In 1986 I wrote His Needs, Her Needs: Building an Affair-proof Marriage, to help spouses identify and learn to meet each other's most important emotional needs. Six years later I wrote its companion book, Love Busters: Overcoming Habits That Destroy Romantic Love, to help couples avoid hurting each other.
Then, a year later, I wrote 5 Steps to Romantic Love, a workbook to help couples complete the assignments in the chapters of the first two books. It includes contracts, questionnaires, inventories, and worksheets that I've used in my counseling practice.
When couples read these books, answer the questions at the end of each chapter, and complete the assignments found in 5 Steps to Romantic Love, their love for each other is restored, and their marriage becomes terrific. Hundreds of thousands of couples from scores of countries are happily married today because they followed the advice I give in these books.
But the advice I offer must be followed. We all know what it takes to lose weight — decrease food intake and increase exercise. All that's needed to be slim and trim is to follow a program of moderate eating and exercise. It's all about motivation. Follow the program and you lose weight.
My program of marriage recovery is exactly the same as most weight loss programs. Whenever it's followed, the marriage recovers. I know of no other program of marital recovery that can make that claim. In fact, if you follow the advice of most marriage recovery programs today, your marriage is not likely to recover. That's why a 1995 Consumer's Report survey found marriage counseling to be the least effective form of psychotherapy. Only 16% found the experience to be helpful.
While waiting for these three books to be delived to you, complete the Emotioal Needs Questionnaire, Love Busters Questionnaire, and the Marital Problem Analysis that that can be downloaded free of charge from tthis website. They will tell you where to start so that you can get right to the heart of your issues.
For those who complete my program of marital recovery, 100% find the experience to be more than helpful — it solves their marital problems. But just like in dieting, the successful outcome depends entirely on motivation. Only those who are not motivated enough to complete the program fail.
So, if you find yourselves failing to follow this program because you need encouragement, or have questions along the way that should be addressed before you can continue, I have created a second program that includes coaching to help motivate couples to follow and complete the lessons of His Need, Her Needs, Love Busters, and Five Steps to Romantic Love.