Eight Strategies to Achieving a Great Marriage

With nearly half of first marriages ending in divorce, and an even greater number of second marriages doing the same, it's apparent that the overload of self-help relationship books, Dr. Phil instant-therapy shows and widely-available marriage counseling is not keeping marriages from going under.

But every once in a while we find a relationship book that dazzles, and that is Dr. Scott Haltzman's innovative, The Secrets of Happily Married Men: Eight Ways to Win Your Wife's Heart Forever.

Dr Haltzman, a clinical assistant professor of psychiatry and human behavior at Brown University and a couples and individual counselor, noticed that many men in counseling held back with a serious hesitation to acknowledge their feelings and fears. He launched a web site, www.secretsofmarriedmen.com, as a way to research and support husbands' marriage strategies, and after communicating with countless men, amassed a treasure trove of revealing information about men and marriage.

The results have been carefully distilled into this enlightening, helpful guide that should be required reading for both men and women in relationships.

The book celebrates the equality of the sexes and outlines their innate strengths and skills. However, the main message is that there are definite and undeniable biological and emotional differences between men and women that need to be understood and utilized to enhance the relationship, not to create more tension.

Men have been socialized to believe they are clueless at nurturing relationships, as witnessed by the portrayal of inept husbands and boyfriends on situation comedies and in movies; they've been shamed into thinking that they can't communicate or express themselves like women can, and so they need to change.

It begins to make sense why so many gender traits frustrate and irritate, since we don't understand them.

Following the very compelling compare-and-contrast lesson on brain differences, the book dedicates one chapter to each of the eight strategies that happily married men have indicated are the crucial factors for enjoying a happy marriage while keeping a strong sense of themselves as male. The chapters include:

Make your marriage your job

Know your wife

Be home now

Expect conflict and deal with it

Learn to listen

Aim to please

Understand the truth about sex

Introduce yourself

Each chapter has personal stories, along with insight, advice and helpful TO DO lists to help organize the material and facilitate following the action steps.

This book does not excuse selfish behavior from either sex. It promotes the differences between the sexes with the important message that neither sex has to be a slave to biology and each is capable of adapting. Dr Haltzman tells men that they can improve and save their marriages precisely because they have the innate skills to succeed in relationships.

The bottom line is that, "when men worked hard to improve their marriages using their inborn manly skills to put their wives' needs above their own, not only did their marriages improve, but they were happier and more fulfilled than at any other point in their lives".

And women with essential insight into why their husbands do what they do, help their men to be more effective partners.

About the Author

Sheena Berg enjoys writing articles for the StepHeroes step parenting tips newsletter at http://www.About-Blended-Families.com. To discover more about happily married men, there's no substitute for reading "The Secrets of Happily Married Men" by Scott Haltzman, M.D. (See our video review at http://www.youtube.com/user/blendedfamilynews). However, you can join our interview with Dr Haltzman when he will be our Ask the Expert guest on http://www.BlendedFamilyExperts.com.

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