Several great books have been written on couples sex therapy. Preview them here:
by Stan Tatkin
“What the heck is my partner thinking?” is a common refrain in romantic relationships, and with good reason. Every person is wired for love differently, with different habits, needs, and reactions to conflict. The good news is that most people’s minds work in predictable ways and respond well to security, attachment, and rituals, making it possible to actually neurologically prime the brain for greater love and fewer conflicts. Wired for Love is a complete insider’s guide to understanding your partner’s brain and enjoying a romantic relationship built on love and trust. Synthesizing research findings on how and why love lasts drawn from neuroscience, attachment theory, and emotion regulation, this book presents ten guiding principles that can improve any relationship. The no-fault view of conflict in this book encourages readers to move past a “warring brain” mentality and toward a more cooperative “loving brain” understanding of the relationship.
By John M. Gottman & Nan Silver
John Gottman has revolutionized the study of marriage by using rigorous scientific procedures to observe the habits of married couples in unprecedented detail over many years. Here is the culmination of his life’s work: the seven principles that guide couples on the path toward a harmonious and long-lasting relationship. Packed with practical questionnaires and exercises, The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work is the definitive guide for anyone who wants their relationship to attain its highest potential.
Intimacy & Desire: Awaken the Passion in Your Relationship
by David Schnarch
In Intimacy and Desire: Awaken the Passion in Your Relationship, Dr. Schnarch explains why couples in long term relationships have sexual desire problems, regardless of how much they love each other or how well they communicate. Through case studies of couples he worked with, Dr. Schnarch shows why normal marital conflict can be the cause of desire problems and creates a roadmap for how couples can transform marital conflict into a stronger relationship and a font of new and powerful desire for each other. He takes it a step further, giving readers simple but effective exercises that will help them reconnect with each other.
Mating In Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence
by Esther Perel
One of the world’s most respected voices on erotic intelligence, Esther Perel offers a bold, provocative new take on intimacy and sex. Mating in Captivity invites us to explore the paradoxical union of domesticity and sexual desire, and explains what it takes to bring lust home. Drawing on more than twenty years of experience as a couples therapist, Perel examines the complexities of sustaining desire. Through case studies and lively discussion, Perel demonstrates how more exciting, playful, and even poetic sex is possible in long-term relationships. Wise, witty, and as revelatory as it is straightforward, Mating in Captivity is a sensational book that will transform the way you live and love.
Getting the Love You Want: A Guide for Couples
by Harville Hendrix
Originally published in 1988, Getting the Love You Want has helped millions of couples attain more loving, supportive, and deeply satisfying relationships. The 20th anniversary edition contains extensive revisions to this groundbreaking book, with a new chapter, new exercises, and a foreword detailing Dr. Hendrix’s updated philosophy for eliminating all negativity from couples’ daily interactions, allowing readers of the 2008 edition to benefit from his ongoing discoveries during his last two decades of work. Harville Hendrix, Ph.D., in partnership with his wife, Helen LaKelly Hunt, PhD., originated Imago Relationship Therapy, a unique healing process for couples, prospective couples, and parents. Together they have more than thirty years’ experience as educators and therapists and their work has been translated into more than 50 languages, with Imago practiced by two thousand therapists worldwide. Harville and Helen have six children and live in New York and New Mexico.
By Bill & Ginger Bercaw
If your relationship, including your sex life, stayed EXACTLY the way it is now for the rest of your life, would you be satisfied? If you can’t quite answer “absolutely,” you have lots of company. In fact, it has never been harder to be a couple than it is today: The strong currents of modern life are taking a huge toll on relationships, leaving many couples drifting slowly from each other. How would we know? Well, not only do we see this every day in our work with couples at our office, we regularly come face to face with these distance-creating currents in our own, thoroughly modern marriage. We have drawn on our marital and clinical experience to develop a new treatment model created to lead couples like you — and like us — on a powerful yet efficient journey toward rekindled passion and connection. The exercises we’ve chosen for this book focus squarely on improving your Living Room (emotional intimacy) and Bedroom (sexual intimacy) connection. The resulting positive feedback loop between the two rooms of your relationship is what we call CoupleFlow™, which is a stronger, brighter, more resilient and more passionate partnership that is more than capable of facing the many challenges posed by our crazy-busy, tech-bombarded, running in a million different directions culture.
Hold Me Tight: Seven Conversations for a Lifetime of Love
by Sue Johnson
Heralded by the New York Times and Time magazine as the couple therapy with the highest rate of success, Emotionally Focused Therapy works because it views the love relationship as an attachment bond. This idea, once controversial, is now supported by science, and has become widely popular among therapists around the world. In Hold me Tight, Dr. Sue Johnson presents Emotionally Focused Therapy to the general public for the first time. Johnson teaches that the way to save and enrich a relationship is to reestablish safe emotional connection and preserve the attachment bond. With this in mind, she focuses on key moments in a relationship-from Recognizing the Demon Dialogue to Revisiting a Rocky Moment-and uses them as touchpoints for seven healing conversations. Through case studies from her practice, illuminating advice, and practical exercises, couples will learn how to nurture their relationships and ensure a lifetime of love.
The New Rules of Marriage: What You Need to Know to Make Love Work
by Terrence Real
In this revolutionary book, Terrence Real shows women how to master the new rules of twenty-first-century marriage by offering them a set of effective tools with which they can create the truly intimate relationship that they desire and deserve. He identifies five non-starters to avoid and shares practical strategies for bringing honesty, passion, and joy back to even the most difficult relationship. Women have changed in the last twenty-five years–they have become powerful, independent, self-confident, and happy. Yet many men remain irresponsible and emotionally detached. They don’t know how to respond to frustrated partners who just want their mates to show up and grow up. The New Rules of Marriage will introduce you to a radically new kind of relationship, one based on the idea that every woman has the power to transform her marriage, while men, given the right support, have it in them to rise to the occasion. The New Rules of Marriage shows us how to fulfill this courageous and uncompromising new vision.
Erotic Intelligence: Igniting Hot, Healthy Sex While in Recovery From Sex Addiction
by Alexandra Katehakis, MFT
“When you’re brave enough to surrender and take responsibility for joining with your partner, you experience a depth of connection that far surpasses the chemical rush of any sexually addictive exploit. Erotic sex makes sex addiction look like child’s play because it requires the maturity and responsibility for oneself and mutual caring for each other that only an adult can muster. Erotic Intelligence is a resource that any couple can use together to know themselves and each other better, towards the goal of creating and maintaining a rewarding sex life.” – Alexandra Katehakis
“Erotic Intelligence provides couples healing from the pain of sexual addiction with a roadmap to re-write their sexual story, from one of betrayal, to one of healing, and finally to one of vibrant erotic sex.” – Stefanie Carnes, PhD, CSAT; Author of Mending a Shattered Heart: A Guide for Partners of Sex Addicts.
Mirror of Intimacy: Daily Reflections on Emotional and Erotic Intelligence
from Center for Healthy Sex
Increase your sexual potential to connect on a deeper level with your mate. This book is for anyone with a desire for more loving relationships and greater self-love. Mirror of Intimacy contains a year’s worth of daily reflections that explore and support the range of human sexualities as a divine gift and a human right. The reflections reference a rich array of approaches: attachment theory, mind/body nexus, neurobiology, 12-step principles, meditation techniques, Eastern and Western philosophy, and ancient world myths.