Good marriage book

Love and Respect is excellent and can be applied even without the husband’s “cooperation”, as you’re dealing with half of the cycle.

I second Jimmy Evan’s stuff as well.

Which leads me to the next statement, if part of the problem is a controlling partner (him in this case), then Created to be his Helpmeet can be oppresive to the wife and cause greater burdens and emotional pain on her to bear from him than she should and actually exacerbates the problem; for example by the advice to pull away from a church if he doesn’t like her going-that not only causes her to disobey G-d, but it isolates her from community and the support the wife desperately needs (which is exactly what controlling husband’s want). Don’t mean to upset any here who got a lot out of it, but in some women’s situations I know, it made things a lot worse.

However, An Excellent Wife deals with that aspect better and how to handle it far better to prevent a controlling man from taking advantage of his wife via her docility and advises her accordingly.

Like it was said above, it really depends on the problems. Boundaries in Marriage and Boundaries by Henry Cloud (esp. in a manipulative, pleaser, controller-type scenario), combined with stuff from Jimmy Evans, the Love and Respect book and Martha Pearce’s book is a balanced approach, IMO; but it really does depend partially on where the problems lie. Obviously, it’s always both to some degree, since our reactions can feed the other person’s negatives, so learning how to control our reactions is vital in trying to change a relationship dynamic.

I hope things improve for them.