Invasion of the Marriage Snatcher: Battling Your Anxiety Alien

Being happily married is a challenge. Being tormented by anxiety is a bigger challenge. Being in a marriage tormented by anxiety is a gargantuan challenge. But being in a marriage tormented by anxiety without your knowledge is the biggest challenge of all. It's like an invisible invader has infiltrated your relationship wrecking havoc and nobody knows how it got there, who is responsible, or how to get rid of it.

That's what Invasion of the Marriage Snatcher is all about. With wit and wisdom marriage therapist Erik Johnson cuts to the chase and gives practical tools for couples to identify and combat this alien invader. Over a twenty year career coaching conflicted couples he's collected 101 of the best interventions couples have used to quit seeing each other as the enemy and attack the real enemy instead--anxiety.

In some respects it's a painful shock when the anxious party realizes their partner isn't the monster they thought. But it also comes as a relief because now instead of fighting their partner they can fight the real monster, anxiety.

Using the alien metaphor is Johnson's attempt to help the anxious party in a marriage recognize what is often hard to see. The suggestion that their partner isn't as awful as they thought is often met with incredulity, denial, and defensiveness. Anxiety is an enemy that does not yield willingly. Thus Johnson uses the convenient fiction from a 1950's sci-fi film as strategy to win the confidence of the anxious person, depersonalize a vexing emotion, and simplify the steps for getting relief.