Dr. Jim Talley
1942 – 2025
For more than fifty years, Dr. Jim Talley sat with couples at the worst moment of their marriage and told them the truth: that the way back exists, and that it can be walked one honest step at a time.
He was a Christian couples counselor, and reconciliation was his life's work. Couples came to him separated, betrayed, exhausted, and convinced they were finished. Many of them left with a marriage. Others left with a clear head and a way forward. What he refused to do, in every case, was pretend that a hard marriage was a hopeless one.
No marriage is beyond repair.
That conviction shaped everything he built: the structure he taught couples to follow, the questions he asked when trust had broken, and the plain-spoken way he described what it actually takes to rebuild. He was never sentimental about it. The work was the work, and he expected both people to do it.
What he wrote
His books came out of the room, not a theory. Couples asked the same questions in the same order, so he wrote the answers down.
- Too Close, Too SoonOn pacing a relationship — why moving too fast keeps couples from building anything that holds. Republished in a 2025 Digital Age edition, with a companion workbook.
- Reconcilable DifferencesOn the distance between two people who still want the marriage, and how to close it.
- Reconciliation InstructionThe structured path he walked couples through, written out step by step.
The work continues
Waymark Inc. is the next chapter of Dr. Talley's life's work. We walk with couples and individuals through coaching, in the hardest seasons of love and life, in English and Spanish, by phone and video anywhere in the United States.
Book a conversation His books & resourcesYou may have arrived here from drtalley.com. That site is now part of Waymark Inc., which holds the rights to Dr. Talley's name and work and continues it under the Waymark name.