feel their partner needs to improve at, and I would use the Marital Satisfaction Inventory to gain insights into their overall satisfaction in their relationship (36). I would tailor these questionnaires so that they included a wide range of questions touching on their satisfaction with the relationship, their individual and community oriented needs and the extent to which these needs are being met, the range of environmental demands that each of them is facing, their cognitive and communication patterns, and the strengths and weaknesses they feel they each bring to the relationship (35-36).
After they have each filled in the questionnaire, I would sit down with them together to flesh out the developmental history of their relationship. I would ask Mike and Mary to tell me the story of their relationship from their first meeting. The goal of this is twofold. First, I want to be able to observe their interactions to form a picture of their behavioral patterns. In Mike and Mary's case, it is during this phase that I would notice Mary's behavioral pattern of speaking for Mike and assisting him in his answers, while I would also notice Mike's inability to communicate well verbally. The second goal of the relationship history is to take Mike and Mary back to a period of their relationship when they were both happy and where the relationship was characterized by positive memories and emotions. I would ask them about the qualities that initially attracted them to each other, what their first date was like, when they first met each other's families, how it was that they decided to commit to marrying each other, and whether they've ever been in therapy before (34).
After the questionnaires have been completed and the relationship history has been established, I would move on to the current relationship concerns that brought Mike and Mary to seek therapy. I would begin by looking at the dyadic factors in their relationship, su...