Introduction

2025 IPPY Awards Silver Medalist for Sexuality/Relationships
2025 ZIBBY Most Anticipated Book of 2025
2025 ZIBBY Summer Reads Selection

For fans of Lori Gottlieb's Maybe You Should Talk to Someone, a contemporary memoir by a psychologist whose sexual conflict with her screenwriter husband threatens to destroy her marriage.

Can a loving relationship endure career setbacks, infidelities, and mismatched sexual desires? This is the question psychologist Bonnie Comfort grapples with as she navigates her unpredictable thirty-year marriage to Hollywood screenwriter Bob, while she provides marital therapy to others.

Bob is affectionate, brilliant, and hilarious—but his sexual desires are incompatible with Bonnie's. Despite her misgivings, she indulges his kinks, which often include photographing her in lingerie. Their Hollywood life is exciting, but eventually Bob's growing career frustrations lead to his complete sexual shutdown. Tensions rise, and Bob suggests Bonnie have discreet affairs and not tell him. She does just that—but when she confesses her infidelities five years later, his sexual demands become more extreme. When she complies, Bonnie feels shame; when she refuses, as she increasingly does, their fights threaten to tear their marriage apart.

Bonnie understands the rhythm of disconnection and repair that is common in love relationships. With honesty and vulnerability, she recounts the highs and lows of her own marriage which sadly ends with Bob's death. As she grieves, Bonnie reflects on her role in their marital struggles and offers profound insights from personal and professional experience. Her story lays bare the complexities of love, the ongoing challenges women face in intimate relationships, and how even difficult marriages can find a way to thrive.

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Excerpt

During the winter rains here in Portland, Oregon, there are times when my office smells of faint cologne, baking chocolate from St. Cupcake downstairs, incessant coffee, and wet fleece and leather. At the end of a day of doing psychotherapy, my trash can is crowded with tear-soaked Kleenex and used Starbucks paper cups. The room feels full of a palpable desperation from my patients who want their lives to get better. There are laughs and lighthearted moments too, but it’s the sadness that stays with me, the painful stories of abandonment or conflict. ... view entire excerpt...

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