Couples Conversations™
Dr. Ari Sytner
Couples therapist, professor, author, rabbi, and a kidney donor. I wrote Couples Conversations because of what I kept hearing in my office.
Couples would sit down after years together and tell me they no longer knew what to ask each other. Not because the love was gone, but because the questions had stopped. The conversations got shorter, the calendar got fuller, and one day they were running a household together instead of knowing each other.
What I kept seeing was this: most of them did not need to be in my office. They needed better tools, earlier. They needed someone to teach them the language of connection before silence became the norm. Couples Conversations is that resource. Not a quick fix. Not a script. A clinically informed starting place for couples who are not willing to wait.
- Certified Gottman Therapist. One of a small number of PhDs worldwide to hold the certification.
- PhD, LCSW, M.Ed. Licensed clinical social worker and clinical professor at Yeshiva University’s Wurzweiler School of Social Work.
- Author. The Couples Conversations series, Start With You, Loving Your Spouse Through Anxiety, and The Kidney Donor’s Journey.
- Kidney donor. With my wife’s blessing, I gave a kidney to a stranger, and then wrote The Kidney Donor’s Journey so others could think it through too.
- Husband and father. Married more than twenty-five years, four children, and still learning the questions.
Recommended by Dr. John Gottman and Dr. Pepper Schwartz.
“I absolutely love this book. It is an incredibly useful handbook for couples to build essential aspects of their relationship together. Thoughtful, practical, and deeply insightful.”
“Most couples want to have meaningful and bonding conversations but simply don’t know how to begin or what to say. Couples Conversations is the perfect handbook to help partners support each other and discover what each needs in their relationship.”
Twenty years of questions, written down.
Every question in the series came out of real sessions: the ones that opened something, the ones couples asked me to write down, the ones I wished someone had asked me earlier. They are arranged so the first questions in a chapter are easy and the later ones go somewhere, because a conversation needs a runway.
The research underneath is Dr. John Gottman’s, along with Dr. Sue Johnson’s work on attachment and Dr. Sara Algoe’s on gratitude. The voice is mine. Dr. Gottman read the first book and called it thoughtful, practical, and deeply insightful, which is still the review I am proudest of.
The workbook I hand couples in my office, free.
Nine guided conversations, real scenarios, and the one skill that makes them land.