9 Books to Read if your Marriage is in Trouble

Books to Read if your Marriage is in Trouble

Like delicate flowers, relationships have a way of dying if not cared for properly. Luckily though, people are more resilient than plants, we have the ability to take charge, to make changes and work for the outcome we want. Even the most committed relationships is bound to go through rough patches. I’ve put together this list of books to read if your marriage is in trouble for those exact circumstances. There’s no shame in working on something you care about. I there has ever been something you should care about, it’s your marriage.

Taking care of yourself is the first step to pretty much anything so while you’re waiting for these books to arrive take a look at my Seven Day Self Care Challenge. This will help you learn to prioritize your self in stressful and trying times.

Anxious in Love

Healthy relationships require trust, intimacy, effective communication, and understanding. However, if you suffer from chronic anxiety you may have trouble dealing with everyday conflicts and tensions that can arise in relationships. No matter how committed you are, anxiety can leave you feeling distanced from your partner. Fortunately, there are steps you can take to overcome the anxiety-fueled reactions that keep you from achieving true closeness in your relationship.

Written by two experts on anxiety disorders, Anxious in Love offers easy-to-use techniques for calming anxieties and strengthening communication in your relationship. With this book, you will learn to stay centered when faced with conflict, understand your partner’s perspective, and become more independent. By changing the way you react to triggers and stress, you will be able to focus on enjoying time with the one you love, without anxiety getting in the way.

Couple Skills

Love takes work, but, when it comes to relationships, it pays to work smarter. Couple Skills, Second Edition, revised and updated from the therapist-recommended classic, will show you how to work smarter in your relationship. You’ll learn to improve communication, cope better with problems, and resolve conflicts with the one you love in healthy and creative ways. Each chapter teaches you an essential skill that supports greater relationship satisfaction and deeper intimacy.

New to this edition is a chapter on using acceptance skills, developed from the revolutionary new acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT). These new approaches will help you to accept your partner’s feelings (and your own emotions) without judgment. Using these techniques will help you decide what you really value in your relationship and then commit to acting in ways that further those values every day.

The Relationship Cure

A groundbreaking, practical program for transforming troubled relationships into positive ones

“This is the best book on relationships I have ever read. . . . John Gottman has decoded the subtle secrets that can either enrich or destroy the quality of our ties with others.” Daniel B. Wile, Ph.D., author of After the Fight: Using Your Disagreements to Build a Stronger Relationship

“John Gottman is our leading explorer of the inner world of relationships. In The Relationship Cure, he has found gold once again.”William J. Doherty, Ph.D., author of Take Back Your Marriage: Sticking Together in a World That Pulls Us Apart

“When he says his five steps will help you build better connections with the people you care about, you know that they have been demonstrated to work.” E. Mavis Heatherington, Ph.D., professor of psychology, University of Virginia

From the country’s foremost relationship expert and New York Times bestselling author Dr. John M. Gottman comes a powerful, simple five-step program, based on twenty years of innovative research, for greatly improving all of the relationships in your life—with spouses and lovers, children, siblings, and even your colleagues at work. In The Relationship Cure, Dr. Gottman:

* Reveals the key elements of healthy relationships, emphasizing the importance of what he calls “emotional connection”
* Introduces the powerful new concept of the emotional “bid,” the fundamental unit of emotional connection
* Provides remarkably empowering tools for improving the way you bid for emotional connection and how you respond to others’ bids

Communication Miracles for Couples

Create lasting harmony and keep love alive with psychotherapist and bestselling author Jonathan Robinson’s powerful and simple methods for effective couples’ communication. For anyone who wants to enhance their relationship by learning to communicate with less blame and more understanding Communication Miracles for Couples will show you how.

In just a few minutes couples will learn to:
Feel totally loved. Never argue again. Get your partner to really hear you. Repair broken trust. Learn the secret of the Acknowledgment Formula.

Originally published in 1997 and continuously in print with more than 100,000 sold Communications Miracles for Couples has helped hundreds of thousands of couples repair their relationships. Whether you are looking to enhance your relationship or are deeply mired in conflict, these techniques can help anyone develop more effective communication with a spouse or partner.

Present Over Perfect

LIVE A LIFE OF MEANING AND CONNECTION
Instead of pushing for perfection

A few years ago, I found myself exhausted and isolated, my soul and body sick. I was tired of being tired, burned out on busy. And, it seemed almost everyone I talked with was in the same boat: longing for connection, meaning, depth, but settling for busy.

