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4-MAT Review:
The Dream Home: How to Create and Intimate Christian Marriage
Natalie Radcliffe
School of Behavioral Sciences, Liberty University
December 11, 2022
Author Note
Natalie Radcliffe
I have no known conflict of interest to disclose.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Natalie Radcliffe
Email: [email protected]
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4-MAT Review: The Dream Home: How to Create an Intimate Christian Marriage
Summary
Dr. Elias Moitinho and Dr. Denise Moitinho brings awareness and light to the everyday
struggles within a marriage in the book, The Dream Home: How to Create an Intimate Christian
Marriage. The use the home as a metaphor for marriage give a simple understanding to complex
ideas for a couple and the counselor. Each section is broken down into a room necessary to
create harmony in one’s marriage. At the root of creating an intimate Christian marriage is
creating a shared vision, like house hunting (Moitinho et al, 2020). The Moitinhos unpack the
themes of effective communication and how a couple can work through conflict appropriately.
At the heart, the book aims to explore the various dimensions of conflict within a marriage using
Christ-centered language (Moitinho, 2020).
The metaphor of the kitchen and dining room are used to explore the importance of
taking care of one’s body, mind, soul, and lastly relationships. The chapter explains that giving a
spouse one’s best means a person must take care of themselves and work towards becoming the
best version of themselves (Moitinho, 2020). Again, this topic is brought back to scripture using
the fruits of the Spirit and emphasizes Drs. Moitinho (2020) desire to use God’s Word as the
backbone of marriage and counseling.
While there is a specific chapter focusing on intimacy, The Dream Home (2020) also
discusses how each “room” of the house, and each topic contributes to intimacy. This explores
not just physical intimacy, but also spiritual, emotional, and intellectual (Moitinho et al, 2020).
The book closes by discussing how to maintain the marriage by giving couples various calls to
action to that allows the tool and techniques to carry a couple forward beyond the book.
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Concrete Reflection
Speaking honestly, marriage counseling has always intimidated me. While I have a very
healthy and lovely marriage, I grew up in an extremely abusive household. I was surrounded by
yelling, hitting, and hate-filled conversations from my mom and stepdad. When I see toxic
couples, I tend to become triggered from my childhood and see their relationship through the
lens of the children (if any) involved.
Viewing this text from that lens, so many things stuck with me, particularly the chapter
regarding effective communication. The Dream Home (2020) references the destructive patterns
of communication which are criticism, defensiveness, contempt, and stonewalling. Growing up,
my stepdad spoke with nothing but contempt in his voice. I remember physically covering my
ears when he spoke to my mother, constantly hearing degradation, name-calling, and hate in his
words. Unfortunately, this was coupled with my mom’s response being stonewalling, which is
simply withdrawing from the conversation (Moitinho et al, 2020). If she were to engage, she
would most likely get hit so she simply stopped engaging. The times when she did engage were
also not constructive communication strategies. There were a few times when she chose to voice
her defensiveness of his accusations or, in turn, criticize his behavior (Moitinho et al, 2020). This
always led to more fighting or hitting, and nothing was ever resolved. I am grateful for this
chapter, so I was able to recognize and name the unhealthy habits easily and see the effective
tools like active listening (Moitinho et al, 2020).
I also connected with the parenting chapter, especially seeing Erik Erikson’s theory of
development being used in a Christian counseling setting (Moitinho et al, 2020). Part of my
undergraduate focus was child development, so I love seeing these psychological techniques and
tools being implementing and paired with the spiritual development of children.
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Critique
First, I must start with what I really agreed with and love in the text. Chapter twelve
focused on the home maintenance and how to put the previous chapters into action in tangible
ways. There are checklists and homework to fill out regarding each chapter, which I thought was
such a great way to begin to apply the tools learned (Moitinho et al, 2020). While reading the
book I kept thinking to myself, “wow, I wish there were checklists or tests couples could do”.
So, when I got to chapter twelve I was pleased. However, I think there was a missed opportunity
to have those same, or additional tests and checklists to fill out the chapters are being read. It as
would be beneficial to be given tangible application while the information is still fresh.
Additionally, I wished it had been noted to couples how often to check in on their home
maintenance or where to begin when you have already done the work, but a “tune up” is needed.
Some notes or tips to recognize when a “room” begins to fall out of harmony would be helpful
for couples. I think it would allow couples to intervene in their relationship it becomes a before
bigger issue.
Now, speaking from a personal perspective as my passion and calling is family and
child/teen counseling, I wish there was more information regarding parenting. The chapter is
filled with helpful information such as their development, the importance of taking a Biblical
perspective, identifying parenting styles, and quick parenting tips (Moitinho et al, 2020).
However, because it is condensed into one chapter, some things are glossed over. I understand
the vision behind it as some couples reading the text may not be parents. I think a good balance
and solution to that would have been to offer additional books on specific parenting topics as
resources for parents. There is an abundance of parenting books available, and it can be difficult
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to know which ones are good, Christ-centered information and which are not. Recommendations
from this book would have been a great opportunity.
Application
In terms of personal growth, I want to go through the home maintenance with my
husband. As I mentioned, we have a very healthy relationship. After seventeen years of marriage,
we have worked through most of these situations. However, we are all imperfect, and there is
always room for growth. After the semester ends, we have committed to do each chapter’s
checklist and see which rooms of ours need fine tuning. Initially, I believe we will both agree our
guest room could use some growth (Moitinho et al, 2020). I am quite introverted and do not
enjoy my house, my safe place, being overwhelmed with people. My husband is the opposite and
enjoys opening our house to all the neighborhood children. He works from home so enjoys
having our home being the one our children’s friends come to. However, when I get home from
work I become overwhelmed.
In terms of future counseling roles, I feel more confident in general in terms of marriage
counseling. While it is still not my desire to have that be my focus, I am excited to use the
communication definitions and checklist to be able to partner with couples in finding better ways
to communicate with each other. Family mediation is something I am passionate about so the
various ways to clean up conflict and the defined sources of conflict are helpful. The conflict
resolution model is something I envision myself using consistently in mediation (Moitinho et al,
2020).
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Reference
Moitinho, E., & Moitinho, D. (2020). Dream home: How to create an intimate Christian
marriage. Kendall Hunt Publishing.
