Book Notes: The Marriage Book (N&S Lee) Sex, Romance & The Glory of God (Mahaney), Lovers for Life (Wolf), The Good Marriage (Wallerstein/Blakeslee)

Having just clocked up our first decade of marriage, the church wants us to host a 'marriage course' in our home! The Marriage Course is really a set of videos to encourage couples to think seriously about how to develop their relationship, with sessions on such diverse matters as comunication, sex and in-laws! The sessions are informal and there's chat and food as well as the videos. First though we have to do some training in order to be able to run the thing successfully. Hopefully it will be up and running sometime in the New Year.

The Marriage Book, which accompanies the course is a really useful resource. I have to admit that reading it caused me a lot of serious (if not occasionaly painful) self-reflection and repentance. The difficulty with reading a book like this is to remain self-critical not become spouse-critical! It would be too easy to go through it with a pen underlining the bits I think SHE should read. That however would be to miss the point almost entirely. I've read a few books about marriage recently (10th anniversary and all that) and this is the one I have recommended to a few folks and bought for a few more. Theological, it ain't - but sensible and practical it is. If there's a fault with it, its probably that the autobiographial bits are a bit long; but this doesn't stop it being a really useful starting place to think about this wonderful, bizarre, amazing, strange, painful, joyful, perplexing, and inspiring thing called marriage.

A rather different book on marriage is this little hardback written for husbands by C.J. and Carolyn Mahaney. Unlike "The Marriage Book" this book is specifically about the place of sex in marriage, and its relationship to all other aspects. Using the biblical "Song of Solomon" as a starting point it is a celebration of God's purpose in creating sex and marriage and is full of advice and encouragement to see it flourish.

Again, it's the autobiographical stuff that gets in the way. "Those bonking Mahaney's" are at it all the time, it seems. By the end of the book you wonder how they had time (or indeed the strength) to sit down and write it, before dragging each other back to the bedroom. The 'poetry of seduction' section is the funniest and cheesiest thing I have ever read, so bad its worth buying the book for alone! Having said that, it is refreshing to see a Christian book which addresses the reality of who we are, rather than prudishly hedging issues. The Bible isn't remotely embarrased in it frank discussions of sex, certainly historically Christians have been.

This book on marriage however, is less useful. Advertised as being written by a marriage counsellor for several decades, it should have been really useful and insightful - but it dissapointed.

It's not that it wasn't helpful at all, just that her starting point in every issue seemed to be stereotypes. Men are like X, women like Y therefore........ So when her stereotype fitted us and our marriage, the ensuing wisdom was OK; but when the stereotype was misplaced the result was irrelevant advice. This becomes rather weary reading. The rather explicit sexual advice will also be a bit much for the staid reader! Personally I found it rather amusing.

An altogether much better secular book on marriage is this one by Wallerstein and Blakerslee. The authors, psycholgists by trade had done some research on divorce, analysing its causes and effects. Following that work they then then did an extensive study on long-lasting marriages, by way of comparison, examining the factors that made them survive and thrive. The results are a book which is less didactic and more analytical.

Of particular importance is their identification of nine 'tasks' or accomplishments which characterised most of the life-long marriages they studied and which were absent in the ones which broke down. These include such things as "separating successfully from family of origin" to "sharing laughter and keeping interests alive" to "making a safe place for conflict". This was the first book on marriage I ever read and the relevance of its findings actually grows with time. After 'The Marriage Book' this is probably the next best read mentioned here.

We're not going to host the Marriage Course under the illusion that we have anything to teach anyone else, simply the knowledge that the more you are prepared to work at it the better it gets. That, and the commitment to keep working at it as a lifelong excercise, because it is so completely worthwhile.