Book Notes: Gurian’s latest examines intimacy

For 25 years and through 28 books, Spokane marriage and family counselor Michael Gurian has offered advice to help people live their lives better.

For his latest book, “Lessons of Lifelong Intimacy” (Atria Books, $26), Gurian looked to his clients in long-lasting marriages for insights into what works and what doesn’t. He offers up nine principles to achieve happy and balanced relationships.

Gurian will celebrate the book’s release with a reading on Thursday at Auntie’s Bookstore in Spokane. In this Five Questions With interview, we talk about his inspiration for the book, and the best tip he can offer.

Q. What inspired this book?

A. Well, I’m in my 25th year of marriage and family counseling, and so all through the process I’ve helped a lot of couples. I think deep down I wanted to put this work into a book. … I wanted to teach these things and give people a practical, step-by-step plan they can go through to assess their marriage. Also, my wife and I have just celebrated our 29th year. I was helping so many young couples that I really felt like there was a perspective that folks who have been together a long time have.

Q. Who could benefit from reading it?

A. I think any married couple. I think there’s going to be an urgency of use, where it can really be a life saver, for couples who are involved in power struggle, in other words, there’s some distress with them in their marriage. … I also think that any couple, anywhere they are, even if they’re starting a new marriage, they’re divorced, anywhere they are, they’re going to fit into these 12 stages.

Q. What is the most common mistake people in troubled marriages make?

A. It’s a hard question. I’m going to go with the most subtle common mistake, the mistake they don’t even realize they’re making. That mistake is when they’re in distress, trying to be too close. They hound each other, or one hounds the other, trying to get deeper into the other’s psyche, trying to change the other. That usually will kill the marriage. It’s a hard one to explain, so I wrote a whole book.

Q. Which leads to my follow-up. That notion of backing away seems counter-intuitive. How can people begin to recognize that taking a step back sometimes is a good thing?

A. The various chapters of the book follow couples. And each couple is evidencing one of the common mistakes and the patterns that people can watch for. So for instance, one is the angry partner and the anxious partner. If one partner feels anxious about the relationship, and the other is constantly angry, hair-trigger. I’m not talking about abuse. Abuse is its own thing. … Another pattern is the enmeshed partner, the partner who feels sucked in, constantly being watched, but this person’s partner often feels abandoned.

Q. If you had one single piece of advice for couples, what would it be?

A. Work toward a balance of intimacy and separateness. Couples tend to, and most self-help literature is about becoming closer, intimacy. I can promise a couple that if that’s all they’re working toward, the relationship probably will not last. They cannot keep a separate self if they’re constantly working toward intimacy. They have to be working toward a balance. … It’s the balance that creates the longevity.