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If your clinic budget allows, buy a simple black and white video camera and tripod. Make some tapes of your marriage. Make tapes of the family, the kids, the house, the cats and dogs, but most important, make some private tapes of your marriage.

“Are you serious?” asked one wife. “You want us to make our own X-rated tapes?”

That’s up to both of you. I am suggesting short tapes of the two of you talking, dancing, doing things together. If you check your family pictures and movies, most of them do not contain pictures of the two of you together. Videotapes of your communication, of dinners and other interactions could teach you much about your pattern of interaction. The videotapes of couples communicating in the clinic are among the most helpful of clinical tools, especially when the couples review them carefully. By discussing the tapes, each partner becomes aware of the other’s style of relating, emphasizing self-analysis and the responsibility of each partner to the interaction. The communication styles reflected the reports of sexual styles. Videotapes can be to marriage improvement what X rays have been to medicine. They can be abused and dangerous if overdone, but if carefully used in moderation, they can help us see through a lot of marital problems.

It may be helpful to set up a role-rehearsal tape where there are preassigned situations, such as a vignette in which one or the other partner must announce something to the spouse that the spouse typically gets angry about. Study your marriage and see if there are not some good role-rehearsal patterns you could use.

More couples make their own sex tapes than are willing to admit it. Fifty-six couples of the thousand stated that they did so. Watching yourselves make love can teach much if the couple approaches this opportunity with humor, sensitivity, and mutual concern for intimacy and respect. If one partner is “just going along” with this idea it is probably not productive to do it. M-rated (“M” for marriage) tapes are certainly of much more value than the X-rated tapes of complete strangers, because they are modeling the sex of the first three perspectives while you are trying to learn a fourth. The tragedy of the couple in the introduction to this book was that they were looking to the couple in the tape to find the intimacy that was right there between them, they failed to realize they are the stars of their own intimate drama.

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Take out your marital log, a tape recorder, and the records you have kept on your opportunities in Chapters One and Two. Record you reactions to the points made in this chapter. Record your “bonding imprint” and courtship sequence in discussion with your partner. Collect some old pictures of your courtship days, not just with your spouse but with anyone. Discuss your courtship of others with your spouse, the good and bad times.

Sheila was treated in my clinic for loneliness and depression. She felt that she would never love or be loved again. During her therapy, she reported another trip to another bar. By her report, this particular bar was one of the darkest she had ever been in. It seems that most bars are quite dark, perhaps another way of promoting deception in the courtship ritual?

“I went this time just to hear the band. I got a soft drink and sat far enough from the speakers to hear quality instead of volume. Well, I really got into the music. This man came and sat beside me. We didn’t talk, but I could tell he was really into the music, too. We listened to the whole set, about forty minutes, I’d say.” Sheila continued to describe a meeting that would begin an entirely new relationship.

“I spoke first,” Sheila continued. “Not really to him, just sharing how I felt. I didn’t even look at him. I told him that the last song made me want to cry because it reminded me of my ex-husband. He answered, “Me, too. And by the way, you look familiar.”

“Well, I know you won’t believe this, but I was familiar. It was my ex-husband,” continued Shelia. “He had seen me sitting here and come over to talk. He didn’t want to bother me when I was so engrossed in the music and was kind of embarrassed about the whole scene. We laughed, but I think we were crying. You know what? I’m going out with him this Friday night. I hope we do it right this time.”

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