Wednesday, April 21, 2010

The blog is about tactics, but...

I do have a favorite book on marriage strategy.

*The Seven Principles For Making Marriage Work*, by Dr. John Gottman.

The reason is it doesn't just throw a bunch of Christian platitudes at you...or anecdotes about the author's own marriage (which is all I intend to do on this blog, btw) - it has oceans of scientific data to back up its message.

It's depressing though - the outlook is bleak. Gottman can very accurately predict which marriages will end in divorce. That implies some fatalism. And my wife and I found ourselves counting the "horsemen of the apocalypse" in our own marriage. When she started reading it, she said, "I wish I divorced you years ago."

It's nice to have clarity on the problems, though. One of my biggest pitfalls is the influence thing. The book says that in successful marriages, the husband allows the wife to influence him. This was a big pill for me to swallow. I hate being told what to do. I have for as long as I remember, a problem with my parents / authority / bosses in any form. If my wife said something that even smacked of nagging, I might counter with a sarcastic, "Yes mom." After reading the book I decided to start trying to suck it up and let her be the boss, and that helped push the hands on the marital doomsday clock back some.




1 comment:

  1. I have not read the book and don't understand the context - it might help to list all the principles with a short explanation.

    One friend offered that couples fight because the lady tries to tell the man what to do in his shed and he tries to tell her what to do in the house - his theory, its a matter of allocating responsibility and providing freedom for each party to have control of their own area.

    One issue with the appeasement approach is that people with dominant personalities (or little self control) might overstep the mark and just get out of control.

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