Recommended Reading

Articles

How to Improve your Marriage without Talking

Investing in your Marriage

Towards a Better Appreciation of the "Intimacy" Gap between Men and Women

Do we Marry a Partner of Equal Maturity?

When Aging Parents come back to Us

Books

Books Recommended by Martin Rovers:

Books Recommend by Marlene and Bob Neufeld:

Books Recommended by Judy Kiar

Books Recommended by Martin Rovers:

Martin Rovers wrote this book "for people who want to love and be loved; who want to know where love comes from; how it works; how love can live or die; and especially how to live a fuller loving life with a partner."

Rovers shows how the families in which we were raised continue to influence our relationships long after childhood has ended. This influence can take the form of deeply felt wounds. When love is wounded, how does love get healed?

In order to help readers grapple with this "woundedness," he presents a series of individual-focused and couple-focused therapeutic strategies for emotional growth and health. Communication and self-awareness are the basis of the process in this very readable and highly practical self-help book.

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The Flight From Intimacy: Healing Your Relationship Of Counterdependence -- the Other Side Of Codependency (Ph.D. Weinhold)

Breaking Free Of The Codependency Trap (Ph.D. Weinhold)

Rebuilding: When Your Relationship Ends (Bruce Fisher, Robert Alberti)

After the Affair: Healing the Pain and Rebuilding Trust When a Partner Has Been Unfaithful (Janis A. Spring)

How Can I Forgive You: The Courage to Forgive, the Freedom Not To (Janis A. Spring)

The Relaxation and Stress Reduction Workbook (Martha Davis)

Everyday Opportunities for Extraordinary Parenting (Bobbi Conner)

Books Recommended by Marlene and Bob Neufeld:

Comment by Marlene and Bob:

"This easily read book highlights 5 secrets of lasting love and includes practices to follow this path. It highlights new ways of being committed, being with your emotions, letting go of blame, being creative in your way of living, and expanding your level of appreciation. Using examples from their own experience, which they have kitchen-tested, Drs. Gay & Kathlyn Hendricks offer a comprehensive program to generate passion and harmony in your primary relationships. We have used the activities in the book, to increase the love we express to each other."

Comment by Marlene and Bob:

"This book explores the limit that most of us have on how much love, success and good time we can experience before we unconsciously create situations to bring us down to a more familiar and mediocre place in our lives. Gay Hendricks gives specific suggestions how to expand your capacity to feel positive and achieve your true potential. He uses real life examples to identify the hidden fears that are at the root of this Upper Limit Problem and help us break through these limitations. Learning about this concept, opened up a new way of being together for us. Finally, we understood those fights we used to have which seemed to come out of nowhere, just when we thought things were going well. Using the principles outlined in this book, we have greatly expanded our own limit of how much positive we are able to experience."

Comment by Marlene and Bob:

"This book identifies the major obstacles to intimacy; the ways we have conditioned ourselves to defend against closeness. It also explores a new kind of intimacy that is available when our hearts are opened to the deeper possibilities of conscious relationship. It is helpful to lay readers as well as professionals. This book helped us identify our own identity cracks, those places where we were wounded in our childhood that we were expecting our partners to heal for us. We learned that we are the only ones who can heal our own identify cracks."

Comment by Marlene and Bob:

"In this book which is accessible to the lay reader, Dr. Johnson, the developer of Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy, leads readers through a simple program for creating stronger, more secure relationships. The book outlines seven healing conversations which give you insight into the defining moments in your relationship and guide you in reshaping these moments to create a secure and lasting bond. We learned about our own built-in needs for attachment and the cycle of withdraw-pursue that we had engaged in, which helped us break the pattern and find ways to be closer."

Books Recommended by Judy Kiar:

John Gottman:

Comment by Judy:

What I like about the Gottman books is that they are easy to read and to relate to. His theories are based on observations and interactions with real life couples going through the normal everyday challenges that couples face. He provides exercises for self-discovery and connection with your spouse as well as suggestions on how to strengthen the things that you agree on and negotiate the ones that you don't. Most people seem to recognize themselves in these pages and find strategies for growth. The advice is straight-forward and easy to apply to all relationships.

Harriet Lerner:

Comment by Judy:

I like both of these books because of the way that they describe communication and interaction as a dance with both people contributing the steps. Many times people seem to feel that they are powerless to change difficult relationships. Helping them to identify their part in the dance helps them to connect with their personal power and influence and perhaps to learn new ways to express themselves. As Lerner points out when you change your part of the dance your partner has little choice but to change their part too, sometimes without even knowing they are doing so.

Martha Stout

Comment by Judy:

While disturbing, this book gives a name to those people we read about or sometimes encounter who don't seem to be bound by the same rules of morality as the rest of us. Quite often, when dealing with these types of people we tend to second guess and blame ourselves, largely out of ignorance that someone could actually behave the way they do. The Sociopath Next Door, helps educate the reader that sociopaths really aren't playing by conventional rules and are, therefore, largely immune to pleas for compassion or cooperation.

Sandy Hotchkiss

Comment by Judy:

I have shared this book with many of my clients. Their most typical reaction is to be blown away by its accurate description of someone they are dealing with in their real lives. The book does a good job of describing narcissism, its roots and expression as well as helping the reader build strategies for dealing with narcissists in his/her personal life as well as in the workplace. Hotchkiss helps liberate the reader from trying to reform a narcissist - something that she says is highly unlikely to happen.

Terrence Real

Comment by Judy:

This is a good book that helps unpack male depression as something that reveals itself in different ways than what we typically expect to see, which he identifies as a more female experience. Through the use of personal reflection as well as research findings Real suggests that men frequently mask depression with anger and addictions, as these are more socially acceptable ways for them to express sadness, dissatisfaction and hopelessness.

Comment by Judy:

In this book Real attempts to break down the different communication styles and goals of each sex and how they can get in the way of effective interactions.

Comment by Judy:

I like this book because it looks at the radical changes that have happened in gender roles over the last few decades and how these complicate relationships today. While women have taken on greater education and careers and are spending less time in the home, men's experience has not changed a great deal. They are still compelled to get jobs to provide for their families. However, now with their wives also going out to work and contributing financially, men are being expected to share more in the running of the household and in child rearing. Little in most men's upbringing has prepared them for this and so real life demands bump up against each sex's expectations of what their partner should be and do. A very thought provoking book.

Edwin S. Shneidman

Comment by Judy:

I found this book to be very helpful when working with a client who chose to end her life. Rather than thinking of suicide as a cop-out or selfish act this book clarified for me that suicide is a final response to unremitting pain that seems to have no hope of abating. It helped increase my compassion for people who are suffering from chronic depression or other debilitating illness.