I am a wife, mother, daughter, sister, friend, neighbor, writer, and I know all too well that settling feeling. But over the course of the last few years, I’ve learned a way to live, marked by grace, love, rest, and play. And it’s changing everything.

Present Over Perfect is an invitation to this journey that changed my life. I’ll walk this path with you, a path away from frantic pushing and proving, and toward your essential self, the one you were created to be before you began proving and earning for your worth.

Written in Shauna’s warm and vulnerable style, this collection of essays focuses on the most important transformation in her life, and maybe yours too: leaving behind busyness and frantic living and rediscovering the person you were made to be. Present Over Perfect is a hand reaching out, pulling you free from the constant pressure to perform faster, push harder, and produce more, all while maintaining an exhausting image of perfection.

Shauna offers an honest account of what led her to begin this journey, and a compelling vision for an entirely new way to live: soaked in grace, rest, silence, simplicity, prayer, and connection with the people that matter most to us.

In these pages, you’ll be invited to consider the landscape of your own life, and what it might look like to leave behind the pressure to be perfect and begin the life-changing practice of simply being present, in the middle of the mess and the ordinariness of life.

Uninvited

The enemy wants us to feel rejected . . . left out, lonely, and less than. When we allow him to speak lies through our rejection, he pickpockets our purpose. Cripples our courage. Dismantles our dreams. And blinds us to the beauty of Christ’s powerful love.

In Uninvited, Lysa shares her own deeply personal experiences with rejection—from the incredibly painful childhood abandonment by her father to the perceived judgment of the perfectly toned woman one elliptical over.

With biblical depth, gut-honest vulnerability, and refreshing wit, Lysa helps readers:
Release the desire to fall apart or control the actions of others by embracing God-honoring ways to process their hurt.

Know exactly what to pray for the next ten days to steady their soul and restore their confidence.
Overcome the two core fears that feed our insecurities by understanding the secret of belonging.
Stop feeling left out and start believing that “set apart” does not mean “set aside.”
End the cycle of perceived rejection by refusing to turn a small incident into a full blown issue.

One More Try

When doors slam and angry words fly, when things just aren’t working out, and even when your spouse has destroyed your trust, there is still hope. If you feel like your marriage is near the breaking point, or even if you’ve already separated, Gary Chapman will show you how you can give your marriage one more try.

One More Try will help you . . .

Take the next step when blindsided in marriage;
Discover healthy ways to manage frustration and anger;
Effectively deal with loneliness;
Renew hope and trust in your spouse; and
Rebuild your marriage from the ground up.
Distress or even separation do not necessarily mean divorce is imminent. Matter of fact, it’s possible that these may even lead to a restored, enriched, growing marriage. The outcome of this challenging time is determined solely by the individuals involved. If you’re willing to make the most of that process, then begin the journey with confidence as Gary walks you step-by-step towards healing and hope.

Love Busters

How spouses treat each other has a tremendous bearing on the success and failure of marriage. In this completely updated and revised edition of “Love Busters,” Willard F. Harley, Jr., helps couples identify and overcome the most common habits that destroy the feeling of love, including selfish demands, disrespectful judgments, angry outbursts, dishonesty, annoying habits, and thoughtless behavior. Harley also explains how to resolve common marital conflicts such as career choices and financial planning.
You can’t eliminate conflict altogether, but once these “Love Busters” are eliminated, conflicts can be resolved with love and grace. With Harley’s expert guidance, couples will be able to avoid those behaviors that tear a marriage apart and focus instead on building their love for each other. This companion to “His Needs, Her Needs” and “Fall in Love, Stay in Love” is perfect for pastors, counselors, and couples.

The 5 Love Languages

Simple ideas, lasting love

Falling in love is easy. Staying in love—that’s the challenge! How can you keep your relationship fresh and growing amid the demands, conflicts, and just plain boredom of everyday life?

In the #1 New York Times bestseller The 5 Love Languages, you’ll discover the secret that has transformed millions of relationships worldwide. Whether your relationship is flourishing or failing, Dr. Gary Chapman’s proven approach to showing and receiving love will help you experience deeper and richer levels of intimacy with your partner—starting today.

The 5 Love Languages is as practical as it is insightful. Updated to reflect the complexities of relationships today, this new edition reveals intrinsic truths and applies relevant, actionable wisdom in ways that work.

Includes the Couple’s Personal Profile assessment so you can discover your love language and that of your loved one.

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