Elise Loehnen is the host of Pulling the Thread, the author of the New York Times bestseller On Our Best Behavior, and co-author of True and False Magic: A Tools Workbook with Phil Stutz. She has co-written twelve books, five of which were New York Times bestsellers.
At Oprah Daily she tagged nine titles that "offer actionable and thoughtful guidance for all sorts of marital distress, from healing from infidelity to getting your spouse to load the dishwasher correctly." One book on the list:
A Good Apology, by Molly Howes, PhDRead about the other books on the list.
Good marriages don’t escape conflict—instead, they endure during harder times because the partners are capable of making a repair. Typically, this is a skill that must be developed: Making amends is not something we’re necessarily equippedto do from birth, which makes psychologist Molly Howes’s guide particularly essential. A Good Apology explores workplace tension, social justice, and friendship as well—effectively anyplace where we might cause offense, or find ourselves affronted, including at home. What Howes ultimately coaches is how to listen without rushing for redemption. “On any scale, the skill of listening to and honoring someone else’s experience can be challenging,” she writes. "When a patient of mine was telling her husband about how he had hurt her, he kept giving her explanations. She finally said, ‘You don’t get to talk. I’m simply hurt.’…She later told me, ‘It took him two days to see that I didn’t want him to say “I’m sorry.” I wanted him to know how it feels to be me.’” To that end, Howes advocates a multi-step process during which attempts for repair must be “grounded in their experience.” This takes the following retorts right off the table: I’m sorry, but; I’m sorry if; I’m sorry that; It’s not my fault; I didn’t mean it; I’m sorry that you see it that way; and vagueness. And thus begins the road to repair and relational resilience.
--Marshal Zeringue
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