After the Fight

Daniel B. Wile, author of Couples Therapy and After the Honeymoon, devotes this entire book to an analysis of a single night in the life of one couple. By tapping into their self-talk (their ongoing conversations with themselves), he discovers what starts, escalates, and rekindles fights--and also, what potentially allows for a useful conversation about a fight. Wile reveals the half-thoughts and half-feelings that generally go unnoticed: the anxious flashes; depressive waves; self-directed diatribes; and two-second mental divorces.