Customer Reviews

Good People... Bad Marriages: Wisdom to Know - Freedom to Choose - Courage to Change

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I am currently in the beginning stages of a divorce. Married my best friend and was married 5 years. Nothing really went wrong with the marriage other than just we grew a apart. I have been feeling guilty about getting a divorce dealing with all the feelings that go along with it but this book helped. I am not a big book reader but I finished it 2 nights. And now I am going to share it with my spouse.

There seem to be so many books and advice out there about working hard to save a marriage. They actually make having a good marriage sound about as pleasant as having stomach flu. In this book the author suggests that good marriages happen, because, first of all, the people involved are fairly well balanced and second of all, they were lucky and found the right match. The author says that there is probably no fixing a bad marriage, because it's just not a good match. She feels from studying information she has gathered, that in a good marriage there are disagreements and misunderstandings, but these couples work them out quite well with a minimum of fuss.
I think this way of seeing things makes more sense than thinking that marriages take continual gut wrenching work to sustain them. Maybe she's right. Maybe it's bad marriages that take gut wrenching work to keep them going. Maybe all these marriage counselors are really just shoring up marriages that are hopelessly unhappy.
The author states that it is better to have no marriage than a bad one. She lists the reasons why people probably settle for what they know deep down is a not going to be a good marriage. Two reasons which I'm not sure she mentioned are wanting to have children and wanting to believe they can have some of the happiness of married love. It's not JUST because people are expected to or that they are too needy. In my marriage even though it was never what I would have wished in every important way, I did have children I love, and I did have a partnership with my husband for a long time. The relationship lacked some important things for me, one of which was respect and true interest in and understanding of me by my husband. I mean when your husband's big disappointment in your marriage was always your no good housekeeping, you somehow don't feel he ever really saw you. I suppose people settle for the wrong person. because they decide they won't find any "right one" and they want a family and maybe they are needy. That was true of me. The author feels that people ought to marry only for love, not for what the other person can do for them. It should be because they want to love and care for that person for the rest of their lives. The author also indicated that when a person marries another for love and it is not really reciprocated, eventually that love dies.

Finally some reassurance that I was making the right decision! This book helped me with some of the guilt I was feeling over a difficult marriage and helped me see that even if we're both good people, we just made a bad decision. Very easy to read and understand.