Books: Dating and new relationships
Mostly relationship books rather than divorce books, and the popular framing here has drifted a long way from what the research says. Every entry says who it is not for, which is the useful part and the part nobody else prints.
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Dating and new relationships: 5 books
Ordered by how well evidenced they are rather than by how good they are, because those are different questions and the second one depends on who you are.
Sue Johnson · Piatkus · first published 2008 · 320 pages
Sue Johnson, a clinical psychologist, created Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT), one of the more rigorously studied couples-therapy approaches, with outcome research and clinical trials behind it.
A lay explanation of EFT for couples, structured around seven conversations meant to break negative interaction cycles and rebuild secure emotional connection.
Read it if A couple trying to repair or understand their relationship, including a couple in a divorce-adjacent situation trying to figure out if the marriage is genuinely over.
Do not read it if Someone already certain the marriage is ending and looking to move forward rather than repair — the book’s whole architecture is aimed at rebuilding connection, not letting go of it.
Well evidenced EFT is among the more empirically supported couples-therapy models, with clinical trial evidence behind the approach the book distills.
Open Library 3.857143 from 7 ratings. Checked 2026-09-02.
John Mordechai Gottman, Nan Silver · Tantor Audio · first published 1999 · 288 pages
John Gottman is a psychologist who built a research career on decades of observational studies of couples (the ‘Love Lab’); Nan Silver is a co-writer/editor.
A distillation of Gottman’s observational research into seven practical principles for a stable marriage — things like turning toward bids for connection and managing conflict rather than eliminating it.
Read it if A couple who wants marriage advice with a genuine, decades-long research program behind it, or a divorced reader trying to understand what actually predicted breakdown in their own marriage.
Do not read it if A reader taking the book’s famous ‘can predict divorce with over 90% accuracy’ claim at face value — that figure comes from small, specific validation samples under lab conditions and has been criticized as overstated when marketed as a general claim; the underlying research on conflict patterns is real, but the headline statistic oversells it.
Well evidenced Rests on genuine decades-long observational research, though some of the book’s own marketing claims (the divorce-prediction accuracy figure in particular) are stated more confidently than the underlying studies support.
Open Library 4.5 from 6 ratings. Checked 2026-09-02.
Stan Tatkin · Echo Point Books & Media · first published 2011 · 190 pages
Stan Tatkin is a clinician who developed the PACT (Psychobiological Approach to Couple Therapy) method used in his own practice and trainings.
A relationship guide built around Tatkin’s own clinical framework — sorting partners into attachment-style archetypes (‘islands,’ ‘waves,’ ‘anchors’) and offering neuroscience-flavored explanations for conflict patterns.
Read it if A couple who responds well to a clear typology and wants concrete scripts for de-escalating conflict.
Do not read it if A reader who wants the neuroscience claims held to the same standard as the book’s confident tone implies — the brain-based explanations are illustrative framing built around Tatkin’s own clinical model, not findings from controlled neuroscience research on these couples.
Practitioner experience, not research A clinician’s own framework built from his practice, dressed in neuroscience language that outruns what’s actually been studied about these specific claims.
Open Library 5.0 from 1 ratings. Checked 2026-09-02.
Amir Levine · Gildan Media · first published 2010 · 294 pages
Amir Levine is a psychiatrist trained in attachment research at Columbia; co-author Rachel Heller (not listed in this record) is a psychologist.
Applies attachment theory to adult dating and relationships, sorting readers into anxious, avoidant, or secure ‘attachment styles’ with quizzes and advice for pairing well or working around mismatches.
Read it if Someone dating again after divorce who wants a simple, popular vocabulary for recognizing relationship patterns in themselves and partners.
Do not read it if Anyone who wants the book’s categories treated as diagnostic fact — attachment researchers themselves generally treat adult attachment as more dimensional and relationship-specific than the book’s fixed three-category quiz suggests, and a style measured with one partner doesn’t reliably predict how you’ll attach to the next one.
Popular, weakly evidenced Adult attachment theory itself is real research, but the book’s tidy three-type framework simplifies a body of research that treats attachment as more of a continuum, more context- and relationship-dependent, and less fixed as a personal ‘identity’ than the pop-psychology packaging implies.
Open Library 4.214286 from 14 ratings. Checked 2026-09-02.
Logan Ury, Genis Monrabà · Simon & Schuster · first published 2021 · 320 pages
Logan Ury is a behavioral scientist who worked at Google and later became Hinge’s director of relationship science; her training is in applied behavioral economics, not clinical psychology.
A dating-strategy book grounded in behavioral economics — decision biases that sabotage dating choices, and structured exercises to counter them (dating like a scientist, running small experiments on your own preferences).
Read it if Someone re-entering dating after divorce who responds well to a structured, almost project-management approach to a messy process.
Do not read it if Someone who isn’t ready to date yet and needs to process the marriage ending first — this is a forward-looking dating-strategy book, not a divorce-recovery one.
Popular, weakly evidenced Draws on real behavioral-economics research about decision-making generally, but its application to dating outcomes specifically rests more on the author’s Hinge data and professional experience than on controlled studies of the book’s own methods.
Open Library 3.6666667 from 9 ratings. Checked 2026-09-02.
Every title, author, publisher, year, page count and ISBN here was checked against a bibliographic database rather than typed from memory, and the candidates that could not be confirmed were dropped rather than guessed at. Ratings are shown only where we could see them at source, which is why several books have none — a blank is honest and an invented four-point-three is not. The judgments about what a book is worth are ours, they are opinions, and you are entitled to disagree with them. Tell us when we are wrong.
Compiled 31 August 2026. Bibliographic data from Open Library. Prices, editions and availability change constantly; the links go to the current listing.