The Marriage Medics

The Marriage Medics
Cynthia Cooper, PhD and Scott Lorenz
TheMarriageMedics.com
ISBN: 0-9760844-0-6
Non-Fiction, Relationships
Reviewed by Dr. Tami Brady

The Marriage Medics is a comprehensive resource for marriage and divorce. This book is directed to anyone thinking of a divorce, coping with news of a divorce, or trying to improve a marriage. The topics covered in this book are extensive. The authors have collected advice from various specialists on finances, planning the marriage vision, communication tools, the stages of marriage, sex, and divorce procedures. Some of these professionals have also included question, planning, or problem sheets meant to guide the couple through better communication and examination of potential marital difficulties.
The overall feel of this book is that our society as a disposable society tends to throw things away rather than to try and fix them. This line of thinking naturally extends to marriage. Thus, when a couple have frustrations over finances or sex (the most common causes of marital distress), they often decide that a new relationship would have less baggage and end the current relationship. The authors point out, however, that often these issues just worsen with divorce. Therefore, the authors suggest that couples make a strong effort to fix these problems before divorce becomes the only solution to these problems.
Nonetheless, the authors accept the fact that some problems such as the three A's (addiction, affairs, and abuse) may make fixing a marriage extremely difficult if not impossible to fix. In these cases, the authors set out ways that both members of the marriage can seek help for these issues as well as resources for playing fair during divorce proceedings.
Though The Marriage Medic is meant mainly for those couples with marital difficulties, much of the information included in this book will be helpful to any couple. This is particularly true of the sections on communications, vision of the relationship, underlying resentments, and gender roles. These issues and hints relate directly to nearly any relationship and therefore will be of value to almost any reader.