Need Recommendations?
Not everyone needs to start in the same place! Drop me a message and let me know where you are struggling the most or what you were searching for when you landed here and I’d be happy to help you pick where to start.
There are so so many great resources and I promise some will hit closer to home and have a far greater impact than others.
Book Recommendations for Couples
The links below are all books, audio books, and podcasts that have greatly helped me understand relationship dynamics, heal old wounds, and find new ways to connect to my partner. I hope that you enjoy them and find them as useful as I have!
Resources to build better relationships by understanding the components that play a role in relationship dynamics.
A great place to start your journey. The work of Dr. Fisher represents a wide range of concepts and tools that he has developed over the last 20 years to help couples. He is the creator of the Fisher Relationship Coaching Academy that I did my training in.
This is one of the first books my marriage therapist recommended to me. Read this for the scientific studies alone. The section on how when we feel emotionally close and supported our physical wounds heal faster was actually amazing. The concept that we do not need to be two complete and whole people before we enter a relationship but that being in a committed relationship actually supports us to be better, build bigger, take bigger risks, this is well worth the read or listen.
So much of what we do revolves around how you and your partner “feel” love. The 5 love languages are the basis for this type of connection and a great place to help you understand your own as well as your partners love language and will help with the concept of filling each others love buckets.
The day the light clicked on and I realized that I had no idea what the different types of intimacy were, how to define them, and how to nurture them I found this book. It has changed every relationship in my life from my marriage to my kid and friends. A great all around read to understand the basis and types of intimacy we can bring to our relationships.
Attachment theory answers so many of my questions. From how they talk about the childhood experiences that formed who we are and how we show up in our relationships to the idea that it is completely normal that two people with different attachment styles end up together and how we can work towards finding secure attachments and ultimately have better relationships.
What is the feeling and the message behind the words. How many times have you been triggered by someone for something they say to you when they are asking for something they need? Its about hearing the feeling and the message behind the words. Great great resource for learning how to really hear the feelings people are trying to share with you, even when their words may fail them!
This is just one of those books you need to read, it has practical examples of how we can love each other better and how we can build connections to one another. I really love his concept of the four E’s!
If you haven’t heard of Esther Perel you have not been doing your relationship homework. The concepts she brings, the light she shines on how we have created this fantasy about how our romantic partner is also supposed to be everything else to us and how that expectation of closeness kills intimacy and desire… A must read.
Book Recommendations for Men
Its all about growth, individually and in our relationships. The following resources have been a big part of my personal journey towards becoming the man I knew I needed to be but didn’t know how to be. I don’t fully subscribe to all of them but they all have some amazing insights into what it is to be a man in this world, how we can learn to be the best versions of ourselves, and what our feminine partners need from us.
Growing up in the 80’s I couldn’t agree more with this book. The concepts that we as young boys are taught to trade emotional intimacy for membership into the “boys club” and mostly just not get our asses kicked. Justin talks about how as men we can be better, we can learn to connect to our emotional side again and build better relationships. LOVE this book!
John Kim! I found John early in my journey, his no nonsense way of of talking about relationships, how to be a man, how to grow, and how to get rid of all the bullshit in our lives.
This book is a great read or listen for any man on his journey to be his best self.
What does healthy masculinity look like?
I am a firm believer that we have to re-learn how to have a healthy masculinity in order to have healthy relationships with our feminine partners. This book does a great job at helping find perspective.
Nice Guys Finish Last!
I was given that broken blueprint “happy wife, happy life” a long time ago. I bought it all. What I didn’t realize is that me being “nice” in order to get something in return was creating a toxic relationship in my marriage. I am doing X because I want Y in return. We have all done it, this book teaches you how to stop! Give from your heart, because you want to, and for f*cks sake, stop saying YES when you want to say NO!
What are your terms as a man?
Hold on to your nuts helps you understand how to identify, fine-tune, and start living by your terms as a man. This is a great follow-up to No more Mr Nice guy in that it helps you very clearly understand how terms play out in our life, why they are so important, and helps you find your masculine edge.
Recommendations
By Women
For Women
I am not a woman, shocking for some, so I asked the women in my life who I know are doing their own work for recommendations on resources that will help my female followers grow and learn about themselves, relationships, and how to live the lives of their dreams. If you have others you love, pass them along!
This book helps reader understand their own sexual landscape. What turns them on, the context, “breaks” and “accelerators”.
Invites us to consider how culture informs our beliefs about negative emotions and what if we invited them rather than resisted them?
The author is a female LMFT and uses a psychodynamic approach to help the reader understand the wounds that inform their current patterning.
Beautifully written about the author’s struggle with anxiety and tools she’s gained to help with it.
This book addresses how self abandonment can lead to physiological diseases.