Books like Redemptive Divorce

I found this a terrific book that weaves the author's personal story throughout her writing.

I appreciated her honesty regarding her own struggles and imperfect reactions to the loss of her marriage. She handily debunks some of the lies we believe about ourselves when we go through an unwanted divorce. I was inspired by the ways she relied on God without feeling she was over-spiritualizing her journey.

One of the most authentic authors I have read on this topic. I admired how transparent she was about her mistakes and successes in parenting her children through the process. Insightful and encouraging. Not your average nonfiction book on divorce.

This was the first “Oh My Gosh!” book that I read in the immediate aftermath of my unwanted divorce.

I couldn’t understand my extreme reactions to my husband’s affair and decision to end our marriage. I trembled all the time, suffered nightly nightmares, daily flashbacks, and found myself longing for the man who so profoundly injured me.

This book answered most of those questions. I have highlighted passages on nearly every page. The author is an abandonment grief specialist, and this book was pivotal in reducing my shame and my feeling so crazy.

I found this to be an excellent resource for wives whose husbands had an unexpected change of heart and left the marriage, seemingly out of the blue.

Often traced to a midlife crisis. I respect the fact that Vikki is a psychotherapist with 40 years’ experience who went through this kind of loss by a formerly loving spouse. I appreciated how she identifies “Wife Abandonment Syndrome” in her surveys and offers practical tools to support a person’s recovery.

While I read her book long after my own experience, I wish I’d found it earlier. Although I am a Christian and she admits being a Buddhist in practice and faith, I found her insights useful and non-offensive, and I've recommended her book to many clients over the years.

I first fell in love with Michelle’s work through her interviews, podcasts, and blogs.

I appreciate how she integrates Attachment Theory with her training in working with sex addicts and their partners. While she has much experience helping both partners, this book is meant for the betrayed partners. It will help you overcome the shame of being an injured spouse.

This book helped me find language for aspects of my feelings and trauma I didn’t find anywhere else. It contains a treasure trove of wisdom from a trained professional who was once married to a sex addict. I highly recommend it.

If you have children, this book is a great follow-up to the parenting section of my book Peace after Divorce. Based on his professional experience as a therapist and researcher Dr. Emery shares important steps you can take to see that your children become well-adjusted and thrive. I’m impressed with the depth of his insights and feel that parents who read this book will be better able to navigate the tricky pitfalls of parenting through and after divorce. Stories of families illustrate his points and make this book an interesting read as well as a rich resource for those who want to minimize the negative impact of divorce on their children. This is the only book on my list not from a Christian perspective but it is good for parents.

So many women have silently suffered abuse for years in the name of trying to do what they believe God would have them do. Sadly, their well-meaning efforts, and at times misunderstanding of the Scriptures, can actually feed the destructive cycle in their marriages. In this book, Leslie Vernick reaches out to the reader with practical strategies for recognizing emotional abuse and taking steps to break free of its bondage. She outlines what needs to happen for hope to be restored in a marriage and shares how to leave if the cycle of destruction continues. Many women I’ve worked with through my groups and Peace after Divorce Workshops have cited that this book literally saved their lives.

This first book gave me the necessary perspective to consider the impact of divorce on my children’s entire lifespan, not just their childhoods.

It lays the groundwork for what legacy we’re breaking, since hopefully your children are young and you’re still married. I never once thought about how divorce when my three children were small would influence the nature of their adult intimate relationships and ability to navigate marriage in their future, even though I had direct experience with it influencing mine.

This is the spell breaker of all the divorce books. It will snap you out of any trance you’re in that might be preventing you from factoring in your children’s lives. It was the first time an author spelled out to me how divorce impacted me as a child and young adult, and it explained so many reasons for my behavior in relationships, especially fear of commitment.

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Divorce is a devastating experience, especially where ending a marriage is viewed as a separation, not only from your spouse, but from your church as well. In God, the Devil and Divorce, Linda M. Kurth shares her personal divorce journey in spite of the opposition of her community of faith to escape the pain of an abusive marriage. She emerges triumphantly as a trailblazer for Christian women enduring spousal abuse, offering hope and reassuring them that life goes on—and happily. 

I have to include the best-selling book of all time, the Holy Bible, in my toolkit for breaking divorce legacy because the Word of God is so powerful. Choose any Bible, but I chose this version because it’s aimed at the 12-step recovery movement.

Addictions ruin intimacy, and in today’s world, we can be addicted to anything, and it won’t appear problematic. Reading romance novels can be an escape from your marriage, especially if they suck up your actual sex life like a vacuum. But this Bible connecting 12-step recovery to Scripture provides the power necessary to carry out the will of God in family life and break all chains, not just the divorce legacy. 

I’m on my third round of book study using this Bible and in a monthly club with it now, and it’s a deeper experience of God every time. I can say with conviction that as… show more.

This is the story of a divorced mom who rents her downstairs apartment to a Catholic monk whose spiritual well has run dry twenty-three years into his vocation, leading him to walk away. I love disgruntled, disillusioned Mike, who can’t help being a stand-up guy, and whose ongoing, sometimes combative correspondence with a former colleague tracks the vagaries of his spiritual life. I love Rebecca and the way she handles insane emotional and practical responsibilities and somehow keeps on going. Most of all, I enjoy the understated, wry way these two fall in love. Farrington’s prose style is beautifully transparent, and he’s intelligent and funny about Christian belief and practice and about romance. There is also a good sequel, The Monk Upstairs.