The Best Relationship Books, Tests and Resources for Understanding Your Relationship

There is no shortage of relationship advice online. Search almost any question about your partner and within minutes you can find someone confidently telling you that you have found your soulmate, discovered a red flag or should immediately end the relationship.

The harder thing to find is genuinely useful guidance that helps you understand your relationship without trying to make the decision for you.

If you are wondering how strong your relationship really is, whether you are compatible long term, or simply want to understand your partner better, there are some excellent books, assessments and free resources available.

We have put together some of the best places to start.

1. Eight Dates by John Gottman and Julie Schwartz Gottman

Best for: Having the conversations you probably should have had already

If you only choose one relationship book from this list, Eight Dates is a very good place to start.

Created by relationship researchers John and Julie Gottman alongside Doug Abrams and Rachel Carlton Abrams, the book structures eight dates around eight important areas of a relationship: trust and commitment, conflict, sex and intimacy, work and money, family, fun and adventure, growth and spirituality, and dreams.

Rather than simply reading relationship advice, you actually have the conversations with your partner.

That is what makes it particularly useful. You might discover that you have completely different ideas about money, or realise you have never properly asked your partner what they want their life to look like in ten years.

The Gottman Institute describes strong relationships as an ongoing conversation between partners, and that is really the philosophy behind the book.

Good for: Couples at almost any stage of a serious relationship.

Try it if: You want something practical that you can work through together.

2. The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work by John Gottman

Best for: Understanding what strong long term relationships actually do differently

Another Gottman book, but with a slightly different purpose.

The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work explores the patterns John Gottman's research has associated with successful relationships and turns them into practical exercises couples can use.

One of the most useful things about Gottman's work is that it does not suggest happy couples never argue.

Conflict is normal.

What matters is how couples respond to conflict, how well they understand each other's inner worlds, whether they maintain friendship and affection, and whether they are able to create a sense of shared meaning around their lives.

If you are asking "Is our relationship actually strong?", this is useful because it gives you a much broader way of thinking about strength than simply asking how often you argue or how in love you feel.

Good for: Serious couples and married couples.

Try it if: You want to understand some of the research behind successful long term relationships.

3. Hold Me Tight by Dr Sue Johnson

Best for: Understanding your emotional connection

Not every relationship problem is really about the thing you appear to be arguing about.

An argument about somebody being on their phone might actually be about feeling ignored. An argument about going out with friends might be connected to feeling unimportant. A seemingly small disagreement can become enormous because it touches something much deeper.

That is where Hold Me Tight is particularly interesting.

Written by psychologist Dr Sue Johnson, the book is grounded in Emotionally Focused Therapy and attachment science. It guides couples through seven conversations designed to help them better understand emotional connection, conflict and security within their relationship.

It offers a different perspective from simply asking whether you and your partner are compatible on paper.

You can agree about children, money and where you want to live while still struggling to feel emotionally secure with each other.

Good for: Couples who find themselves stuck in the same emotional patterns.

Try it if: You want to understand what might actually be happening underneath your arguments.

4. PREPARE/ENRICH

Best for: Couples seriously considering marriage

If you would rather take a structured relationship assessment, PREPARE/ENRICH is worth knowing about.

It is an established assessment used with couples to explore areas including communication, conflict, finances, intimacy, spiritual beliefs, personality, habits and responsibilities.

Unlike a quick online compatibility quiz, the process is designed to provide a more detailed picture of a relationship and can be worked through with a trained facilitator.

Importantly, it is not designed as an exam that determines whether your relationship has passed or failed.

That distinction matters.

Relationships are too complicated for a questionnaire to decide whether two people belong together. A good assessment should help you notice patterns, strengths and differences that are worth discussing.

Good for: Engaged couples and couples seriously considering marriage.

Try it if: You want a more formal assessment that you can explore with a professional.

5. The Gottman Institute Relationship Resources

Best for: Free relationship advice grounded in established research

You do not necessarily need to buy a book.

The Gottman Institute has an extensive library of free articles covering communication, trust, conflict, dating, intimacy, money and long term relationships.

One particularly useful concept is the distinction between solvable and perpetual problems.

Some disagreements have solutions. You can decide who does the washing up, create a household budget or agree how often you will visit each other's families.

Other disagreements may come from deeper differences in personality, values or lifestyle and might never completely disappear.

