I started reading The Mingling of Souls mostly for the first chapters about dating and courtship, since I find myself in that stage of parenting (!). And indeed those chapters were helpful, and I recommend them for those who are dating/courting as well as their parents and other mentors. Save the chapter on the wedding night for just before marriage (it’s appropriately graphic). But for me personally, the latter chapters were the most beneficial, especially the chapter about marital conflict. After nineteen years of marriage, I may no longer be the newlywed who threw a pair of scissors at her husband, but I still have a long way to go in handling conflict appropriately.
One of the criticisms I saw in skimming through some of the other Goodreads reviews is that Chandler sometimes uses stereotypical gender roles in his examples. I could see that in a few places, but to me it did not really detract from Chandler’s main message of mutual love and service. (Side note: I am a stay-at-home mom, and my husband and I probably look like we have a pretty “stereotypical” marriage, so I have nothing against that. And I do believe the Biblical commands husbands to sacrificially love their wives and wives to submit to their husbands. But I have become more sensitive to the fact that that does not look the same in every Christian marriage, and that some of the stereotypes of men and women we have absorbed from the culture are not Biblical.)
I also, like some other reviewers, sometimes wondered how he got a particular interpretation or application from the text of the Song of Solomon. But I am no Hebrew scholar, and am willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. His advice in general seems sound, and I do think I have a better appreciation of that under-studied book of the Bible.
What I appreciated most was the personal aspect Chandler brings to this book. He is candid and humble about his own struggles, trials, and failings; and his love for his wife and commitment to marriage really shines through.
