Research-Backed Ways to Save Your Marriage and Avoid Divorce

Need a wedding gift for a happy couple in your life? 

Well, look no further—psychology professor Galena Rhoades has the perfect idea: her latest book, “Fighting for Your Marriage: Positive Steps for Preventing Divorce and Building a Lasting Love.”

The idea of “preventing divorce” and “fighting for your marriage” before it has even begun may seem like putting the cart before the horse, but Rhoades likens the book to a “how-to” handbook for relationships.

“We use manuals for just about everything we do, right?” she says. “We start doing a job, we get an employee handbook. We get pregnant, we read some books about what it means to be pregnant and what delivery is going to be like and what having a newborn is going to be like. We have kids, we read books on parenting, right? This is another manual that people can use.”

Co-written with fellow DU psychology faculty Howard Markman and Scott Stanley, the fourth edition of “Fighting for Your Marriage” is geared toward couples at any stage of a relationship, Rhoades says. 

“Whether they've just started a committed relationship; they're about to get married; they've been married for some time; they have young kids, they have older kids; they're empty nesters—these are skills and tools that people can use, regardless,” she says.

The book covers topics ranging from “talking without fighting” and “staying friends and having fun” to “the magical art of touch” and “commitment in an ever-changing world.” 

“All of us are couples therapists, and we have seen so many couples who feel like they're at the end, that they don't have any hope left,” Rhoades says. “And these are exactly the kind of skills that can really turn things around for a couple if they are really struggling.”

One of the chapters, “Ground Rules for a Great Relationship,” contains advice about making decisions on how to operate together, as a couple.

“Those ground rules would be things like using good communication skills—deciding to take a timeout when things get kind of heated and come back to that discussion,” Rhoades says. “Some couples might decide on some positive ground rules too, like, ‘We will devote time to being friends and going on dates together.’”

In part, the advice in the book is based on the PREP—Prevention and Relationship Education Program—approach, developed by Markman and Stanley and maintained by Rhoades over the last several decades. PREP is an evidence-backed collection of resources for educators, programs and therapists to help people have happy and healthy relationships.

The “P” in PREP—“prevention”—is a key aspect of the program, Rhoades says, and something that the book touches on as well.

“We come from a prevention perspective; these kinds of skills are really helpful when you're doing well, because they then give you the foundation for times that you disagree, when you go through rough periods,” she says. “With these tools, people are able to fall back on a foundation of really strong relationship skills, to be able to navigate those kinds of difficult periods and really weather the storms that come in any marriage.”

Rhoades says it’s never too late to learn the skills that help prevent conflict in relationships.

“These are things that we would like everybody to know as they're starting a relationship, starting a marriage,” she says. “They are also things that people can learn later on when they're in a marriage that's going well or when they're in a marriage where they're feeling kind of disconnected. Maybe you've been married 10 years. Maybe you've been married 40 years. These are still skills that are applicable to any stage.”

The most important tool in maintaining a healthy coupling, Rhoades says, is being intentional with the decisions you make together—and separately—about your relationship.

“This [book] is the best wedding present,” she says. “Because everybody should learn these skills and develop those ground rules for how they want things to go in their marriage, and it will, as we know from research, lead to better experiences together.”