He Wins, She Wins

The
thesis of this book is that each conflict or disagreement in marriage
should be solved by working together to come to a solution that can be
agreed to by both parties….enthusiastically. I think it had many good
points and it made me think more critically about how I solve
disagreements and problems in our marriage.

This book would be
good if you and your spouse are looking for a complete overhaul in the
way you approach conflict in your marriage. He recommends a systematic
strategy using a notebook and says that if you can’t come to an
enthusiastic agreement then you shouldn’t do anything and you should
just table the discussion until both sides can enthusiastically agree. I
appreciate the encouragement to not just reluctantly agree to something
in the name of ‘serving’ your spouse. He details the pitfalls of that
attitude in the first few chapters.

But ultimately I think that
the book does not have enough practical advice about how to actually
reach enthusiastic agreement when there are two sinful people involved. I
found myself disagreeing with many things he suggested. For example, he
discusses in one place how if your spouse doesn’t like being around
your parents because your parents are not kind to him/her then you
should just tell your parents that you won’t be coming to visit them
until they start being nicer to your spouse. I guess I would agree if
there is some kind of emotional abuse of your spouse going on, but I
think that most conflicts are two sided and that your spouse would be
responsible for some part of the issue.

So unless you and your
spouse are both committed to trying out the system then there are
probably other marriage books that would be more beneficial. Ironically,
both spouses need to be enthusiastic about trying this out for it to
work. I was also turned off by the numerous times that he mentioned how
he and his wife used these principles to have such a wonderful marriage.
I get that he has 50 years of experience, but it came across as
prideful instead of encouraging.

Overall it was worth a read but wouldn’t be my new go to marriage book.

I received a copy of this book through the Revell Blogger Review
Program, in exchange for my honest review. All opinions are my own.