Staheli [Schwartz, Pepper; Staheli, Lana]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781580055635
Publisher: Basic Books

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Holly, thirty-eight, and Raphael, forty, are passionate people who let their tempers get the better of them rather regularly. Holly, a slim, fashionable lady with a tattoo on her right shoulder that reads “Love Is All,” is pleasant all day in her job as a hairdresser; she is chatty, warm, and funny and has many clients who have been with her since she started. No one at the salon has seen Holly’s temper. Raphael, her husband, also has great people skills. He needs a great personality in his job as a therapist for returning war vets who have psychological as well as physical disabilities that he helps them conquer. In his job, he is a patient cheerleader for his clients and is proud of how many gravely injured men and women he has helped on their way back into civilian life. His clients see him as a supporter who totally believes in their ability to have a great life despite very significant injuries. But Raphael is like his wife: He puts away his anger during his work but at home, when the two of them disagree on something, sparks really fly. Over their nine years of marriage, Holly has been known to throw a few hairbrushes, and Raphael has turned over some furniture.

This scares them. This is a second marriage for both of them and they really want to make it work. So the fury that sometimes erupts makes them fear that they will destroy their relationship. A recent fight that could have been avoided by simply holding hands first was over her picking up their dinner at Whole Foods instead of a less expensive local grocery. Raphael thought that she was buying brand more than budget and chided her for wasting money. Holly perceived this as an attack on how she managed all money for the family and felt that he wasn’t respecting either her time or her concern for providing healthy food for both of them.

Her instant retort to his wisecrack about her “total lack of concern about how much things cost,” citing pre-cut fruit as the height of irresponsibility, was to snarl, through clenched teeth, about the “crap he eats” and the fact that he’s getting a “spare tire around his middle” so his “tacky clothes” don’t fit anymore. That was too much for Raphael, so he went after her weight and when he mentioned saggy breasts, it became a verbal free-for-all. The feud ended with Raphael throwing a whole carton of eggs against the wall and Holly stepping over the mess in her hurry to get to the door to go over to her sister’s house for the evening. They don’t know how to stop the escalating tirades, but we do.

This kind of fighting is not good for them—and they know it. So, how to avoid it? It’s simple, really: Reach out and hold hands.

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