Chapman - Things I Wish Id Known Before We Got Married

The Five Love Languages
The Five Love Languages Mens Edition
The Five Love Languages Gift Edition
The Five Love Languages of Children
The Five Love Languages of Teenagers
The Five Love Languages Singles Edition
The Five Languages of Apology
God Speaks Your Love Language
The Marriage Youve Always Wanted
The Marriage Youve Always Wanted Bible Study
The Family Youve Always Wanted
Hope for the Separated
Parenting Your Adult Child
Desperate Marriages
Anger

I Wish I Had Known

CHAPTER ONE
That being in love is not an adequate foundation for building a successful marriage

CHAPTER TWO
That romantic love has two stages

CHAPTER THREE
That the saying Like mother, like daughter and Like father, like son is not a myth

CHAPTER FOUR
How to solve disagreements without arguing

CHAPTER FIVE
That apologizing is a sign of strength

CHAPTER SIX
That forgiveness is not a feeling

CHAPTER SEVEN
That toilets are not self-cleaning

CHAPTER EIGHT
That we needed a plan for handling our money

CHAPTER NINE
That mutual sexual fulfillment is not automatic

CHAPTER TEN
That I was marrying into a family

CHAPTER ELEVEN
That spirituality is not to be equated with going to church

CHAPTER TWELVE
That personality profoundly influences behavior

APPENDIX
Developing a Healthy Dating Relationship

I n my undergraduate studies, my academic major was anthropology. Later, I completed a masters degree in the same field. For over forty years, I have continued to study human cultures. One conclusion is inevitable. Marriage, between a man and woman, is the foundation of all human societies. The reality is that when children become adults, most of them will get married. In the United States, each year there are over two million marriages; that is four million people who are saying I do to the question, Will you have this man to be your wedded husband? or Will you have this woman to be your wedded wife? Almost all these couples anticipate living happily ever after. No one gets married hoping to be miserable or to make their spouse miserable. Yet we all know that the divorce rate in Western cultures continues to hover around fifty percent, and the highest percentage of divorces occur within the first seven years of marriage.

People do not get married planning to divorce. Divorce is the result of a lack of preparation for marriage and the failure to learn the skills of working together as teammates in an intimate relationship. What is ironic is that we recognize the need for education in all other pursuits of life and fail to recognize that need when it comes to marriage. Most people spend far more time in preparation for their vocation than they do in preparation for marriage. Therefore, it should not be surprising that they are more successful in their vocational pursuits than they are in reaching the goal of marital happiness.

This is not a book on how to plan a wedding. This is a book on how to have a successful marriage.

The decision to get married will impact ones life more deeply than almost any decision in life. Yet people continue to rush into marriage with little or no preparation for making a marriage successful. In fact, many couples give far more attention to making plans for the wedding than making plans for marriage. The wedding festivities last only a few hours, while the marriage, we hope, will last for a lifetime.

This is not a book on how to plan a wedding. This is a book on how to have a successful marriage. Ive spent the last thirty-five years of my life counseling with couples whose dreams of a happy marriage have been shattered in the real world of dirty dishes, unpaid bills, conflicting work schedules, and crying babies. With hard work and months of counseling, many of these couples have gone on to have good marriages. For that, I am grateful.

It is my conviction that many of these struggles could have been avoided had the couple taken time to prepare more thoroughly for marriage. That is why I am writing this book. I want you to learn from their mistakes. It is much less painful than learning from your own mistakes. I want you to have the kind of loving, supportive, mutually beneficial marriage that you envision. However, I can assure you, that kind of marriage will not happen simply because you get married. You must make time to discover and practice the proven marital guidelines that make such a marriage possible.