The Love Fight: How Achievers and Connectors Can Build A Marriage that Lasts

 

BOOK DESCRIPTION (FROM AMAZON.COM):

Divorce is epidemic among successful, "high-powered" people.  Doctors, lawyers, executives, politicians and entrepreneurs often attain career success only to fail at home in their family relationships.  What gives?  Has success changed them?  Or, have they been secretly waiting to exit when the time is right?  Did they ever love their spouses?  

In The Love Fight, Drs. Tony Ferretti and Peter Weiss explain how worldly successful individuals fail at home in their intimate relationships, often from a mismatch of priorities and styles between the success-oriented "Achievers" and their relationship-oriented "Connector" spouses.  This Achiever mindset is common in highly successful people of all social classes, perhaps especially so in America where such success is lionized and top CEOs are considered heroes.

As opposites attract and Achievers meet and marry Connectors, the very same personality traits that propelled the Achiever to the top in medicine, law, business or politics (and which may have attracted a more relationship-oriented partner in the first place) often sow the seeds of destruction in their marriage.  These traits, and the differences between Achievers and Connectors, can create a dynamic of poor communication leading to anger, resentment, and eventual estrangement.

Achiever or Connector, The Love Fight is a book that will help you understand your spouse and yourself better.   It's easy-to-read and understand style, simple assessments and exercises to evaluate your relationship, and straightforward strategies can help you develop an action plan to create the marriage you want.

MY THOUGHTS:

If it seems like you and your spouse are opposites then this book is for you. Drs. Ferretti and Weiss have taken the time to identify and dissect different personalities in a marriage and have broken them down to include Achievers and Connectors. Using real life examples to compare and using their criteria, I have figured out that my husband is an achiever and I am a connector. That means that we look at our relationship differently but we CAN make it work (and personally we have for almost 10 years). I like that the authors keep hammering home the fact that you can make a relationship work if both people are willing to work on it, despite differences in personalities. I like that the authors say that you have the power to create a healthy family relationship no matter what outside circumstances there are. Life happens and there are going to be rough patches, but if you are willing to work for a healthy relationship then it doesn't matter if you are an achiever or a connector, you can have a healthy relationship. 

This was an interesting read and one that I would recommend to anyone who is having doubts or wants to make their relationship stronger.  

Disclaimer: I was provided a free print copy of this book from The Cadence Group on behalf of the author in exchange for a review. All opinions are my own.