Uncoupling: Turning Points in Intimate Relationships

by Diane Vaughan

Book Overview

Drawing from extensive research and in-depth interviews, an invaluable guide for anyone who wants to understand--or prevent--the collapse of a relationship.

How do relationships end? Why does one partner suddenly become discontented with the other--and why is the onset of that discontentment not so sudden after all? What signals do partners send each other to indicate their doubts? Why do those signals so often go unnoticed? And how...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0679730028
• ISBN13: 9780679730026
• Release Date: September 1990
• Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
• Length: 272 Pages
• Weight: 0.52 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.2" x 8.1"

Customer Reviews

Not a self help book.

This is not a self help book. It is a compiling of statistics from interviews of people who have broken up. It isn’t about why so much as how. Essentially it is a sociology study about the steps that are taken consciously and subconsciously that lead to the dissolving of the relationship. It was interesting but not helpful for what I needed. I did find chapter 10 interesting and helpful. If you are looking for a self help book I recommend: Necessary Endings by Henry Cloud Too Good to Leave, Too bad to stay by Mira Kirshenbaum

Demystifying breakups

What can one say about breakups? When you go through the first one, you think you've literally invented this level of pain, that no one else understands what you've been through, that this is a whole new (and extremely horrible) world you've managed to spiral into. Well, guess what, it's not. I started reading this book going through my first real breakup, and it was almost uncanny how well it demonstrated each of the steps I had gone through, and what I had done to get there, and where I was heading. Indeed, there is something almost pre-programmed about the way we deal with these things, and Vaughn's book proves this quite beautifully. When I first started burning through these self-help books, I was after something a bit more solid and based on real research. "Uncoupling" definitely fit the bill, and if you are more technically-minded, then this is the book for you. Sadly, as one other reviewer pointed out, you never get to this book in time. If you're interested in reading it, you're probably on the verge of ending something, or have been the victim of such an end. But if misery loves company, at least you know you're on the -very- trodden path.

The truth hurts

First, although you will probably find this book in the "Self help -- Relationships" section, it is important to be aware that it is not a self help book. It is a sociological study of how relationships break down. It is quite academic but extremely readable. More importantly, it is quite brilliant. Diane Vaughan is so insightful that you will wish she was less so. That's because, whether you are "the initiator" or "the partner" -- the book's idealized protagonists -- you will find out some very uncomfortable things about yourself. For instance, suppose you're the initiator and you've pumped yourself all up to leave with some standard self-help fare about "responsibility to yourself" and "personal development" and all that stuff. This book will rip the carpet right out from under your feet, as you realize that your carefully crafted justifications are just that -- justifications. The initiator wants out of the relationship, and constructs an ideology which will facilitate this. This book is a masterpiece, and so it has flaws. The most obvious is a relentless pessimism which has been commented on by several other reviewers. This is clearly an artifact of the methodology: the author conducted interviews with people whose relationships had ended, thus we don't get even a glimpse of people whose relationships somehow escaped the seemingly inexorable patterns described. Do such relationships exist? I hope so. I don't know whether or not Vaughan comments on this limitation, because not being a sociologist, I skipped the methodology chapter. Although this is not a self help book, I feel that it did benefit me in understanding my own troubled relationship. Trust me, when you see "the initiator" and "the partner", you are going to work to make yourself less like them! I highly recommend this book to anyone who is curious and wants to understand their situation better. But, if you want self-validation, keep well clear!

The devestating truth you may not be ready to hear or face

Regrettably, chances are that you will look for and find this book far too late in the process of uncoupling to save your own relationship. For the "initiator" has all the power to end or save a relationship and put the "partner" through hell in the process.If you're the initiator, stop what you are doing, read this book and carefully consider the spiraling path to relationship destruction you are on.Either way, I believe that you will learn more from reading this book than a dozen others. Much more than from marriage counselors or even Psychologists. But the truth may be hard to take. It was for me as I was looking for help in saving my relationship from my wife's affair. Alas, she had long since started a transition out of our relationship and redefining me in negative terms. This book will help you understand why the person you love can turn on you like a rabid dog, rip your beating heart from your chest, throw it in a blender and hit frappe!Eventually you will want answers whatever the emotional cost and this book is filled with them.However, if you are one of the fortuitous or lucky ones fortunate enough to find this before it is too late, then read, learn and act now before your life is sucked through a crushing black hole of change very few are ready for.

Excellent description of the process of ending relationship

This book is an extremely good, very solid and intelligent description of the dynamics and processes involved in the gradual disintegration of a romantic relationship. I am a marriage therapist and find this book to be refreshingly intellegent, atheoretical, nonmoralistic and unbiased analysis of what takes place when estrangement creeps into and overtakes a once- viable connection between lovers. It is a solid, unprejudiced depiction of the process from both partners' points of views, without being tritely subjective. It is very readable, but certainly not simple-minded in its content. Strongly recommended.

The last few chapters of the book of relationships.

I'm very picky and critical of self-help books, but Vaughan's Uncoupling is the next best thing to a counsellor. More than a psych book, it is the definite beginning-middle-end about how couples become uncoupled. I picked up this book by instinct, as I needed to read something--anything--about how relationships end. I don't care about the why's anymore; I just wanted to understand what was happenning in my own relationship. This book will not tell you how to save your relationship, or whether it's worth saving or not. Vaughan argues that there is a pattern to how relationships end. And in the telling, she gives the story that makes sense of everything--and that is all we need when we go row into the choppy waters of a faltering relationship.