16 Best Love & Romance, Self-Help Books

From celebrity life coach and motivational speaker, Tony Gaskins Jr. and his wife, Sheri, comes an essential guide with hard-hitting truths about a woman’s undeniable influence on a relationship–and the power she has to change her man for the better.

Tony Gaskins has inspired others by sharing his truth–drawing millions of followers online and making him one of America’s foremost experts on love and relationships. Now, he and his wife explore a woman’s positive impact on a relationship in this practical and accessible guide that walks you through a series of irreplaceable lessons on making personal changes that foster healthy relationships. Tony and his wife, Sheri, draw on their own relationship successes and failures as they examine the eighteen time-tested truths about how a woman’s influence can shift a relationship for the better–if used correctly.

Including advice for women such as “you are not a maid,” “show don’t tell,” and the “72-hour rule”–where the woman makes herself totally unreachable to her partner–Tony and Sheri tackle all of today’s important topics such as misogyny and the “grown boy syndrome,” while never losing the empowering and empathetic tone that Tony’s loyal following has come to love and trust.

Whether you are single, dating, engaged, or married, A Woman’s Influence is a hopeful response to a culture where men behave badly and women are victimized all too often. By providing a vision that empowers women to know their worth and simultaneously bring out the best in men, this guidebook can help you make a lasting, positive change to your relationship.

Alan and Lisa Robertson, members of America’s favorite back woods family and the Duck Commander Clan, take on the topic of relationships as they share the secrets that saved their marriage.

Infidelity, deceit, distrust, and shame. Unfortunately, these are recurring themes in many of today’s marriages in America–even in the family-values-promoting, Christian-based Robertson family.

With a romance that began in junior high, the couple got off to a rocky start but soon settled into married life and had two baby girls. Alan became a pastor in the church where his family had been members for years. Then, when Lisa had an affair, the heartache and the tension was very public.

But this is not a book about a marriage gone wrong. It is a candid story of rescued love and renewed commitment. After nearly getting divorced, Alan and Lisa came to terms with what went wrong in their marriage and both began the hard work of making it right. Now married for twenty-nine years, Alan and Lisa counsel couples in trouble and speak across the country–openly sharing their hardships, their journey to renewed commitment, and a thriving marriage.

The author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Think Like a Monk offers a revelatory guide to every stage of romance, drawing on ancient wisdom and new science.

Nobody sits us down and teaches us how to love. So we’re often thrown into relationships with nothing but romance movies and pop culture to help us muddle through. Until now.

Instead of presenting love as an ethereal concept or a collection of cliches, Jay Shetty lays out specific, actionable steps to help you develop the skills to practice and nurture love better than ever before. He shares insights on how to win or lose together, how to define love, and why you don’t break in a break-up. Inspired by Vedic wisdom and modern science, he tackles the entire relationship cycle, from first dates to moving in together to breaking up and starting over. And he shows us how to avoid falling for false promises and unfulfilling partners.

By living Jay Shetty’s eight rules, we can all love ourselves, our partner, and the world better than we ever thought possible.

Power couple Marlo Thomas and Phil Donahue have created a compelling and intimate collection of intriguing conversations with famous couples about their enduring marriages and how they have made them last through the challenges we all share.

What makes a marriage last? Who doesn’t want to know the answer to that question? To unlock this mystery, iconic couple Marlo Thomas and Phil Donahue crisscrossed the country and conducted intimate conversations with forty celebrated couples whose long marriages they’ve admired–from award-winning actors, athletes, and newsmakers to writers, comedians, musicians, and a former U.S. president and First Lady. Through these conversations, Marlo and Phil also revealed the rich journey of their own marriage.

What Makes a Marriage Last offers practical and heartfelt wisdom for couples of all ages, and a rare glimpse into the lives of husbands and wives we have come to know and love. Marlo and Phil’s frequently funny, often touching, and always engaging conversations span the marital landscape–from that first rush of new love to keeping that precious spark alive, from navigating hard times to celebrating triumphs, from balancing work and play and family to growing better and stronger together. At once intimate, candid, revelatory, hilarious, instructive, and poignant, this book is a beautiful gift for couples of every age and stage.

