Marriage Years

Do you feel overwhelmed and completely unprepared for marriage? Are you worried about failing in your marriage, second-guessing your decision to even get married, or considering a divorce? Here's how to adjust to married life, build a strong foundation, and survive your first year of marriage - EVEN if you don’t know where to start.

Marriage is the most profound human relationship there is. Coming to know and love your spouse is one of the most rewarding and wondrous things we can experience in life. But it is also one of the most difficult and painful. In this 365-day devotional, Timothy Keller and his wife of 43 years, Kathy Keller, share powerful instructions on how to have a successful marriage. The Kellers draw from and expand upon lessons they first introduced in their book, The Meaning of Marriage, offering stories, daily scriptures, and prayer prompts.

"Life changes fast....You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends." These were among the first words Joan Didion wrote in January 2004. Her daughter was lying unconscious in an intensive care unit, a victim of pneumonia and septic shock. Her husband, John Gregory Dunne, was dead. The night before New Year's Eve, while they were sitting down to dinner, he suffered a massive and fatal coronary. The two had lived and worked side by side for nearly 40 years.

At age 34 Jo Piazza got her romantic-comedy ending when she met the man of her dreams on a boat in the Galápagos Islands and was engaged three months later. But before long Jo found herself riddled with questions. How do you make a marriage work in a world where you no longer need to be married? How does an independent, strong-willed feminist become someone's partner - all the time?

In Devotions for a Sacred Marriage author Gary Thomas encourages you to build your marriage around God’s priorities and explores how God can reveal Himself to you through your marriage and help you grow closer to Him as well as to your spouse.

After 22 years, spent across four continents, with two children - Louis and Marcel - in 1990, Anne and Paul Theroux decided to separate. For that year, Anne - later a professional relationship therapist herself - kept a diary, noting not only her day-to day experiences as a busy freelance journalist and broadcaster but the contrasts in her feelings between despairing grief and hope for a new future.

If the two of you have not even lived together yet, there is a good chance that arguments will occur later in the relationship once you guys move in together. We often see this in many situations. It's actually referred to as the "stages" in your relationship.

During a cringey visit to IKEA, the store where relationships go to die, Emma finally blurts out to Rob that she is no longer happy in their 26-year marriage. She wants more meaningful work, connections, thrills, joy – and more passionate sex. It’s been ages. Rob knows their marriage isn’t perfect, but it’s good enough…isn’t it? He’s loyal, solid, a good provider. What more does she want, anyway? Emma suggests taking a Marriage Gap Year. Time apart, no calls, no texts. This feisty communications manager wants the comms switched off between them for the next 12 months.

One-night stands are supposed to be with someone convenient, or wickedly persuasive, or regrettable. They aren’t supposed to be with someone like him. But after a crazy Vegas weekend celebrating her college graduation - and terrified of the future path she knows is a cop-out - Mia Holland makes the wildest decision of her life: follow Ansel Guillaume - her sweet, filthy fling - to France for the summer and just…play.

In 2009, 22-year-old Joseph Fink, newly arrived to New York City from the West Coast, was juggling odd jobs to pay the rent and volunteering with a theater company in the East Village so he could snag free tickets to their shows. Meg Bashwiner, a 22-year-old aspiring performer and playwright, was living with her parents in New Jersey, working a desk job and commuting to her internship with that same East Village theater company.

From the New York Times best-selling author of Circle of Friends and The Glass Lake comes This Year It Will Be Different, a stunning work that brings us the magic and spirit of Christmas in 15 stories filled with Maeve Binchy's trademark wit, charm, and sheer storytelling genius. Instead of nostalgia, Binchy evokes contemporary life; instead of Christmas homilies, she offers truth; and instead of sugarplums, she brings us the nourishment of holidays that precipitate change, growth, and new beginnings.

Through this 52-week devotional experience, you will be reacquainted with the obstacles and outcomes of familiar couples like Abraham & Sarah... and meet some lesser-known couples like Othniel & Aksah. Each week focuses on one couple of the Bible, from Adam & Eve to Christ & His Bride. You will read their story, learn about their cultural setting and explore how their story can teach you important truths about your own marriage. Each week you will be guided with questions applying biblical truth to your relationship with your spouse.

Clever and ambitious, Emma Jung yearned to study the natural sciences at the University of Zurich. But the strict rules of proper Swiss society at the beginning of the 20th century dictated that a woman of Emma's stature - one of the richest heiresses in Switzerland - travel to Paris to "finish" her education, to prepare for marriage to a suitable man. Engaged to the son of one of her father's wealthy business colleagues, Emma's conventional and predictable life was upended when she met Carl Jung.

Truly loving another imperfect person is not merely a romantic feeling, but a daily decision. But what are the keys to consistently giving and receiving love? How are love and romance best experienced and expressed in the midst of life’s everchanging pressures and emotions? The Love Dare Day by Day is a one-year devotional designed to challenge husbands and wives to understand and practice unconditional love.

Tiller is an average American college student with a good heart but minimal aspirations. Pong Lou is a larger-than-life, wildly creative Chinese American entrepreneur who sees something intriguing in Tiller beyond his bored exterior and takes him under his wing. When Pong brings him along on a boisterous trip across Asia, Tiller is catapulted from ordinary young man to talented protégé, and pulled into a series of ever more extreme and eye-opening experiences that transform his view of the world, of Pong, and of himself.

William is a happy man. He has just married Isabel, the girl of his dreams, and is confidently sailing along on a sea of wedded bliss. He’s got a hot wife, a snazzy new job and things couldn’t be much better. Sure, there are a few bumps in the road, but life on the whole is good. That is until Isabel’s ‘best friend’ Alex starts to intrude on their wedded bliss. And when William’s ex-girlfriend Saskia - aka the ‘Destroyer of Relationships’ - appears on the scene, things go from bad to worse.

The first year of marriage is the most important. It forms the habits - good and bad - that will define the rest of your married life. Make that first year the best it can be.

When Nancy Balbirer learns her beloved eleven-year-old beagle has kidney failure, she’s devastated. She and her husband had gotten Ira as a puppy - a wedding gift to each other, and their first foray into “parenthood.” Now, her dog is terminal, her marriage is on life support, and Nancy is desperate to save them both (whether they want it or not). In a single year, she loses her two best friends, but Nancy’s life is about to take yet another unexpected turn. With humor and heart, Nancy Balbirer shares her story of relationships, loss, and canine friendship in this illuminating memoir.

Starting in spring 2006, journalist Laurie Abraham sat in with five troubled couples as they underwent the searing process of group marriage therapy. Published as "Can This Marriage Be Saved?" the resulting article generated intense reader response. While space limitations allowed Abraham to focus only on one couple in her article, this book, which grew out of it and the reaction it inspired, tells the moving, fascinating story of all five.

The first five years of marriage is full of ups and downs, and we would like to share with the millennials and the rest of the world what it takes to have a happy marriage. Every married couple is not happy, and it takes a lot of work to have a healthy relationship and a successful marriage. Please take a little time out of your busy schedules to invest in your love life! We hope that our experience helps you on your journey to find happiness and true love.