The Weekend Marriage: Abundant Love in a Time-Starved World - Hardcover

Kirshenbaum, Mira

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1400080983 ISBN 13: 9781400080984

Publisher: Harmony, 2005

Synopsis

From the bestselling author of Too Good to Leave, Too Bad to Stay comes the first marriage guide designed for our fast-paced lives—a revolutionary, streamlined approach for couples who want to make the most of every precious moment together.
Forget Mars and Venus. It’s our time-starved lives that are hurting our relationships. A book that is sure to be much talked about, The Weekend Marriage will transform our understanding of what two people need to have a happy marriage. Mira Kirshenbaum is the first to argue that the real obstacle to a life full of love is not knowing how to handle our relationships when we have so little time.

In this marriage guide for the twenty-first century, Kirshenbaum shares the proven secrets of people who have figured out how to nurture their love no matter what their schedules. (And it’s the busiest partner who determines how much time the couple has for each other.) In our fast-paced society, the intimate, one-on-one connection between spouses is too often neglected in a rush of familial and social obligations; spending precious hours untangling knotty problems is the last thing couples need. Kirshenbaum’s fresh ideas show how most marital conflicts can easily be resolved, and some can even be ignored. She offers four realistic, easy-to-follow recommendations for transforming a time-starved relationship into a thriving and fulfilling marriage.

About this title

Review:

If you're afraid of "turning into one of those couples who go into therapy because they bicker all the time,"[p. 120] search no more for marital advice. According to bestselling author Kirshenbaum, the ever-increasing divorce rates in the U.S. aren't due to the often-reported irreconcilable differences, but rather a lack of "quality time" together. As overused as that term is, Kirshenbaum (Too Good to Leave, Too Bad to Stay) persuasively argues that the American state of matrimony is all too often the victim of what she calls "Murphy's law" of marriage: "The less time you have together, the more things go wrong in your relationship."[p. 3]

Her prescription for finding "abundant love" in a world that's bursting with beeping Palm Pilots is pretty simple. "Successful weekend-marriage couples ruthlessly put their marriage first. Tough nuggies to everyone else." [p.147] she warns that such prioritizing may tick off some family members, as she recommends that married folks cut way back on socializing with friends and even visiting aging relatives, if those visits can be implicated in a lack of couple time.

Some of her other advice is more palatable. She recommends that couples never keep joint checking accounts, as they're often a major source of stress and arguments. Instead, one spouse should be responsible for paying the mortgage, and the other the rest of the bills, if those amounts are roughly equal. Kirshenbaum also says that it's best to ignore each other for a while when you're both finally at home at dinnertime, so as to avoid the "negative energy" of venting about the day's stresses. Using Kirshenbaum's many "guerrilla tactics" for preserving (or resurrecting) romance, couples may very well find they have "less time for anger, more time for love." --Erica Jorgensen

About the Author:

Mira Kirshenbaum is clinical director of the Chestnut Hill Institute in Boston and an award-winning, bestselling authority on relationships. She is the author of eight books, and her numerous television appearances include Today, The O’Reilly Factor, and a one-hour prime-time ABC news special. She is happily married to her college sweetheart and has two grown daughters.

About this edition

• Publisher: Harmony
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 1400080983
• ISBN 13: 9781400080984
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 256