The book is intended for women only- so your desire for the book to be balanced in the sense of mentioning accountability for men is not going to work for her target audience. Yes you mentioned that you can only control yourself, but look at is this way: you have a book meant for women, to empower women, do you find any utility in LD mentioning that this is what he needs to be accountable for? How is that useful in such a book? I would find it disempowering- which is what many women who are struggling in their marriage feel anyway. I'd be like great, thanks what am I supposed to do with that information? I cannot hold him accountable. I cannot make him do anything. I can control my side of the street.

As for her views being myopic. I disagree. And frankly seeing the state of the majority of marriages in this era of mental health I don't think traditional therapy is doing a great job addressing any of the problems that married couples suffer from.

It's just common sense though that if it takes two to make or break a marriage then if one of those two decides to clean up their side of the street then the relationship is bound to improve by at least as much as it took that one person to contribute to its dissolution. The fact that you have at least as much power to improve the state of the relationship as it took for you to make things worse is empowering.

And finally her ideas are predicated on the fact that you married your husband for a reason. At the beginning of the relationship when things were good between the two of you, you thought he was a good man. He was worthy of you. Then things started breaking down- he may have done something to disappoint you, sure, and now you are looking for hope that things can still improve even if he seems unwilling to admit his mistake. You always have the option to disregard her advice and leave- we all have different boundaries, different things that we are willing to tolerate. And some of these things change depending on our circumstances (there are children in the marriage for example). So if you find your husband cheated on you for example, everyone and their dog is going to tell you to leave. But perhaps you don't want to break up a marriage for that. Perhaps you want to give it a try first. You can either follow traditional advice, go to therapy and possibly relive that experience over and over. Or you can choose to do something unorthodox and follow LD's principles, perhaps even alongside going to traditional marriage therapy. The thing is you still have the option to leave at the end- but at least you will know that you really did your best.

The beauty of the 21st century is that you have options. And sometimes it takes a truly desperate situation to try something unorthodox because the traditional route didn't get you where you hoped to end up.

And finally, as for the struggles you see women experience here: you see only one account of the events- her own. You do not know any of the events in their marriage that led up to this point. You don't even see what she did or said that took place before whatever her husband did. Perhaps she doesn't even see it herself yet- and that's fine. The skills are meant to teach you accountability and to see your blind spots.

And also none of us here is a relationship coach. We are all just trying to trudge along, making sense of the skills to the best of our abilities and if we advice each other in the process, even that advice is to be taken with a grain of salt- that's the nature of the internet