FOREWORD, BY PAT WEBSTER
Over a decade ago, my late husband Bill and I went into couples therapy with Marty Groder. As a therapist myself, and having been in individual therapy with Marty for a number of years, I thought I knew quite a bit about couples’ relationships, about “getting those feelings out.”
“We have to start over again, Pat,” Marty said, not long into the session. “There are some things you’ve learned in therapy here that aren’t going to work.”
As Marty began helping me learn some of the tools that are outlined in this book, I was initially scornful. I had grown into young womanhood on the cutting edges of feminism. I studied to become a therapist and also began my own therapy in the early 1970s, when raw expression of emotion was encouraged. Having grown up in a family where emotions, especially anger, were discouraged, I struggled hard to learn to express my anger and set my own boundaries. Before I married Bill, I had been a single mom and working professional for twenty years. I had a black belt in karate. I knew how to stand up for myself. What was this polite stuff that Marty was trying to teach me? Manners Therapy? Was I to take training in becoming a fake?!
But I was in a stuck place in my marriage, and was paying to get unstuck. So I tried what Marty was offering. From the time we began using Marty’s coaching up until Bill’s death, we had one of our sweetest times together, and we had shared many sweet times. I wouldn’t take anything for the ways in which I had learned to love and to be loved.
Some years later, in the beginning of a new relationship, I again sought Marty’s help. He scribbled a diagram on a tablet page, explaining something about the particular nature of my struggle at the time. I stuck it in a file, and for the first time in years, looked at all the little pieces of similar papers I had accumulated over the years. I had a file full of nuggets of wisdom about couples’ partnerships. Marty had done extensive research on leading edge literature about couples and emotions. Combining that knowledge with his many years of experience helping couples, he had evolved a theoretical structure that incorporates the tools he used so successfully in his professional work and in his own marriage. In my file were the little notes, building blocks that were part of the “house” of his theories.
I wanted to put the whole theory and structure into book form. I wanted to understand it more thoroughly for myself; I wanted it in my bones. I also knew that it could be helpful for others. For myself, and for the reader, I needed to make it simple. So I offered to join Marty in writing this book. It is his legacy to me; what we did together is a mutual legacy to the world.
I initially balked when Marty said, “You know, we have to write this book for guys.” I’m not a guy, and I speak and write more easily to women. In response to my frown, Marty said, “Pat, how many women do you know who have twenty, thirty books on relationships?” “Lots.” “And how many men (who are not professional colleagues) do you know who have any books on relationships?” “None.”
“We need to write a book for alpha males about how to live in Loveland,” Marty said. While I overcame my initial hesitation about co-authoring a book for men, it helped that I am an alpha female, alpha traits honed by a difficult childhood, coming into young womanhood at the peak of feminism, and by being a single working mother.
The research and the construction of the basic model for this book were initially Marty’s. The organization, simplification, and translation are mine. Along the way, I began to contribute in fleshing out and expanding the theory. It became ours. I have absorbed this material in my bones, though I still have to practice, a lot.
I feel deep gratitude to Marty, my mentor, friend and colleague. Thanks for your brilliance, your trust, your humanness and the fun- and for showing me again and again how to successfully use this material. Thanks for helping me to know more about loving and being loved. Thanks to Bud Harris, who, when I was in a time of being existentially adrift, encouraged me to move on my impulse to consider writing this book with Marty. Thanks to my daughter Ali, wise woman and gift to my soul, who has perhaps more than anyone taught me about love and forgiveness. I am grateful to my sister, Mary, for agreeing to incorporate these skills into our relationship and who blesses me regularly with her embodied big-heartedness. Thanks to all my friends, including the YaYa Sisters’ movie club, who regularly ask me about the book and Marty’s health and who have listened to me through the evolution of this writing project. Thanks to Marty’s wife and my friend, Leslie, who agreed to share events of her precious marriage and also was a great editor. And thanks to my late husband, Bill, who gave one hundred percent to a loving, exciting, and sometimes challenging marriage.
Lastly, thanks to my Jay-Bear, for coming into my life.
