Marriage Rules: A Manual for the Married and the Coupled Up

4.5 | 539 ratings

Price: 13.78

Last update: 08-26-2024

About this item

Following a unique format perfect for today's world, the renowned author of The Dance of Anger gives us just over 100 rules that cover all the hot spots in long-term relationships.

Marriage Rules offers new solutions to age-old problems ("He won't talk"/"She doesn't want sex") as well as modern ones (your partner's relationship to technology.) You'll also learn how to:

Calm things down and warm them up
Talk straight and fight fair
Listen well as a spiritual practice
Connect with a distant partner
Survive the unique challenges of children, stepchildren and difficult- laws
Follow a 12-step program to overcome defensiveness
Know how and when to draw the line
Take back your marriage when things fall apart

Marriage Rules is a treasure chest of lively, practical advice to help you navigate your couple relationship with clarity, courage, and joyous conviction. If one person in a couple follows 10 rules of his or her choice, it will generate a major, positive change. All that's required is a genuine wish for a better relationship and a willingness to practice.

Bill Gallagher

Rule #1, This Is Recommended for Marital Wisdom and Good Reminders

Reviewed in the United States on January 17, 2012

The timing of the arrival of this book was somewhat uncanny, as it arrived the day after my wife and I had had our first fight in quite a long while (in the past, there have been rough spots). During that fight, uncharacteristically, my wife was really anger with me and lost her temper, screaming and yelling and cursing; that night, she even slept in another room. The next morning my instinct was (fitting of Ms. Lerner observation that we tend toward fight or flight) to be frosty, but I reminded myself that won't change a downward spiral effect; so I tried to be pleasant, but that probably just got me to neutral. Then, a few pages in to Marriage Rules, Lerner wrote (quoting a friend and colleague): "It's just when your partner is being the biggest jerk that you're called upon to be your best self." Now, my wife wasn't really being a jerk (I could understand why she was disappointed in me, even if she was over-reacting [from my vantage point]. But it helped me reset my emotional thermostat and got me excited about Ms. Lerner's new book.

The excitement wasn't because of any big breakthroughs, but because the book offers timeless reminders delivered in an engaging way and illustrated with good vignettes. For example, in Rule #43 in the "Fight Fair" section, she tells about a San Francisco-based couple that fought viciously over just about everything. They seemed to have no control over their attacks on each other -- until a distinguished British professor stayed as a house guest for months, sleeping in the bedroom right next to theirs. Over those months, they were courteous with each other and agreed it was among the best months of their marriage. The point: you have more control than you think.

Not every rule or vignette moved me (for example, her story about communication about sex in Rule #55 seemed a bit too obvious), but the general message in that section "Forget About Normal Sex" is spot on and relieves pressure that can only make things worse in the bedroom. So overall, well recommended, especially if you're looking for a book to keep by your bedside and read a rule or two or few at a time -- and then share the book with your partner.

Other books on marriage to consider: Getting the Love You Want: A Guide for Couples, 20th Anniversary Edition (helpful for looking at the deep underlying patterns that cause disfunction) and The Couple's Survival Workbook: What You Can Do To Reconnect With Your Partner and Make Your Marriage Work (especially helpful if you're really struggling).

Wonderful

Reviewed in the United States on February 9, 2012

I received this book yesterday and was so looking forward to it I opened it to a random page and immediately started reading. At once I identified with what I was reading on the very first page I found. Lerner breaks down problem areas in relationships by chapters, then again in to shorter topics and then again in to very short summaries/bullet points. It's easy to pick up anywhere. I bought this book to help work out some deeper issues with my relationship (I am not married but find this is just as relevant in committed relationships) that we've identified but have not yet been able to completely manage. This book has already been helpful (yes! even after one day!) in identifying ways to manage such issues. The format makes it easy to have a conversation about the book with your spouse/significant other since it's broken down so easily. My only gripe with the book is that Lerner makes presumptions about gender roles when discussing relationship issues - for example, she discusses the Pursuer/Distancer roles that many relationships take on when a relationship is under high stress. When discussing this, she writes as though all Pursuers are women and all Distancers are men, which is, of course, not accurate. I would hope that there wouldn't be this much stereotyping when roles can just as easily be reversed. This aside, the book is excellent and a very highly recommended read for anyone considering.

SoggyNacho

A must read to each other

Reviewed in the United States on November 28, 2015

When read daily to each other, this simple marriage rule book invites conversation and perspective shared together. We took turns each day reading one rule to the other. The flow of this books starts a 'troubled' couple off at the stage, when both are feeling unheard and unsure of where the relationship stands. Once you get past the rules about speaking to each other, the "right" way, you move into the next chapter of rules with the foundation necessary to make improvements in the way you communicate and relate to your partner. As we marched through the book, we already decided we would revisit chapters or rules to strengthen what we learned. So much of this is common sense, but something that also vanishes when emotions are hurt and high. It saved us, and got us back on track, back on the path which we somehow departed without recognizing it was happening to us. We found this book better than our marriage counseling sessions at times and even bragged to our therapist of things we had learned as we read the rules. Therapy can work slowly, but this book gives a simple rule per day that keeps the momentum going and preventing a couple from backing up in between sessions. Not complicated to read or understand, this book won't scare off either partner and even covers rules for those with children (or step-children) and a little family of origin in there. We would definitely buy another rule book by this author, if she made this a series. Thank you for formatting a self-help book in this manner for those of us weary of psychology books full of psych jargon and over-explanation!

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