Resources for Struggling Couples
There are hundreds of great resources for your use in improving your marriage.
While there are hundreds of great tools for strengthening your struggling marriage, we've listed some of our favorites below. Be sure to also check out National Marriage Event Calendar to find out about marriage-enhancing events in your local community and online.
Marriages in Distress – Breakthrough
Many couples at various stages of their marriage face times where they feel stuck and are at a standstill in their relationship. The SmartLoving Breakthrough online course helps marriages under stress by working with individual spouses to optimize their interior peace so that they can approach their difficulties from a position of strength and love.
This course will help to:
Identify conflict triggers
Learn strategies to de-escalate an argument
Find constructive ways to re-establish connection
Register for SmartLoving Breakthrough here.
Hope Restored - A Marriage Intensive - Robert Paul
The CDC recorded 630,505 divorces in the United States in 2020. Each figure represents a choice to dissolve a marriage experiencing crisis. But divorce doesn’t have to be the only answer. Where can people turn when their marriage is so broken it feels like there’s no hope?
Marriage Dynamics - Deborah Timson
Nobody gets divorced if they are in love. That profound realization became the thesis upon which marriage therapist and researcher Willard Harley, Ph.D., built his work and eventually became the inspiration for bestselling, His Needs, Her Needs book. Most marriage champions and many lay people interested in marriage and family have at least a passing familiarity with the book’s title and content. In the more than 35 years since it debuted, the book has sold more than four million copies worldwide. The concepts Dr. Harley introduced became the bedrock upon which later experts in the marriage field founded their practices, including the Nashville-based Marriage Dynamics Institute
Discernment Counseling - Dr. Russell M. Berg
People unhappy in marriage often believe their only option is divorce. Once they file, they find themselves on a “divorce superhighway – with no off-ramps or exit signs,” to quote a respected judge in Minnesota. However, thinking about divorce does not have to mean a death sentence for a marriage. A couple can get help to determine the best path for them before making a life-changing decision. There’s a strategy called discernment counseling that provides clarity, allowing couples to move forward with confidence that they have considered all options.
Should I Try To Work It Out - Alan Hawkins
Alan Hawkins, Ph.D., has devoted his professional career to studying family life. A professor in the Brigham Young University School of Family Life, Dr. Hawkins has focused his work on studying and applying relationship education tools to help individuals and couples form and sustain healthy relationships and strong marriages. He served on the National Divorce Decision Making Project, which documented the prevalence of couples experiencing divorce ambivalence and whether intervention affected marital outcomes.
Marriage Coaching - Alan & Autumn Ray
You read the book or attended the marriage conference and came away determined to do things differently, to make your marriage better. But somehow, back in your everyday life, your enthusiasm fizzled, and you slipped back into the same old habits.
Have you ever wondered why it is so hard to make any lasting change in your relationship?
Love Reboot - Jon Anderson
Early January is infamously known as the beginning of divorce season, according to Carl Caton, Founder of the San Antonio Marriage Initiative (SAMI). The first day children go back to school after winter break is the busiest day of the year for divorce filings, he says. Many couples have remained together to get through the holidays, but the stress of the season pushes a shaky marriage over the breaking point.
Saving Your Marriage - David Clarke
Despite the happily-ever-after ending portrayed by Hollywood, successful marriages take work. Sometimes all that is necessary is a communication tweak or more focused time together to set a marriage back on solid ground. But other times the enormity of effort required can feel like climbing Mount Everest.
Whether your marriage just needs a little inspiration or is coming apart at the seams, Christian psychologist, speaker and author David E. Clarke, Ph.D., offers wisdom pertinent to you.
Before You Split - Toni Nieuwhof
Find What you Really Want for the Future of Your Marriage, by Toni Nieuwhof, poses a question on the back cover, “What would it take to leave unhappiness behind instead of your spouse?”
Toni writes from her rare perspective as one who has spent years as a trained family law attorney and divorce mediator while being married to a pastor. Toni remains refreshingly transparent about her past marital difficulties - including the near break up of her own family. Her personal and professional experiences allow her to offer more than the usual insight.
Resources Related to Infidelity
When Trust is Broken - Cindy Beall
It’s a wife’s worst nightmare. Your husband’s confessed he’s been unfaithful. You don’t know how to think, what to do, or even if you can take another breath. Where do you turn for wisdom? Who can you trust with your emotions, your shame, your anger?
Cindy Beall knows just how you feel, because she’s walked down that road herself.
When an Affair is Discovered - Brad & Heidi Mitchell
Nobody enters the world alone. Relationships form the foundation of the human experience. But sometimes the ties that bind begin to chafe, especially between those we love most. Helping couples untangle the knots and strengthen marriage has long been the focus of Christian marriage speakers and authors Brad and Heidi Mitchell, founders of Build Your Marriage ministry.
Resources Related to Sexual Wholeness
BeBroken - Jonathan Daugherty
Brokenness thrives in a sin-sick world. We see marriages fall apart due to infidelity or addictions to sex or pornography. Who steps in to help people heal from these hard problems? Who can be trusted to understand such personal pain and shame?
Be Broken Ministries, founded by Jonathan Daugherty 20 years ago, effectively addresses these very issues with kindness, skill, and the power of the God’s redeeming grace. The organization was born out of Jonathan’s desire to help men, women and families directly impacted by sexual brokenness heal, recover and grow.
Helping a Friend's Marriage
2Restored - George Kenworthy
Many have felt helpless watching a friend or family member struggle in their marriage. George Kenworthy, M.Div., D.Min., feels the same heart tug. As he began pastoring churches, he realized the depth of the need of those experiencing marital difficulties and the passion of his conviction to help. He began training others how to conduct marriage and family counseling in the mid-1970s and in 2006, founded the marriage ministry that became 2Restored based on the best practices he’d developed.