How to Improve Your Marriage Without Talking About It
 | Average Customer Rating: Recommend Men are right. The “relationship talk” does not help. Dr. Patricia Love’s and Dr. Steven Stosny’s How to Improve Your Marriage Without Talking About It reveals the stunning truth about marital happiness:Love is not about better communication.It's about connection. You'll never get a closer relationshipwith your man by talking to him like youtalk to one of your girlfriends. Male emotions are like women's sexuality:you can't be too direct too… Product details and pricing info |
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43 Customer Reviews Posted
- Recommended by someone who didn't read it
- I anxiously awaited this book. When I began to read the first chapter, I found the information very interesting. I went online to search for the research that the authors had done or had cited, and I could find no references to it. I also wanted to know the authors' credentials. This was not readily available either. Observation in personal practice is important, but other items were inserted in the book that make me want to verify their credibility. In a field all too full of "the answer" to a couple's relationship struggles, this is interesting, but I don't know how valid.
- 2008-12-18, 1 of 1 people found this review helpful, Rated:
- Wonderful book - for marriages and other relationships
- Thank you so much for this book. It has fundamentally altered the way I approach my marriage and many other relationships as well. The improvements have been, in many cases, instantaneous: as soon as I saw things in this new light, my behavior changed, and then so did the other person's behavior. Amazing!
One stumbling block for me was that I don't see myself (the wife) as "fearful" - so the fear/shame dimension didn't quite resonate for me at first. But oh my goodness I DO experience anxiety - so now I just think of it as an anxiety/shame dimension.
One of my most startling realizations: I hadn't realized how much my anxiety showed in small behaviors apparent to my husband. Surprise surprise - I often thought "he started it" -- but often it was my acting out my anxiety that came first. How humbling :-)
In my non-marital relationships (friendships, business associates, family members) the model doesn't fit quite so neatly, particularly along gender lines, but the underlying concepts play out all around me.
I have recommended this book to many of my friends and bought it for several. It's a lifesaver!
A great companion book, for the times when one SHOULD "talk about it" with someone: Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes are High - 2008-12-14, 0 of 0 people found this review helpful, Rated:
- Great book, even my husband liked it
- Must read for every couple, really helpful. Valuable insights into the sensitivities and behavior of your partner and yourself. Practical advice to make your relationship better. Even my husband connected to the ideas and is reading the book, happily, after initially being very skeptical.
- 2008-11-27, 1 of 1 people found this review helpful, Rated:
- Another book that encourages women to adapt to men - and not vice versa
- This is another one of those books that holds women ultimately responsible for the success or failure of relationships.
The premise is that women want to talk and men don't. That may be true. But the answer provided by this book? Men need to be accommodated and women should accommodate them! Gee - what a novel concept! Who would have thought!? Truly groundbreaking!
Then there is the whole "women are motivated by fear and men are motivated by shame" thing - which is pure stereotyping - and manages to make women responsible for both their own and men's failings by implying that women evoke the shame response in men whereas women's fear response is due to their own weaknesses. (We need men to protect us from, uh, ... other men?)
This book trades on women's willingness to accommodate others, and it also plays on men's terror of being thought effeminate. (Asking your man to communicate with you is really asking him to be a woman! Horrors! We'll be asking them to clean the toilet next!)
I for one am sick of these "Men and Women are From Different Planets" type books. We aren't. Isn't it time we expored our similarities? - 2008-10-28, 2 of 4 people found this review helpful, Rated:
- ENOUGH TALKING ALREADY!
- Thank goodness somebody finally made it clear what real communication between couples is. That it is not always talking, talking, talking until you are worn out. Once you learn from this book how to UNDERSTAND each other, then take it a step further, and show each other how you feel. The Sensuous Couple's (Flip Over) Guide to Seismic Oral Sex will create more communication than you ever thought possible, and you won't be doing any talking. Give both books a try, and bring you and your husband closer than ever.
- 2008-10-10, 0 of 5 people found this review helpful, Rated:
