Product Description
Marriage Fitness is a revolutionary step-by-step system for creating a phenomenal marriage. Whether you’re happy, satisfied, frustrated, angry, or bored, Marriage Fitness can help you get your marriage in the best shape of its life. Like physical fitness, Marriage Fitness is for everyone.
Marriage Fitness is based on the universal laws of love. Just as diet and exercise determine your health, certain behaviors determine the level of love and intimacy in you… More >>
Marriage Fitness: 4 Steps to Building & Maintaining Phenomenal Love
When I am giving premarital coaching to young couples, or marriage coaching to married couples, they often want to focus on their problems or potential problems. Of course these issues are of great concern to couples so its not always easy to direct their focus to the solutions, not the problems. Problems are unimportant. Solutions are what is important and with his book, MARRIAGE FITNESS, Mort Fertel has given a simple, yet effective four step plan to marital solutions.
I can’t tell you how refreshing for me it has been to read a book by someone who understands and teaches what marriage is really all about. Love. I often use the analogy that love is like a fire. Even an out of control wildfire will eventually run out of fuel and burn itself out. To keep the fire of love alive, we must continually stoke the embers and feed it fuel. This book teaches it differently but essentially says the same thing, and shows couples how to provide the fuel their marriage must have to survive.
The book is very well written and contains some excellent projects for couples. Certainly intended for couples working together, there is also definite help here for one with an uncommitted spouse to help get things back on track.
Part 1, the first two chapters, give couples a deeper understanding of love. This may sound ridiculous, but most people confuse character traits with what I term “soul conscientiousness”. Fertel deftly explains why character love makes you role mates, not soul mates. If you really want to take your marriage to a higher level, it is critical that you come to understand the differences between what I call outward love (loving the character traits of a person) and inward love (making the choice within your soul to love a person on the inside, regardless of their character traits). Once you fully understand this concept, your marriage (and innerhappiness) will be changed forever.
Part 2 is Fertel’s 4 step program for building and maintaining love in your marriage, as well as his twenty exercises.
Mort Fertel has certainly given my some new ides on how couples can enrich their marriages and take them from ordinary to extraordinary. This is one of the best books you’ll find on building a strong marriage. Highly recommended.
Pastor Monty Rainey
Rating: 5 / 5
My wife picked up this book and asked that I read it, which I did. I’m not going to mince words here: This book is terrible. It’s like reading a late night infomercial, if you can imagine such a thing. An inordinate amount of the book’s space is taken up by hard-sell advertisements for the author’s other services (which direct you to his website), and he references his own “trademarked” services on almost every page of the book. He restates the same three or four concepts throughout the book, and the only imaginitive thing in the book is the different ways in which he repeats these cocepts for 180 some-odd pages. I guess nobody will buy a book that’s only 8 pages, so he padded it to 180. Just a few of his nuggets of “wisdom:”
“Love conquers all” – Really? All you need is love? There’s nothing else to it? Then why do you charge money for this book? Why do you charge over $400 for the CDs that can accompany this book? Life, and love, is not that simple.
“People don’t change” – Again, really? Everyone changes throughout their lifetimes. Has this guy ever even cracked open a psychology textbook? People are dynamic, they get new interests, drop old ones. People learn things, develop new beliefs. How can Mr. Fertel advise us on relationships if he doesn’t even understand the basics of the human psyche?
“Relationships after a divorce don’t work” – Seriously? I have a whole slew of friends and relatives who, along with their new spouses, will happily testify to the contrary.
“Don’t find the right person to love…love the person you find” – Yeah, don’t bother investing the time to find someone you connect with, or can be happy with. Just settle for what you have. Then have a miserable marriage. Then buy more of Mr. Fertel’s books. While he and his wife laugh all the way to the bank.
Unlike Mr. Fertel, I actually have a degree in psychology. Please, don’t buy into this shiny-happy pop psychology garbage. Life is not so black and white, and marital issues are not solved with 180 pages of trite, redundant psychobabble. Go find a therapist. Find a support group. Talk to your friends. Lean on your family. Invest your time and money into something that isn’t built simply to syphon your time and money, like this book. If this book helped you, then great. There probably wasn’t much that needed fixing. But for any couple with serious issues, don’t waste your time on this or any other book. If your marriage can be saved by a book, it’s not in as much trouble as you think it is.
Rating: 1 / 5
This book does not offer any solutions. It is alot of unanswered questions reworded to fill up the page.
Rating: 1 / 5
I haven’t read this book since last year so unfortunately I can’t get too specific. I want to reread it. The author explains his philosophy and then gives you specific daily, weekly and yearly assignments to do that will enhance your intimacy together.
Rating: 5 / 5
If you’re looking for something that gets straight to the point, this is not it. I was reading it to my husband and thinking to myself “When are we going to get to the substance” and my husband said, “He’s long Winded”. We don’t have any marriage problems, we’re just trying to prevent them.
I don’t know if the author is religious or not. But the concept of the book is loving the other person no matter what (like Jesus loves us despite what we do). This is a great concept, so if you want to go that route you may want to try the “Love Dare” at the very least, watch “FireProof”. Both are Christian based, which like I said is the basis of this book, but he doesn’t mention God, Jesus or religion of any kind. If you know your maker, it’s clear he avoids this in the book. This may be to appeal to the non-religious & teach them a religious concept w/o telling them.
So, if you don’t believe in God & making him/his ways the center of your marriage, this may be your book. If you do believe, there are a lot better books that get straight to the point.
Rating: 3 / 5