Charles D. Schmitz - Building a Love That Lasts: The Seven Surprising Secrets of Successful Marriage

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Table of Contents

WE DEDICATE THIS BOOKto the thousands of successfully married couples we have interviewed over these past 25 years and to our own enduring love for each other.

Foreword

THIS IS A WARM BOOK. I dont mean that its warm because you are holding it or because it may have been lying in the sun. Its warm because the authors are warm, candid, and friendly people. The warmth of Charles and Elizabeth jumps off every page as you digest their practical, direct, and very doable ideas for success in marriage. As is fitting with their decades of work, they want to be your companions in your journey to build and sustain a marriage of lasting love.

Ive been conducting and publishing research on marriage for three decades. I know what the vast literature on marriages can teach us but I also know its limitations. One of those limitations is that researchers can too easily focus more on what goes wrong and how to fix it than on what is going right and how to sustain it. Both are valuable and both can teach you a lot. This is a book focused on the latter, based on the authors study of very happy, long-term married couples. What are those happy couples doing right? Thats what you are about to learn here. Best of all, these are things you can do and things that, in the doing, can make a difference in your marriage.

I want to highlight two of the things that Charles and Elizabeth accomplish in this book that seem to me most important of all. First, through their stories, insights, and advice, they are teaching realistic and healthy expectations for marriage. In a day and age where so many people have learned to expect levels of unending bliss that are simply not the essence of what really great marriages are like, this is a direct and helpful look at how it really happens.

Second, Charles and Elizabeth have a particular focus that I think is one of the hallmarks of making a difference. They want you to focus on the smaller, daily things you can dothe things that combine over the years to make a life together. This is crucial because you can do the small, meaningful things every day. From my research on sacrifice and commitment, I believe that the small, regular acts of compassion and care between partners trump the big events. To do something big you need a big opportunity. To do something small that matters, you only need today. You have many todays ahead, and heres a great book full of encouragement for how to live them.

Scott M. Stanley
University of Denver
Author of The Power of Commitment
www.slidingvsdeciding.com
Coauthor of Fighting For Your Marriage
and A Lasting Promise

Special Thanks

WHEN YOU ENGAGE IN a research project for more than 25 years there are a lot of people to thank, especially when your work culminates in a finished book like Building a Love That Lasts: The Seven Surprising Secrets of Successful Marriage. We have worked with many wonderful people along the way, but several stand out.

First and foremost, we would like to thank all of those marvelous and wonderful couples we have interviewed over the years. We have learned so much from them about love, successful marriage, and relationships. They were and continue to be an inspiration for us, and a model for successful marriage in the United States and around the world.

Our colleague David Riklan, at www.selfgrowth.com, provided us with the opportunity to greatly expand our work via the Internet. His offer for us to become the Official Guides to Marriage on SelfGrowth.com has changed our lives. David gave us an unbelievable platform for our work. Our writings about love and marriage are now read around the world. Thank you, David. Your support means more to us than you will ever know.

Our heartfelt thanks to our literary agent, Peter Rubie, of FinePrint Literary Agency in New York City. Peter has always been steadfast in his faith in us and our marriage project. His confidence has lead to things we could never have imagined. We thank Peter from the bottom of our collective hearts. Because of him, we persevered and success has come our way. When others doubted us, Peter believed in us! We will be forever indebted to him.

A special thanks to Alan Rinzler, executive editor of Jossey-Bass, for his enthusiasm about our project. We absolutely love people who are action-oriented like Alan. Our relationship will prove to be a marriage made in heaven. From our first lunch together in Florida, we knew Alan was our soulmate!

We cannot say enough about June Clark and Robin Blakely of Get There Media. They are wonderful to work with and have opened our eyes to new possibilities. We appreciate their marvelously creative ideas and their undying support for us.

We are especially indebted to our friend and colleague Pat Kloepfer (PK, as many friends call her). Her final editing work on our manuscript is yet another example of her eagle eye when it comes to accuracy. Working with her over these past 14 years has been a joy. PK is one of a kind and we love her for it.

And finally, to our daughter, Kristina, and our two beautiful grandchildren, Hudson and Hope. Their love has inspired us to greater heights to share our message of love, hope, and success. When you are surrounded by family and love, all things are possible. We love you guys!

Introduction

TILL DEATH DO US PART are the words couples use in committing their lives to each other. It is the promise we made to each other 43 years ago, and to this day we have a lasting love that burns even brighter now than when we first said, I do. Why has our love lasted when so many of our friends have long since ended their marriages in divorce? This is the question we began researching more than 25 years ago.

We continually remind others that the divorce rate in America is all too highsome estimate it as high as 50%. And the news gets worsenearly two-thirds of those who get remarried following a divorce get divorced again, and those who get married a third time have a failure rate of nearly 75%! The simple truth is, almost all of this suffering and unhappiness could be avoided. Yes, avoided! How, you say? Well, successfully married couples can tell you. They know!

That is why we are committed to reducing the divorce rate and increasing the success rate of marriage by sharing what we have learned from decades of research and our own 43 years of marriagemost marriages are worth saving and can be saved!

Hundreds of marriage and relationship books have been written in the past 30 years telling people how to have a successful marriage. So why would anyone want or need another? Well, to begin with, the practical advice outlined in these other books is almost exclusively derived from experts who have studied relationships that have failed in order to predict what will work.

On the other hand, we have taken a completely different approachwe decided that the best way to understand how to make a marriage a success is to study s

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