— Matt Tuckey 🇬🇧 (@matttuckey.bsky.social) July 5, 2025 at 1:36 PM
Relationships can be hard work. They’re never smooth sailing and there’ll always be challenges. There are a thousand books about how to navigate your relationship, so when writing a book on this topic, the challenge is to write something that hasn’t already been discussed, and in a way that draws people in and keeps them reading.
An email came through to me from Ascot Pr.
‘Former U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy declared loneliness “an epidemic on par with tobacco use and obesity.” But there is hope. Creating healthy connections is a skill set that can be learned, say Stacey and Paul Martino, and they share their groundbreaking methodology in their new book, The Missing Piece.’
With an opener like that, you’d get the feeling that the book might be more about the formation of relationships in its early stages, or advice for single people on beginning one. The Missing Piece, however, focusses more on how to sustain an existing relationship. That isn’t my circumstance at the moment (rarely, in fact), but I’d agreed to review it anyway so I ploughed through it.
It turns out Dr Murthy actually doesn’t feature in the book at all, and that loneliness isn’t exactly covered. The Missing Piece is more an investigation into the differences in how men and women communicate with each other in their relationships. It’s a guidebook for sustaining a relationship through communication, and is intended to help us understand how men and women communicate differently.
An interesting premise, although hardly original. But as a result of Dr Murthy’s absence, there’s no clear indication of qualification from the authors. Did the Martinos go to university? Which one? What did they study? Have they had a clinic? Do they see patients? In essence, I’m asking, why should I believe this couple?
That said, I myself have been in NHS therapy many times and I’ve picked up a certain amount of psychological knowledge and skills from these experiences. I’ve also read a lot of psychology books, many of which were recommended to me by said therapists. There’s a lot in The Missing Piece that I’d agree with – men ruminating over a disagreement for longer than women might, as we want to protect people in relation to whatever the problem was, for example. Another: women will sometimes describe a problem but not actually wanting a possible solution as a response, and men not realising that and thus diving in with their own 2 pennies, as another. The Martinos helpfully label these as ‘processing conversations’ and ‘solving conversations.’ (Key point, if you were wondering: assume it’s ‘processing.’ Don’t offer advice unless she asks for it.)
A lot of what’s advised in the book rings true with what therapists etc. have advised me, but there were times where I raised my eyebrows. There’s a section on how we react negatively to things that other people say or do, or our ‘triggers.’ Stacey here believes that no one is triggering us, and that other people being late, for example, is an issue for us to deal with. People are sometimes late. It’s life. But what the Martinos don’t discuss is when people are always late, then we’re going to see a pattern. It’s not respectful to your time to constantly be waiting for the same person. Surely you’d prefer they were honest about their own time frames than left us standing around. Just to say to the reader ‘you haven’t solved your own triggers yet’ feels a lot like gaslighting.
The Martinos discuss problem solving in relationships, and break this down into 4 types of ‘human processing’ – how we deal with situations like partner arguments. The descriptions do make sense – I’d describe myself as Type 4 of these, a ‘methodical and patient processor.’ There are others, but again, says who? Have any major universities or psychological bodies backed up this criteria?
As much as I may have agreed with chunks of the book, I found it a difficult read. I’d agree that there’s a level of work that needs to be done to keep relationships and marriages going, but when you’re discussing ‘healing in a relationship where trust has been broken,’ that sounds like an affair to me. Wouldn’t most people just move on? Wouldn’t that be the right thing to do? There are times like perhaps these, or definitely when abuse is present, where the relationship SHOULD end. There wasn’t much discussion around THAT.
The Martinos also advise against measuring what you get in a relationship to what you give. But, if you don’t have your eyes open to what’s happening in a relationship… how would you know if you were being taken for a mug?
Maybe that’s my own weakness coming through. I dunno.
The book also fails to mention that the more developed a nation is, and the more rights women have, the higher the divorce rate. Are the undeveloped nations, where women face greater inequality, really having better conversations with each other and saying together as a result? Or are there more evident barriers to divorce, whether practical or bureaucratic? And in the more developed western nations like in Scandinavia, where the divorce rate is among the highest in the world, wouldn’t the more open conversations likely to be happening more there anyway? Given the high standard of their education?
The book offers up a lot of key phrases with capitalised words, most of which I forgot the meaning after they've been defined, and there’s no glossary for these things. Also, the acknowledgements section at the end doesn’t indicate anyone involvedin the book having a psychological background.
Furthermore, the Martinos suggest that ‘being too different’ is just an excuse to split up, and that people say that and then end the relationship because they actually ‘came to the end of their skill set.’ But surely, sometimes, Person A just doesn’t want to be with Person B because they just aren’t making them happy? The Missing Piece’s principle is that relationships can be saved. Wouldn't they’d be much happier with people that they suit better? The book overlooks the idea that staying together ‘for the kids’ – children they’ve had in that relationship - is only going to cause more harm, and that by dragging the relationship out, their kids are going to be exposed to constant arguments. The emphasis on trying to keep couples together felt to me like gaslighting, or perhaps shortsightedness.
There were other parts of it that didn’t sit right with me – either it got too technical and relied on a bit too much phraseology, or that examples of conversations seemed too formal.
Maybe I’m missing the point of the book. I dunno. I think with a bit more science and authoritative input it could have had more impact.
That, for me, was the missing piece.
