My husband and I did one section a week

Every Sunday morning, one section, coffee in hand. It opened conversations we'd been circling for years without landing. Before, our talks about money and in-laws went in circles. Now we have the 'pause and name' structure and they actually go somewhere. That change is concrete and it's held for months.

Tools, not theory

I was braced for another relationship book long on insight and short on anything you can do. This is the opposite. Specific scripts, specific practices. Before it, our disagreements escalated fast. After the repair exercises, we recover from a fight in an hour instead of a sulking three-day standoff.

Used it alongside couples therapy

We hit a rough patch and found this during it. We used it between sessions and our therapist was glad we were doing structured work on our own time. It gave us shared vocabulary when emotions were high — having agreed words for what was happening kept a lot of fights from going nuclear.

Some exercises hit harder than expected

A few sections landed harder than I bargained for, the attachment one especially. Working through where my patterns come from got real, fast. That's not a flaw — the discomfort was productive. Just know going in that it's genuine work, not a light read, and give yourself room for that.