Best books marriage counseling
Couples Therapists Give Their Top 10 Relationship-Saving Books
I’m part of a Facebook group of Couples Therapists who ask each other for advice, support, and recommendations.
Recently, one therapist asked,
What are the top books you’d recommend to couples so they can develop the skills to “divorce-proof” their marriage?
They then received litany of responses from professionals all over the world.
What were the most common books recommended? Here’s the top 10:
Dr. Sue Johnson is well known for her development of what is known as Emotionally Focused Couples and Family Therapy (EFT), and she presents this knowldge in her book.
In Hold Me Tight, couples will learn how to nurture their relationships through case studies from Dr. Johnson’s practice, as well as her illuminating advice and practical exercises.
Stan Tatkin is another incredible clinician with his own methodology, known as the A Psychobiological Approach to Couple Therapy (PACT).
We Do helps couples understand the psychological and biological influences on their relationship, featuring numerous case studies, dozens of exercises, and recommendations on how to handle conflict.
If you’re looking for experience, Dr. David Woodsfellow is the therapist for that. He boasts of being a 100% exclusively couples therapist for twenty-four years, with over 25,000 hours of couples therapy helping more than 1,500 couples save their marriages.
In Love Cycles, Fear Cycles, the focus is on turning couple’s negative cycles back into positive cycles. By continuously moving towards greater levels of positivity, couples ensure the success of their relationship.
Debra Fileta is a relationship counselor whose career can only be described as prolific: the author of Choosing Marriage and True Love Dates, she’s also the host of the hotline style Love + Relationships Podcast and has a popular relationship advice blog, TrueLoveDates.
com.
Love in Every Season focuses on the phases of a relationship that almost every partnership goes through. Recognizing the patterns of each season and understanding how to navigate each one with intention is vital to the health of your relationship.
For a more religious perspective, feel free to turn to Alistair Begg: the senior pastor of Cleveland’s Parkside Church, the voice behind the Truth for Life Christian radio.
In Lasting Love, Alistair lays out the theological foundations for marriage and shows what he calls “God’s blueprint” to make marriages sturdy and vibrant.
Dr. Willard F. Harley, Jr. is a nationally acclaimed psychologist and marriage counselor with a quite a few enlightening books: Five Steps to Romantic Love; Surviving an Affair; Draw Close; and He Wins, She Wins.
In His Needs, Her Needs, Dr. Harley identifies the 10 most vital needs of men and women, and says that husbands and wives make their marriage sizzle by satisfying those needs in their spouses.
Like Dr. Sue Johnson and Stan Tatkin mentioned previously, Harville Hendrix and Helen LaKelly Hunt are pioneers in their fields and have their own relationship methodology that they founded with the Imago Institute for Relationship Therapy.
Getting the Love You Want focuses on resolving the power struggle that prevents greater intimacy and teaches partners to learn how to really listen to each other.
Terrence Real is the founder of the Relational Life Institute and you’ve probably seen him on Television or heard him on the radio espousing the best relationship advice.
In The New Rules of Marraige, Real notes that while women in the last twenty-five years–they have become powerful, independent, self-confident, and happy, many men remain irresponsible and emotionally detached. Woman now have the power to transform her marriage and men have it in them to rise to the occasion.
If you’re truly looking to “Divorce-Proof” your marriage, you might need to be prepared for your biggest fear: infidelity.
In Not “Just Friends,” Shirley P. Glass, one of the world’s leading experts on infidelity, draws on more than two decades of original research and hundreds of clinical cases to provide a step-by-step guide through the process of infidelity — from suspicion and revelation to healing.
It seems that in almost every episode of The Learn to Love Podcast, somebody mentions the work of John Gottman. The nation’s leading research scientist on marriage and family, professor of psychology at the University of Washington, and cofounder of the Gottman Institute, Dr. Gottman knows a lot about what makes relationships succeed and fail.
The culmination of his research can be found in these seven principles that guide couples on a path toward a harmonious and long-lasting relationship.
So, there you have it. Did we miss any books, what do you think? Comment below.
17 Best Marriage Counseling Books
Dr. Emily Cook presents the same strategies that she has used in her private practice to help couples work through common issues.
The book is divided into easy-to-follow sections. It starts with having you identify strengths and problem areas. You then examine the issues beneath the surface that tend to impact your problems.
The second part of the book includes eight steps for building a stronger bond. The individual steps include tips for effective communication, exploring intimacy, and building trust.
Check Price on Amazon
If you struggle to address marital problems without anger, blame, or frustration, you may want to try the advice in this book. It is built for highly reactive couples.
The author relies on dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) to change the ways that couples deal with their challenges.
