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.

"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.

What if God designed marriage to make us holy more than to make us happy? By popular demand, the author of Sacred Marriage returns to the topic of how God uses marriage to expand our souls and make us holy. With all new material, Devotions for a Sacred Marriage explores how God can reveal himself to you through your marriage and help you grow closer to him, as well as to your spouse. Fifty-two devotions encourage you to build your marriage around God’s priorities.

My boss’s daughter is off limits. For now. Wanting her wasn’t in the cards. Tell that to the need pumping through my veins. When we’re thrown together at work, resisting temptation goes out the window. So does my shot at the job I’ve had my eye on for years. Her father chooses her to take the role instead of me. Talk about unqualified. She’s everything I want in bed and everything I don’t want at the office. And she gets to call all the shots. I’m honestly not sure how much I can put up with. Especially because I don’t have to. But she needs me. The coworker in me wants to ...

SERIES COMPLETE! Second book in a series but can be read as a standalone novel. The strings of fate get tangled when I’m forced into an arranged marriage with the grumpy, gorgeous Storm Prince. I never thought one of my duties as Princess of the Ice Kingdom would be becoming a political bargaining chip. Just as my powers manifest, the rival Storm Kingdom treats me like a hostage, not the future bride of their heir. The Prince destroys everything in his path during fits of volatile rage. But, like the lightning he wields, he sends electricity through my body. His rock-hard chest, strong ...

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.

Roy Petitfils knows firsthand (and as a counselor) that a lasting, fulfilling, and happy marriage needs planning, hard work, and dedication. He uses stories from friends, clients, and his own marriage to provide advice, humor, and practical tips for the newly married.

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.

Read 52 Reasons God's People Love Passionate Sex and see for yourself how the "Better Christian You Become, The Better Lover You'll Be." The Bible has always promoted vigorous lovemaking while teaching intellectual, emotional, sexual, and spiritual intimacy. In 1986, when Patsy wrote God’s People Make the Best Lovers, she counted eight health and wellness benefits in the Bible that science had finally caught up with. Now as we begin 2024, the list has grown to 52 reasons passionate sex is like skinny dipping in God’s fountain of love and youth. The 52 Reasons God's People Love ...

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.

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.

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.

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.

Elise has known Cole for years…and has loved him almost as long. No one knows her better than he does. A little mystery… And a romantic love story that brings two people together just as they were meant to be… Sometimes…especially when least expected…love is simply meant to be… Elise has known Cole for years…and has loved him almost as long. No one knows her better than he does. And during those years he’d slowly battered away at her hesitance about making a long term commitment. He didn’t have any such problem and was determined to get the two of them in front of a ...

The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer/Questioning (LGBTQI+) bars, drinking and dancing establishments were not just party scenes but were really sanctuaries for that community. As a matter of fact, many people in the LGBTQI+ community treated these happy places as second homes or even primary homes if their families were close minded towards the community. They did indeed forge Pride and this book was the first to tell that story.

Chance is a young omega who took a little longer to find what he wanted out of college, but when he emerges, he knows his dream. He found it just before he fell in love with Liam. For Chance, the challenge isn’t just getting a cooking podcast up and running. It isn’t leaving the city and moving into a new community with only eighteen houses and no commercial businesses (though many businesses are run out of the estates). The challenge is only knowing that you’re an omega for only a week before moving in with your alpha back home. It’s getting pregnant after only four months. It’s ...

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?

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.

Lou and Josh have been together for 14 years. They share two kids, a mortgage, careers and plenty of history. Now, after a particularly fraught Christmas, Lou is ready to ask herself: is this marriage worth hanging on to? Every month for a year, Lou sets a different test for their relationship - from daily sex to brutal honesty - to help her decide if she should stay or go. Secrets are exposed, old wounds reopened and a true-to-life suburban love story unfolds.

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.