Why Talking Is Not Enough: Eight Loving Actions That Will Transform Your Marriage

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Having worked with many couples over the past 35 years I feel I can echo the testimonials Susan has received from some very prominent and thoughtful people--this is a really good book, one I would recommend--and I don't recommend books often or casually. What impressed me the most was that if people actually follow these suggestions, I know their relationship will really improve. How often can that be said? I have recognized over the years, as clearly Susan have also, that much of what doesn't work in relationships has to do with ignorance rather than ill intent. If a person has been raised in an unloving family, then that person simply does not know what actual loving actions are. This book provides that information in such a clear and digestible way; it really provides an important and useful service.

Susan Page's new book is the best relationship book I have read in a long time! It is POWERFUL because it is PRACTICAL - in other words, Susan brings the expression of love down to earth by advocating clear, specific, actions that demonstrate in physical reality the intention to create a loving, harmonious partnership. Far from theoretical or academic, this book puts love into practice. The book is EMPOWERING because it puts the tools for change in your hands - you do not have to wait until your partner changes for your relationship to get better! Susan's book is innovative in the following ways: 1) She suggests that communication is NOT the most important relationship skill. Far more important is the ability to take loving actions. These loving actions are a way for the individual to further their own spiritual growth and development because they focus on "being" a loving partner rather than on getting your partner to change or to admit that they are wrong and you are right. Page offers a convincing argument for why trying to get your partner to change never works anyway, and it usually makes things worse! and, 2) Susan suggests that couples take the focus off their problems (because, the more you focus on problems, the more problems are all you see) and instead focus on learning to be happy together. In fact she advocates giving up problem-solving altogether because, as Carl Jung says, "All the greatest and most important problems of this life are fundamentally insoluble. They can never be solved, but only outgrown." Susan's book offers invaluable advice and guidance for the step-by-step process of "outgrowing" your problems by becoming actively engaged in the possibility of love, support, and nurturance in your relationship. I couldn't recommend this book more. If you are tired of hearing yourself talk (and argue)and ready to try something truly radical and transformative, buy this book and try the loving actions. You won't be disappointed!

My husband and I have been working on our communication and other hot topics for over ten years. As you would expect, we come from different perspectives and have yet to sustantially improve our communication or resolve our hot issues. In counseling our therapist recommended we discontinue our efforts to resolve our issues and try working on our spiritual connection individually and together. A friend recommended a book that she discovered in her search for some help in her spiritual practice. Just reviewing the first chapter on-line sold me on Susan Page's book. I bought it immediately and then my husband bought it, he was so impressed with my recommendation. We are both reading and working on our spiritual practices and are amazed at the results. We can only work on ourselves. We cannot fix others. There are many relationship guru's who are saying very much the same things, in different ways. This book spoke directly to me. The basic message is to start with yourself. I've read my fair share of self-help and relationship rescue books with good information and messages, but this one gives you "experiments' to try which was a bonus for me. I finally had something that worked for me that didn't take a degree, or hours of unavailable time to write or perform. I saw immediate results and I feel "free" at last. I no longer feel trapped or victimized. I can take action and feel the power of an inner peace I've never felt. I recommend this book regularly to family and friends. I am using the loving actions with all my relationships. Without the recommendation of my therapist to develop a spiritual practice and the tip on this book, I believe my marriage would be no more. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain by reading this book!

This book is about developing a "Spiritual Partnership" with your mate. Surprisingly, Susan Page believes that this is possible even if all the effort is coming from only one of the partners. In essence, it's about how to be a spiritual partner yourself. Though it is actually a rewrite of an earlier book (If we're so in love, Why aren't we happy?), it has been augmented and reorganized so that it's even better than before. After 30 years of marriage, my husband and I have certainly gotten to the point of realizing that more discussion just doesn't help: Most of our issues have been on the table for years. We've discussed them many times, we understand the other person's point of view, and can even empathize to a certain extent. And yet, in the past, when one of these hot-button issues would surface (once again), we would both feel hopeless and demoralized. This book really helped me to change my focus; and to the extent I have been able to follow through with the "experiments," I've seen improvement--not in getting my husband to finally see things "my way," but in both of us being happier and more comfortable in our relationship. This is one of the best self-help books about marriage that I have ever read; and although its focus is on couples, I found the approaches it suggests are also helpful in my relationships with my children and co-workers. I have recommended it to many friends and relatives, and their reactions to it have been quite positive as well.

This is a very powerful book. It offers a radical notion -- that you can make your marriage a whole lot better, without getting your spouse to do it with you. Most people probably would think this is either impossible or terribly unfair. But Susan Page argues that if you're unhappy or not getting what you want out of your marriage, you have a whole lot more power to make your marriage better than you ever imagined. In fact, she makes it clear that feeling that power, that sense of control over the emotional quality of your marriage, MORE than makes up for any feeling of how "unfair" it all is that you're the one who's orchestrating the changes. The "8 Loving Actions" that she talks about are, in fact, ways that one person can change the dynamics of a relationship, turning anger, fear or distance into support and caring. More and more research on marriage shows that it's not "conflict" and the inability to resolve it that breaks up marriage; it's the dysfunctional dance that two people get into, that make them unable to support and soothe one another. This book shows you how to go from being a victim of the dance, constantly getting your feet stepped on, to taking the lead. Eventually your spouse can't help but start trying your new, more enjoyable dance steps. This probably won't be enough to fix a marriage that's been damaged by drugs, alcohol, constant philandering, or physical abuse (although Susan Page has very useful advice even in those circumstances). But for garden-variety marital unhappiness -- the feeling of being unsupported, or of the marriage having gone stale -- this book is a godsend. It can make the difference between resigning oneself to having a ho-hum marriage that's not really great, but not really bad enough to leave -- and having a marriage that is full of life, and joy, and satisfaction for years to come.