I am not even close to reaching my goal of reading one book per month this year. Can you believe it’s already August? We have been a bit busy on other projects. However, I did just finish a book that I thought warranted a review. It’s called Helping Couples: Proven Strategies for Coaches, Counselors & Clergy, by Drs. Les & Leslie Parrott and Dr. David H. OIson (published in 2021 by Zondervan).
I had a hard time putting it down. I finished it in a few hours. I highly recommend it if you do any work or research with couples. Even if you don’t, if you are married or contemplating marriage, this book holds value for you and your mate.
These authors may sound familiar to you. They are all famous authors and researchers. They have appeared on The Today Show, Oprah, Good Morning America, and more venues. They have all developed reliable, validated assessments for premarital and marriage counseling.
While some may think of them as competitors in the marital assessment market, they worked together to provide us with a brief history of how marital and couple therapy research got started, as well as provided a plethora of information about working with couples from an evidence-based perspective. Their book is graced with humility, as they share the information they have learned through their collective years of research, yet I never got the impression they were “tooting their own horn,” so to speak.
Drs. Parrott and Olson are giants in the field of premarital and marriage counseling, and even bigger giants as it pertains to research. They started researching couple therapy in the 1960s and 1970s, and haven’t stopped since. They are what we call scholar-practitioners, meaning they built a solid practice based on years of research. Over half a million “marriage champions” (I like that term), and over five million couples have been studied over the years to contribute to the information found in this tiny, but mighty, little book.
Helping Couples is just six chapters long, in addition to an introduction and conclusion. It’s only 141 pages and an easy read. The actual text ends on page 113. That’s because there are so many studies referenced in the text, they needed twenty pages to include them all in their Notes. Twenty pages of references! Many of the studies they conducted with their own teams of colleagues, but they also reference other important researchers and practitioners that have contributed valuable information to our field. They claim they did not write a comprehensive book, and it wasn’t meant to be. But it seems to me their research is pretty exhaustive.
Here are some highlights you will find in the book Helping Couples, in random order.
- Lots of quotes by theologians, authors, counselors, philosophers, and more to supplement the text. One of my favorites was this quote by G. K. Chesterson: “Do not free a camel of the burden of his hump; you may be freeing him from being a camel,” (as it pertains to your relationship being unique.)
- Descriptions of various components of the SYMBIS (Parrots) and PREPARE/ENRICH (Olson) Programs. Both have value, depending on your particular style and interest. Also, both require training and certification to use with couples. Using the right assessment is critical in your work with couples. (I am a certified facilitator and trainer of facilitators for PREPARE/ENRICH, so it was helpful to learn more about SYMBIS.)
- Interesting stories from their early days of counseling. My favorite story was told in Chapter 6 by Dr. Olson. I literally gasped and then laughed out loud while I was reading in the café. He wrote about the first time he ever did couples therapy. No one had done it before, as person-centered and psychoanalysis with individuals were the therapeutic models. Yet, here they were working with a married couple in the same room at the same time. It’s not just the novelty of the first experience. He provided a little background on the couple, which is quite intriguing given their personal issues. I won’t spoil it for you, but it is worth the read.
- A good reminder of Gottman’s Four Horses of the Apocalypse. One of more of these “caution flags” inevitably precede a divorce. The presence or absence of these can predict marital success or failure at a 90% rate.
- A chapter on intimacy, which is the emotion in the marriage. The authors report that “intimacy is the number one predictor of happiness–or unhappiness–in a marriage.”
- Information on empathy. Couples need empathy for one another. When we move from “I” language to “we” language we begin to work together rather than against each other.
- The 31% factor. You can help a couple reduce their chances of divorce by 31%. It’s proven time and again in the research.
- A stage set for helping couples find lasting love, not just love.
I could go on, but I’ll stop there for now. I recommend this book to anyone who is in the helping business. Whether you are clergy, coaches, counselors, or marriage and family therapists, YOU are a marriage champion! Thank you for the work you do. Helping Couples is written for you.
Leave a comment below and let me know what you think. Be sure to tell me if you pick up the book, and what you think of it after you read it. You can purchase it on the Prepare/Enrich website for $9.00. Click this link to go to their store.
À la prochaine…hasta la próxima vez…until next time!