Featuring interviews with:

Alan and Arlene Alda * Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick

President Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter * James Carville and Mary Matalin

Deepak and Rita Chopra * Patricia Cornwell and Staci Gruber

Bryan Cranston and Robin Dearden * Billy and Janice Crystal

Jamie Lee Curtis and Christopher Guest * Ted Danson and Mary Steenburgen

Viola Davis and Julius Tennon * Gloria and Emilio Estefan

Michael J. Fox and Tracy Pollan * Chip and Joanna Gaines

Sanjay and Rebecca Gupta * Mariska Hargitay and Peter Hermann

Neil Patrick Harris and David Burtka * Ron and Cheryl Howard

Jesse and Jacqueline Jackson * Elton John and David Furnish

John and Justine Leguizamo * LL Cool J and Simone I. Smith

Melissa McCarthy and Ben Falcone * John McEnroe and Patty Smyth

Mehmet and Lisa Oz * Rodney and Holly Robinson Peete

Letty Cottin Pogrebin and Bert Pogrebin * Rob and Michele Reiner

Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelos * Al Roker and Deborah Roberts

Ray and Anna Romano * Tony Shalhoub and Brooke Adams

Judges Judy and Jerry Sheindlin * George Stephanopoulos and Ali Wentworth

Sting and Trudie Styler * Capt. Chesley “Sully” and Lorrie Sullenberger

Lily Tomlin and Jane Wagner * Judith and Milton Viorst

Judy Woodruff and Al Hunt * Bob Woodward and Elsa Walsh

Harville Hendrix has illuminated the paths to loving, long-lasting relationships in his New York Times bestsellers Getting the Love You Want and Keeping the Love You Find. Now, with coauthor and wife Helen LaKelly Hunt, he brings us to a new understanding about one of the most complicated issues facing couples today:
Receiving Love
Many men and women know how to give love, but many more undermine their relationships by never having learned how to accept it. We don’t always realize the ways in which we reject appreciation and affection, help and guidance from our romantic partners. And, according to Hendrix and Hunt, until we are able to understand the meaning behind our behavior, our relationships stand to suffer. Ask yourself:
Are you reluctant to tell your partner what you really want or need?
When you do get what you’ve asked for, do you still feel dissatisfied?
Is it difficult for you to accept kind gestures, gifts, or compliments from your partner?
If you answered yes to any of the above, this book is for you. With Receiving Love, you can learn how to break the shackles of self-rejection — which likely began in childhood, when our caretakers unintentionally failed to nurture us — and embrace real intimacy. Drawing on their renowned expertise, the wide clinical experience of Imago therapists, and their own personal experience as a married couple, the authors offer detailed, sensitive advice on how to turn a relationship between two well-meaning yet misunderstood individuals into a true, everlasting partnership.

A straightforward, day-by-day plan for healing heartache in one month from the star of ABC’s popular daytime drama One Life to Live

Day 1: It’s over. You’re devastated, numb, angry, lost, hurt, helpless, hopeless, shaken — meanwhile, the source of your grief has the arrogant nerve to still be alive. He’s probably having himself a perfectly good day, while you feel as if you’re dying inside.

Catherine Hickland knows. She’s been there. More than once. She also knows that soon you will get past your pain and on to the great life that’s waiting for you. Inspired by the soap diva’s own trial-and-error efforts to recover from a broken heart in a healthy and productive way, The 30-Day Heartbreak Cure is an easy-to-follow, one-day-at-a-time plan for getting yourself over him and back on your feet. All you need to do is set a deadline — one month from today — for your pain to end, and let Catherine guide you through it.

Catherine’s solid, empathetic advice will help you take responsibility for your recovery, repair your self-esteem, and learn from the best and the worst of what you’ve been through. “Look at it this way,” she says, “you only have to follow these rules for thirty days. There’s nothing you can’t handle for thirty days, except feel like you’re feeling today.”

Each day brings a new reflection and a simple activity that will help you look better, feel better, and ultimately discover that you’re not just as good as new thanks to this experience, you are better.

Enjoyable sex: it’s not about technique or a perfect body or being hopelessly, passionately in love. It’s about Sexual Intelligence.

In his three decades of working with couples and individuals as a sex therapist and marriage counselor, Dr. Marty Klein has continually seen that although most people say what they want from sex is pleasure and closeness, that’s not what they focus on during sex. Instead, we’re preoccupied with how we look, what our partner is thinking, how we’re performing, and whether we’re “normal.” We do more thinking, worrying, and judging than experiencing. Sex like that can’t thrill us, can’t create intimacy, and can’t, well, feel sexy.