This approach helps change behavioral patterns that negatively impact your relationship. You learn how to avoid repeating the same actions that tend to lead to arguments.
4. 201 Relationship Questions: The Couple’s Guide to Building Trust and Emotional Intimacy
Check Price on Amazon
The outline of this book is simple.
It includes 201 questions that are intended to help you and your spouse explore each other’s feelings.
As you work through the questions, you will uncover intimate details about your spouse.
Do you ever feel disrespected? How do you define unconditional love? These are the types of questions that you and your spouse will ask each other.
While the concept is simple, the questions can draw out deeper emotions and address potential problems before they arise.
5. No More Fighting: The Relationship Book for Couples
Check Price on Amazon
Are you tired of fighting? This book may help.
It includes strategies for tackling the problems that tend to trigger arguments in your relationship.
This marriage counseling book includes 52 relationship challenges that you complete during 20-minute weekly exercises.
The book offers clear instructions for each challenge along with supportive guidance to encourage you to keep working on your relationship. Instead of escalating the tension, this book may help diffuse it.
6. The Power of Two: Secrets to a Strong and Loving Marriage
Check Price on Amazon
Full of helpful advice and strategies, this book helps improve your conflict-resolution skills.
The techniques covered in the book are designed to address the differences between you and your spouse. It allows you to dig deeper into the issues that tend to lead to arguments or disagreements.
Instead of constantly arguing, you can learn how to effectively communicate your feelings.
You will also explore strategies for comprising when dealing with common marital problems and overcoming the most sensitive issues.
7. The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work
Check Price on Amazon
Based on years of research, the author of this book has compiled seven principles that define a happy marriage.
You can learn what it takes to succeed in your relationship and address a variety of problems.
No matter if you are dealing with issues related to money, sex, religion, work, or family, this book has strategies that you can use. The tips and methods are practical and easy to follow.
More Related Articles:
15 Actions To Be A Better Lover
17 Of The Best Self-Help Books For Women
23 Of The Best Relationship Goals To Nurture Intimacy
8.
Mindful Relationship Habits: 25 Practices for Couples Check Price on Amazon
Instead of providing a step-by-step guide for strengthening your relationship, this book focuses on helpful habits that you can implement.
The authors teach you how to be a more mindful spouse by responding to your partner’s needs instead of reacting negatively to his or her actions.
The 25 positive relationship habits are clearly outlined. Everything discussed in the book is backed by research, ensuring that these habits really work.
9. Couples Therapy Workbook: 30 Guided Conversations to Re-Connect Relationships
Check Price on Amazon
If you feel that your relationship is over, read this book first. It includes 30 guided conversations designed to help you deal with the most challenging marriage problems.
The goal of this guide is to bring you and your spouse back together emotionally. The format helps you dig deep into your relationship, covering everything from family values to empathy and emotional intimacy.
10. Married Roommates: How to Go from a Relationship That Just Survives to a Marriage That Thrives
Check Price on Amazon
Do you ever feel as if your spouse is more of a roommate than a romantic partner? This book is written for those who feel unfilled or lonely in their marriages. It includes tips for bringing up your feelings with your spouse.
The simple-to-implement strategies are built to strengthen communication and increase appreciation for each other. It also covers conflict resolution techniques, making it a good read for couples who tend to fight frequently.
11. Communication in Marriage: How to Communicate with Your Spouse Without Fighting
Check Price on Amazon
Couples who fight frequently may benefit from the strategies in this guide.
The authors are a husband-and-wife team. They have created a simple guide with real examples of common situations and actions that often lead to arguments and fights.
You can see the good and bad habits that improve or hurt communication between couples. Exploring the chapters in this book may help you uncover the causes that tend to trigger your fights, allowing you and your spouse to communicate feelings without arguing.
12. Healing Your Marriage When Trust is Broken: Finding Forgiveness and Restoration
Check Price on Amazon
It is often difficult for a marriage to recover from a major betrayal. In this book, the author details her own journey to forgiveness after discovering that her husband had multiple affairs, was addicted to pornography and fathered a child with another woman.
If you feel that your spouse has betrayed your trust, this book may offer the insight needed to repair your marriage.
13. I Do! A Marriage Workbook for Engaged Couples
Check Price on Amazon
Couples who communicate their feelings and desires are more likely to stay together, which is the purpose of this book. It includes detailed exercises for engaged couples before they tie the knot.
The book includes seven chapters with exercises that focus on specific relationship topics, including intimacy and beliefs. The exercises help you and your partner learn more about each other’s true emotions and goals.
14. Getting the Love You Want: A Guide for Couples: Third Edition
Check Price on Amazon
Written by leading marriage therapists, this guide explores intimacy concerns to help couples grow closer. Through a series of practical steps, you will learn how to revive the romance in your marriage.
