Power of the Middle Ground: A Couple's Guide to Renewing Your Relationship

by Marty Babits

"This book took us from the difficult relationship we had to a much better one," reports Marie O. The author helps you bring love and compassion alive in your relationship. He offers field-tested tips and techniques for improving connection. You'll learn to negotiate differences, see issues from each other's point of view, reduce anger and, as a result, rekindle warmth and love. Despite the central place of divorce in our culture, you can find the support you need to develop your relationship's true potential. Read about how others have used this approach to dramatically strengthen communication and lift themselves to a better place. 

Genres: Self Help

263 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2008

Reviews

[Wendy Kendall · Rating 3 out of 5]

The middle ground is the place between selfishness and selflessness. This area of the relationship belongs to neither partner. Neither partner can claim or dominate this space. It is between partners, in the middle. It is not a compromise; it is the place of shared perspective. With tending, the middle ground grows sturdy and resilient and can come alive with a lifetime of potential for intimacy, pleasure, and dialogue.

But how do you find your way into the middle ground? The most common relationship problem reported by the author is bad communication and lack of mutual understanding. How can this be improved? Well, this author has a prescription.

Marty Babits is co-director of Family and Couples Treatment Service, a division of the Institute for Contemporary Psychotherapy in New York City. His book features a compassionate approach to helping couples strengthen their relationships. His prescription is counter to the push of the busy, multi-media, information overload demands of our everyday life. He prescribes patience. When couples slow down their reactions and extend their partner the benefit of the doubt, they can gain mutual understanding. The ability to weigh your responses before responding to your partners action or words, and to choose your response rather than simply react as if on automatic pilot is crucial. This requires a degree of patience, rare these days, which can be developed.

Every step toward the middle ground involves developing patience. According to the author, when people slow down the communication process so that the time between remarks and responses allows for a moment reflection, the goal of communicating together as allies becomes possible. Learn to acknowledge your feelings, but not be ruled by them.

The author writes clearly and provides illustrative examples and straightforward exercises you can try together with your partner. It includes the author’s guidance in communication techniques that will help you both gain a better understanding. Stop the arguments, enhance the discussions. Get the outcome you need for the rich relationship you want. This is certainly a book to share with the one you love.

Because the author is writing about improved communication, much of his advice can also apply to other relationships including within the family, at work, and friendships. It is a middle ground, but it is also a method for building bridges. Perhaps this book could help with impasses in the Federal government.

Thereby hangs a tale . . . .

[Dawn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Please note: I am conservative with my stars, as a five star rating is reserved for my all-time favorite books.

I received this book in a Goodreads giveaway. The format was slightly confusing (for example, chapter three is written for gay couples, but the lessons are more or less universal and therefore are shouldnt be skipped over.) I think if you simply read this book you will be left with a fuzzy idea of what the middle ground is all about. True understanding necessitates jumping in, preferably with your partner, and doing the quizzes, worksheets and exercises. I believe you could find a good measure of success in negotiating your relationship by devoting some time to this book. Additionally, these techniques will certainly serve anyone who is seeking to better communicate with another, and not necessarily a romantic partner.

[Delaina · Rating 3 out of 5]

I received this book as a Goodread's Giveaway.

As a social worker I am prone to find and read books about helping through relationships and am intrigued to learn more every day. This book is great because not only does it focus on finding middle ground in a heterosexual relationship but also a homosexual relationship. The homosexual relationship is often left alone and not discussed in books so it is great the author made room for discussion in his book.

There are multiple quizzes to take throughout the book to help you know where, as a couple, you stand. Many times while reading the book I realized there was common sense statements made and helped me realize how to voice help to other couples.

This book is decent for helping couples find middle ground.

[Freda Mans-Labianca · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a great relationship book in so many ways, with providing help on different kinds of relationships. No matter what your situation is, there may be help in this book. However, I do believe this book to only be a tool for better communicating with your partner. I do think if your relationship is that bad, this won't help, you still need an outsource like therapy or counseling.
Really not a book for everyone, but still very valuable to those who read it.

[Sierra Lawrence · Rating 4 out of 5]

I won this book in a Goodreads Giveaway.

I found it to be very helpful and insightful. It was very well written and easy to grasp the concepts needed to fix your relationship.

I will definitely pass this book along to my mom, sister, and even my significant other.

[Kaye Cloutman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Author Marty Babits “hits it out of the park” with this helpful book for couples wishing to restore, revive or repair their relationships. In using the “middle ground” as a metaphor for balance and moderation he gives us all an opportunity to learn new ways of caring for our partners, and in doing so, learn new ways to care for ourselves. Note that the middle ground is not the same as compromising oneself, but through the course of the book one may discover that the way to get what we want without compromising is to do some of the very same things we might normally think of as compromise. We learn not to view these behaviors as compromise, and that’s a clever trick in this book which is the key to its success with readers.

Anyone wishing to learn healthy new habits to practice in their relationships will find plenty of advice not just on how to fix damaged relationships, but to improve them going forward. This book will be very good reading even for those who think their relationships are in tip-top shape, too. Finding balance and learning not to be too reactionary is difficult and not always rewarded in our everyday lives, so each of us could use some of the lessons, strength and power that can be found in Marty Babits’ Middle Ground

[Nan Clegg · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the most fantastic relationship help books that I have ever read. Since I write a Relationship Advice column that's saying something.
What sounds like a lot of common sense that is much more difficult to put into practice than it should be, and some practical insight into what happens in real world experiences and relationships, this book helps center you back on a path to partnership and happiness in your relationships. Once in a while, you need a kick in keister to remind you of what you knew once, and sometimes you just need someone to teach you something in such clear terms you can actually learn it and this book can do both.

[Vincent Schaefer · Rating 4 out of 5]

I won this book in a Goodreads giveaway.

Excellent book. Very well presented with real life examples that are quite useful, not only in couple relationships, but with all relationships. I would highly recommend.