Making Happy - Review

In Making Happy, Drs Les and Leslie Parrott provide practical methods for finding true joy in marriage. They claim that the “3 week happiness plan” is based on cutting edge research that really works. Drs Les and Leslie Parrott have spent years exploring the art and science and the practice of long-term happiness in marriage. They are founders of Realrelationships.com and the Center of Relationship Development at Seattle Pacific University. They have also authored several books including Love Talk and Saving your Marriage Before It Starts. There are ten chapters in this book and they are brief so the reader is not intimidated by the size and content of the material covered in this book.

The authors are dedicated to helping you keep the vital sign of happiness healthy and strong in your relationship. They do this not with armchair psychology but the strategies that they present built on long time research. In recent times many have stated that marriage is not about happiness, it is about holiness. This might seem as though happiness and holiness are mutually exclusive. But it need not be the case. Why can’t married couples be both happy and attain holiness in the context of a Christian union? They define happiness as “the emotional state of feeling satisfaction, playfulness, contentedness, amusement, cheeriness, serenity, gratification, elation, triumph, joy, and bliss.” This book is permeated with interesting quotes (that itself is worth the book). It also has “Reflection Questions” at the end of each chapter which makes for a great group study.