THE LOVE & RESPECT EXPERIENCE by Emerson Eggerichs

The Love & Respect Experience: A Husband-Friendly Devotional that Wives Truly Love (2011) is a Christian devotional for married couples by Emerson Eggerichs based on his very worthwhile Love & Respect book (2004) and curriculum.

The Love & Respect Experience consists of 52 devotionals of three or four pages each, covering such topics as the differences between men and women, love, respect, forgiveness, prayer, sex, being positive, focusing on God, anger, and humility.

There’s a great deal of exhortation here, but not a lot of discussion material that doesn’t potentially involve picking at one another’s flaws. Instead, there are plenty of things to do and not do. The effect of this is that The Love & Respect Experience often feels like a Christian self-help book dressed up as a devotional.

The discussion questions for each devotional are in the back of the book rather than with the corresponding chapter. That may sound trivial, but it’s a major blow to user-friendliness. Once you track your questions down, there tend to be a lot of “yes/no” questions and reading comprehension questions, and not always a lot for fruitful discussion.

The book is heavily billed as being “geared toward men,” yet, beyond one devotional about John Wooden and another about Tom Coughlin, I was hard pressed to find evidence of this, whether in theme or town. I never felt like it was geared to me. My wife and I pray together on a daily basis, although we don’t usually do a devotional. I picked this up because I thought this was worth a shot, but neither of us ever got into it.

The Love & Respect Experience also includes a brief explanation of Eggerichs’ three cycles of marriage, as outlined in Love & Respect, but familiarity with the material in Love & Respect helps quite a bit in working through these devotionals, and some of the material may be confusing or not useful otherwise.

While the content in The Love & Respect Experience is good, it just doesn’t work well as a devotional, at least to me – no doubt some will find it quite helpful, and that’s great. The rest of us, however, might be better off sticking with the original Love & Respect and trying to meet our devotional needs elsewhere.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the publisher through the BookSneeze.com book review bloggers program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

WHEN TWO BECOME THREE by Mark E. Crawford

When Two Become Three: Nurturing Your Marriage After Baby Arrives is a 2007 book on marriage and parenting by clinical psychologist Mark E. Crawford. The book’s primary stated purpose is to show parents how to keep their marriage a high priority, and to strengthen it, after the birth of the first child.

This is more of a marriage book than a parenting book, although it is inextricably both. Crawford begins by discussing communication and conflict resolution, then moves on to cover the pressure of the tremendous responsibility of parenting, and the new division of household labor. Much of this, however, is written in such a way (inadvertently, of course) as to create agitation and anxiety in new parents rather than immediately ease concerns.

Crawford also offers specific advice to mothers and fathers. But he only considers the traditional working-man, stay-at-home mom and two-income structures. Given Crawford’s emphasis on gender-specific parental attributes, I was profoundly disappointed to see that he has nothing to say on the subject of stay-at-home dads – come on, man, join the twenty-first century.

The final third of When Two Become Three covers sex after the baby comes, establishing a parenting philosophy, and dealing with the complex issues of step-families.

Crawford’s writing style is chatty and readable. The back of the book calls him witty, but that’s being generous. Crawford himself is pretty obviously a Christian, although this is by no means a Christian book, and his references to Christianity tend to be oblique.

When Two Become Three is not a long book (192 pages), but the reader may frequently find himself skimming. Crawford simply goes into a great deal more detail than many readers will care to get into – these will be, by and large, the readers who have largely non-dysfunctional marriages. This is not to say any of this information isn’t good – it’s just problem-solving tips for problems many of us don’t have.

But the fundamental truths here are solid: being a married couple first and parents second, parenting and administering the household as a team, maintaining mutual respect and intimacy, and so forth.

Maintaining a marriage after children is important (and, given the statistics on divorce in the United States, often neglected), and the basics covered in When Two Become Three are certainly worthwhile. For parents-to-be, this book is worth a perusal.

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THE FIVE LOVE LANGUAGES by Gary Chapman

The Five Love Languages is marriage guru Gary Chapman's book on expressing love and commitment to a spouse. The goal here is to get readers to be able to "fill the emotional tanks" of their spouses, which does not always come naturally because people receive love in different ways.

Chapman begins with explaining his "love tank" idea (which is corny, but good), gives a diatribe against the "falling in love" condition, then outlines his five love languages: words of affirmation, quality time, receiving gifts, acts of service, and physical touch. He concludes with various remarks about love, particularly love as a choice. The book ends with little quizzes spouses can take to discover their own love languages.

The book on the whole feels oversimplified. Chapman does not point out here that the kind of love a person likes to receive is not always the kind of love that same person gives. In fact, he suggests the opposite. Chapman's dialogue with the couples he speaks with (as he reports it) is distractingly stilted and unnatural. Even though the book is less than 200 pages, it drags at times, as Chapman beats the horse on each point.

In The Five Love Languages, things are clearly oversimplified. Nevertheless there is some valuable material here. Specifically, there are two important points to take away: that people receive love in different ways, and that love is a choice and an action. From that perspective, almost anyone who is married can benefit from this book.

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