His Needs, Her Needs Making Romantic Love Last HB

The value of this book is the questionnaire. Reading the book helps you understand the typical (though by no means ALL) men and women and helps put the topics of the questionnaire in context. Limiting yourself and your partner to the needs listed, even if you don't entirely agree with them, gets you both on the same page and becomes a catalyst for honest discussion. Even discussing HOW you disagree with a specific need is revealing (startlingly so for me.)

My only real complaint is that several of the anecdotes the author uses are absurd and others are just pointless. Were it up to me, I'd edit the book down by at least a third. I've suggested to others to read the first few pages of each chapter to understand what is meant by each need, skip the stories, and then fill out the questionnaire twice. First go through it as fast as you can, wait a day, read what you wrote, throw it away, do a lot of thinking then do the questionnaire again (it's available online as a PDF.) I suggest NOT using custom needs; they tend to be trivial, lack a mutual context and end up leading you back to the he said/she said arguments where a lot is said and nothing understood, let alone resolved.

On a personal note, this book didn't save my marriage, but did save me. It helped me understand myself in ways nothing else had. It helped me understand that my needs weren't selfish, ways I wasn't being the best husband and how dysfunctional my marriage had become. It helped with post divorce counseling due largely to what my ex and I had revealed in the questionnaires and subsequent discussions. Most importantly, without understanding my needs, I probably would have charged into a new relationship just as destructive as the one I'd left.

During counseling while still married, the most surprising thing was when my then wife conceded that I was satisfying all her top five needs, though I definitely needed improvement in a few, but then adamantly refused to admit that some of top needs were even legitimate, until the counselor pushed her, and she insisted I'd just have to accept that I wouldn't have some needs, or part of them, met. Ever. It may sound weird, but after all our arguments and attempts to fix our marriage, to have our differences laid out so plain was refreshing.