The good:
1) I like the connection between love and respect. Every time he says husbands need respect and wives need love, you have to translate that mentally into *both* husbands *and* wives need love *and* respect, but the basic premise is a good one -- the Christian understanding of love indicates an attitude of honoring, respecting, and blessing the other person.
2) The crazy cycle and reward cycle. This is one of the most important things most couples could learn. Our behaviors are self-reinforcing and good things to lead to more good things in a cycle. Likewise, bad things often lead to more bad things. The good news is that we serve a God of redemption and just as the gospel message teaches us that Christ breaks us out of a cycle of sin, God can redeem broken marriages and break them out of destructive cycles.
3) For *some* couples, a disrespectful attitude toward the husband or an unloving attitude toward the wife *is* the problem. For those relationships, I imagine they would benefit greatly from this book.
The not-so-good:
1) As mentioned by several reviewers already, the book is incredibly sexist. I started making a `W' in the margins when Dr. Eggerichs blamed the wife for the problem and a `H' when he blamed the husband. Skimming back through, it's about 90% W's. Just about any time he says something negative about the husband, you are almost guaranteed to get a follow-up sentence about how his wife's pettiness or nagging or belittling comments or criticizing or bitterness or whatever was really the root cause of the husband's behavior. At times, it was to the point I thought he was emasculating men by making us out to be powerless -- we can't take responsibility for our own behavior because every issue is probably our wife's fault anyway.
2) It's kindof a continuation of #1, but I honestly can't believe he found a man and a *woman* to blame the husband's marital infidelity on the wife. Finding a man who wants to justify his immorality by blaming his wife shouldn't be too hard, but Dr. Eggerichs found a woman who blamed *herself* for her husband's philandering. The idea that a man has so little control over his own actions that he is to be expected to wander if his wife doesn't `put out' often enough is just galling.
3) The narrowness of the focus. As I mentioned above, a disrespected husband or unloved wife is a problem for some couples. But there's lots of reasons marriages struggle, and disrespect is only one of the possibilities. Dr. Eggerichs doesn't acknowledge that at all.
4) He spends quite a bit of energy being defensive about it, so Dr. Eggerichs clearly realizes that the idea of unconditional respect has some problems. I honestly don't see the appeal of unconditional respect. If I want respect from my wife (which I most certainly do!), I will act in a way that *deserves* respect. Why would I demand her unconditional respect regardless of my actions unless I couldn't be bothered to earn it?
