I Love You More: How Everyday Problems Can Strengthen Your Marriage

My husband and I LOVE this book! Awesome for creating intimacy between husband and wife.... the exercises are great for dealing with the stuff under the surface that you'd never think of, that wouldn't come up in everyday conversation. Get this book, no matter how great your marriage is! Marriage is worth it!

The Parrotts have packed a lot of helpful insight into this short book. Many areas are enhanced by stories from real couples -- talking about a problem area in their marriage and how it was managed or resolved. Married for 13 years myself, I found all of the book to be realistic, and relevant to my experience, and some of their advice was actually new to me. The suggested workbooks are definitely not essential for getting the good out of the book, certainly they take the reflection (the personalizing) further.

With today's high divorce rate, another book on gluing your marriage together is always welcome. Here, veteran relationship team Drs. Les and Leslie Parrott show how difficult problems can lead to deeper, more committed marriages in I LOVE YOU MORE (a re-issue of the earlier WHEN BAD THINGS HAPPEN TO GOOD MARRIAGES, 2001). While much of their advice will have a familiar ring to those who regularly read marriage self-help books, the idea of using negative marital circumstances to achieve a positive outcome makes this book stand out from the ordinary. The Parrotts are perhaps best known for their Soul Mates Seminars and long-running output of books on marriage for Christian audiences. They speak with the experience of interactions with many married couples when they write, "No marriage --- no matter how good --- is immune to everyday problems." The very problems that seem to threaten marital happiness, they believe, are actually the "tipping point" for deeper love between a husband and wife. Sound counter-intuitive? Read on.... Contrary to romantic belief, love is not enough to make a happy marriage. Neither is shared faith. (Oklahoma, they point out, the buckle of the Bible belt, has one of the highest divorce rates in the United States). Don't get them wrong --- love and faith are important. But a good marriage is built by two people's capacity to adjust to negative things. The bankruptcy you didn't expect. The child who is born disabled. The affair you thought you'd never have. The depression that incapacitates your spouse. "We have staked everything on this person we marry," they write. "...And we eventually learn this person is not what we expected, or at least what we wished." The Parrotts like to break things down into manageable bites of information. They list five possibilities that contribute to marital problems, including idealistic couples with unfulfilled expectations, restless couples who have not examined, contented couples who have not tapped into their unskilled potential, couples who make unhealthy choices, and unpredictable circumstances. Much of marriage is about attitude, the authors caution, adding that a good attitude is your most important marital asset. "Good attitudes open the double doors of marriage for optimism to do its work... without optimism, couples see no way out of their negative circumstances," they write. They offer four steps to turn around a bad attitude: look for the positive, refuse to be a victim, give up your grudges, and give yourself and your marriage some grace. A sure sign of a good marital attitude is when you are not only willing to go the first mile, but also go the extra mile in your marriage, the "extra-mile principle." The Parrotts also list "six subtle saboteurs" that can deep-six a marriage: busyness, irritation, boredom, drift, debt, and pain from the past. Practically, the Parrotts offer readers the five "most important" tools a marriage needs to successfully battle everyday problems. W