A 400+ page volume with originally-commissioned essays, edited by Susanne M. Alexander of Marriage Transformation.
Authors include Beverly and Tom Rodgers, Julie Baumgardner, John Van Epp, Nisa Muhammad, Claudia and David Arp, Mike McManus, Gary Chapman, Rita DeMaria, Scott Haltzman, and many more.
Institute affiliate scholar Emily Luschin’s essay is titled “Pace It,” and explores how “committed, successful relationships don’t just appear out of thin air” but are “built over time.” It offers “best practices” that can help any couple prepare well for marriage.
My own essay is titled “‘If Our Parents Divorced, Can Our Marriage Succeed?: Striving for Unity in an Era of High Family Fragmentation.” It examines how those from divorced families can have “high hopes but few models,” and offers a model for building unity with your family of origin even as you are embarking on forming a new family.
Categories: Children of Divorce, Marriage
This book sounds very interesting. Is there anything in it that might be helpful to a young gay couple who are about to marry? We have friends who are 22 and 24 respectively who are planning to marry soon. Most of our gay friends who have married have been older (from early thirties like us to late 70s) and don’t need any kind of marriage prep books, but this couple might. They have been a couple for about a year and living together for about nine months.
I don’t know of any similar books especially for gay couples. There are several websites that help gay couples plan weddings, but I don’t there are any that talk discuss the serious issues that this book does.
Jay, I think there’s a lot about marriage prep that’s valid no matter the age or orientation of the couple, or even the length of time that they’ve been together.
But if it needs to be made specific, I think a gay couple is going to have to write it. My guess is that you could go through the report with a highlighter and mark the parts that you think would be relevant, and make notes about what you think should be changed.