The exercises included in this book are intended to eliminate negative reactions so that you and your partner can focus on each other’s needs.
15. The 5 Love Languages: The Secret to Love That Lasts
Check Price on Amazon
The advice presented in this best-selling marriage workbook may help you and your spouse develop more intimacy. The author recognizes that staying in love is a challenge for many married couples and provides a step-by-step guide for rekindling the love in your relationship.
Reading this book may help you reflect on what your partner means to you. This understanding should lead to a deeper, lifelong commitment.
16. Eight Dates: Essential Conversations for a Lifetime of Love
Check Price on Amazon
The goal of this book is to strengthen your marriage with multiple date nights.
The book includes step-by-step instructions for communicating the things that matter most to you in your relationship. You and your partner will go on eight dates to discuss specific topics.
The eight date nights help you and your spouse discuss intimate matters including trust, money, conflict, sex, adventure, family, spirituality, and dreams. It is a simple guide that tries to add a little more excitement to the typical marriage counseling process.
17. The Normal Bar: The Surprising Secrets of Happy Couples
Check Price on Amazon
If you tend to feel that your relationship problems are unusual, you may find solace in this book. It presents findings from polls and surveys from over 100,000 real couples. Reading other people’s answers to questions about marriage may help you feel more normal.
The book is mostly comprised of statistics and responses from couples.
It does not include strategies but may give you more insight into the normalcy of your relationship, helping you see that you are not the only one going through these issues.
How to Choose the Best Couples Counseling Books
The 17 recommended marriage counseling workbooks provide effective tips and solutions for dealing with common marital problems.
From a lack of communication to fighting about money, the issues these books cover address the most common and challenging areas of discontent and disconnection.
When looking for the right counseling book, examine the descriptions and chapter titles. Read the author bios and learn what they want to achieve with the book. Try to find a book that addresses the specific issues that you face.
Ignoring a problem is not a solution. If you can’t go to marriage counseling right now, these books are excellent resources to help you start repairing your marriage.
Books on family psychology.
TOP-5 books according to the Genesis Publishing House +7(495) 682-60-51 +7(495) 682-54-42
registration
GENESIS
Everything for a practicing psychologist
LoginRegister
- Main
- Blog
- Books on family psychology. TOP-5 books according to the Genesis Publishing House
The psychology of relationships is one of the most significant topics for many people. These are interpersonal relationships, and of course family relationships, love, marriage.
Books on family psychology will be interesting and useful to all those readers who want to understand the problems, as well as to establish and maintain emotional closeness, harmonious relationships and a good atmosphere in their family.
Author: S.K. Nartova-Bochaver, K.A. Bochaver, S.Yu. Bochaver
Item information:
S.K. Nartova-Bochaver - Doctor of Psychology, Professor, National Research University "Higher School of Economics"
K.A. Bochaver - Candidate of Psychological Sciences, Associate Professor of the Moscow Institute of Psychoanalysis, Leading Expert of the Association of Interdisciplinary Medicine
S. Yu. Bochaver – Candidate of Philology, researcher at the Institute of Linguistics of the Russian Academy of Sciences
The book discusses topical issues of organizing the family's living space: territory, time regime, possession of family and personal belongings. The right of every person to privacy is argued. The life and development of the family system are considered from the point of view of building and violating personal boundaries. Typical conflicts that arise between parents and children, husbands and wives, and other family members are analyzed.
The book is equipped with exercises on self-knowledge and self-diagnosis.
The book is addressed to practical psychologists and other professionals, as well as to a wide range of readers interested in strengthening family values.
Buy
Author: A.Ya. Varga
Item information:
AND I. Varga - Candidate of Psychological Sciences, Head of the Department of Systemic Family Psychotherapy of the Institute of Practical Psychology and Psychoanalysis.
The book outlines the rules for the functioning of the family system, provides examples of compiling genograms and their analysis. The description of numerous cases from practice illustrates and complements the theoretical provisions. The family is considered here as a social system, as a complex of elements and their properties that are in dynamic relationships and relationships with each other.
The book will be of interest both to specialists and to everyone who is interested in psychology and psychotherapy, questions of family relations.
Buy
Author: E. Glozman
Item information:
E. Glozman - family psychotherapist, supervisor and teacher of family psychotherapy, psychologist-educator, EMDR (EMDR) therapist.
The author offers the reader specific advice and recommendations for reviving emotional intimacy in the family.
The book is intended for parents who think, doubt and are ready to work on relationships in the family. Consistently analyzing their own attitudes and line of behavior, the reader will have the opportunity to become an active participant in family psychotherapy: to see the family scenario, the specifics of marital relations in marriage and relationships with children, learn how to properly resolve conflicts and quarrels and overcome stressful situations. Special techniques, exercises and practical examples will help you understand how to build relationships with loved ones and make them more trusting.
