Marriage Family Relationships

Drawing on decades of counseling experience, Jim Newheiser explores forty crucial questions relating to the complexities of marriage, divorce, and remarriage—unpacking the answers given in God's Word. This useful reference work for pastors, counselors, and personal study can also be listened to straight through for a scriptural overview of the topic or assigned in small sections to counselees.

In this must-have for anyone who wants to better understand their love life, a mathematician pulls back the curtain and reveals the hidden patterns—from dating sites to divorce, sex to marriage—behind the rituals of love. The roller coaster of romance is hard to quantify; defining how lovers might feel from a set of simple equations is impossible. But that doesn’t mean that mathematics isn’t a crucial tool for understanding love. Love, like most things in life, is full of patterns. And mathematics is ultimately the study of patterns—from predicting the weather to the fluctuations of the stock market, the movement of planets or the growth of cities. These patterns twist and turn and warp and evolve just as the rituals of love do.

In lieu of a perfect, hypothetical future husband, Mindy Kaling is thinking a lot about being single. Pros? She can marathon any Christine Baranski show she wants. Cons? Dealing with married couples and their condescension at cocktail parties. But until a gorgeous, morally flawless, preferably tall TV dad materializes in three dimensions, Mindy can cope with waiting it out (from the driver’s seat).

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.

Find the balance between tough love and tender love. In The Two Sides of Love, best-selling authors John Trent and Gary Smalley explain how to find a healthy balance between the protective, consistent, "hard side" of love and the tender, understanding, "soft side" of love. This is the groundbreaking book that introduced the four "animal" personality types and it will show you how to best demonstrate both sides of love in all your relationships-with your spouse, children, and friends. Included in this thoroughly updated edition is a free assessment of your core personality type.

Marriage is a journey of both hills and valleys, and newlyweds are just beginning this great adventure. By following God's way and making him the center of their marriage from the start, couples can avoid rockier paths and create stronger foundations. In this spiritual and practical devotional, marriage coaches Chris and Jamie Bailey speak to the particular challenges that every newlywed couple faces and provide both inspiration and guidance.

Love may be sweeter the second time around, but once the bliss of a newfound relationship wears off a little, the reality of being part of a stepfamily sets in. If you are one of the millions of remarried Americans facing the challenge of blending two existing families into one cohesive whole, you are part of a stepcouple - and you know all too well how hard it can be to make your marriage work in sometimes tough terrain. Susan Wisdom and Jennifer Green provide tips and strategies on dealing with the issues remarried couples face, with a wealth of advice from real-life stepcouples.

With the trend of divorce in Christendom, it has become worrisome that some believers are fast changing the ancient landmark of God. However, we have also seen miracles work out in troubled marriages that appeared to be absolutely beyond repair.

Self-deprecating and with an acerbic wit, TikTok star Clara Batten aka @rabatts is every middle-class mother trying to get through the day without another sh*t on the staircase or panic drive to McDonald’s. In Gin and Phonics, she talks candidly about the ups, downs and hilarious reality of trying to parent two small people and fulfil her lifelong dream of becoming an actress without losing her bl**dy mind.

Linda Fruits brings her signature combination of hilarity and empathy to The Mom Life, emphasizing that you're not a bad mother for fondly remembering a time in your life before children, and that sometimes it's ok to feed your toddler chicken nuggets three days in a row. Equal parts sass and inclusiveness, The Mom Life explores the highs and lows of new motherhood, tackling taboo subjects like losing interest in your partner, not immediately loving your baby, and imposter syndrome.

Money issues are a frequent source of conflict in any marriage. But blended families are a monetary minefield. Debts, bills, and child support payments from previous relationships often influence the finances of a blended family. And planning for college expenses, retirement, and inheritance gets even more complicated in stepfamilies.

When Rachel Bertsche first moves to Chicago, she’s thrilled to finally share a zip code, let alone an apartment, with her boyfriend. But shortly after getting married, Bertsche realizes that her new life is missing one thing: friends. Sure, she has plenty of BFFs—in New York and San Francisco and Boston and Washington, D.C. Still, in her adopted hometown, there’s no one to call at the last minute for girl talk over brunch or a reality-TV marathon over a bottle of wine. Taking matters into her own hands, Bertsche develops a plan....

How to Help Your Spouse Heal from Your Affair is the book that can help you, step by step, to recover from betrayal, rebuild trust, and repair your relationship after a betrayal through forgiveness and expert advice from consultant Suellen McDolly. Healing a relationship that has recently been tested and broken by an affair is a difficult journey, but not one that is impossible. Many spouses or partners seek to rebuild a relationship or marriage after an affair has come to light, but often do not know what to do or how to talk to their spouse to help begin the healing process.

Infidelity, deceit, distrust, and shame. Unfortunately, these are recurring themes in many of today's marriages in America - even in the family-values-promoting, Christian-based Robertson family. With a romance that began in junior high, the couple got off to a rocky start but soon settled into married life and had two baby girls. Alan became a pastor in the church where his family had been members for years. Then, when Lisa had an affair, the heartache and the tension was very public.

Every little girl has dreams of being swept up into a great adventure, of being the beautiful princess. Sadly, when women grow up, they are often swept up into a life filled merely with duty and demands. Many Christian women are tired, struggling under the weight of the pressure to be a "good servant", a nurturing caregiver, or a capable home manager.

Are you ready to have kids? More and more gay men are turning to adoption and surrogacy to start their own families. An estimated two million American LBGTQ people would like to adopt and an estimated 65,000 adopted children are living with a gay parent. Unlike other parenting books that have whole chapters focusing on things specifically related to mothers (such as how to get the perfect latch when breastfeeding), this parenting book replaces those sections with things relevant to gay dads.

A family rift is one of the most traumatic experiences a person can face. It can have a profound effect on virtually every aspect of life, causing depression, relationship problems, and even physical illness. Healing From Family Rifts offers hope to those coping with a split in their families. Family therapist Mark Sichel addresses the pain and shame connected with family rifts and offers a way through the crisis and on toward healing. Uniquely, Sichel does not assume that every rift will or even should be mended. Instead, he offers ways to recover from any outcome.

Radio personality and best-selling author Barbara Rainey knows firsthand the challenges newly married couples face. Dismayed by Hollywood depictions of marriage and the seemingly easy solution of divorce, she sees a desperate need for a voice of experience, a mentor who has been there and understands - and can encourage, coach, and care. As her daughters began their married lives, Barbara wanted to share with them, and now you, some of the lessons learned throughout her own marriage as well as those gleaned from years of ministry to couples.

Dan Savage’s mother wants him to get married. His boyfriend, Terry, says “no thanks” because he doesn’t want to act like a straight person. Their six-year-old son, D.J., says his two dads aren’t “allowed” to get married but that he’d like to come to the reception and eat cake. Throw into the mix Dan’s straight siblings, whose varied choices form a microcosm of how Americans are approaching marriage these days, and you get a rollicking family memoir that will have everyone - gay or straight, right or left, single or married - howling with laughter.

Many pastors feel ill-equipped to handle the challenges that arise when a couple is going through marital difficulties. If you are or have been in this situation before, this book shows church leaders how to counsel married couples from both a logical and biblical perspective. Author and pastor Jonathan Holmes offers you a practical guide to get started with the first sessions and then offers specific guidance on nine of the most common topics that come up in marriage counseling.