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A review by lizawren
The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work: A Practical Guide from the Country's Foremost Relationship Expert by John Gottman
2.0
2.5 stars. I thought it might be useful to read about how to keep a marriage strong, since I’ll be getting married soon. A lot of the recommended marriage prep books on Goodreads seem to have a distinctly Christian bent (which is not for us), so I picked this book up because reviewers seemed to tout it as the must-read marriage book that was religion-neutral with advice that was actually grounded in statistics and science.
The author felt the need to remark how “blessed” he was at least twice in his introduction, which gave me a little pause. The first chapters smacked a little too much of ‘only I can help you, believe me’, with a lot of telling rather than showing. Also, it’s possible that in the 1990s, one could write a successful pop-psychology book and not cite one’s (published, peer-reviewed) sources, but I don’t know if that flies today. So, there’s also no bibliography, and there’s no “recommended further reading” section (though there were a few book recommendations within the text), but there sure were a lot of claims made. Granted, some of the claims made sense and some of the exercises were useful to consider. There are lists of discussions to have and questions to ask each other. I was a little let down, but it’s possible that others may find this book helpful. 2.5 stars.
The author felt the need to remark how “blessed” he was at least twice in his introduction, which gave me a little pause. The first chapters smacked a little too much of ‘only I can help you, believe me’, with a lot of telling rather than showing. Also, it’s possible that in the 1990s, one could write a successful pop-psychology book and not cite one’s (published, peer-reviewed) sources, but I don’t know if that flies today. So, there’s also no bibliography, and there’s no “recommended further reading” section (though there were a few book recommendations within the text), but there sure were a lot of claims made. Granted, some of the claims made sense and some of the exercises were useful to consider. There are lists of discussions to have and questions to ask each other. I was a little let down, but it’s possible that others may find this book helpful. 2.5 stars.