Six Books That Will Improve Your Relationship
As a marriage and family therapist, I am sometimes asked by colleagues, clients, and friends for book recommendations about strengthening a relationship. Many great books have been written about relationships that tackle the topic from many different angles and target different aspects of a marriage or committed partnership. While there are too many to list here, I am going to start with six that I believe provide wonderful information that can help you and your partner strengthen your bond as soon as today. (PS: if you are short on time but ready to dig into one of these great resources, do not forget about audiobooks! Many of my clients make time for reading this way.)
If any of these books pique your interest in doing deeper work with your partner in counseling, make sure to check out my couples therapy offerings.
Hold Me Tight: Seven Conversations for a Lifetime of Love by Sue Johnson
The recently deceased Dr. Sue Johnson is a pioneer in couples therapy, having created and developed Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy. Sue’s work focuses on the importance of feelings and the transformative power of new emotional experiences with our loved ones. Hold Me Tight is her most popular book and accessible to the general public; in it, she explains how love, safety, and security are as essential to our wellbeing as any other need and how we can foster this with our partner. Sue spends a few chapters explaining the foundation of her work, which is attachment theory - the science behind the emotional bonds between humans. After providing this groundwork, Hold Me Tight outlines seven different conversations that can help you identify where you and your partner might be getting stuck and provides exercises that you can practice at home to strengthen your emotional connection. This is a great companion resource for couples who are currently seeing an Emotionally Focused Therapy-trained practitioner or are thinking about seeing a therapist with an EFT background.
The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work: A Practical Guide from the Country’s Foremost Relationship Expert by John Gottman & Nan Silver
The first Gottman book on this list is The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work, a very easy-to-read and easy-to-implement guide on improving your relationship. Dr. John Gottman is one of the top marriage experts in the field today, and this book is jam-packed with data from Drs. John & Julie Gottman’s Love Lab, a research environment set up like an AirBnB for couples who have agreed to have their conversations, fights, and other couple moments studied for our benefit. Seven Principles includes a thorough introduction to the Gottman couple therapy model that anybody can pick up and understand. In addition to helpful exposition and examples of theory, the book includes a large number of exercises that you and your partner can use right here, right now, to improve your relationship. Gottman teaches partners how to turn toward each other with fondness and admiration, how to start tough conversations, how to influence each other and be each other’s cheerleader, and how to identify and then work with different kinds of conflict. When I see requests for a relationship-oriented workbook for couples, I always answer with Seven Principles, even though it is not technically a workbook - the exercises mixed with the narrative are just so accessible and useful for anybody navigating a romantic relationship.
Fight Right: How Successful Couples Turn Conflict Into Connection by John Gottman & Julie Schwartz Gottman
The Gottmans’ latest book is a wonderful addition to their collection of materials for couples. A great companion to Seven Principles, I have had clients give Fight Right a big thumbs up. If you have ever wished that you and your partner could just eliminate conflict from your relationship, this book will help you learn that conflict can actually enhance your intimacy and bring you closer together - really. The Gottmans detail how to fight so as to enhance connection and closeness, explaining that a lack of conflict can be just as threatening to a marriage’s longevity as toxic fighting. They take you step by step into the minute details of common couples’ arguments, detailing where you get off track and providing guidance as to what to do instead. If you are wanting to improve communication with your spouse and figure out a sustainable solution to your regular arguments and fights, this book may be a game-changer for you.
Loving Bravely: Twenty Lessons of Self-Discovery to Help You Get the Love You Want by Alexandra Solomon
Dr. Alexandra Solomon’s first book is not focused on couples, but it is focused on what she calls relational self-awareness: understanding yourself and why you relate to others the way that you do. Loving Bravely is a fantastic collection of 20 different topics and lessons that help you discover the roots of your behaviors in romantic relationships in a clear and compassionate way. At the end of each chapter is an exercise you can use to further your understanding of the lesson - and they are all really helpful. The topics included in this book range from boundaries to family of origin influences to sex to soulmates - so everyone reading is pretty much guaranteed to discover something useful about themselves!
(Fun fact: Alexandra was one of my professors at Northwestern University, and my class was the first to get to use Loving Bravely as a resource, both for understanding ourselves better and for our clients. I later got to be a teaching assistant for her undergraduate class focused on relational self-awareness, Marriage 101, the most popular undergraduate class at Northwestern.)
Set Boundaries, Find Peace: A Guide to Reclaiming Yourself by Nedra Glover Tawwab
This is the second book on this list that is not actually geared toward couples - but what it does do is really powerful in the realm of relationships. You have certainly heard about the concept of boundaries in this day and age, but if you really are not sure what exactly that means and how boundaries can improve your relationships, this is a must-read for you. By taking us through how boundaries protect ourselves and our relationships - protect, not harm - Nedra Glover Tawwab provides numerous examples of how to create and uphold systems that prioritize our health and the health of our closest relationships. She also has a workbook to accompany Set Boundaries, some boxed card sets, and a podcast that further digs into boundaries and relationships.
Come Together: The Science (and Art!) of Creating Lasting Sexual Connections by Emily Nagoski
Dr. Emily Nagoski’s first book made a huge splash in the therapy world: Come As You Are: The Surprising New Science That Will Transform Your Sex Life is a refreshing new guide to women’s sexuality that has helped countless women finally feel like they are normal and good just the way they operate sexually. She and her twin sister then wrote about burnout in women’s lives, and now, Emily is back with Come Together, her follow-up to Come As You Are. This couple-focused guide highlights how couples can aim for healthy sex lives that honor each participant’s needs while throwing away cultural ideas of what we think sex “should” look, feel, or be like. The main thesis of the book is moving away from desire as the goalpost (which typically means lots of spontaneous sexual desire) and moving towards sex that is filled with pleasure, whatever that means for you. This book has some great general couple’s information contained within it, making this a useful read from start to finish. Another cool feature of this product is that it was partially inspired by Emily herself becoming the new queen of women’s sexuality with the wild success of Come As You Are and then struggling with her own partner around sex - she is not just writing about this topic from a detached perspective, but she has lived it herself.