If your relationship is in trouble, big trouble or small, I’m going to tell you straight-up how to fix it. I’m not going to try to be cute or glib, and I’m not going to hit you with a lot of clever buzzwords. I’m not going to use a bunch of psychobabble or the en vogue theory du jour. I’m going to give you the straightforward, no-nonsense answers that work—answers that have always worked, but have just been buried in a deluge of pop-psych nonsense.

But there is a serious and outcome-determinative precondition that you have to meet if you expect to successfully rescue your relationship and reconnect with your partner. You have to get real about you. And when I say real, I mean one hundred percent, drop-dead, no-kidding real. No defensiveness, no denial—total honesty. Get argumentative, be rigid, be defensive and hardheaded, and you will lose for sure.

While the focus of this book is rescuing your relationship and reconnecting with your partner, the vehicle to achieving that is you. Not you and your partner, but you. Reconnecting with your partner cannot and will not happen if you do not reconnect with yourself first.

I promise you, you can change your partner from daylight to dark, you can dump your partner and trade up to a better one, but it won’t make a damn bit of difference unless and until you decide to clean house inside yourself first. This journey does not begin with you and your partner; it begins with you. You have to take your power back and become the kind of person who commands quality, inspires respect, and settles for nothing less than an active and abiding love.

That change begins from the inside out as you get back in touch with who you are and as you decide what to do with your love, your life, and your vision. Your clarity and your purpose must become crystal clear. The fix, the rescue, depends on you.

This is not silly self-help talk. This may well be the most important concept you’ll ever seek to master. I’ve studied successful people my entire life. I always wondered why these people create wonderful, rewarding relationships and lives when others just as talented muddle through with mediocrity. We all know people who get all the breaks and opportunities, yet who still can’t do anything with their lives.

And we know others who seemingly come out of nowhere to defy the odds and overcome immense challenges to carve their niche in the world. What I’ve discovered with stark and undeniable clarity is that the ones who do well are so in touch with their individual core of consciousness, so aware of their self-worth and their sense of personal value, that they not only treat themselves with enormous self-respect but they inspire others to treat them with equal respect.

They live with an empowering inner clarity, one that gives them the unshakable confidence that they and they alone can determine the quality of their life. They have tapped into their core of consciousness, claimed their right to a fulfilling life, and have refused to accept less from themselves or anyone else.

The truth is not always easy to hear, but it always remains the truth —and I’m not going to let you hide from it and, in so doing, cheat yourself. So listen to me: if you don’t scrape away all of life’s layers of distortion, negative input, and doubt-inducing messages, and get back in touch with your own core of consciousness, then no matter what else you learn, you will have such low standards that you will continue sabotaging your relationship. You will remain mired in pain, guilt, anger, and confusion. You can bet on it.

So that is your precondition. As you go forward into this book, you must contemplate everything that’s presented with an eye toward how it can get you back in touch with yourself—how it can get you back to that core of strength that has been there since you were born.

As you read, think about how you will put honor and nobility back into your heart and mind so that you can begin to engage the world from a position of strength instead of weakness. Commit right now to requiring more of yourself, for yourself, in every area of your life. With every page you read, I want your head to lift, I want your chin and your chest to come out, not as an act of arrogance but as a message of determination.

Tapping into your core of consciousness, rediscovering your inner strength and drive for greatness, can be the single most significant act of your life, and your greatest gift to your relationship partner.

RELATIONSHIP RESCUE : A Seven-Step Strategy for Reconnecting with Your Partner by PHILLIP C. MCGRAW Ph.D.