Disappointing Guide for Clueless Men

Review of

For Men Only: A Straightforward Guide to the Inner Lives of Women

By Shaunti and Jeff Feldhahn

Multnomah Books, 2006 (190 pp, $14.99, hardcover)

Rating 3/5

Following in the shadow of his wife’s wildly popular book For Women Only, Jeff Feldhahn attempts to serve as the guide for clueless men through the female brain in his book, For Men Only. This book is largely the result of a professional survey Feldhahn conducted of thousands of women nationwide during the aftermath of his wife’s popular For Women Only title. Maintaining a very relaxed, conversational tone, Feldhahn provides men with most women’s true opinions on reassurance, emotions, security, listening, sex, and beauty.

I was initially displeased with Feldhahn’s writing style; he is too conversational and tries to appeal to too broad of an audience with his incessant use of poor catchphrases. For example, to help his male readers remember his steps for listening to their wives effectively, Feldhahn enlists the baseball diamond to remind his readers to give full physical attention to their wives at first base while listening for her emotional feelings about a concern before their sprint towards home plate. It is his dedication to something I can only call “trying to be cool” that kept me from taking many of his arguments seriously, as valid as they might have been.

Once one can filter through Feldhahn’s relaxed sentences, he will discover that there are some valuable, practical pieces of advice offered in this book. I found the advice offered in the chapter on listening to be especially useful as it afforded me the opportunity to understand my wife in ways in which I never understood her before reading this book. Feldhahn’s advice to listen for the emotional problem (as opposed to the logical, practical problem men often only consider) within your wife’s stories of concern is excellent and has changed the way I listen to my wife after a long day at work.

My greatest issue with this book, however, has nothing to do with Feldhahn’s arguments, but with the publisher. This book possesses one of the most irritating layouts I have ever seen. Nearly every page contains some sort of deviation from plain text, whether by bullet point, section heading, poll result, sidebar, or (most annoyingly) block quotes. The block quotes in this book typically contain sentences read in the last ten seconds and are frankly rarely worth the 20-percent page area they assume. A simpler, more focused layout would have permitted me to take his arguments more seriously.

While the book does offer pieces of practical advice on a wide range of issues, Feldhahn (and his publishers) delivers a largely disappointing book that leaves men waiting for a title that will take a more serious, Bible-centered approach to the way women think and behave.

- Reviewed by Tyler Constable

I received this book for free from WaterBrook Multnomah Publishing Group for this review.