Customer Reviews

Most Important Year in a Woman's Life, The/The Most Important Year in a Man's Life

5 star:		(28)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Both my husband and I of 4 months are reading "The Most Important Year in a Woman's/Man's Life", and we are thoroughly impressed with it so far!

My husband really liked how his "side"of the book started out with topics of sports, and money...he says that immediately grabbed his attention.

Now my "side", Susan Devries and Bobble Wolgemuth writing style really appealed to the emotional aspect of marriage...the expectations prior to marraige, and the reality of life after marraige. I appreciate their ability to effectively communicate women's emotion in writing, which is not easy to do! I believe the lady authors do a superb job at capturing the emotions and lending that support for the female during the 1st year of marraige.
The book also speaks on topics such as sex from both the male and female perspective...So the female authors explain what sex is like for the men-and the importance of making love with your husband, and the male authors explain sex to the men using a baseball analogy (first base, second base, third base, and home) to ensure they comprehend how to make love to your wife.
There is also the middle section, "Meet in the middle" with activities/review material for the husband and wife to complete together once they have each read their portion.

This is a very creative book! 2-in-1! I have never seen that!

I will definately recommend this book to other newlyweds in my church!

I have been married for a year and a half and just read the book. You can read it before you get married or thirty years down the road. It tells you simple rules and ideas you can actually practice. I know its a Christian book and that is one reason why I was given it, but you can read it being any faith, just as long as you want a better marriage and relationship. And its so fun being in one book to "meet in the middle." I am about to read his side of the book now!

Susan and Mark DeVries and Bobbie and Robert Wolgemuth have put together not only a helpful first year companion for newly marrieds, they've done it with creativity.

This one book is really two books in one. From one side, women can read about what to expect, how to handle, and generally what constitutes a good first year in a Christian marriage. From the opposite side of the book, men develop the same type of material. Then, in the middle, are questions and ideas to bring the two sides together. They tackle topics from a balanced, Christian perspective and give tremendous insight into both sides of the marriage relationship.

The only issue I had with the book was that from the woman's perspective (yeah, I peaked in on that side :) there is great emphasis placed on the woman's ability to change the man. Though typical of our culture today, I think this is the only (though not necessarily insignificant) unbalanced part of the book. I would have liked to have heard on both sides of the book how both the husband and wife provide complimentary change into each other's lives. This then focuses on mutual change, dreams, and submission.

Even with that problem, I think I could recommend this book to newly married couples as a good guideline on how to build a strong foundation for a life-long commitment to an imperfect person.

For a full review, go to the blog in my screen name and click on the Readings category.

My fiance and I each bought a book to read for our pre-martial counseling. Even though we haven't even started meeting with the counselor, we have had many deep discussions brought on by this book. Its been excellent in helping us think through things that will affect our marriage.

We read this before we got married and found that there were several "aha" moments and things we hadn't thought of. It's a great eye opener and I HIGHLY suggest reading it and talking through your marriage or pre-marriage!

We thought we were invincible and put off reading this wedding gift until 5 months into our marriage. As I'm sure you can guess, we were having all sorts of frustrating discussions on everything from the dishes to the direction of the toilet paper.

When I would approach my husband with a problem, he was constantly trying to "fix me." This book really helped us bridge a communication gap. My husband took to the sports analogies, and I found myself with a new appreciation for my husband's point of view. This really got us past that first hump. It's a must read, and I'm sure we'll do it again somewhere down the road.

I am usually pretty sceptical of self-help books, or books that are recommended by conservative religious groups although I am a Christian. However, this book was given to my husband and me when we were engaged and we both loved it. Although it is geered towards couples who are newlyweds, we found the book great for getting us talking about key issues that we had never considered before, and working out problems before we were confronted with them in the marriage. We learned a lot about each other from this book, and even found it more helpful than our professional pre-marital counseling. We have since given this book to all of our young friends getting married.

My wife and I have both read this book (both sides of it) and found the information to be very good regarding the 'normals' each person brings to a marriage and how they are not necessarily "right" or "wrong" but just different. It helps open up discussion about things like sex, money, habits, toilet paper alignment, work, kids, in-laws, church, man/woman roles, etc. Although we didn't read it until after 2 years of marriage (we have read many other sources, though :)) we still pulled some good info from it.

I like that the book reviewed the importance of both love and friendship. You can fall head over heels in 'attraction' for your mate, but if you have nothing in common and don't want to learn how to please or be a friend to them, it's going to be rough. When you can learn together, admit that you make mistakes, and each work on your 'issues', the friendship and marriage grows better. Your problems will NEVER be resolved if you just ignore them! Keep working on constant improvement.

Another recommendation I liked is that each person should SAY what they want rather than trying to 'hint' at it. A woman who thinks, "if my husband really loved me, he would..." may never see it happen. I don't know about you, but I sure can't read minds and don't get the 'hints'. Thankfully, my wife tells me what is on her mind so I don't have to magically figure it out. It's so much less hassle that way. Overall, I recommend the book and am going to buy another copy for a friend at work who is getting married next week.

I've already recommended it to several friends and family members. When I started reading "my part" I couldn't put the book down. I was having a little trouble getting my husband to read "his part" (and was eager to see what his side of the book said) so I offered to read it to him just before bed. Very enlightening and right on target! A must read for newlyweds...or anyone.

Most Important Year in a Woman's Life, The/The Most Important Year in a Man's Life
This is an excellent resource book not only for newly married couples but for those of us who have been married for a long while. Some of the topics covered are: roles, friendship, money, sex, talking, dreams, inlaws and outlaws, etc. It shows you how to have healthy discussions about such differing points of view as: men have a tendency to want to "fix" whatever is bothering you and you have a need for your husband just to listen most of the time and validate your feelings. Women need to be heard from the heart not just the ears and women need to give their man the respect that they crave. I highly recommend this book to all newly engaged or newly wedded couples.