Sylvie Angel, a psychiatrist, psychoanalyst and family therapist, has counselled couples for more many years, notably at the Paris Centre Pluralis, which she founded with her husband, Pierre Angel, a psychiatrist and psychotherapist. She is the author of the highly successful La Deuxième chance en amour (Editions Odile Jacob).

For more than thirty years, Sylvie Angel has been counselling couples who are on the brink of breaking up. She listens to them, helps them overcome their problems, and often helps them see that the divorce they were contemplating is not the right solution.
Drawing on her lengthy counselling experience, she explains how therapy can help couples step back from the complex crises that rock their relationships and, in the process, learn to overcome them.
Illustrated with numerous examples, this book aims to help us understand the interactions between two people in a relationship; the situations that trigger the major and minor dramas that are part of most relationships and to show couples how to surmount them. And, when there is no other solution, she shows them how to separate ‘respectfully and elegantly’, so as not to jeopardise the future of both partners and, especially, of their children. The trauma of separation must not be compounded by an endless battle that will poison the lives of everyone concerned.

• Even when it is freely chosen, divorce is a painful event, triggering feelings of loss and grief. A highly experienced therapist explains how to cope with the trauma.
• Drawing on her extensive experience, a specialised psychiatrist argues that most divorces could be avoided or deferred — or at least given more support and assistance.
• Faced with the psychological distress of couples who are in the process of separating, the author offers her expert advice to help both partners prepare the divorce (once it is deemed inevitable), before meeting with a lawyer.