Review: Now You’re Speaking My Language

Now You're Speaking My Language: Honest Communication and Deeper Intimacy for a Stronger Marriage by Gary Chapman
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Much helpful advice, but marred by a few significant and dangerous flaws.

In Now You're Speaking My Language, when Gary Chapman writes about ways couples can improve their communications skills, there is much helpful and useful advice. And this forms the bulk of the book. However, there is one significant issue (and a few smaller ones) that I came away with that I find troublesome and even dangerous.

Chapman's thesis revolves around the concept of covenant marriage. This is in contrast to a contract marriage. According to Chapman, a contract typically is of a limited period of time, often deals with specific actions, based on "if… then…" mentality, is motivated by desire to get something we want, and it is sometimes unspoken and implicit. On the other hand a covenant is initiated for the benefit of the other person, is unconditional in its promises, based on steadfast love, views commitments as permanent, and requires confrontation and forgiveness.

It is on this last point, "requires confrontation and forgiveness," that I have strong reservations. In my reading of Chapman's words in this book, he raises covenant marriage as an ideal to which every marriage can aspire and reach. He fails to address the realities of some marriages that involve spousal abuse (physical, emotional, spiritual) and domestic violence. Where he does touch on the possibility of abuse, he dismisses it lightly as mainly a communications issue; i.e., he writes that if the abused partner simply confronts her or his partner in an attitude of love and forgiveness, the abusive partner will recognize his or her sin, confess it, and come around to a healthy relationship. This is dangerous and harmful advice. It implicitly places the blame on the victim, making her or him share responsibility for the abuse. For this reason alone, I hesitate to recommend this book.

There are a few other quibbles I had with the book. Where Chapman employs examples of household tasks, nearly in every case the wives are given domestic duties such as cleaning, cooking, and childcare, and the husbands are given yard work and mechanical work. Can he at least mix it up a bit and break the stereotyping?

Chapman never comes around to address the case where one of the partners doesn't want to work with the idea of a covenant marriage. What then? He does not offer any advice.

This book is clearly intended for a certain segment of the Christian audience. Due to its strong basis in covenant theology derived from the Christian Bible, I suspect it will not find much appeal to the non-Christian audience. Because of certain interpretive biases, it will not appeal to many Christians, either.

There is a conspicuous lack of endnotes and references. From this I conclude that much of what Chapman writes is from his own experience. I am not dismissing the validity of his experience, but how applicable is it to the broader population that is not representative of his work? He bases this book on a statistic that 86% of all divorced couples report that "deficient communication" was the primary factor in the divorce. There is not attribution to this statistic. Is it from his practice, or does it come from somewhere else? Is it from a representative sample?

Each chapter ends with questions that the reader is encouraged to answer for himself or herself. This is followed by activities that Chapman encourages each couple to take part in together.

As I stated at the beginning, Chapman offers some very good advice when he is dealing strictly in the areas of communication. If he kept to those things, I could recommend this book. But as I have detailed, although the flaws are few, at least one is too dangerous for me to recommend this book. I don't say a person shouldn't read it, but to be fully aware of the problems and to go through it with a critical mind.

(This review is based on an advance review copy supplied by the publisher through NetGalley.)


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