Beth Sampson

Beth Sampson tried to make a marriage work just like many people. She even tried longer than most--for eighteen years of their twenty-year marriage together, they were in and out of all different types of marriage counseling. When the marriage was finally over, she wanted to know, why couldn’t any of the counselors fix their problems over all those years? And importantly, what could have been done differently to either fix the marriage or help end it sooner?

Beth found that the main information that people in relationship counseling really need is: “What are the elements in common in most healthy relationships?” If people had that information, it would be easy to see what you either have or is missing in your own relationship. She therefore began her search to find such a list. What seemed like a simple list, became impossible to find. None existed! So instead, she used all her research to compile her own list which she called “Relationship Rights.” And, in the process of compiling the list, she also noticed that the common elements in healthy relationships fell into three distinct categories, which for ease of her understanding, she associated with the colors of a traffic light—Green for Go, Yellow for Yield and Red for Stop. And importantly, at the same time she developed a simple vocabulary with definitions for communicating feelings and issues in relationships, so that partners could communicate with common language and meanings.

When Beth shared this concept with some other marriage counselors, they immediately told her to write and submit the concept to professional journals and publications. She laughed because counseling was not her area of expertise and she had no credentials in it--other than eighteen years in and out of different kinds of marriage counseling with her ex-husband. However, as the word spread about Relationship Rights (and wrongs), more counselors and friends encouraged her to share her concept; the book was born.

The concept of Relationship Rights was so successful due to its simplicity to understand and communicate that it was used in marriage counseling programs, as well as being taught to middle school children in school as part of their health curriculum It has received endorsements from the President of the Alliance for Children and Families (a network of family service agencies serving over six million people in North America), Behavioral Medicine doctor at the Medical College of Wisconsin, the founder of the Family Peace Project and a retired head librarian from Brigham & Woman’s Hospital.

Beth received her B.A. in Economics from Newcomb College of Tulane University and attended Columbia University for an M.B.A. She lived in Japan for a year and worked for Toyota as the first woman in a non-clerical position. She has worked at Procter & Gamble in Brand Management, run a publicly held company at age 24 and had her own company by 26. She currently lives in the Milwaukee, Wisconsin area and has been running companies or non-profit organizations ever since.