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Resources
Free workbooks you can use at home, the books we recommend most often, and what we've written about relationships, attachment and mental health. None of it replaces therapy. It can be a useful place to start, or something to work on between sessions.
Each workbook helps you see what's working, where things are wearing thin, and the pattern underneath the fight you keep having. They draw on Emotion-Focused Therapy, which we incorporate into our relationship work. Everyone fills one in alone, then you compare. Free to download, no email needed.
For two people, monogamous or open.
Each of you fills it in alone, then you compare. Starts with what your partner does that makes your life better, then maps the fight you keep having and rates 11 areas, from everyday connection to money and sex.
PDF · 18 pages · print it, or write on it in a PDF app
Download the workbook
For three people who are all partnered with each other.
A throuple is four relationships at once: the three of you, plus each pair. This one checks both, including balance, jealousy and who carries the work of keeping everyone connected.
PDF · 19 pages · print it, or write on it in a PDF app
Download the workbook
For one person with two partners, and for those two partners.
Separate sections for the hinge and for each partner. Covers time, what gets shared between relationships, and what happens when the hinge ends up as the messenger.
PDF · 18 pages · print it, or write on it in a PDF app
Download the workbookIf the same pain point keeps coming up, or talking about it always turns into a fight, that's a good time to bring in a relationship therapist. Find a therapist who fits
The books we find ourselves suggesting in session. Links go to Booktopia, an Australian bookshop. We don't earn anything from them, so buy wherever you like, or ask your local library.
Dr Sue Johnson
Sue Johnson, who developed Emotionally Focused Therapy, argues that most couple fights are really about attachment: am I still important to you, will you be there when I need you? The book walks through seven conversations for stepping out of that pattern and reconnecting.
Find it at Booktopia (opens in a new tab)
Jennine Estes Powell and Jacqueline Wielick
For couples who love each other but keep getting stuck in criticism, blame, defending and withdrawing. Built on Emotionally Focused Therapy, with practical strategies for managing triggers and calming arguments down.
Find it at Booktopia (opens in a new tab)
Amir Levine and Rachel Heller
A psychiatrist and a psychologist explain anxious, avoidant and secure attachment in adult relationships. Includes ways to work out your own style and your partner’s, and how to use that to build a more secure relationship.
Find it at Booktopia (opens in a new tab)
Jessica Fern
Applies attachment theory to non-monogamy. Fern looks at how attachment and trauma shape our relationships, then sets out six strategies (her HEARTS model) for building secure attachment with more than one partner.
Find it at Booktopia (opens in a new tab)
Dr Emily Nagoski
Nagoski’s book on women’s sexuality, revised and updated. She explains desire as an accelerator and a brake, and shows how stress, mood, trust and body image shape your sex life as much as anything physical.
Find it at Booktopia (opens in a new tab)
Dr Emily Nagoski
Nagoski’s follow-up, on keeping a sexual connection going in a long relationship. She takes apart the idea that desire has to fade over time, and covers what gets in the way, from conflict and body image to fixed ideas about how sex is supposed to go.
Find it at Booktopia (opens in a new tab)
David M. Ortmann and Richard A. Sprott
A guide for people in BDSM communities, by a psychotherapist and a researcher. It covers coming out, telling consensual power exchange apart from abuse, finding community, and finding a therapist who gets it. Also written for the partners, friends and family who want to understand.
Find it at Booktopia (opens in a new tab)
Leigh Cowart
Why do people seek out pain on purpose? Science writer Leigh Cowart, a self-described masochist, tries a lot of it first-hand, from BDSM and ultramarathons to icy ocean swims and eating hot chillies.
Find it at Booktopia (opens in a new tab)
Lindsay C. Gibson
For people who grew up with parents who couldn’t meet their emotional needs. Gibson describes four types of emotionally immature parent (emotional, driven, passive and rejecting), and how to stop feeling lonely and start meeting your own needs as an adult.
Find it at Booktopia (opens in a new tab)
Mark Wolynn
Wolynn argues that trauma can be passed down through families, and offers a method for mapping your family history to find and break inherited patterns. The science on biological inheritance of trauma is still debated.
Find it at Booktopia (opens in a new tab)
Lisa Feldman Barrett
Neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett argues that emotions aren’t hard-wired reactions. Your brain constructs them in the moment from your history, your body and what’s around you, which means you have more influence over them than it feels like.
Find it at Booktopia (opens in a new tab)
Jon Kabat-Zinn
Short chapters on bringing mindfulness into everyday life, from the founder of the Stress Reduction Clinic at the University of Massachusetts, where Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction began. Easy to read a few pages at a time.
Find it at Booktopia (opens in a new tab)Writing from the Unison team on relationships, non-monogamy, trauma and the therapies we use.
26 September 2026 · 9 min read
For the hinge whose two partners can't stand each other: what makes the middle so heavy, what is and isn't yours to fix, and practical ways to lower the temperature.
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15 September 2026 · 6 min read
Betrayal breaks something more specific than trust in the abstract — it wounds the felt sense that this particular person has you. Unison director Meg Wilson on what actually rebuilds it, with Emotionally Focused Therapy, Gottman's research, and the couple who taught her the shape of it.
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15 September 2026 · 5 min read
Attraction isn't one thing. This guide walks through romantic, sexual, aesthetic, sensual, emotional and intellectual attraction — and why untangling them matters more than you'd think.
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15 September 2026 · 4 min read
Director Meg Wilson joined The Lifestyle Lounge podcast to talk shame, compassionate honesty, and why most couples in non-monogamous relationships end up in therapy for the same reasons everyone else does.
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15 September 2026 · 4 min read
People get referred to schema therapy constantly, and almost nobody explains what it means once you're actually in the room. What a schema is, the patterns that show up most often, and what the work looks like week to week.
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26 August 2026 · 5 min read
A traumatic memory can feel like it's happening again because the brain stored it without a date stamp. What goes wrong, what EMDR does about it, and what a session actually involves.
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