Customer Reviews

I Love You More: How Everyday Problems Can Strengthen Your Marriage

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With today's high divorce rate, another book on gluing your marriage together is always welcome. Here, veteran relationship team Drs. Les and Leslie Parrott show how difficult problems can lead to deeper, more committed marriages in I LOVE YOU MORE (a re-issue of the earlier WHEN BAD THINGS HAPPEN TO GOOD MARRIAGES, 2001). While much of their advice will have a familiar ring to those who regularly read marriage self-help books, the idea of using negative marital circumstances to achieve a positive outcome makes this book stand out from the ordinary.

The Parrotts are perhaps best known for their Soul Mates Seminars and long-running output of books on marriage for Christian audiences. They speak with the experience of interactions with many married couples when they write, "No marriage --- no matter how good --- is immune to everyday problems." The very problems that seem to threaten marital happiness, they believe, are actually the "tipping point" for deeper love between a husband and wife. Sound counter-intuitive? Read on....

Contrary to romantic belief, love is not enough to make a happy marriage. Neither is shared faith. (Oklahoma, they point out, the buckle of the Bible belt, has one of the highest divorce rates in the United States). Don't get them wrong --- love and faith are important. But a good marriage is built by two people's capacity to adjust to negative things. The bankruptcy you didn't expect. The child who is born disabled. The affair you thought you'd never have. The depression that incapacitates your spouse. "We have staked everything on this person we marry," they write. "...And we eventually learn this person is not what we expected, or at least what we wished."

The Parrotts like to break things down into manageable bites of information. They list five possibilities that contribute to marital problems, including idealistic couples with unfulfilled expectations, restless couples who have not examined, contented couples who have not tapped into their unskilled potential, couples who make unhealthy choices, and unpredictable circumstances.

Much of marriage is about attitude, the authors caution, adding that a good attitude is your most important marital asset. "Good attitudes open the double doors of marriage for optimism to do its work... without optimism, couples see no way out of their negative circumstances," they write. They offer four steps to turn around a bad attitude: look for the positive, refuse to be a victim, give up your grudges, and give yourself and your marriage some grace. A sure sign of a good marital attitude is when you are not only willing to go the first mile, but also go the extra mile in your marriage, the "extra-mile principle."

The Parrotts also list "six subtle saboteurs" that can deep-six a marriage: busyness, irritation, boredom, drift, debt, and pain from the past. Practically, the Parrotts offer readers the five "most important" tools a marriage needs to successfully battle everyday problems. Who could resist? Not this reader. The five (not so easy) steps they recommend are: Ownership --- taking responsibility for the good as well as the bad; Hope --- believing that good wins over bad; Empathy --- walking in your partner's shoes; Forgiveness --- healing the hurts you don't deserve; and Commitment --- living the love you promised. They conclude the book with an overview of learning to speak your spouse's spiritual language, partially drawn from Gary Thomas's must-read book, SACRED PATHWAYS. The Parrotts believe that marriage is a spiritual discipline. "A stronger marriage is a side effect of learning to love God --- together."

One thing to be aware of: If you buy this book, the publisher has ensured you'll want to purchase at least one of the accompanying husband or wife workbooks by directing readers to do exercises from it throughout the text. In some ways, this feels a little like a marketing gimmick to sell more books. However, there are questions for reflection included at the end of each chapter, so the book will stand on its own without the additional workbooks.

--- Reviewed by Cindy Crosby. (...)

The Parrotts have packed a lot of helpful insight into this short book. Many areas are enhanced by stories from real couples -- talking about a problem area in their marriage and how it was managed or resolved. Married for 13 years myself, I found all of the book to be realistic, and relevant to my experience, and some of their advice was actually new to me. The suggested workbooks are definitely not essential for getting the good out of the book, certainly they take the reflection (the personalizing) further.

From the outside this reviewer did not feel too impressed with this book. There is no Scripture index and the endnotes refer mostly to secular works. Unfortunately, the as this reviewer started reading the book, the conclusion was easily drawn that this is a book that is for any married couple, but because it is a book for everyone, it is not a Christian book. The book is 200 pages long, and includes a total of 2 Scripture references! The first one was Matthew 7:41, mentioned in the conclusion of the chapter on page 69. This means that the Bible was not the basis of the chapter or even a simple point, but rather an illustration. The other was Eph 5:21 (158), which seems to be wrongly interpreted and certainly does not give the basis for the conclusion that is made in the story. By writing a book that lacks virtually any Scripture the authors deny Sola Scriptural, they deny sufficiency of Scripture, and even that Scripture has anything to say about these life issues! Why do the authors base none of their arguments on Scripture? Why is there not even a hint of a discussion of Eph 5:22-33, the Proverbs 31 woman, James 4:1-10 or 1 Corinthians 7:1-6 when they do discuss things like roles in marriage, conflict and sexual problems.
Over and over again they deal with adultery and other sin issues in marriage. But the word "sin," as far as this reviewer can recall, is not mentioned once in the book. There are a few times that one partner in marriage asks the other for forgiveness, but there seems to be not a single time that the person mentioned seeks forgiveness and restoration from God.
Interspersed in each chapter the authors give nice little quotes of "wisdom;" the problem is that they quote indiscriminately from people who are Christians, who may or may not be Christians, and who are not Christians. There is some God talk, but in the end, with the lack of Scriptural discussion, they really are saying, "God's Word is nice, but it does not have the answer to your problems. We do!" The authors certainly did not write this book with this kind of intention, but that does not change the fact this book displays this kind of emphasis. Only chapter 8 is somewhat geared to spiritual matter, but even here the discussion is far from being distinctly Christian. Virtually all the material could have been written by or for Muslims or Jews just as much for Christians.
This book is unfortunately like so much of modern evangelicalism: instead of focusing on the Bible and bringing glory to God through all things (including marriage), this book is another "fix it yourself" book that has no foundation other than the mere wisdom of man.