Making Marriage Simple, by co-authors and therapists Harville Hendrix and Helen LaKelly Hunt, is a delight to read!
It contains much of the advice I've said to countless couples in pre-martial and martial counseling for the past 17 years. That advice, admittedly, isn't advice you regularly hear from other books making the marriage improvement rounds. "Incompatibility is grounds for marriage." "Conflict is growth trying to happen." "Negativity is invisible abuse." But the advice in the book is forged out of years of counseling couples and working together as a team toward their own healthy marriage.
Bathed in that deep wisdom, this book is a simple, what I call "bathtub" reading. Sit back and relax. The style is flowing, even if the advice will cause you to bolt up on occasion. I particularly enjoyed the artwork. It helps convince me -- this is a book for every couple!
Our culture is steeped in bad relationship wisdom. Divorce rates may have plateaued over the years, but they remain at nearly 50%. Couple start the marriage journey wild-eyed in romance. But, as the authors caution, "Romantic love is a trick".
I only wish the authors had dealt more with finances, particularly. In my own counseling practice, I see more and more couples dealing with the financial stresses of the world. And those stresses bring more marriages to a breaking point than nearly any other issue. This deceptively simple book has that one glaring omission.
In all, I still recommend this book to couples. The exercises at the end of the book are amazing for conversation starters. Hendrix and Hunt have given us a gem. And it was, as I said, a delight to read.
__________
I received this book for free from the publisher's Blogging for Books program in exchange for this review.
It contains much of the advice I've said to countless couples in pre-martial and martial counseling for the past 17 years. That advice, admittedly, isn't advice you regularly hear from other books making the marriage improvement rounds. "Incompatibility is grounds for marriage." "Conflict is growth trying to happen." "Negativity is invisible abuse." But the advice in the book is forged out of years of counseling couples and working together as a team toward their own healthy marriage.
Bathed in that deep wisdom, this book is a simple, what I call "bathtub" reading. Sit back and relax. The style is flowing, even if the advice will cause you to bolt up on occasion. I particularly enjoyed the artwork. It helps convince me -- this is a book for every couple!
Our culture is steeped in bad relationship wisdom. Divorce rates may have plateaued over the years, but they remain at nearly 50%. Couple start the marriage journey wild-eyed in romance. But, as the authors caution, "Romantic love is a trick".
I only wish the authors had dealt more with finances, particularly. In my own counseling practice, I see more and more couples dealing with the financial stresses of the world. And those stresses bring more marriages to a breaking point than nearly any other issue. This deceptively simple book has that one glaring omission.
In all, I still recommend this book to couples. The exercises at the end of the book are amazing for conversation starters. Hendrix and Hunt have given us a gem. And it was, as I said, a delight to read.
__________
I received this book for free from the publisher's Blogging for Books program in exchange for this review.