Reddit mentions of Couple Skills: Making Your Relationship Work

It really depends on what the issue is. For me, I had to figure out how to feel my emotions and communicate them without waiting until the box I stuffed them into exploded and burst out all my crazy. Three books I used back in the day were Couple Skills, Try to See it My Way and When Anger Hurts Your Relationship. But more realistically, it was just practice and therapy that did it for me.

I don't claim to be the greatest at it still, but I'm way better than I was. I credit my SO for having the patience of a saint to us still being together, rather than my emotional skills. Otherwise, I would have been smothered in my sleep years before I learned how to open my mouth and say words like a damn adult.

You're welcome.

This is the kind of knee-high I was thinking of: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Playtex-Womens-Support-Twinpack-Knee-High/dp/B00M6CZE0G

And these are the thigh-highs: https://www.pantyhoseandmore.com/thigh-highs-c2/playtex-perfect-elegance-20-denier-thigh-highs-save-25-p1557

So you don't need to have any special lingerie or clip on to anything/no pinching/cheap as chips so if they run you're not out much.

I do recommend that you take yourself to a counsellor BEFORE trying anything really new in bed, simply to work out everything you're thinking and feeling BEFORE you get naked and then the stakes are a lot higher. This is true for just about anything...BDSM, toys, cock-and-ball torture, etc...and it's a good habit to get into regardless. If you have a good handle on what you are thinking and you've sorted out your emotions on all the topics you've brought up, other than "NOBADZOMG" or similar, it will be easier for you to identify what your needs are and communicate them to your husband in a tactful, respectful, and unambiguous way. It will also make it easier for your husband to communicate with you.

Re: confidence, something that WILL happen to you as you recover your confidence and begin to assert yourself more is that your husband will challenge you, or may unintentionally try to sabotage your forward progress. This doesn't mean that he doesn't love you or want you or want you to succeed....but you are making big changes to you, which means you are making big changes to your relationship, and those kinds of changes are hard. Your own brain will fight you (as I'm sure you know all too well), so extend that to him trying to cope with the changes and it's pretty much a straight line from that to "his brain will fight the changes too." You are seeing it now, with your conflict about sex. This is completely 100% normal and is another reason to get outside support....solo counselling and couples counselling.

Re: witty comment and feeling sorry for himself: this is also something to bring up with the counsellor. Tread VERY carefully here...the witty comment is a deflection meant to take the sting out of the words you said (even though what you said is valid), and the feeling sorry for himself is an indication that even though your needs and feelings are valid, it still hurts for him. This doesn't mean that you should not keep communicating, but it does mean that the part about tact and respect are super-important in this case.

One last thing...there's a book called Couple Skills that I cannot recommend highly enough. It's written for intimate partners, but I have used the communication skills I have learned from it to deal with family members and at work and it's been really helpful in all cases.

https://www.amazon.com/Couple-Skills-Making-Your-Relationship/dp/157224481X

This book is not fluffy-bunny feel-good nonsense. It is carefully written and based on communication skills that have been demonstrated to work and to improve the quality of communication between partners (not just quantity but quality). It shows examples of clean communication, one step at a time, and for it to benefit you, both of you need to approach it in good faith and both of you need to actually DO the work. Something I personally like is that the book gives story-examples of couples working through problems with the various techniques, and the couples are explicitly Not All The Same. There are couples who are explicitly young, explicitly well into their 60s, same-sex couples, couples with small children, couples with names that suggest they are not white people from the US (which means that the authors have paid careful attention to cultural nuances, which is very important for clean communication), etc.

Seriously, good luck.

OK, so I'm not married, and this is something that I'm afraid of. I'm a chick, so here's what I, as an unmarried 20-something, crave. (This is also confirmed by several relationship advice books.)

Affection. Be affectionate. Show affection. Tell her you love her. Cuddle. Hold her hand in public. If you're too busy chasing kids, squeeze her hand in the grocery store, whatever. Kiss her in the kitchen and tell her you love her while you guys are doing dishes. Make sure she knows that you appreciate her. Pause other activities to tell her you love her, that you appreciate that she cooked. Do the silly affectionate things you did when you were first dating.

But try to carve out 40 seconds here or there to hug her, kiss, her, and make sure she knows you love her, several times a day. Little things make a huge, huge difference.


As for books, we liked this and this. The first book (Couple Skills) elaborates on what I wrote above. We thought was helpful even before we were fighting. But we were also unmarried and had slightly conflicting values, so it might be different.

Let me know how this goes. I'm curious for both altruistic and selfish reasons.

Couple skills by Matthew McKay. It also has a lot of good info that also applies to general communication. My therapist a few years ago recommended it, my ex wouldn't go to counseling or read it but I liked it. Im not saying it's miraculous but it helped me.

http://www.amazon.com/Couple-Skills-Making-Your-Relationship/dp/157224481X/ref=cm_lmf_tit_14