What is the Middle Ground?

Imagine a place:
• That brings the potential for love and compassion alive within your relationship;
• Where you and your partner learn to communicate more productively;
• Where understandings can develop from genuine differences;
• Where natural capacities for sharing can be unfrozen and an atmosphere of emotional safety can flourish.

What would you call such a place?  I call it the Middle Ground.  If you are looking for help in your relationship you are very likely unable to see this place clearly. Perhaps you’ve seen it but didn’t recognize what you were witnessing. Perhaps you have never—not even within your imagination—had a glimpse of it. This is the Middle Ground.


Praise for The Power of the Middle Ground

 “His realistic directions on reaching the middle ground include seeing issues from the other’s point of view, emphasizing the positive, and developing patience… Recommended.”
– Library Journal

“The Power of the Middle Ground is an easy to read self–help book with many clinical vignettes and couple-strengthening exercises. Too often self-help books are terrific at describing a problem, only to give scant suggestions for improving the situations. Mr. Babits has accomplished the art of describing what needs to be achieved and how to achieve it at the same time . . . “
– Paula F. Eagle, M.D. ; Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons; Faculty, Columbia Psychoanalytic Center for Training and Research; Private Practice, New York City.

“ . . .The Middle Ground is where the heart of a relationship’s aliveness, its resilience, is located. . . . The middle-ground is a potential that exists within love’s province, in which the hard-edged realities of keeping a contemporary relationship vital, can be found.”
– From the Preface, by Ron Taffel, Ph.D.; Executive Director of the Institute for Contemporary Psychotherapy, NYC; Author of “Parenting by Heart,” “Breaking Through to Teens”

“Writing this wonderful book, Marty Babits drew on thousands of hours of experience as a professional couple and family therapist – and it shows. Always a voice for compassion . . . His book is a joyful tribute to possibility.”
– Elizabeth Ann Danto, Ph.D.; Author of, “Freud’s Free Clinics: Psychoanalysis and Social Justice”; Associate Professor of Social Work, Hunter College, City University of New York.

“This book is a welcome addition to the self-help couples literature. It empowers couples to find creative ways to heal and develop relationship . . .A great contribution.”
– Suzanne Iasenza, Ph.D.; Psychotherapist/Sex Therapist/; Private Practice.

“Mr Babits presents a thought-provoking self-help odyssey for couples, gay and straight, who want to be engaged in building and enriching their relationships. Easy to read, with questionnaires, exercises, and illustrative vignettes, “The Power of the Middle Ground” offers couples a unique chance to hear and understand one another.”
– Hillary Mayers, LCSW; Co-Director, Institute for Child, Adolescent and Family Studies; Director, Chances for Children Program, NYC.