How to Speak Your Spouse's Language: Ten Easy Steps to Great Communication from One of America's Foremost Counselors

Read an Excerpt

Chapter 1: Do You Speak the Same Language?
Marriage expert and popular author Dr. H. Norman Wright reveals why loving couples so often disintegrate into puzzled strangers. Despite all the similarities that brought them together, both bride and groom are actually foreigners.

Chapter 1: Do You Speak the Same Language? : Part 2
Someone asked me what attracted me to Sheri. Excitement! My life was fairly routine. She brought a lot of fun into my life. But after we married, it seemed to get old in a hurry. She seemed scattered and going in several directions at once.

Chapter 1: Communication and a Foreign Language
Have you ever traveled in a foreign country? There are two types of travelers: the colonizer and the immigrant. The colonizer wants to visit another country but sees it from his own perspective instead of experiencing it from the inhabitants' point

Picture a couple at a restaurant. They have been married one month. Their every expression says they're in love: they hang on one another's words, touching hands while they speak, smiling and laughing and looking blissful. This couple communicates "happily ever after."

Picture that same couple at the same restaurant one decade later. Their every expression says they're weary of their relationship: he hardly speaks, she talks long and loud, and they roll their eyes at one another.

Marriage expert and popular author Dr. H. Norman Wright reveals why loving couples so often disintegrate into puzzled strangers. Despite all the similarities that brought them together, both bride and groom are actually foreigners. They were raised with different customs, different understandings of the same words, and different ways of communicating their feelings to others. And the only way to make a smooth merge is for each to learn the other's language.

Couples marry believing they're compatible, but they really aren't at first, says Dr. Wright. Compatibility grows over time as spouses discover their partners' speaking styles, learn how to match them, and finally create free-flowing communication and a deep connection.

In this hope-filled and highly practical book, Dr. Wright shares ten essential steps to unlocking communication between couples, whether they've been married one year or fifty. Samples of dialogue and illustrations of gender, learning, and personality differences, as well as short exercises couples can practice, make the book-and real communication-accessible to anyone.

Dr. Wright emphasizes that the differences in men's and women's communication styles are innate, and neither is right or wrong. But to enjoy satisfying communication, husbands and wives must immerse themselves in each other's foreign territory and learn the lay of the land-especially the language.

Punctuated by humor and poignant real-life stories, How to Speak Your Spouse's Language is the translation guide every couple needs for a healthy and happy marriage.

H. Norman Wright is a licensed marriage, family, and child therapist and a certified trauma specialist. In private counseling practice for over 30 years, Dr. Wright has also authored more than 70 books..

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