Book Plunge: How We Love

What do I think of Milan and Kay Yerkovich’s book published by WaterBrook press? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Love. Love. Love. Love is what makes the world go around supposedly. Everyone loves love. We all speak so highly of love and we assume love is a universal good. Wherever there is love, well you have something good for sure. There are many questions that go unanswered about love. One such question is how we love. In this book, the Yerkovich’s speak about various love styles highlighting five that have their own weaknesses and they say are from unhealthy imprints. This means that as a child, you learned a certain way to love before you could really evaluate that and that affects the way you love today.

I can’t say I’m sold on the hypothesis yet, but it is an understandable one. There are many people for instance who cannot relate to God as Father and they have a hard time doing such because they had bad fathers when they were growing up. The Yerkoviches then move us into the various love styles, such as the avoider who tends to shy away from contact and does not open up about themselves. There’s also the pleaser who has a hard time saying no to anyone and wants to please everyone, which is often done to cover their own negativity. The vacillator style is one that sees relationships as valuable for certain needs that they meet and when these needs aren’t being met, they tend to want to move on. Then we get into two styles that go hand in hand due to abuse which are the controller and the victim.

The authors look at each of these and discusses how each of these styles love. They tell each person in the style what they can do to change and they also say what can be done to help your spouse if they are in that style, although they do emphasize that you cannot directly change your partner. You alone are the one that can change and even if your spouse does not go along, you can still play your part. The version of the book I read also came with a workbook.

If there were areas I’d like more on, I would like to see more clarification at times on the styles. When I took the online test, I was pretty similar for three of them, which I considered problematic. I was unsure where I ranked too often and unsure where my own spouse ranked. This made it difficult for me to get the full benefit of the book since I could see myself and I could see my wife in many of the styles. (Aside from the last two.)

I also would have liked more said about sex. There was one section where it was mentioned for a bit, but in books that talk about marriage, we really do need to talk about sex more. I would have liked to have seen something on how each of the love styles approached sexual intimacy and how partners on both sides could better relate to improve this area in their marriages.

Still, this is a book worth reading and worth considering. I did end it with much to think about.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

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