In Sexual Intelligence, Klein shows how to stop observing ourselves during sex, ending our obsession with sexual performance and sexual normality. “I don’t help people ‘function’ better during sex,” he says. “I teach people how to relax and enjoy sex with the body they have, the partner they have, in the situation they have.” Now that’s something we all want: fulfilling, exciting sex at every stage of our lives.

In Sexual Intelligence, Klein challenges our understanding of sex, love, intimacy, romance, and satisfaction. After all, sex isn’t just an activity. Change the way you think about sex, and you can change your sex life–forever.

A comprehensive and intimate guide to finding, keeping, and enjoying love after fifty, the best kind of love there is.

Studies keep showing that love after fifty is more satisfying than at any other stage in life, and it makes sense: at this stage, you are more emotionally stable and more focused on the present; you know what you absolutely have to have, but also what you can live without; partnering is no longer about building family and fortune–it’s about sharing intimacy as grounded individuals. And sex isn’t pass/fail anymore, but about becoming erotic friends.

So, if this is the promised land, how do you get there?

In Love After 50, journalist Francine Russo interviewed the best experts in the field and dozens of couples to help show the way. Her “practical, excellent guide” (John Gottman, author of The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work) includes advice like:
-How to recover from the emotional damage of divorce, the grief of widowhood, or a history of unfulfilling relationships
-How to build realistic requirements for a partner
-What attitudes to bring to dating
-How to overcome the psychical challenges of sex and embrace your erotic selves
-How to evaluate the financial, emotional, and practical results of marrying, living together, or living apart
-How to deal with (hostile) adult kids to safeguard your relationship and family

Love After 50 is “essential reading” (Pauline Boss, PhD, author of The Myth of Closure) that is not only practical but also unassuming and candid. It is full of real people’s stories (including the author’s), with vivid examples of couples who have overcome their pasts to form healthy and nurturing partnerships. In other words, it’s as real as love after fifty can be.

“Harvey offers surprising insights into the male mentality and gives women strategies for taming that unruly beast.”
—Philadelphia Inquirer

“Women should listen to Steve Harvey when it comes to what a good man is about. Steve Harvey dispenses a lot of fabulous information about men.”
–Aretha Franklin

The #1 New York Times bestseller from the new guru of relationship advice, Steve Harvey’s Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man is an invaluable self-help book that can empower women everywhere to take control of their relationships. The host of a top-rated radio show listened to by millions daily–and of cable TV’s The Steve Harvey Project–Harvey knows what men really think about love, intimacy, and commitment. In Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man, the author, media personality, and stand-up comedian gets serious, sharing his wealth of knowledge, insight, and no-nonsense advice for every good woman who wants to find a good man or make her current love last.

Now in paperback, The Gaggle captures the zeitgeist of today’s “post-dating” world where instead of traditionally dating, women find love by cultivating a “gaggle” of men.

AMBIGUOUS TEXTS.

SUDDEN BLOWOFFS.

CONFUSING HOOKUPS.

MIXED SIGNALS.

THIS DOESN’T HAVE TO BE YOUR LOVE LIFE.



IN THIS GROUNDBREAKING DEBUT, based on nationwide interviews with women and men, Jessica Massa leads you through today’s post-dating world, where the rules of sex, dating, and relationships have completely changed. The Gaggle is the ultimate guide to finding love in the modern age.

From the New York Times bestselling author of Unfu*k Yourself comes tough-love that explains what makes relationships work: you taking responsibility to fix yourself.

“Love is patient, love is blind. . .” Until it’s not. Then what?

No matter how much advice we get or how much work we do on our “stuff,” nothing ever seems to make the difference. The truth of it is, you’re woefully ill-equipped for one of the most life-defining things you will ever take on–being in a committed relationship.

Whether you’re currently in one, want to be in one, half in-half out, getting over one, married, single, separated, divorced, or just overwhelmed with the whole thing, let’s cut through the morass of relationship schtick and put you back in charge. No flowery BS, no woo-woo strategies, systems, or techniques, just real talk, for real people who want a real relationship in their life that actually works.

