The First Few Years of Marriage: 8 Ways to Strengthen Your “I Do”

This saved our marriage. Buying more for every wedding I go to

Present

will be a great gift for couples getting married

My husband and I have been married for 19 years, and I still found this read to be refreshing to the soul. The idea that even after years of marriage, we have been given new tools to refresh our lives in exciting new ways that are pleasing to God.The book offers practical tools with working through struggles in ways we had not embarked on before now. We all know that a healthy and happy marriage can be a difficult journey, yet having some new tools to put into action, including the practice of course corrections, we are able to envelope these into our everyday life. I believe that reading this book together will also improve the intimacy of your marriage. I strongly recommend this book to couples at any stage of a marriage.

Wonderful book to learn what really matters in marriage

Where was this book 16 years ago!?!?!?In their own whimsical, funny, honest, and heartfelt ways, Doug and Jim shed light on what it looks like to successfully navigate the first few years of marriage. As a 16-year "veteran" of marriage, I learned SO MANY tips from this book that I can apply to a more seasoned relationship, and I know that what they share will be so helpful to a new marriage relationship.This book is full of practical advice from two trusted family ministry voices. They willingly share from their own successes and failures as husbands, providing examples and stories that both encourage couples and shed light on easy-to-put-into-practice tips and practices to help newlyweds build a healthy marriage over the first few years of married life.Whether you're just starting out on the journey of marriage or have been married for decades, if you apply what Doug and Jim teach in this book, you will help you take your relationship to a whole new level!

I have been married more than a few years and found the practical tips to keep a marriage on track as great reminders for our own marriage. It would have been helpful to have a book like this -- perfectly collecting and summing up so many of the marriage concepts found drawn out in other books -- earlier on in marriage! I'd highly recommend this book. It was easy and quick to read, with real-life transparent stories throughout. Practicing the principles within would clearly create a healthy relationship! The key would be CHOOSING to implement and make the necessary "course corrections" as explained in this book. The practical concepts in the chapter "Fight Fear" were most new and poignant for me... giving couples clear counseling tools they can work through themselves. Be brave and read this book together with your spouse -- it will lead to greater open communication and intimacy!

What happens after a couple says, "I do"? This book fills a much needed gap for those who couples who perhaps did not give much focus to premarital education and find that after the glow of the wedding and honeymoon is over, want to proactively invest in building a healthy, lasting marriage. Burns and Fields, having a vast amount of knowledge and experience in helping couples of all phases of marriage, have created a resource, a roadmap of sorts, to a "happily ever after." In their typical writing style, Jim and Doug provide insightful, conversational, humorous and vulnerable coverage of the issues young couples will face, skills and behaviors to master, and course corrections they must make, to avoid relational drift in order to build a solid marriage foundation that can last a lifetime.