Book Review: Cliff Powell, Graham Barker, &
Ian Harvey, Marriage That Works: Building a Loving Relationship,
Sydney: Albatross (England: Lion Publishing), 1966.

‘At parties, all too frequently, husbands and wives
join in the conversation by telling everyone else some tale that
displays their spouse’s inadequacy or folly. "That’s nothing,"
Jan will say. "Tony’s away so much for work that he has to
relearn the children’s names every time he comes back home."
Everyone laughs accordingly in response to this little humorous
gem.

‘On another occasion, Tony will get a laugh from
everyone with his story about Jane’s sense of direction – so hopeless
that the other day she drove out of a service station back the
way she had come, without even realising it!

‘It’s all done for fun – no hurt intended. At least
that’s the defence people use as they drive home in the car afterwards,
when they are confronted with a hurt, angry spouse. Many of the
best fights between husband and wife occur after a party as one
confronts the other with the dreaded question: "Why did you
say that?" The truth is, "spouse assassination"
contains disguised anger – and it is always destructive…’ Ouch!

Computer nerds read up – all the time – about computers.
Managers attend how-to-do-it or motivational courses regularly.
Every responsible professional subscribes to journals in their
vocational field. But in the most complex and important vocation
of all – a married relationship – it’s amazing that some people
hardly read anything. Revise that – some women and most men hardly
read anything.

We have physical checkups to see if our bodies are
functioning as they should. We submit to performance appraisals
at our job. (More people are coming regularly to our little counseling
practice to do ‘This is Your Life’ weekends – a spiritual/ psychological
check-up on how they’re doing emotionally and in their relationship
with the Lord).

Marriage check-ups? What are they? In short, they
ought to be a mandatory procedure, with a trusted and skilled
counselor, about how we’re doing in our marriage. When Jan and
I hit a bit of a ‘mid-life wall’ compounded by the so-called ’empty-nest
syndrome’ a few years back, we went to another couple to talk
through our changing relationship. Two intensive sessions were
enough for us to put in place a few ‘course corrections’…

Now, if you want to do it on your own, a couple could
do no better than buy this little (207 page) paperback by three
Australian clinical psychologists. I wish I’d read it when I was
writing about marriage for my book The Family (see the relevant
articles on our homepage, or email me for details about how to
get the book).

The three authors obviously checked their counseling
theories and perspectives with each other. Its two best features,
in my view, are the real-life stories throughout, and the questions
for thought and discussion at the end of each chapter. These are
under three headings – Personal Inventory, Sharing with your partner,
and Group work. So your church young marrieds’ group (or any marrieds’
group) could find it useful as an eleven week series (one chapter
per week).

Some excellent features:

* The emphasis on unfinished family-of-origin business.
I’m coming across people in the 50s, 60s and sometimes older who
are reprogramming the tapes in their head/heart from early childhood
experiences. On pages 28-29 there’s an excellent Personal Inventory
on these issues, helping us face the messages we got from our
parents, or significant others, about Self, Others, The world,
Important life issues, ‘Life Messages’ etc. We do the work on
our own and check it then with our partner. Terrific stuff.

* The helpful cartoons. (Eg. Jester to princess:
‘I have nothing to give you so I give you my heart. All I ask
is that you handle it with care.’ Princess: ‘Oh, Eddie! Of course
I will!’ Next frame: ‘Chuck!’ as she throws it into a large chest
with many other hearts).

* Although written by evangelical Christian therapists,
it’s hortatory without being ‘preachy’.

* The discussions about sexual matters are sensible
and not too technical.

If I had to select the paragraph that touches the
most telling problem in modern marriages it would be this one
from page 88:

‘Loving intimacy is difficult for many men to get
a handle on. Men are often not well prepared, culturally, for
the task of sharing close thoughts and feelings with a wife. Women
frequently share from adolescence with close girlfriends, but
too often their male counterparts are active "doing things"
without any deep sharing. They would like the same level of closeness,
but social taboo somehow forbids it. In marriage, this can become
a thorny issue, as wives expect their husbands to fill the role
that girlfriends played and provide the close, sharing friendship
of _philo_.’ (See the excellent website http://www.manhood.com.nf/
for more).

And the award for the most telling/thoughtful sentence:
‘The best marriage will go considerably beyond this foundation
of equality and become a kind of competition in dominance reversal…
This improved model runs, really, on a foundation of self-sacrifice’
(p.203).

My only question: What difference would a woman have
made to the contents?

Get it!

Shalom!

Rowland Croucher