The aim is not always to solve every disagreement. Sometimes a strong relationship is about learning how to discuss an ongoing difference without allowing it to become destructive.

That is a much healthier standard than assuming compatible couples should agree about everything.

Good for: Anyone wanting to learn more about relationships for free.

Try it if: There is a particular area of your relationship you want to understand better.

6. The Relationship Test

Best for: Exploring different areas of your relationship together

Full disclosure: this one is ours.

We created The Relationship Test because there is a difficult space between wondering about your relationship and needing professional relationship counselling.

Sometimes nothing is obviously wrong.

You simply want to understand your relationship better.

The Relationship Test explores 19 different dimensions of your relationship, helping you look at areas such as communication, trust, money, intimacy, values, family and the future you want to build.

The aim is not to produce a verdict.

It will not tell you to get married. It will not tell you to break up. It will not pretend that a percentage can determine whether two people belong together.

Instead, it is designed to help you identify where you naturally align, where you might see things differently and which conversations could be worth having.

Good for: Couples who want to understand their relationship more clearly.

Try it if: You want a structured starting point without someone telling you what decision to make.

Take The Relationship Test →

7. 50 Questions to Ask Before Marriage

Best for: Starting the conversation without taking a test

Sometimes you do not need another book, assessment or piece of relationship advice.

You just need to talk.

Our free 50 Questions Before Marriage guide covers some of the conversations that can become increasingly important as a relationship gets more serious, including money, children, family, intimacy, values and the future.

Some questions are easy.

Others might make you hesitate.

Those are often the interesting ones.

You do not need to agree on every answer. The point is to discover what your partner actually thinks rather than assuming you already know.

Good for: Couples considering engagement or marriage.

Try it if: You want something free that you can do together tonight.

Try the 50 Questions Before Marriage →

What Should You Actually Be Looking For?

Working through relationship resources can easily become another way of searching for reassurance.

You take a quiz hoping it will tell you that you have found the right person. You read about relationship red flags and suddenly start looking for them everywhere. Then you read about green flags and feel better again.

That is probably not the most useful way to approach it.

Instead of trying to prove whether your relationship is good or bad, use these resources to understand it.

There are several areas worth paying particular attention to.

Communication: Can you tell each other what you actually think and feel?

Conflict: Can you disagree without becoming cruel, dismissive or disrespectful?

Trust: Do you feel secure in the relationship and able to rely on each other?

Values: Do the things that matter most to each of you have enough room to coexist?

Money: Can you build a financial life that works for both of you?

Intimacy: Can you talk openly about sex, affection and your changing needs?

Family: Do your expectations around children and your wider families broadly fit together?

Independence: Can you maintain your own identity while still functioning as a couple?

The future: When you imagine your lives in five, ten or twenty years, are you moving in roughly the same direction?

You do not need perfect answers to all of these questions.

You probably will not have them.

What matters is whether you can talk honestly about the areas where your answers are different.

No Relationship Test Can Give You the Final Answer

This is probably the most important point in this guide.

Be cautious of any book, article or online quiz that claims it can definitively tell you whether you should stay with your partner.

Relationships are not that simple.

You could score brilliantly on a compatibility assessment and still be unhappy. You could disagree significantly in several areas while having an incredibly strong relationship because you communicate well and respect each other's differences.

The value of a good relationship resource is not that it gives you the answer.

It gives you better questions.

It might help you understand why the same argument keeps happening. It might uncover an assumption you have never discussed. It might reassure you that a difference is completely manageable. Occasionally, it might highlight something that deserves much more serious thought.

That information is useful.

But what you do with it is still up to you.

Where Should You Start?

If you want a book you can work through together, start with Eight Dates.

If you want to understand the research around long term relationships, try The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work.

If emotional connection and recurring conflict are what you are struggling to understand, Hold Me Tight offers a different perspective.

If you are approaching marriage and want a structured assessment with professional support, look into PREPARE/ENRICH.

If you simply want to start talking tonight, try our free 50 Questions Before Marriage.

And if you want to explore your relationship across a wider range of areas, you can take The Relationship Test →.

Whichever route you choose, try not to approach it as an exam your relationship needs to pass.

Approach it with curiosity.

You are not trying to prove that your relationship is perfect.

You are trying to understand the person you love, the relationship you have built together and whether the future you both imagine has enough room for both of you.

The best relationship resources do not give you the answer. They help you ask better questions.