Marriage on the Rocks: New Hope for a Relationship Revolution Gone Blindly Astray. By Richard Driscoll, Ph.D. with Nancy Ann David, Ph.D. Knoxville, Tennessee: Westside Psychology, 2007. 148 pp. www.westsidego.com. $22.00.

Richard Driscoll has published a rare thing: an original, even superlative book on two well-worn topics: relationships and gender. Moreover, he appears to have self-published it. Production values are not particularly high, though they are certainly passable enough, but the content itself is nothing less than golden.

The author has developed a style all his own: breezy, confident, knowledgeable yet not stuffy, regularly drawing felicitous connections between seemingly unrelated issues.

We know we are in for a treat from the very first page, in which Driscoll treats us to a deft, even brilliant paragraph summarizing the current state of gender relations.

Marriage on the Rocks is so rich and concise that it resists summarization as it is already written as tightly as it can be. Nevertheless I will note that the author holds both sexes in the highest regard, sees their strengths and weaknesses, their similarities and differences, and earnestly wants each of us to understand all of this too so that we can make the very best out of our lives and relationships. He aptly suggests that each new conversation we strike up with our partner can offer a chance to write a better script for our future.

Driscoll is certainly not afraid of controversial propositions, though he backs them up so ably that by the time he is done they have been bled of much of their power! For example, he demonstrates the practical and genetic advantages of men’s dependence on women. He explains why men “succeed” at suicide more often while women “attempt” suicide more frequently. He describes the beneficial aspects of conflict with the other sex. Are you aware that expressions of love obligate men more than women? Driscoll explains why.

Some of what the author has to say seems obvious, but only after we have read it, as when he points out that many questions women ask us about the relationship or ourselves feel to us like another chance to mess up! Women typically don’t understand how strongly her discontent stresses her man. While women often feel their husbands don’t take their positions seriously, often just the opposite is true.

Moreover, the author is a very funny man. His imagined Stone Age conversation, in which she says the cave is cold and the fire is about to go out, and he sympathizes with her feelings without doing anything about the situation, is hilarious. What’s wrong with this picture? Men sometimes come under attack for doing rather than feeling, yet that’s precisely what most women actually want us to do. Moreover, the men who are fixers and doers tend to be rewarded with reproductive success, thereby passing their genes on to future generations. Yet for a woman, there are genuine genetic advantages to expressing one’s feelings. The author helpfully provides “his and hers” advice regarding how best to discuss problems a woman wants to share that she is experiencing at work.

Driscoll interestingly delves into barriers faced by successful women seeking a mate, who generally desire a man who is more successful than they are. He also quite baldly states, and then documents, why a husband’s willingness to comply with what the wife wants, and not the reverse, is the key to marital success. The author then goes on to show us why a supposedly patriarchal arrangement (with a man as head of the household and principal wage-earner and a woman taking the lead at home) benefits women at least as much as it does men. Both women and men find wife-dominated marriages to be the least satisfying. The man should expect to take care of wife and children, and the women should expect to be faithful. The man should be faithful too, but Driscoll shows why the woman’s fidelity is more critical to marital success.

Fascinatingly, fathers not only stabilize their own families, they stabilize entire neighborhoods including single-mother families as long as they are able to play a role in those children’s lives. As far as your own children go, present a united front to them along with your wife, and hash out any differences later, in private.

Men’s rights are largely tangential to the author’s principal concerns, though undercurrents throughout the book indicate Driscoll’s familiarity with pertinent issues. At the end, however, a full-fledged discussion of the political emerges at an appropriate moment.

Truly we are all in the author’s debt, for there is much we can learn from Driscoll. Do not miss this utterly remarkable and admirably succinct book! I promise you that you won’t read another one this year that provides better word-for-word value. Your relationship and your life cannot help but benefit immensely.

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