Book Review: Building a Ridiculously Great Marriage

I received an electronic copy of Building a Ridiculously Great Marriage: Premarital and Marital Habits, by Gil Stieglitz, and was asked to review it in return. I should start out by saying that I had difficulty reading the ebook as a mobi file or an epub file, that that’s because I generally use a Kindle to read ebooks and Kindle doesn’t like us circumventing their software. That said, I enjoyed the portions that I was able to read.

When I started reading this book, I was cautious about what the writer was proposing: that if you implement all the points of advice he provides, you can have a ridiculously great marriage. Here’s where I was hesitant, and still am: the writer gives fifteen (15) points or actions that you need to take to have the promised great marriage. I thought, who’s got time to implement 15 points. There’s a reason the title contains the word ridiculous!

However, the first point redeems the book (granted I wasn’t able to read everything). The first action is to set up a time, preferably when both husband and wife have arrived at home and spend 30 minutes catching up. When I first read the timeframe (30 minutes), I questioned the writer’s sanity! But he defended the idea well.

His thought is the for over 8 hours, the two of you have been in different worlds; either both working outside the home, or one working outside and the other in the home. By spending time together catching up and asking some key questions, it gives the couple time to re-unite and avoids some conflict. He even talks about how to train children that mom and dad are talking privately, and they cannot interrupt.

Since I read that action point, I have talked with a few guys that I mentor about setting aside a time to re-unite after the workday. I don’t give them a 30-minute idea, just mention taking the amount of time needed to catch up with each other. Two of those guys have implemented the idea and are interested in buying this book (which just came out in October 2019).