If you really want to improve and transform yourself, the first step is to become aware of the weaknesses which may be holding you back and preventing your evolution. These weaknesses may be: your excessive independence, your fear of commitment, your eccentricity, your instability, and your fear of intimacy.

Alex Clark accepts the idea that every relationship follows more or less the same general scheme: a base of intimacy and an accomplishment or purpose apart from the relationship itself. If he succeeds in defining, through discussion and communication, what sort of intimate relationship he and his partners want to maintain and what accomplishment or purpose they hope to achieve, many conflicts will be avoided.