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In an age when the idyllic notion of everlasting love has been battered against the rocks of infidelity and divorce, ever-popular Christian counselor and writer Smalley (The Language of Love) offers his own tried and true methods for making love last forever. According to Smalley, the foundation of lasting love is falling in love with life itself. In the first section of the book, he explores principles for resolving anger, balancing expectations and reality and avoiding hurt. Using anecdotes from his counseling sessions and stories from his own marriage, Smalley fashions, in the second section of the book, a set of "forever-love" principles designed to help married couples improve their relationships. Some of the principles Smalley includes as essential ingredients for lasting love are better communication, understanding a spouse's personality type and using conflict to foster intimacy. Each chapter closes with a set of "forever-love" principles drawn from the topic of the chapter. In the end, however, Smalley's principles are not helpful because they are founded upon, and promote, conventional stereotypes of men as rational and aggressive and women as intuitive and passive. Unfortunately, only couples who accept these stereotypical gender roles are likely to benefit from his principles.
From Booklist
After only a few chapters, it is obvious why Christian marriage counselor Smalley has sold more than 12 million copies of his videos and previous books. His presentation is highly organized, so that he can summarize each chapter in so many numbered points. He speaks plainly and inculcates his lessons with anecdotes from his clinical practice and his own life that workaday Americans, especially if they are in business and the professions, find easy to identify with and which Smalley weaves... read more
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