Rescue Your Love Life

July 25, 2005
Reconnecting with your mate is the goal of this uneven guide by Cloud and Townsend, the authors of the million-selling Boundaries series on relationships. Here, they offer a comprehensive look at virtually every way a marriage can disconnect. They also provide tested and successful solutions to these problems as they address issues such as unreasonable expectations, personality differences, and problems with communication, trust, sex and conflict resolution. Their advice ranges from the obvious—"Don't criticize or put down your mate"—to seasoned counsel stemming from a deep understanding of how marriages really work (such as when they conclude that couples "must go through reality to get to love"). The book is refreshingly honest in its push to get couples to examine themselves closely and pinpoint problems, as well as create appropriate solutions. Its comprehensiveness, however, is also its weakness. Skimming the surface of the huge topic of marriage makes for limited ability to plumb the depths of specific problems and solutions. While this is an excellent primer for discovering marriage-ending troubles and taking beginning steps toward reconnecting, the deep work of repair must be found elsewhere, perhaps in the workbook that will be published simultaneously.