Happily Ever After


Book Description

Most of us enter marriage with great expectations of how perfect life together will be. But unless you talk about those expectations, there's little hope of them being met. While you may imagine big family dinners on Sunday afternoons, your spouse may be looking forward to football and pizza on the couch. So how do you resolve these contradicting ideas? The key is to examine your expectations for the many aspects of marriage and talk about them with your spouse. Only then can you begin to build a foundation for your new life together. In Happily Ever After, Toben and Joanne Heim look back to their first year of marriage and share their own struggles and triumphs as they dealt with their expectations. Paired with fresh experiences of newly married couples and the wisdom of couples married for years, they model how couples can learn to communicate with each other about the issues that often define the first year of marriage -- things like money, family history, sex, spirituality, and more. This book is packed with honest anecdotes, intriguing questions, and exercises designed to help you understand and appreciate what makes your spouse different -- and special. Whether you're newly engaged or newly married, build a foundation of understanding that will last a lifetime! Book jacket.




What Did You Expect? (Redesign)


Book Description

Marriage always involves two flawed people living with each other in a fallen world. Yet many couples say “I do” with unrealistic expectations, leaving them unprepared for the day-to-day difficulties of married life. This unique book introduces a biblical and practical approach to dealing with the challenges of marriage that is rooted in God’s faithfulness and the Bible’s teaching on sin and grace. Outlining six practical commitments that give shape and momentum to a truly healthy and fulfilling union, this redesigned book will equip couples to develop thriving, grace-based marriages in all circumstances and seasons of their relationships.




The All-or-Nothing Marriage


Book Description

“After years of debate and inquiry, the key to a great marriage remained shrouded in mystery. Until now...”—Carol Dweck, author of Mindset: The New Psychology of Success Eli J. Finkel's insightful and ground-breaking investigation of marriage clearly shows that the best marriages today are better than the best marriages of earlier eras. Indeed, they are the best marriages the world has ever known. He presents his findings here for the first time in this lucid, inspiring guide to modern marital bliss. The All-or-Nothing Marriage reverse engineers fulfilling marriages—from the “traditional” to the utterly nontraditional—and shows how any marriage can be better. The primary function of marriage from 1620 to 1850 was food, shelter, and protection from violence; from 1850 to 1965, the purpose revolved around love and companionship. But today, a new kind of marriage has emerged, one oriented toward self-discover, self-esteem, and personal growth. Finkel combines cutting-edge scientific research with practical advice; he considers paths to better communication and responsiveness; he offers guidance on when to recalibrate our expectations; and he even introduces a set of must-try “lovehacks.” This is a book for the newlywed to the empty nester, for those thinking about getting married or remarried, and for anyone looking for illuminating advice that will make a real difference to getting the most out of marriage today.




Simple Habits for Marital Happiness


Book Description

SIMPLE HABITS FOR MARITAL HAPPINESS is an incredible book that covers every aspect of a marriage to help you create a vibrant, rewarding relationship that grows stronger every day. Backed by over thirty years of experience, Dr. Randy Schroeder - a pastor and marriage counselor - helps you develop the habits your marriage needs. These straightforward, easy-to-understand lessons will show you how to... Apologize and forgive. Stay in love after the honeymoon. Communicate effectively with your spouse. Safeguard your oneness. Maintain emotional and physical closeness. Disagree without hurting your relationship. Budget, save, and spend together.




Rebuilding a Marriage Better Than New


Book Description

What's Better Than New? God's Best You've made a commitment to see your marriage healed, so now what? Whether your relationship is recovering from an affair, pornography addiction, or just years of coasting, Cindy Beall shares from her redeemed-marriage journey to help you trust completely in God's ability and grace heal deeply by restoring faith in a future build wisely from the foundation up live fully by embracing your renewed relationship invest generously in your marriage and in other people Insightful questions, biblical teachings to counter lies, and stories of rebuilt marriages lead you to God's healing and the hope of helping others from the place you once had deep pain. Cindy Beall provides undeniable proof that God is a Redeemer regardless of how messy, difficult, or painful our current relationships are. Lisa Harper, bestselling author and Bible teacher I'm a massive Cindy Beall fan. If your relationship needs a tune-up or a complete overhaul, read this book with an open heart and I believe God will do a new work in you. Craig Groeschel, senior pastor of Life.Church




