Marriage Skills Handbook - Guest Post by Raffi Bilek, LCSW-C

 The low divorce rate of the frum community used to be a badge of pride.

 By this point, we all know more than a few divorced people in our own communities – sometimes folks who have been divorced multiple times, or within months of being married. It is painful to see.

 What happened?

 No doubt the problem is complex, and there are many explanations that could be given. I’m not a sociologist; I’m a marriage counselor. So I’m not going to try to tackle the reasons for this shift in our society or what can be done on a communal level to address it. I’m just going to offer you something to protect your own marriage.

 It’s communication.

 No chiddushim there; we’ve all heard that buzzword before. I’m just coming to provide some practical, actionable steps to actually doing it.

 Enter The Couples Communication Handbook: The Skills You Never Learned for the Marriage You Always Wanted. I wrote this book based on my decade-plus of experience working with couples to help improve, repair, and save marriages. I think it’s got a lot to offer folks regardless of how they’re feeling about their marriage right now (unless you feel like the communication in your marriage is as good as it could possibly ever be – if that’s you, let me know).

In truth, there aren’t many chiddushim in here either. It’s a lot of ideas that have existed already, put together in a way that is digestible and easy to read, with maybe a few twists of my own.

 I should note that this is not a Torah book; it’s for general audiences, but it is perfectly clean and acceptable for the frum community. (There is a very brief section discussing talking about sex, which does not get any more graphic than this sentence you just read.)

 If you feel like you could use a boost in your communication and connection with your spouse, I think you’ll get a lot out of this book.

 על ידי שלום שבין איש לאשתו יהיה עזר לאדם ליחד הדודים למעלה

-- Ben Yehoyada, Berachos 28b