Three of Dr. Laura’s Ten Stupid Things audios, all on CD and in one box.

Three of Dr. Laura’s very popular backlist titles available for the first time on CD in a box set, Ten Stupid Things Women Do to Mess Up Their Relationships, Dr. Laura uses real-world examples to take a clear-eyed look at self-damaging behavior and helps you move to a quality existence.

Ten Stupid Things Men Do to Mess Up Their Relationships, Dr. Laura speaks her mind on: Stupid Chivalry; Stupid Independence; Stupid Ambition; Stupid Strength; Stupid Sex; Stupid Matrimony; Stupid Husbanding; Stupid Parenting; Stupid Boyishness; Stupid Machismo.

Ten Stupid Things Couples Do to Mess Up Their Relationships: addresses the problems men and women face in finding peace, joy and self-fulfillment in relationships. This audio offers the sort of hard-nosed advice that made Dr. Laura a star.

Previously published as Marry Smart and now updated with a new foreword responding to the controversy that followed its initial release, this is the unvarnished truth about marriage, motherhood, and happiness from the “Princeton Mom.” Says James Taranto of The Wall Street Journal, “Every smart young woman should seriously consider Susan Patton’s commonsense advice. Sure, it’s controversial–but only because it’s so vital.”

A graduate of one of the first classes of women at Princeton University, Susan Patton has heard smart young women admit they aspire to marriage and motherhood but have no model for pursuing those goals. Reflecting on the choices she made in her early twenties, she’s boldly turned the tables on our “career first” conditioning and suggests that you seek out the golden opportunities right in front of you, right now.

In Marry By Choice, Not By Chance, Patton shares the wisdom of her experience with warmth, humor, and very straight talk. But this is not your mother’s dating guide–Marry By Choice, Not By Chance celebrates the vital achievements of traditional marriage and motherhood, and gives you the essential life strategies that no one’s talking about, including how to strike while the greatest number of single young men is available to you; attract a man who is your intellectual and emotional equal; date to find a mate; and find total satisfaction in your roles as a wife and mother.

Whether or not you are in college, whether your future plans are clear or still undecided, Marry By Choice, Not By Chance is a must-read for all young women who want to get the most out of love and life.

With Life Strategies, Phil McGraw helped hundreds of thousands of people take responsibility for their own actions and break free from self-destructive habits and situations. Now he turns his honest, unflinching eye toward relationships — diagnosing them, repairing them, and maintaining them. This hands-on audiobook is for people who realize their relationship is in trouble, but who don’t want to give up on it. Dr. McGraw helps get relationships back on track with clear action-oriented steps for reconnecting partners.
* Diagnose the relationship
* Take personal responsibility
* Escape wrong thinking
* Embrace relationship truths
* Learn the formula for success in a relationship
* Renegotiate the relationship
* Learn to live with love and harmony
Relationship Rescue offers readers the chance for further happiness through meaningful, fulfilling relationships.

Dr. Alex Schiller doles out hilarious yet profoundly wise dating advice in her new sex and dating manual, which will transform you into an exceptional individual capable of seducing everyone you meet.

“My name is Dr. Alex Schiller and I never sleep alone. Unless I want to. Man or woman, rich or poor, teenage or elderly–NSA will transform you into the one that everyone wants.”

For the past three years in New York City, Dr. Alex (not a real doctor) has been performing her hit comedy and dating show Never Sleep Alone to sold-out audiences, helping thousands of people from all over the world transform themselves and fulfill their sociosexual desires.

Now, with her signature blend of outrageous humor and profound wisdom, the celebrated guru has created an interactive sex and dating guide that takes you on a fantastic journey of exciting new adventures, self-discovery, and transformation.

With her nine NSA principles, her compulsively quotable NSA truths, and her interactive NSA challenges, Dr. Alex inspires us all to laugh at ourselves, to make real human connections, and most importantly, to Never Sleep Alone. Unless we want to.

A guide to happiness and love by a renowned inspirational counselor

Dr. Miles O’Brien Riley brings his many years of counseling experience to the topic of love. Full of humor and fun, Love, It’s an Inside Job brings us to a greater understanding of how love works in our lives. Join Dr. Miles and gain a new perspective on your relationships with family and friends. This recorded conversation offers many tips and ideas for understanding and furthering one’s growth in the practice of love.