I Didn’t Sign Up for This

What happens when your relationship no longer feels like the one you said “yes” to?

Couples therapist Dr. Tracy Dalgleish has spent the last seventeen years dedicated to helping hundreds of couples in distress find hope and healing, sometimes by staying together and other times not. Breakdowns in communication, lack of intimacy, infidelity, overbearing in-laws and exes (to name a few) – she’s seen it all.

Shortly after the birth of her first child, Dr. Tracy suddenly began to see herself in her clients’ narratives. Despite the overwhelming joy she felt as a new mother, she also found herself welling up with anger and resentment toward her partner as she began shouldering more than half the domestic load and childcare labor in their marriage. In time, she found herself uttering the very words she’d heard countless times in her office from her clients: I didn’t sign up for this.

Part memoir, part self-help, Dr. Tracy Dalgleish’s debut book provides a rare look inside real therapy sessions with four couples – and into her own marriage. With unflinching candor and heartfelt empathy, she digs to the root of the issues that fuel our day-to-day relationship conflicts and illuminates the common struggle of what it means to be human: the incredible difficulty of showing up wholly and authentically in our most intimate relationship with others and with ourselves.