Book/therapy recommondation for couples

Emotionally focused therapy for couples has been around for several decades. There is a ton of research behind it, showing it's very effective. "Research studies find that 70-75% of couples move from distress to recovery and approximately 90 percent show significant improvements," according to this website.

So why am I just hearing about it now?

I just read Dr. Sue Johnson's book, Hold Me Tight: Seven Conversations for a Lifetime of Love, and my husband is now reading it too. We've just ended a short relationship with a marriage counselor and we tried marriage counseling back not too long before we found NoFap. Neither of those counselors helped much and, in some ways, made things worse. At least in my opinion. I am very much looking forward to finding a new counselor trained in EFT!

There are also EFT marriage retreats. The prices vary, but I checked on one and it was much, much more reasonable than the cost of the Gottman Institute retreats.

Has anyone else read the book, gone to an EFT trained counselor or gone to a retreat? I'd love to hear about it! So far, I absolutely LOVE what I've learned about it. It makes so much sense to me and it really fits with the patterns we've struggled with in our 13 years of marriage.

 

I hear you. We've had two mediocre therapists who didn't really help that much and, in the second case, made things worse in some ways. There's always going to be that human factor with therapists, some have more training and experience, and not every therapist clicks with every client, personality wise. Still, I'm hopeful the EFT method will take at least some of the variability out of finding a good therapist. It is scary though! It's so expensive and I've heard some pretty bad stories of therapists! On the other hand, I've also had some excellent individual therapists so I'm hopeful there are good marriage therapists out there too.

 

Did you work through the questions/exercises in the book with your husband or just tell him about it? I thought about working through the book with my husband but I was afraid we wouldn't be able to keep ourselves from the demon dialogues and the protest polka, especially in some of the more difficult topics.

 

That's awesome!

 

The beginning is history. First whole chapter. It gets MUCH better!

I considered that but decided we needed the help of a counselor so we don't fall into the same patterns while reading the book and doing the exercises. We decided to read separate and then do EFT counseling. However I've heard from one spouse who said working through the book with her husband (she read and explained and they did the exercises.) worked for them. The book said get a therapist if there's abuse or addiction.

 

Great to know!! I was planning to email. Maybe I'll call, we'll see.

 

Oh duh, that was Anna who said that in this thread! LOL

 

How interesting to meet an EFT trained therapist at nofap. Just out of curiosity, what's your history with porn? Are you a PMO addict yourself?

This is an anonymous forum so a lot of people will probably prefer not to answer.

 

I found the part in the book that I referenced the other day.

The book "is not for people who are in abusive or violent relationships, nor for those with serious addictions or in long-term affairs; such activities undermine the ability to positively engage with partners. In those instances, a therapist is the best resource."

I don't think that means, for sure, that you and your wife, or another PMO addict and spouse, couldn't read the book together and benefit. But what happened with you guys, starting the book and running out of steam to keep up with it, is another reason I decided I didn't want to go that route. Without scheduled therapy appointments I guessed that life would probably get busy and we'd be tired and next thing you know we'd put off reading the book forever.

Anyway, I just ran across that text on my kindle app and thought I'd share what the book says exactly.

 

I don't know of any other EFT books but I thought "Sex Addiction: A partner's perspective" was good. It's for partners of sex addicts but does also mention porn.

 

I'll start with celebrity status thing first.

I'm glad our story can help people. To inspire and motivate and point people in the right direction. But we are flawed humans, both of us. You know, right, that my husband recently relapsed, twice, after a year and a half? And I haven't journaled about it in the main forums yet (just the SOS group) but things got to a crisis level where my husband started telling me I should just leave and that it would be easier to give up. I bottled up my emotions until one night I threw my brand new phone directly into a wall (screen protector shattered but did its job) and screamed at him that I'd like to physically hurt him. So we definitely have our struggles, especially for a while there. Things are a little bit better currently but we haven't really been able to address the scary stuff (relapse, phone hurling, ect.) so we're waiting until we establish with a new marriage counselor in a few months. (After we move.)

Point being, this is hard. Really, really hard. It takes a lot of time and effort on both partner's parts. And mistakes WILL be made.

That last bit is the bright part. Don't make a decision when you're in crisis. On it not working for you guys to read through the book together (because momentum to keep doing it was lost), I urge you to think about this more.

You say:
You two have trouble communicating + you weren't able to successfully finish reading the book together = time to give up. (I assume you mean on the book.)

I think you have come to the exactly wrong conclusion.

Just because it didn't work to read the book together doesn't mean you should give up. Clearly you two need help communicating, so rather than giving up, try to find something that does work. Some options, off the top of my head.
1. Try reading the book together again. Maybe once you get past the first part you'll get into it.
2. Try reading the book on your own, and talking to her about it.
3. Ask her if she will also read it separately. (Something that has worked for us is to purchase the digital version so we can both read it on our phones with the kindle app.)
4. Find an EFT counselor.
5. Find a different type of counselor. (Just keep in mind that if you don't click, move on to someone else. Same with #4)
6. Go to an EFT retreat.
7. Go to a different type of marriage retreat.
8. Try finding a different book. My husband and I started reading a Gottman book together and we never got into it and didn't finish. This one is much better, in my opinion, but different things work for different people.
9. Go to your wife, hug her, tell her you are sorry and that your marriage is a priority to you. Talk about your next move.

I'm not very active here anymore (a bit more recently but I'm not sure if I'll keep that up or not) so I haven't read your journal or anything. So I may be suggesting things you have already tried or that you are already doing. Don't mean to step on toes. I just wanted to address the give up thing.