R-E-S-P-E-C-T

May 16, 2019 7:25 AM

I'm looking for books (or maybe articles) to boost my marriage. Specifically, about how to treat my husband and things I can do to set my marriage up for lifetime success.

We've been married for less than a year and generally get along well and have a very loving relationship. But after a silly fight and my shitty ingrained responses, I realize I can be very mean and disrespectful when I feel wronged. Most of my marriage examples growing up were pretty bad, and I default to those bad examples. I feel like I need to get some outside education to change my learned behaviors. And yes, already in therapy.

Unfortunately, most of what I can find is from either a sexist religious standpoint or a feminist standpoint, and I need something more centrist. Not because I think those are inherently incorrect points of view, but because a) I have a tough time reading past the bias so I tend to reject things where the bias is so obvious and b) I have read plenty of both because that's all I can find online. Whatever I get, my husband will probably also end up reading.

posted by DoubleLune to Human Relations (13 answers total)

Nonviolent Communication. I wouldn’t say I thought everything in it made sense or was even reasonable, but it really pushed me to rethink my gut responses when I’m angry. I reframe them as “what is my anger telling me about what I think I need from this person/situation that I’m not getting, and what’s a better way to ask for that?”
posted by sallybrown at 7:28 AM on May 16, 2019

The (fairly standard) Gottman stuff seems neither super feminist nor Christian. The Seven Principles of Making Marriage Work is their main book. It’s helpful (from the perspective of someone who has been married for a while).
Whether you’ll get your husband to read it, well, good luck.
posted by The Toad at 7:40 AM on May 16, 2019 [9 favorites]

Harriet Lerner's The Dance of Connection (which is written later than the Dance of Anger) is a great resource for some of that.

It's dated but one book that really helped me in your situation was Leo Buscaglia's Loving Each Other.

For me it presented a shift in what I had learned growing up, which is that marriage is a dominance battle. And strangely, even though it was about kids and I had none, the principles outlined in Barbara Coloroso's Kids are Worth It! (where she says "you'd never speak to your spouse like...") also gave me quite a bit of ground, and she connects the dots with family styles growing up. (I'd get it from the library and not buy it if you're not sure, and it's mainly the opening chapters.)

This article sums up my so-far 25 year experiment starting from about where it sounds like you're standing: The Secret to Love is Just Kindness
posted by warriorqueen at 7:41 AM on May 16, 2019 [2 favorites]

Gottman's Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work is a frequent recommendation around here. It's centrist, as you put it, and research-based. And it agrees with your instincts that being disrespectful is an extremely damaging pattern to have in a relationship.
posted by Homeboy Trouble at 7:42 AM on May 16, 2019 [6 favorites]

For general advice on making a relationship work, I found the concepts in The 5 Love Languages very helpful. It effectively boils down to the fact that people have different ways they would like love expressed to them. In the parlance of the book, these are the different "languages." The idea is to strive to express love to your partner in their language rather than your language.
posted by slkinsey at 7:43 AM on May 16, 2019

bell hooks’ All About Love helped me approach everything in my relationship from a more loving context and also helped me understand some of my shitty responses through the framework of patriarchy and the ways women have historically been silenced in heterosexual relationships. YMMV but it was a game changer for me.
posted by stellaluna at 8:09 AM on May 16, 2019 [2 favorites]

I have a bunch of links in my profile about the Gottman Institute. The basics of their recommendations are online.
posted by theora55 at 8:15 AM on May 16, 2019 [1 favorite]

I posted an askmetafilter question a few months back looking for a couples counselor. My partner and I have been together for 10 years, but we decided our relationship could be stronger with some help.

We managed to connect with a therapist that uses Emotionally Focused Therapy as described in the book Hold Me Tight. It has made an amazing improvement on our relationship. I don't know how much we would have gotten out of just reading the book, but the counseling has helped us a lot.
posted by elmay at 8:27 AM on May 16, 2019 [1 favorite]

I 100% recommend reading Esther Perel's two books, and listening to her podcast.

The books are about sex in long term relationships ('Mating in Captivity'), and sexual infidelity ('The State of Affairs') -- but don't let either topic put you off, if you don't have a specific issue with sex in your marriage. I think of her books as using the common problem of sex to explore how to craft and sustain respectful, loving, supportive relationships, within which both partners feel valued as individuals and able to grow/change, while still being part of a loving team.

I think she will fit well in the middle ground you are looking for (i.e., not religiously conservative and not explicitly feminist). I also like that her books have a good mixture of thought-provoking ideas, real life examples, and practical solutions.

p.s. a word of warning: the podcasts are veeeery emotional.... Don't try listening to these at work!
posted by EllaEm at 9:43 AM on May 16, 2019 [1 favorite]

Not a book but The Gottman Institute has weekend workshops given by the Gottmans at their home base in Washington State. They also have workshops at sites all over the USA and the world given by certified instructors. We went to one in Michigan and it was phenominal. There were two instructors, lots of reading material, Gottman card deck (there's an app!, and very helpful exercises to practice communication. The exercises were all private--we would go anywhere in the hotel we wanted for a specfic time and the instructors would check in to see if we needed help. I highly recommend it, was very worth the time and money.
posted by waving at 10:48 AM on May 16, 2019

The Mr and I worked with a Gottman counselor when we needed a tuneup and it sounds very much like what you are asking for. The books are good too. We’ve also looked at EFT and Hold Me Tight and will probably do that next (we’re doing ok but both feel another tuneup is in order due to some major life transitions).
posted by matildaben at 5:04 PM on May 16, 2019

By the way, Hold Me Tight also has a video based workshop option that would you let go through it together at home. I would recommend it if you and your partner want to be able to talk (in an open and non-blaming way) about the way your ingrained responses are being triggered. Here are some traditional workshops and here is the video version.
posted by metahawk at 7:03 PM on May 16, 2019 [1 favorite]

Getting the love you want by Harville Hendrix is a bit old (1988) but still relevant today. Very much a 'couples' approach to getting the love you want!
posted by HarrysDad at 10:45 AM on May 17, 2019