Marriage Development

This extraordinary book presents scenarios of one family's therapy experience and explains what underlies each encounter. You will discover the general patterns that are common to all families - stress, polarization and escalation, scapegoating, triangulation, blaming, and the diffusion of identity - and you will gain a vivid understanding of the intriguing field of family therapy.

Can you have a strong personality and still be a godly wife? Yes! Do you ever get the idea that being a godly wife means you need to be a mousy doormat? Be as unnoticeable as a doorknob? Or have a personality transplant? Fierce Women: The Power of a Soft Warrior smashes that idea. No matter whether you're an extrovert or more introverted, Kimberly Wagner believes women are created to be a compelling force.

In prospective, long-term research with over 700 couples, Gottman has discovered certain factors that distinguish happy, stable couples from both unstable, ultimately divorcing couples and stable but unhappy couples. These findings, which are explained here in understandable, nontechnical language, form the basis of his Sound Marital House theory of marriage, which guides the new therapy. This therapy has two goals: changing the marital friendship and teaching couples to regulate conflict.

What does it mean for a husband to love his wife? Three things, says Tony Evans: a husband must be his wife's savior, sanctifier, and satisfier. It is by living out these three principles that a godly marriage will blossom and flourish.

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. In this paradigm-shifting book, Ryan and Selena Frederick show you how to develop a see-through marriage, one that is marked by full transparency and confident vulnerability.

Is your marriage under attack? Sometimes it can feel like the world is trying to tear your marriage apart. Internal conflicts or external pressures might make you wonder if something sinister is going on. How can you tell if you're facing spiritual opposition? And what can you do about it? Tim Muehlhoff provides a straightforward resource for protecting your marriage from the threats of the evil one. He looks at what Scripture says about spiritual warfare and how our everyday struggles have deeper spiritual realities.

Best-selling author Dr. John Townsend teaches you that love can actually be learned and gives you the steps and tools to become skilled in love. Using his trademark stories to flesh out the important principles, Dr. Townsend covers receiving love, connecting love, healing love, confronting love, romantic love, and surrendering love. Through his teaching, listeners will discover - and start enjoying - the words, actions, and experiences of authentic love.

Navigating the challenges of long-term commitment takes effort - and it just got simpler, with this empowering, step-by-step guide to communicating about the things that matter most to you and your partner. Drawing on 40 years of research from their world-famous Love Lab, Dr. John Gottman and Dr. Julie Schwartz Gottman invite couples on eight fun, easy, and profoundly rewarding dates, each one focused on a make-or-break issue: trust, conflict, sex, money, family, adventure, spirituality, and dreams.

In For Married Women Only, pastor and author Tony Evans explores these three principles in a straight-forward yet encouraging manner. He unpacks the touchy topic of submission and lays out the rewards inherent in this biblical model. On seduction, Evans looks at the quality of attractiveness and how embodying it can be pleasing to your spouse and to God. And with surrender, readers will examine why a wife is the perfect helpmate for her husband and how to combat attitudes opposed to God's design.

Fighting for Your Marriage is based on the widely acclaimed PREP approach (Prevention and Relationship Education Program). Research has found that couples who use these strategies can handle conflict more constructively, protect their happiness, and reduce the odds of breaking up. Based on more than forty years of evidence, this book shows couples how to talk more and fight less, protect their friendship, and keep the fun alive.

Is There Sex After Marriage? is the answer for the millions of Americans trapped in the cycle of low- or no-sex marriages. Contrary to the widespread cultural acceptance, from TV shows to standup comedy, sex doesn't have to end once the honeymoon does. Seasoned sex-pert Carol Botwin brings her decades of relationship experience to bear and teaches couples with no-nonsense candor and plenty of humor how to rekindle the fire they had in their courtship, and how to keep it burning forever.

In his classic guide to understanding the opposite sex, Dr. John Gray provides a practical and proven way for men and women to improve their communication and relationships by acknowledging the differences between them. Once upon a time Martians and Venusians met, fell in love, and had happy relationships together because they respected and accepted their differences. Then they came to Earth and amnesia set in: They forgot they were from different planets.

Do you find yourself creating elaborate stories about their whereabouts, none of them good? If constant overthinking is turning your happy relationship into a battlefield, you're not alone. This book will be your lifeline. It dives deep into the toxic thoughts that can creep into any relationship, whispering doubts and insecurities. You'll learn how these overactive mental gymnastics can sabotage your connection and leave you feeling anxious and drained.

There’s good news: You have a 100 percent chance of succeeding in marriage! But it all depends on what you are willing to put into it - and whom you have at the center. Relationship experts Jimmy and Karen Evans know this firsthand. Here, they weave their own personal experience together with what Jimmy has learned through more than two decades of counseling other couples. Whether engaged or married, you’ll find that God’s principles detailed in Marriage on the Rock will help you prepare for marriage or strengthen a good marriage.

Finally, a book about open marriage that grapples with the problems surrounding monogamy and fidelity in an honest, heartfelt, and non-fringe manner. Jenny Block is your average girl next door, a suburban wife and mother for whom married life never felt quite right. While many books on this topic presuppose that the listener is ready to embrace an "alternative lifestyle", Block operates from the assumption that most couples who are curious about or engaged in open marriages are in fact more like her - normal people who question whether monogamy is right for them.

After infidelity, relationships can become strained as both partners lose trust and faith in each other. Author Tammy Nelson helps couples regain trust, romance, and intimacy after infidelity by redefining the monogamy contract. The new monogamy contract is an explicit relationship agreement created after the affair that allows each partner to safely share their desires, expectations, and limitations. After an affair, it's impossible to go back to the way the relationship was before, but this book offers the chance for a new beginning.

Based on the most detailed survey of long married people ever conducted, 30 Lessons for Loving shows the way to lifelong, fulfilling relationships. The author, an internationally renowned gerontologist at Cornell University, offers sage advice from the oldest and wisest Americans on everything from finding a partner, to deciding to commit, to growing old together.

In The Marriage Challenge: A Finance Guide for Married Couples, financial expert and author of The Money Challenge Art Rainer takes you on a journey to a financially healthy marriage. Get started on the right foot, or get back on the right track, by accepting the challenge and realizing God's design for money and marriage.

Great marriages don't just happen - they're made, intentionally, day by day. Yet most of us enter the covenant of marriage thinking that the role of spouse will be easy, natural, effortless. Rarely is this true. In fact, the number one cause of divorce isn't adultery or finances or disagreements. It's apathy - a lack of intentional emotional, physical, and mental investment in the relationship.

Marriage is hard for all kinds of reasons—financial struggles, parenting styles, personality differences, difficult circumstances. It's easy to drift apart, walking through life more as roommates than partners. But there's so much more for your marriage. The Fight for Us offers biblical wisdom and encouragement, as well as practical guidance, that will give you the confidence you need to cultivate the happy and healthy marriage you long for.