Here are some recommended readings for anyone who wishes to strengthen their relationship. These links are to our Amazon Affiliate program, so if you might be interested in purchasing these books, you may click the links below to do so.
The Hold Me Tight Workshop is based on this book. It is highly recommended that you read the book before attending the workshop. Sue Johnson makes available to a wide audience the insights of her many years of work with couples. It provides a roadmap, complete with exercises, for having the conversations with our partners we often don’t know quite how to have, conversations that explore our relationship patterns, guide us in healing old hurts and in strengthening our bonds.
In Love Sense, Sue Johnson provides an in-depth look at the science behind our current understanding of love and attachment. She has a gift for presenting complex and extensive research findings in an understandable and usable way.
Wired for Love is a book by innovative couple therapist Stan Tatkin, who combines attachment theory, modern neuroscience, emotion regulation and a wonderful sense of playfulness to help couples find their way to a more secure bond. He provides a path to “rewire our brain” for love rather than for conflict and insecurity.
John Gottman has likely spent more time researching couple functioning than anyone else on the planet and has done years of groundbreaking work. Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work is an accessible and usable guide to his findings.
Resurrecting Sex takes a gentle, instructive and normalizing approach to couples who are experiencing difficulty in their sexual connection.
Brene Brown has extensively researched compassion and vulnerability. Her TED talks are among the most viewed of all TED talks (and also highly recommended). Daring Greatly is a wonderful book on how developing the courage to be vulnerable can transform our lives and relationships. It is very compatible with the work of the Hold Me Tight Workshop, which stresses how being vulnerable with our partners is the path to connection.
An affair can be one of the most devastating and traumatic wounds a relationship can suffer. Yet, when partners want to move beyond this hurt and heal their bond, relationships can and do recover. After the Affair provides a roadmap for this recovery process, written by a nationally known expert in working through the aftermath of infidelity.
Reptiles in Love is full of strategies to help couples end cycles of destructive conflict by understanding the way that our more primitive brain structures are activated by marital conflict and how to shift our responding to other parts of the brain.
Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy for Trauma Survivors is a book written for therapists that discusses couple therapy in the special case where one or both partners carries the burden of a traumatic history. The vulnerability that we all feel in relationship is heightened by such past wounds, and even greater emphasis is needed on understanding the legacy of this pain and on making the relationship a safe place.