iMarriage Study Guide


Book Description

Until Expectations May You Part Giddy with excitement and burning with love’s fire, engaged couples are filled with desires and expectations! Wonder and eager anticipation propel them forward. Then comes the marriage and if they take the wrong approach, those unrealized expectations and unmet wants can turn a life-giving covenant relationship into a dead-end contractual agreement. Suddenly your marriage has no love, joy, or peace. In this marriage-makeover DVD and study guide from Northpoint Resources, Andy Stanley ’s three key teachings help you transform your expectations and examine the “I’s” of marriage: “Keeping My ‘I’ On You,” “Putting Your ‘I’ Out,” and “It Takes Three.” Broken into six DVD sessions with discussion questions, this is one lesson your marriage won’t survive without. Until Expectations Do Us Part Standing at the altar we all had a picture of what our marriage would look like. The problem is this picture of marriage ends up as expectations that we unload on our spouse. The weight of these expectations will rob your marriage of love and joy. As a spouse you never feel like you measure up and you never feel like you are good enough. So what are you to do with your expectations? You can’t deny them because most expectations started out as God-given desires. In this six-session companion study guide to the DVD, Andy Stanley explains that you must instead learn to transform your expectations and look to God if you are to experience marriage as it was designed. This study guide is complete with a leader’s guide and six lessons including conversation-starting exercises, discussion questions and application steps. Story Behind the Book Andy Stanley is the senior pastor of three North Point Ministries campuses, with a cumulative congregation of more than twenty thousand. As couples voiced their various marital struggles to him, the common root problem became undeniably clear. The “me” syndrome, or the “I” effect, was tearing apart husbands and wives who were once head-over-heels in love. To help couples step back from their immediate circumstances and realize the bigger picture, he preached a series called “iMarriage.” This DVD and study guide will empower couples everywhere to transform their marriages into the one God intends for them.




Great Expectations


Book Description

During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the divorce rate in the United States rose by a staggering 2,000 percent. To understand this dramatic rise, Elaine Tyler May studied over one thousand detailed divorce cases. She found that contrary to common assumptions, divorce was not simply a by-product of women's increasing economic and sexual independence, or a rebellion against marriage. Rather, thwarted hopes for fulfillment in the public sphere drove both men and women to wed at a greater rate and to bring higher expectations to their marriages.




The Unveiled Wife


Book Description

As a young bride, Jennifer Smith couldn’t wait to build her life with the man she adored. She dreamed of closeness, of being fully known and loved by her husband. But the first years of marriage were nothing like she’d imagined. Instead, they were marked by disappointment and pain. Trapped by fear and insecurity, and feeling totally alone, Jennifer cried out to God: What am I doing wrong? Why is this happening to us? It was as if a veil had descended between her and her husband, and between her and God—one that kept her from experiencing the fullness of love. How did Jennifer and her husband survive the painful times? What did they do when they were tempted to call it quits? How did God miraculously step in during the darkest hour to rescue and redeem them, tearing down the veil once and for all? The Unveiled Wife is a real-life love story; one couple’s refreshingly raw, transparent journey touching the deep places in a marriage that only God can reach. If you are feeling disappointment or even despair about your marriage, the heart-cry of this book is: You are not alone. Discover through Jennifer’s story how God can bring you through it all to a place of transformation.




Healing Your Marriage When Trust Is Broken


Book Description

Resurrect beauty from the ashes of betrayal Wife and mother Cindy Beall’s world was shattered when her beloved husband of nine years confessed his pornography addiction, numerous affairs, and the stunning news that another woman was pregnant with his child. What could have been the end of a marriage instead became a testament to God’s miraculous ability to restore broken hearts and damaged bonds. With the wisdom and healing she’s gained in the twenty years that have passed since her husband’s devastating revelation, Cindy shares her own experience as well as those of couples she’s counselled. Drawing from her intimate knowledge of human pain and God’s power, Cindy shows how you can… seek support, counseling, and prayer after deception has surfaced rebuild trust that’s been eroded by infidelity, addiction, or other transgressions help your family heal from grief and reconcile with any long-term consequences rely on God to pursue forgiveness and move forward in new promises Cindy’s remarkable story, compassion, and grasp of God’s Word will help you trust God with your heartache as you seek His hope and redemption.




See-Through Marriage


Book Description

Marriage is all about sharing: sharing space, sharing joys and sorrows, sharing hopes and dreams. Yet we often hold back a part of ourselves because we fear that being wholly transparent--about our past, our desires, our failures, our faults--will bring judgment, rejection, or even just unwanted friction to our relationship. We are afraid to be fully known. As a result, we never experience being fully loved. Fierce Marriage authors Ryan and Selena Frederick think your marriage deserves better. In this new, paradigm-shifting book, they show you how to develop a see-through marriage, one that is marked by full transparency and confident vulnerability. Through personal stories, testimonies from other couples, and biblical truth, they make the case that living authentically in front of each other is the only way to experience love the way we were designed to. If you desire an honest, no-holding-back marriage where you are fully known, fully accepted, and fully loved, you need this book.