The Relationship
Training Manual

David Unger, Ph.D.

What credentials does one need to write a book about relationships?

Certainly it helps to have been a therapist for more than 25 years, to have worked with men and women individually and as couples while they endeavor to make the most of their love. It also helps to have spent nearly 20 years teaching graduate students as they learned to become marriage and family therapists.

I have been the Clinical Director of the Hollywood Sunset Community Clinic, a professor at the California School of Professional Psychology, the Chair of the Graduate Psychology Program at Antioch University in Los Angeles and Santa Barbara, a teacher and counselor at a Secondary High School, and a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist who has worked with numerous couples, individuals and groups in my private practice.

But to write about something effectively, a person ought to have "been there, done that." He or she needs to have experienced enough of life to develop a perspective that can be useful to others. Having been married and divorced as well as in and out of my share of relationships I can certainly attest to what works and what doesn’t. I would like to believe that through my personal and professional life I have gained a level of knowledge, experience and perspective that allows me to engage others (and myself) in a thoughtful, amusing, challenging and hopefully rewarding journey toward becoming a better partner and lover.

I have been a son, brother, husband, father, friend and colleague. I have walked across a room and said hello to the pretty woman only to be told to please leave, and I have been met with a welcome smile. I have had relationships that have blossomed and ones that did not. I have dumped and been dumped. I have said "I do" and "I don’t". I have been argumentative, distant and grumpy and as well as supportive, caring and a strong shoulder to lean on. I, like you, have seen the good, bad and ugly side of myself and those close to me. And, hopefully along the way, I have learned a thing or two that can also help you out.