The result is this short book which provides the perfect introduction to my work. If you’ve read my other books but want to recruit your partner to work on your relationship I would suggest giving him or her this one.

I cover everything he or she needs to know about love and how it changes over the years, why people fall out of love and how to get back the spark—plus it’s only fifteen thousand words so can be read in a few hours.

Twenty Questions to Fall Back in Love

Twenty years ago American Psychologist Dr Arthur Aron conducted a study on how to accelerate intimacy between strangers.

He recruited pairs of random men and women of about the same age and gave them twenty questions to discuss together. Amazingly enough one of these couples fell in love and invited Dr Aron and his team to their wedding.

I wondered if the same trick could be done with long-term couples whose love has lost its original shine. So I adapted the questions and sent several of my couples in counselling on ‘date’ nights to try them out.

The results were always the same. My couples found themselves talking for hours and remembering the time when conversation between them flowed like wine. It was almost like when they were first dating. So the final chapter includes:

• How to set up the date night
• The twenty questions to fall back in love
• Why I’ve chosen each question
• Follow up questions to maximise the benefits

How to Recruit your Partner

Hopefully your partner will be grateful and maybe even impressed that you have a strategy to start again but if he or she is sceptical, I have a plan to help you lay the ground which includes:

• Adopting an idea from the book yourself
• Allowing enough time for it to bed in and be noticed
• How to find the right time to talk
• How to introduce the book
• The importance of truly listening to your partner
• Coming up with a strategy together

Listen to me talk about the book

Here is a recent interview on BBC Radio Sussex about whether wedding vows need to change to reflect the divorce rate. I explain the importance of skills, not just connection, for a happy relationship. I go on to discuss Can We Start Again Please? and explain more about the twenty questions to fall back in love.