The book is intended for parents, for those who want to establish and maintain harmonious relationships in the family.
Buy
Author: C. Whitaker, O. Napier
Item information:
K. Whitaker - MD, famous American psychiatrist, one of the founders of family therapy
O. Napier - a student of C. Whitaker
If anyone has psychological problems, then first of all it is necessary to look at his family with an experienced professional look - perhaps it is there that you can find both the sources of problems and the means to overcome them. The book "Family in Crisis" is unique in that, using the example of working with one family (wife, husband, children), it outlines the basics of family therapy and at the same time analyzes the psychological mechanisms of intra-family interaction.
For over 25 years, the book has been not only a professional bestseller, but also an interesting and intelligent read, as gripping as a good novel.
The book is intended for professionals in the field of psychotherapy and psychological counseling, for couples - potential clients of family therapists, as well as for all who are interested in psychology and good relations between family members.
Buy
Author: I. Mlodik
Item information:
I. Mlodik - Candidate of Psychological Sciences, existential psychotherapist, chairman of the Interregional Association of Psychologists-Practitioners "Simply Together"
Our relationship with children exactly copies the relationship with our "inner child", which, in turn, repeat the model of adults' attitude towards us when we were children ourselves. And if parents during their childhood did not adequately live a certain age, did not solve some important age-related task, then they most likely will not allow their children to do this ... Unless, of course, they do not engage in self-study and work out something which for some reason they failed to do at the time.
The book is about just that.
The psychological part is supplemented by a fictional story, which is conducted on behalf of the child and makes it possible to imagine what he could tell adults if he knew how to express his thoughts.
The publication will be interesting for both parents and grown-up children trying to figure out their lives.
Buy
Books on family psychology have always been and will be in demand by readers - both specialists and a wide audience - whether it be a husband or wife who wants to strengthen a marriage; parents who are trying to establish contact with their children or all family members interested in maintaining family values.
Return to section
Popular articles
"Body projector" and "Shadow projector" - psychological meaning and possibilities of using sets
10 Essential Books on Autism Spectrum Disorder
Recall the novelties of "Genesis" for 2020!
6 basic books for every novice psychologist - What to read on vc.
ru The list was compiled by Maria Danina, candidate of psychological sciences with 16 years of experience in psychological practice, founder of the online school "Psychodemia". For more immersion in the topic, read 5 myths about the practice of a psychologist.
13 747 views
"Individual and family psychological counseling", Yulia Aleshina
Beginner and aspiring practicing psychologists often have unrealistic ideas about how counseling works. Books on the theoretical foundations of counseling often do not pay enough attention to the most basic ideas about how the professional and the client communicate. This book will help you understand how psychological counseling works from the inside.
“Initial consultation. Establishing Contact and Winning Trust, Sarah Fine, Paul Glasser
One of the basic conditions for an effective counseling process is to establish a strong working alliance with the client.
Without this essential ingredient, it is impossible to achieve lasting change in the life of the person who seeks help. Sarah Fine and Paul Glasser's book focuses on how to develop a relationship with a client that will form a solid foundation for future work.
Anatomy of therapeutic communication. Basic skills and techniques. Textbook, Konstantin Yagnyuk
If psychological counseling were taught from books, then this one would undoubtedly become one of the main ones in the training of specialists. The works of Konstantin Yagnyuk are always distinguished by special thoroughness and methodical elaboration of all even the most basic ideas. The skills necessary for the helping practitioner to work effectively are analyzed in detail, as well as tasks for their independent development.
"Psychoanalytic Diagnosis: Understanding Personality Structure in the Clinical Process", Nancy McWilliams
One of the most popular, read and cited books on psychotherapy, which is definitely worth reading for any aspiring psychologist, regardless of the approach and direction in which he plans to work.
The book gives a very detailed and specific analysis of how the personality functions, as well as a description of the various personality traits of people that a psychologist can meet in the waiting room.
“Psychotherapy. Theory and practice”, Elena Sokolova
Although contact and the therapeutic relationship is an essential component of successful work with a client, the psychotherapeutic theories and methods used by the counselor are equally important. The textbook will help to understand what current theories are used by practicing psychologists, to systematize knowledge about the factors in the development of psychopathology and the choice of treatment strategies suitable for the client.
"The main directions of modern psychotherapy", collection
An equally interesting and informative review of current trends in counseling and psychotherapy can be found in a collection written by a team of authors. Each of the members of this team is a recognized expert in Russia in the direction he writes about.
