Real Marriage
January 16, 2012 
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A new book came across my desk this week by Mark and Grace Driscoll entitled, Real Marriage – The Truth About Sex, Friendship & Life Together. Touted as the talk of Christian publishing circles months before its release, I had to take a look and provide my honest appraisal.
One thing the Driscoll’s do well throughout the book is share with honesty, the difficulties in their marriage. In particular, how they worked through forgiveness and built a marriage based on friendship. A quote from the book about friendship struck a cord, “Friendship is costly in everything – time, energy, emotion, and sometimes money.” I wholeheartedly agree on many levels. Friendship is an investment many make while dating and fail to follow through with sustained effort after marriage.
In addition, Mark speaks with frankness about the unappealing qualities in husbands who refuse to find balance between tender and tough, and avoid the work necessary to become a man who resembles Jesus. Yet, Mark provides encouragement to men with regard to the changes he made in order to become the father and husband God wants him to be.
Grace’s section to women is good, but not great, on the topic of respect. I found this portion of the book disappointing. In tandem to Mark, I felt she should have described the unappealing qualities in wives and provided guidance for change. While I am not in disagreement with what Grace had to say about the respect a husband needs and a wife should give, this is the one area of the book where I felt I was re-reading Emerson Eggerich’s book Love and Respect.
Real Marriage covers marital sex in detail in a chapter called Can We____? and does an excellent job of bringing spiritual and sexual selfishness into focus. I like how the Driscoll’s break down ways we are selfish lovers and reasons why we are selfish lovers. What’s more, they added an extraordinary section on what couples may do in the bedroom and whether certain sexual acts are lawful, helpful, or enslaving. This section is filled with oodles of wisdom.
Finally, the issue of reverse-engineering your life and marriage is covered with excellence at the end of the book. Pages 214-220 provide a myriad of questions for a couple to work through, which provides guidance and wisdom toward building a life and marriage that is balanced and God-focused. Whether a couple is engaged or married, there is much to learn about each other through this section of the book.
I read scores of marriage related books throughout the year and I am often disappointed because marriage material is regurgitated from one author to another. The Driscoll’s found a way to come up with relatively fresh material I thoroughly enjoyed.
