ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on desirable relationship behaviors that are relatively easy to enact. It describes several types of interventions to increase positive behaviors that vary in terms of who chooses the behavior to be accelerated—the giver, the recipient, or both spouses together. The chapter also describes a variety of procedures for increasing a couple’s positive exchanges and enhancing partners’ reinforcing value for one another. It traces some less distressed couples find they can resolve a wide variety of problems by employing only the strategies. The chapter discusses the exchange of specific targeted behaviors that the spouses request of one another. A common roadblock in the exchange of pleasing behaviors is spouses’ inexperience in making assertive, nondemanding requests of one another. The exchange of pleasing behaviors rests only in part upon the willingness of each partner to give pleasing behaviors.
