Blogger's Bio

Terry Gaspard

I am a licensed therapist, college instructor, and non-fiction author specializing in divorce, remarriage, women’s issues, children, and relationships. I am a regular contributor to The Gottman Institute Blog, Huffington Post Divorce, TheGoodMenProject.com, DivorcedMoms.com, DivorceMagazine.com, and a few other websites.

As a therapist, I am interested in helping people adapt to the challenges they experience related to divorce and remarriage. I became a published writer while attending graduate school in the 1990s, where I began researching the long-term impact of parental divorce and remarriage.

My interest in the lives of women who grew up in divorced families began with my own experience. My passion for this topic grew as my clinical practice included many daughters of divorce and I experienced divorce.

My daughter Tracy and I co-authored Daughters of Divorce: Overcome the Legacy of Your Parents' Breakup and Enjoy a Happy, Long-Lasting Relationship (Sourcebooks, 2016). When I wrote the book, I supplemented my clinical and personal experience by interviewing more than 300 hundred women raised in divorced families.

My initial research study in 1995 included 198 women, and I discovered that the loss of access to both parents was associated with low-self-esteem in daughters of divorce. Following that, I studied a larger, diverse sample of over 300 adults and examined issues such as interpersonal relationships, family climate, and self-esteem. Both studies were published in the Journal of Divorce and Remarriage. My other publications focus on parenting and remarriage.

My second book, The Remarriage Manual: How to Make Everything Work Better the Second Time Around, was just published by Sounds True (February 2020). Based on my personal experience, over 30 years of clinical practice, knowledge from leading marriage and remarriage researchers, and 100 in-depth interviews of remarried people, this book is a must-read for anyone contemplating remarriage.