Laugh Your Way to a Better Marriage: Unlocking the Secrets to Life, Love and Marriage Author: Visit Amazon's Mark Gungor Page | Language: English | ISBN:
1416536051 | Format: EPUB
Laugh Your Way to a Better Marriage: Unlocking the Secrets to Life, Love and Marriage Description
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
- Hardcover: 304 pages
- Publisher: Atria; First Edition edition (March 25, 2008)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1416536051
- ISBN-13: 978-1416536055
- Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.9 x 1.1 inches
- Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces
My husband and I have been married for 32 years and have been to 6 marriage counselors and have read (me 8, him 2) at least 8 self help/marriage type books over those years. We were invited to go to a comedy show with a couple who had been given extra tickets. It was at a church and thought, "It must be a Christian comedian." We had no problem with that because we were Christians. We sat there the first 2 hours and laughed our butts off at realistic things men and women do. Then Mark stated, "Thank you for coming and we'll see you for the next session tomorrow at 10am." My husband and I looked at each other, puzzled and said, "We're in a married seminar!!!" We decided to come back, in which it still had much humor but more in depth - but the humor lighten our ability to hear the more in-depth stuff in the coming sessions. At the end of seminar Mark has you stand to face each other and look at each other in the eyes without taking them off (very hard to do with past hurts) and repeat after him - loving statements that broke down years of bitterness. Tears began to flow as we hadn't done that in many years, maybe only when we were exchanging vows and felt like we were exchanging vows all over again with eyes to see.
Of all the counselors and books we read, nothing has been so restorative and healing as this seminar. There is nothing like humor to pass through the walls of bitterness so easily and is more seen in the seminars than in the book or even the DVD of the seminars, as it doesn't show the entire seminar - but there are also details in the book that weren't in the seminar.
What Marks approach taught me more than anything is, I walked away with knowing how men think with a big, "Oh!
We're doing the series in a group at my church and currently we're about halfway through the video and discussion series. Here's my problem with the book/course: I'd estimate that about half of the couples doing the program kind of want to 'tweak' a marriage which is rusty, and occasionally problematic, while the other half of us showed up wanting to fix a marriage which at times feels desperate -- you know, the "go days without speaking to each other, how the heck did I ever end up with you in the first place, is that all there is to life" situation. "Laughing your way" is pretty good for helping the first group, but pretty darned near useless for the second group. In other words, there's a pretty big difference between being pissed off at your hubby because he leaves the toilet seat up and being pissed off at your hubby because he hates your children who also happen to be his stepchildren. Obviously, fixing the first situation is significantly easier than fixing the second.
My husband hates the series. The word he keeps using is "simplistic" -- it's all that Mars vs. Venus stuff which most of us already know anyway, and the series doesn't go deep enough in terms of actually identifying resentments, nor is it biblical despite the fact that it's used at many churches.
And at the risk of getting all "shrewy feminist a la Kate gosselin or Hilary Clinton or something", I sometimes find that he tends to emphasize altering behaviors over actually looking at the situation and thinking about whether or not it is actually unjust or inequitable.
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