Why Marriage Help Books Don't Always Work

A quick search on Amazon shows over 50,000 different marriage help books. If we conservatively estimate the average length to be 50 pages or so, that amounts to about two billion words.

While numerous couples have benefited from the advice, some of these books contain, just because something is in print doesn't mean that it shouldn't be taken with a pinch of salt.

The truth is that there are good marriage help books out there, and some people find them very helpful before going to marriage counseling or in addition to marriage counseling. This article isn't intended to persuade you to never buy any marriage help books; it's just illustrating problems inherent to some marriage help books in an effort to help you avoid making ineffective purchases or read material that can’t necessarily help you with your specific set of challenges.

Publishers and authors focus on book sales

Putting out a book is an expensive process involving numerous people, all of whom expect to get paid at some point. One way to ensure that this happens is to have a professional family therapist with a national reputation use their training and experience to write a truly excellent book that will end up becoming a bestseller through offering useful, actionable advice.

There are other ways to boost book sales, though, and not all of them have the reader's best interests at heart. Aggressive marketing, misrepresenting the contents of a book or the author's credentials, and plastering false testimonials on its cover are tactics used by the less ethical portion of the publishing industry.

Besides that, some authors only care that someone buys the book, and not necessarily that they utilize the advice or tools within it. As soon as you pick up that book, they have cash in their pocket, whether the book helps you or not. Can you imagine if, when you signed up with your marriage counselor, you paid for all of your counseling sessions in one lump sum before you sat on the couch? By the nature of the arrangement, a marriage counselor has an ongoing interest in the success of the process, not just getting you in the door.

You don't need to be licensed to write a book

Not everyone who writes a self-help book is qualified to do so. That's because you don't need a license to write a book. Many publishers will publish marriage help books written by licensed and possibly practicing marriage counselors because people are more likely to buy a marriage help book by someone with letters ahead of or behind their name. However, degrees or licenses aren't required to write a book where they are required to practice counseling.

Further, as mentioned above, some publishers will misrepresent authors by crediting them with credentials they once held or have since expired. Another classic move is to give vague credentials that don't apply. A "Dr. wrote the book," but they don't tell you that the author has a doctoral degree in business, or some field unrelated to psychology/law.

Further, while degrees don't expire, the knowledge base that earned them can become outdated. If someone isn't working in their field and keeping up to date on advancements and changes in the field, reading a book by someone who got their degree in the seventies can be like reading a book that came out fifty years ago.

If you're in doubt about picking up a marriage help book, choose a book that has received good reviews on a credible platform or that has been recommended to you by someone whom you know and trust. If you're in doubt about the author of a book, don't buy it until you've looked at the author's LinkedIn page or their professional website to see if they are someone worth listening to or if they’re just in it to make money.

Many marriage books don't age well

As mentioned above, publishing a book isn't something that happens overnight. Most books, even books on marriage counseling, run out of author mills - publishing houses that churn out cheap books with minimal editing – and take at least a couple of months to go into production. Any decent book on the topic will take much longer for the author to research and write, not to mention the editing process. This is especially true because a good marriage counseling book will be written by a busy marriage counselor rather than someone who can devote the whole day to writing.

Now, suppose a decent marriage counseling book takes two years from the pen hitting the paper to the book hitting the shelf. In our rapidly advancing technical age, most of us lead drastically different lives now than we did two years ago. In two years, our lives will have changed again. That's part of the reason why Regain promotes marriage counseling, and it's part of the reason that Regain updates their articles so frequently. Print can't keep up to the break-neck speed at which our lives change.

If you need marriage counseling, you need a marriage counselor who can think, adapt, and cope with life at the rate that your life changes. No book can do that.

Marriage help books are often written from a particular perspective

Many of these books are written from a specific religious viewpoint or somehow assume that the reader cultural or societal assumptions with the author.

While there's nothing wrong with this per se, not making this clear at the outset means that anyone reading them will be addressed as if they have a certain kind of background, even if this is far from the truth.

There are considerable differences in the conventions and values of different groups of people and even more so between those of individual couples, meaning that that which is useful and appropriate in one situation may not be in another. 

This is another great reason to look up the author before you buy a book - you want to make sure that they are coming from a place that you can understand and applies to you. Don't just read the title; read the subtitle, the reviews, and the back of the book. If you're buying the book online, most retailers will let you read the introduction, forward, or first chapter. Take advantage of all of this before spending your money.

You also need to be careful of marriage help books written exactly from or from your perspective. You might run into the opposite problem: If the book seems like it's written about you, it might not have anything to teach you. It might not include anything that you haven't already tried or which you haven't already thought to do.

A kind of variation of books written from a particular viewpoint is the problem of books based only on case studies. These books often ignore the entire body of knowledge that professional therapists have built up over decades in exchange for the body of knowledge that the author may have accumulated over the case or a limited number of cases that the author explores. In this case, the advice that the book presents may be perfectly suited to one couple in twenty but pointless or even counterproductive in the majority of cases.

Reading a book can become a bad substitute for real action

There are at least two essential aspects of improving a good marriage or repairing an ineffective one: knowing what's lacking and doing what's needed. It's often the first part that causes problems with the second part. When a relationship doesn't feel like it's as strong as it should be, it's easy to feel like something wrong can put us in problem-solving mode.

Most marriage help books take this assumption as well, but it isn't always the case, and when it's not the case, operating under that assumption can be harmful. Much of the time, the relationship isn't weak because something's wrong, but something is missing. And if you try to fix a problem that doesn't exist, it doesn't only miss the point; it can create new problems that weren't there before.

A good book on relationships may help determine the first part of that equation; however, if nothing is wrong, the book can't help you, and if something is wrong, you probably already know what it is. Knowing what's missing is much more difficult, and that's where the therapist can fill a role where a book just can't.

The latter part of the problem, what to do about the problem, is the one that takes courage and effort to achieve. The gap between theory and practice can be immense, and the most a book can do is make a few suggestions about approaches and exercises you and your partner can apply. Going for therapy, by contrast, is a more immersive process where your counselor can help guide you in the right direction, rather than going around in analytic circles without ever doing anything.

Going beyond marriage help books

As discussed above, this article shouldn't scare you away from all marriage help books. All it should do is help to steer you towards the right marriage help book for you.

That being said, the title of this article is still true. Marriage help books don't always work. That might not be just because you've purchased a bad book. Your relationship might need a bit more help than that book can offer.

If your marriage has been navigating troubled waters, no book can be a suitable substitute for real counseling from a licensed practitioner. With online therapy platforms like Regain, you can book sessions with your counselor at convenient times, and even text them directly if you need help in the moment. There’s no need to miss out on work, family time, or social engagements to attend an in-person therapist’s office; with online counseling, you can meet with your therapist from your home, office, or any location with a secure internet connection.

Online therapy has helped many people who have been having relationship difficulties. In studies that have evaluated the differences between face-to-face and videoconferencing modalities for couples therapy, researchers have found no significant differences between the two forms, and that people seeking both types of treatment experience positive changes in relationship satisfaction and simultaneous reductions in symptoms of stress, anxiety, and depression.

Takeaway

Many people find excellent guidance from marriage self-help books in the form of concepts, mantras, or case studies. That said, a living, breathing relationship with an online therapist can help you build upon a relatable concept, explore your unique marital concerns, and track progress regarding how your efforts are either working or hindering your journey. When you’re ready, you can reach out to Regain to add a professional, empathetic licensed therapist to your support network.