Gregory K. Popcak - Just Married

I share a deep affinity with the Popcaks and the way they present the Faith. Their latest book, Just Married , is loaded with their typical winsome wisdom and advice. They help newly married couples unpack the great mystery of marriage and discover the divine love story that is behind their own. Every married couplenewly married or otherwisewill benefit from this book.

Christopher West
Author of Fill These Hearts

Just Married should be required reading for every recently married Catholic Couple. Christian marriage is a call to heroic love. It should not be surprising that living this vocation well does not happen without prayer and effort. Greg and Lisa provide many helpful insights into the challenges that young couples encounter as well as practical strategies on how to overcome what otherwise will become obstacles to their happiness. Married couples honor and praise God most beautifully by striving daily to grow in their love for each other in the Lord. There is nothing more important that a couple can do to build up the Church and make a better world than to do whatever it takes to make their marriage strong and healthy. The Popcaks provide a practical pathway to help couples enjoy the abundant life God desires for them in this world and to help each other make it together to heaven.

Archbishop Joseph F. Naumann
Archdiocese of Kansas City in Kansas

Thank you, Greg and Lisa! Just Married is a treasure for todays newly (and not so newly!) married couples. A guide this rich with grace and wisdom can only come from a deeply faithful Catholic married couple seasoned through years of marriage, professional practice, and prayer. This is theology of the body for the newly married couple.

Damon Owens
Executive Director
Theology of the Body Institute

We are so happy to be able to give the young people in our lives a copy of Just Married . This is a book filled with personal testimony, evidence from science, years of counseling experience, and, most importantly, a hopeful vision of marriage rooted in faith and nourished by prayer.

Tim and Sue Muldoon
Authors of Six Sacred Rules for Families

Excerpt from For Better... Forever!: A Catholic Guide to Lifelong Marriage (2nd ed.) by Gregory K. Popcak, copyright 2009 by Our Sunday Visitor, Huntington, IN, 46750. Used with permission of the publisher.

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2013 by Gregory K. Popcak and Lisa Popcak

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever, except in the case of reprints in the context of reviews, without written permission from Ave Maria Press, Inc., P.O. Box 428, Notre Dame, IN 46556, 1-800-282-1865.

Founded in 1865, Ave Maria Press is a ministry of the United States Province of Holy Cross.

www.avemariapress.com

Paperback: ISBN-10 1-59471-280-8, ISBN-13 978-1-59471-280-7

E-book: ISBN-10 1-59471-281-6, ISBN-13 978-1-59471-281-4

Cover image thinkstockphotos.com

Cover and text design by Katherine Robinson.

Printed and bound in the United States of America.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

Do You Have What It Takes?

The first five years of marriage can be a roller coaster. The feelings of love, romance, and joy can be so intense as you are starting your life together, but so can those feelings of anxiety, insecurity, and anger. Despite how long you and your spouse have known each other, marriage can change everythingfor better and for worse. With marriage comes a new level of commitment, a challenge to cultivate a deeper level of trust. You cant help surrendering more of yourselves to each other, and that can be a wonderful thing, but it also raises the stakesand the potential challengesa couple can face.

The majority of divorces (about 20 percent) occur within the first ten years of marriage with about 10 percent occurring in the first five years and another 10 percent occurring in the second five years of marriage. Thats not surprising since the early years of marriage represent the time that couples are getting to know each other on a whole different level. The good news is that you can use the early years of your marriage to establish truly important healthy-relationship habits that can strengthen your bond today and keep your marriage growing stronger every day for as long as you both shall live.

The first five years of marriage represent the time that a couple is laying the foundation for a sound relationship. The habits and attitudes you cultivate now can spell the difference between a marriage that is built on sand and a marriage that can grow more passionate and beautiful, not just in spite of the toughest tests life can throw at it, but also because of the way you have braved those challenges together. Your marriage can be a great love story that your children tell their childrena story that inspires everyone you know because of your example.

In order for your marriage to become that great love story there are certain things you need to establish in your early years together because relationships tend to build and grow on precedent. The way you live now can predict the attitudes you will have toward your marriage ten, twenty, thirty years from now. Although the challenges life throws at you will change, the patterns you lay down now will predict how easy it will be for the two of you to overcome those challenges while still having time and energy for each other. The couple that takes these early years for granted and assumes that you will always have the same kind of time that you have for each other once kids and careers start kicking into high gear will be in for a huge and unpleasant surprise. By contrast, the couple that is intentional about laying down good marriage habits in the first five years has a much greater likelihood of staying close, strong, and happy when life starts picking up speed.

Do You Have What It Takes?

Almost every newly married couple we encounter has two things in common. First, they are deeply in love with each other and rightly excited about the lives they are building together. They are passionate about each other, and hopeful about a bright future filled with blessings. But second, underneath that mutual love, joy, and hope, almost every newly married couple is also a little terrified. They wonder if they have what it takes to make it until death do us part. Almost every couple we talk to in our years of marriage ministry ask us one basic question; How can we know if we have what it takes to make it to happily ever after?

We can give you the answer to that question right now. Do you have what it takes? Yes! Absolutely, you have what it takes to have a great Catholic marriage. Contrary to what you might have heard elsewhere, it doesnt matter where youve come from, what your background is, or what your family of origin did or did not give you. We know from years of marriage research that what separates so-called marriage masters from marriage disasters is not magic or history; its a set of teachable skills that happy couples have either picked up along the way or are willing to learn on the job, as it were. Throughout this book, well explore the things you need to do now, in the early years of your life together, that will help you create the marriage God wants you to have, a marriage founded on the kind of love that satisfies your soul and makes the world stand up and take notice of what God can do when a couple lets him into their home.