It has been 14 years since Little Rock therapist Rebecca Fuller Ward wrote a book to help married couples get along better. Ward eschewed any fancy, lofty titles for the book. Its name was straight and to the point: How to Stay Married Without Going Crazy.
Her publisher, Betsy Lampe of Rainbow Books, suggested she release a second edition with a few revisions and a new chapter. The result, How to Stay Married Without Going Crazy: Second Edition (Rainbow Books, $12.95), kicked off with a Dec.
5 release and book signing at WordsWorth Books & Co. in Little Rock’s Heights neighborhood. It’s also an e-book, a $4.95 Kindle edition at Amazon.com.
Urged to “learn to navigate and negotiate the emotional issues in marriage,” readers are taken through chapters about communication, sex, time, money, conflicts and confrontation and collaboration. Bearing a rewritten foreword and dedication, the book dispenses anecdotes - about Ward’s own marital complications and those of her patients - and advice in the same simple, down-to-earth language its predecessor did.
The new chapter discusses infidelity.
“This book is not research-based,” she writes in her preface. “It came from what I’ve seen in my office since I began working in 1979. I’d seen hundreds of couples during these 33-plus years and learned from every one of them. Certainly, I’ve learned that being in love or infatuated or attracted to someone may lead you into a marriage, but it doesn’t teach you how to be married.
“The book focuses on self-awareness and responsibility for how we act and react, and discourages vigorously blaming others for how we are.”
The first edition was issued in January 2000. Since then, Ward says, one of the main compliments she receives is that it is very easy to read. In particular, the chapter on communication seems to strike a chord and resonates with many couples: “I’ve had so many couples come in through the years and ask, ‘How could you have written this book about us when you hadn’t met us ?’Great words to hear.”
Many readers were “fascinated,” she adds, by the information she included about the importance of the family of origin, or what she calls the FOO, in instilling behavior people bring to relationships. “The FOO is where we came from, and to understand your family is to know yourself,” Ward writes in Chapter 2. The FOO explains how misunderstanding and strife can arise between two people who have come from two different families and have been raised quite differently. “Learning about our partner’s beginning is necessary for a good marriage.”
The first edition of How to Stay Married Without Going Crazy sold nearly 10,000 copies. Ward’s datebook filled up with book signings and speaking engagements in and outside of Arkansas. A number of churches used the book in their classes for married couples. Ward gave radio interviews to stations in larger cities, including Boston, Los Angeles and Chicago - “right from my kitchen phone, sometimes in my robe,” she recalls. In addition to newspaper articles, she was quoted in Redbook, Cosmopolitan, McCall’s, Brides magazine and Good Housekeeping.
“Redbook,” Ward says, “actually had me in a bold-print box [labeled] ‘15 Things That’ll Make Any Guy Glow.’” Nowadays, Ward makes regular appearances on KATV, Channel 7’s morning show, Good Morning Arkansas, to dispense therapeutic advice.
It was several years ago that Ward began to consider updating the book. It took her a year to write the extra chapter. “I’ve gotten lazy and writing … takes so much energy,” she says. “And it messes with my brain. I get ideas or points that must be included and if it’s 2 a.m., then I’m up writing.”
It’s still a fairly short book: 112 pages, not counting the bibliography. She wanted a book that was short, concise, and easy to understand - a format, she says, that seems to be appreciated by male readers.
In the new chapter on infidelity, the book addresses the role of social media in marriages - and the threat such easy connections present.
“Social media has made a huge impact on our society and especially our relationships,” Ward says.
“No longer do we have to encounter someone in person to start a flirtation. It can happen instantly, almost anywhere. People are reconnecting with people from their pasts in record numbers and while most don’t evolve into affairs, quite a few at the very least develop into secret communications. It’s the old ‘ships passing in the night’ situation: it’s so easy to tell your deepest emotions to someone when there will not be consequences. Living with someone means there will be.”
Other than making the additions and removing a repititious chapter, Ward changed little in the original work. She improved some phrasing and had the text edited by Lampe - something she’d resisted the first time around. The foreword and dedication were also rewritten. “This book should be as relevant in 15 more years as it was then and is now,” she says.
“Marriage is hard anytime, anywhere, with anybody. When we really accept that reality, there will be less divorcing - or maybe less marrying,” Ward says. “Dreams die hard and it seems we all want the fairy tale: the perfect partner who will love us unconditionally and meet our every need and always look great, smell good, and never have a bad day.”
There’s more to come. Ward’s publisher has asked her to write a book about older marriages - people who have been married 30 to 60 years. It will be co-authored by her partner and fellow therapist, Howard Turney.
“I am seeing so many ‘older marriages,’ and they have their own unique problems [and] issues to confront,” including the physical and life changes that come with aging. “Retirement affects them and they have to learn how to live with more togetherness,” Ward says.
“Most couple who have been married a long long time do not come in with the divorce door open; they just want to know how to tolerate each other better.”
Meanwhile, Ward says she isn’t expecting How to Stay Married Without Going Crazy to get on anyone’s national best-seller list. That would only happen if she’d be willing to travel to promote it, something she wouldn’t do the first time and isn’t likely to do now.
“Some big-time agent called and wanted to represent me and said he’d have me on all the talk shows, but … I was just not interested in that kind of deal,” she says.
She is, however, interested in more readers like the man who recently ordered 20 copies of the book from WordsWorth.
“He told me it was the best book about marriage he’d ever read - and he’d read them all,” Ward says. “I was so validated.”
Family, Pages 34 on 01/15/2014