I read Doherty's book about family rituals and found it insightful and helpful. I recommend that book to anyone who wants to create meaningful rituals in the family, whether or not children are involved. I thought this book might do the same for marriage, and it does, but it also has quite a few chapters that talk about the prevalence of divorce and how to avoid divorce. We are thankfully not in a crisis stage in our marriage and so this section of the book was not useful to me. I found Doherty's perspective that our consumer culture impacts personal relationships interesting and worthy of consideration. He is local and he keeps going back to an analogy about marriage as a canoe on the Mississippi River and that sort of got annoying but I found quite a few helpful suggestions in the book. The last chapters talk about marriage as a community investment and I don't disagree, but I don't think I would be comfortable sharing details of my marriage in a community setting.

I read this book for a Marriage and Family Therapy class as part of a MAPC program. I am so glad I did. This book was incredibly refreshing. Doherty’s ideas on marriage counter and challenge everything that culture says. He isn’t afraid to speak the truth about married life, and thank God for that. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is married or plans to get married one day.

I thought this was an interesting read on his marriage is viewed in society today and how we can keep our marriages strong.

I read Doherty's book about family rituals and found it insightful and helpful. I recommend that book to anyone who wants to create meaningful rituals in the family, whether or not children are involved. I thought this book might do the same for marriage, and it does, but it also has quite a few chapters that talk about the prevalence of divorce and how to avoid divorce. We are thankfully not in a crisis stage in our marriage and so this section of the book was not useful to me. I found Doherty's perspective that our consumer culture impacts personal relationships interesting and worthy of consideration. He is local and he keeps going back to an analogy about marriage as a canoe on the Mississippi River and that sort of got annoying but I found quite a few helpful suggestions in the book. The last chapters talk about marriage as a community investment and I don't disagree, but I don't think I would be comfortable sharing details of my marriage in a community setting.