The Good-For-You Marriage: How Being Married Can Improve Your Health, Prolong Your Life, and Ensure Your Happiness

by Meg Schneider and Cliff Isaacson

Many people joke that their spouses will be the end of them. The truth is, according to this book, that the intimacy of marriage is critical to sound physical and mental health. With this in mind, the... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1598694766
• ISBN13: 9781598694765
• Release Date: January 2008
• Publisher: Adams Media Corporation
• Length: 246 Pages
• Weight: 0.67 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.5" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

It's a Good-For-Everyone Book

The Good-For-You MARRIAGE The title of this book was enough to make me look through it, even though I'm not married and have no plans to be married. Then a glance at the cover blurb convinced me that Isaacson must know what he's talking about, since he had already been married 52 years when the blurb was finalized. The contents later delivered a major surprise that made me wonder if the title was complete enough. In the first sentence, we're reminded that it's a GOOD marriage that's good for us. Given that, we can hope for a bookful of benefits--longer life, suicide prevention, better financial health (perhaps,) less violence, more fidelity, more and better sex, and happy kids. The authors, however, aren't afraid of the fine print in the marriage agreement and what each partner brings to it. They march right into issues like what kind of love made two people marry, and what kind will make them likely to stay happy ever after. For readers who are already skeptical, looking back on a former marriage, or looking right at stormy marriages they see around them, part of the first chapter talks about the effects of baggage from the marriage we grew up in. At the end of this chapter is the first "Honey Do" list of three things to do to improve our relating to each other. Then Sharing the Wealth tells us we may accumulate more wealth married, but we're also looking at one of the three top conflict-makers in marriage--money. But this isn't just a budget lecture but also a lot of understanding of how each partner feels down inside about money, and how different both may be. Feelings that determine our earning, saving, and especially spending are not just from our social class of origin, but gender roles and psychological issues. At the end of the chapter, we get some hope that if the chapter's guidelines help us resolve money issues, we'll see improvement in other areas as well. But it was in Chapter 3, Keeping Your Sanity, that I got the big surprise. What the authors are giving us, that the title doesn't reveal, is a pattern, a book full of counseling on how to relate peacefully to anyone we are truly involved with--even a grown child, parent, or sibling we love but seem completely incompatible with! Probably plenty of people skipped forward to Chapter 6, It's a Date! There we're reminded gently that if we don't like how we're treated, we have to change how we act. This is coupled with plenty of encouragement including what we've suspected-- different people bring out different things in us--best or worst. (Probably a good thing to consider carefully before we buy the ring.) And the authors express their conviction that some people really do bring out the worst in us, in spite of ourselves. Others make us delighted with how well we behave with them. These two chapters alone felt worth buying the book for, married or single. You might also check out: The Birth Order Effect for Couples: How Birth Order Affect