How To Improve Your Marriage Without Talking About It REVIEW

Countless couples have tried to enhance or increase communication as a way to improve their marriage only to increase frustration.  My husband and I have been there. Where did we go wrong? 

---

How To Improve Authors

Who is Pat Love? Dr Patricia Love is a popular educator, counselor, and author of relationship and family advice. You may know her as the author of Hot Monogamy as well.  She worked at Texas A&M University and has developed training programs to help people improve their relationships.

How To Improve is co-authored by Steven Stosny PhD. He has written multiple books and been featured on many TV shows and in countless publications. As a psychologist, he offers workshops for relationships and specializes in resentment, anger, abuse, and violence. His methods are some of the most successful around today for reducing incidents of repeat offences in domestic violence. 

---

How I Found How To Improve

This book came to our attention through endless hours of internet search by my husband about how to improve our marriage. It was recommended on a forum and one day he bought it for me in a big Amazon book haul. He knows me so well – I really love books!

This one piqued his interest because it goes against the grain about “more communication is always better”. We had stayed up way too late way, too many nights, trying to communicate more only to feel like we were bashing our heads against a wall.

---

How To Improve Your Marriage Without Talking About It Review

Summary

How To Improve is a marriage building book written for men and/or  women. A couple doesn’t have to read it together, and it’s made clear that if even just one partner does the work, the relationship will improve.  I’ve found this to be true so often in life! 

The foundation of the book is about uncovering the inherent (general) differences between men and women, how we communicate, and what triggers our most primal instincts. 

For men, this feeling – the one feeling they are instinctively trying to avoid the most – is shame (think: loss of status).  For women, it is fear (think: loss of stability or protection). Responses to these feelings are usually displayed in a predictable pattern of anger, anxiety, defensiveness, shutting down, and more. 

The book is designed to help the reader trigger their partner’s shame or fear less and take ownership for how they contribute to drawing that out of them. The reader also has plenty of work to do on themselves to avoid succumbing to their gut response in the worst way.

The cover and intro state that most relationship advice is to communicate MORE, but that never works.  What’s worse (if it could get worse!) is that most of this advice is geared toward a more feminine way of communicating. This is unhelpful because it forces men into an uncomfortable position that is against their nature.

To boil it down, the book aims to bring the best out of men and women in recognizing how they are different. It works WITHIN that design to empower each person to do what they can without trying to change their partner.

Best Feature From Pat & Steven

This book is written in such a way that it’s like having a counselor in the room with you. It has lists of phrases to use or not and quizzes to evaluate yourself. Topics include things like what negative assumptions are you operating on without even trying.  I found it very practical for women in particular as our tongues can be so sharp when we don’t mean to (and sometimes we do mean to).  It’s a book that you can read just a few pages of and have one or more things to immediately implement. 

PROS

• Based on the supposition that men are women are inherently different and aims to keep it that way
  
• Very practical, not just concepts without guidance on how to implement 

• Not fluffy, every page has value to take away 

• Uses lots of example conversations and scenarios to display ideas

• Multiple self evaluation sections

• Emphasizes personal responsibility, ownership, self-improvement instead of focusing on partner’s flaws

CONS

• Not bible based
  
• At times it seemed to drag on about the same very specific singular idea of the shame-fear dynamic 

• As a book written for men and women, i feel it has much more value for women. It’s not a bad book for men, per se, but it doesn’t have nearly as much value for them.  For men, it helps identify some issues, but I don’t think it was very helpful on how to improve in those areas at a deeper level. Instead, it focused on coping with the issues (in decently healthy ways, but still…). You see, without the power of God, the heart of a human can’t be truly changed. Anything done in the flesh may last for a time, but it can’t last forever.  While this book helps not turn men into women, it did little in the way of teaching how to be better men. 

---

Conclusion

It’s always interesting to find secular resources reflecting the truth found in God’s Word.  All truth comes from God and it can be discovered and used by non-believers.  To be straightforward, I only recommend this book for mature Christians that have a wide knowledge of Bible verses. This is so that they can remind themselves where the truth really comes from and the power therewith to do it.

The book has catchy multi-step processes such as “The Power Love Formula: Four and Three Quarter Minutes a Day to a Powerful Relationship” system, but don’t get caught up in those. I think the self-evaluations are useful for helping discover baggage or habits you may not have put your finger on (not that the Holy Spirit can’t show you these without this book). Impressively enough, the advice on how to make new habits even generally lines up with scripture.  

Lastly, I wouldn’t recommend this book over those that teach the actual Word of God. However, if you’re like me, you’ve already read stacks of those! Now you’re left wondering how to actually apply it – where are the practical steps? Some of them are right here. 

Are you done with the insanity of just trying to talk more, issue after issue, with no positive results? Grab a copy of this book and drop the frustration.

“Even with the best of intentions, talking about your relationship doesn’t bring you together, and it will eventually drive you apart. How To Improve Your Marriage Without Talking About It explains this difference and reveals the stunning truth about marital happiness: Love is not about better communication…”

How To Improve Your Marriage Without Talking About It, back cover

Grace and Peace,
Louise 

PS – If you are head banging like we were, check out my marriage testimony. I thought for years that we just needed to talk more to understand each other better and have a blissful marriage. I couldn’t have been more wrong.