I’ve been working as a therapist for about 15 years now. I have seen a range of clients who have entrusted me with their mental and emotional health, from the severely mentally ill to folks suffering from relatively normal work stress, from children (as young as 4) to senior citizens (as old as 90!), from individuals who couldn’t leave their home to large families who piled into my office.

Some 10 years ago I realized that my passion, and my best work, was in couples counseling. I gradually shifted away from working with individuals to working mostly with couples and some families. (I still do see individuals to a degree, especially when they are working on relationship issues.)

As I got more into relationship work, I studied various models, read a whole lot of books, found influential couples therapists (that maybe didn’t quite make it to celebrity status), and ultimately discovered my own path. It is not a radically new path; it builds on the work of all those that have come before me. But it is also not exactly the same as those other approaches.

I have spent years now sharpening the practice of communication, which is where a lot of the magic happens for most couples. (A lot of it, but not all of it – I’ll be the first to admit that communication, while critically important, is not the only thing a healthy relationship needs. But it’s a pretty darn big thing.)

The culmination of my work of over a decade now, I am excited to say, is a new book that I’ve just published, called The Couples Communication Handbook: The Skills You Never Learned for the Marriage You Always Wanted.

If you are a frequent reader of this blog, you may have already gone through some of my posts on communication for couples, chiefly How to Get Your Spouse to Listen to You and How to Communicate Better in Relationships, which present a few of the ideas upon which the book is based.

The book has a lot more packed in!

Here are some of the topics we’ll get into:

• What works and what doesn’t work in marital communication
• What to do when you disagree on a principle, on a course of action, or even on the facts of what happened yesterday when you got into that bad argument that went nowhere
• When to try to communicate with each other and when not to
• How to guarantee a failed conversation (and how to avoid that)
• What to do when communication isn’t working
• How to increase positive communication in your relationship

There are also relatable stories (including some juicy failures of my own), clear explanations, and specific directions (including handy phrases you can actually use!). 

And there’s a lot more.

If you are looking for help with communication in your marriage, this is the book for you.

Even if you’re not looking, but think maybe you could use some improvement in this area – still the book for you.

Frankly, unless you believe your communication is as good as it could possibly be and there’s no way it could be any better, and it’s inconceivable that your marriage could be any better than it is – I’d wager you can gain something from this book. Possibly a lot of things.

Not convinced? No problem. You can check out the first two chapters for free! They’re available for download (as a PDF or audio mp3!) at www.thecommunicationbook.com (along with other helpful articles about communication and relationships).

I encourage you to check it out! I am pretty confident you stand to gain from it. And if you do, please help me help others by leaving a review on Amazon, telling your friends, and spreading the word however you can!