A few months ago we bought Dr. Harley's Defending Traditional Marriage. I think it was the last Harley book we didn't have, other than some out of print ones.

I expected this book to veer off into politics and wasn't really sure what I was going to think.

What I found was a wealth of additional information in here about Dr. Harley's approach that I hadn't seen before. In particular, this book is a little bit like the counterpart to Buyers, Renters, and Freeloaders.

If you've read Buyers, Renters, and Freeloaders, you know the basic principle: the Buyers Agreement is the way people live when they expect to stay in the marriage for life and have to fix problems that are making one or both of them unhappy. If people will live this way, their marriages will be happy.

But in Defending Traditional Marriage, Dr. H talks from the perspective of a counselor, and he reveals another detail: his plan for getting people to adopt the Buyer's Agreement is 1) get them to fall in love with each other, 2) persuade them to adopt the agreement. If he can get them to try out the behaviors that lead to them falling in love, then once they do, they become open to living by the agreement that will keep them in love.

What seems to be necessary in a number of cases is a good deal of pump priming by the husband: eliminate the lifestyle choices and love busters that are sapping the love bank, sit their patiently waiting for the snail to appear, meet emotional needs with skill, finesse, and sophistication, and suddenly there is a wife who is willing to go all the way as a Buyer.