Tricia Goyer - Generation Next Marriage: The Couples Guide to Keeping It Together

Where do Gen Xers find the priceless principles to make a marriage work? Most didnt get them in the homes they grew up in, and they didnt get them from the TV or movies they watched or music lyrics they listened to. But Tricia Goyer, an Xer herself, offers real help and real hope for the Gen X marriage and insightful truths for all who work or minister to those in the Gen X age group.

P AM F ARREL , best-selling author of Men Are Like WafflesWomen Are Like Spaghetti, Red-Hot Monogamy, and The First Five Years

Generation NeXt Marriage is a much-needed marriage manual for a generation ready to make the most of marriage. Thoughtful, interactive, well researched, and exceptionally relevant for couples who want to thrive in their marriages, this book is a must for beginning and continuing young couples.

E LISA M ORGAN , CEO, MOPS International and publisher, FullFill magazine

Tricia Goyer refuses to play the blame game. This extraordinary Gen Xer, raised in a blended family, steps up to the plate and speaks to ALL generations but especially to her own. She is gifted and blunt. She shares that its time to really LIVE and LOVE YOUR HUSBAND GODs WAY and tells the reader just how to do that. Tricia is young enough to be my daughter and wise enough to be my mentor. This book is GenXcellent!

N ANCY C OBB , author of How to Get Your Husband to Listen to You

Youll fall in love with your spouse and Tricia Goyer in this powerful and well-researched expose on marriage. Goyer goes deep, sharing intimate issues of her own love story as well as interviews with fellow Gen Xers and excerpts from the best of Christian marriage authors. She tops it off with a thought-provoking Bible study sure to help any marriage.

E LAINE W. M ILLER , author of Splashes of Serenity: Bathtime Reflections for Drained Wives and Splashes of Serenity: Bathtime Reflections for Drained Moms

Generation NeXt Marriage is a transparent, authentic look at modern marriage for Gen Xers. Author Tricia Goyer is warm and friendly, offering teaching without preaching as she shares her own struggles and lessons shes learned the hard way. The book is a fun read for those born in the 60s, 70s, and early 80s as it contains many references to songs, movies, and books they will remember and relate to. I will be recommending this book to many couples!

N ANCY C. A NDERSON , author of Avoiding the Greener Grass Syndrome and regular marriage columnist for Crosswalk.com and CBN.com

With fascinating facts, eye-opening honesty, and humor in all the right places, Tricia Goyer delivers biblically based advice to Gen Xers on how to negotiate the speed bumps inevitable in marriagefrom unrealistic expectations to intimacy to children to communication to money matters. Not a Gen Xer? No problem. Generation NeXt Marriage has plenty of timeless truths and advice to go around.

T AMARA L EIGH , author of Splitting Harriet and Perfecting Kate

Tricia Goyer is a strong, godly voice for this generation. Her book Generation NeXt Marriage gets it. It is insightful, not to mention fun. A great book for any Gen Xer who is married or is planning to get married.

R ENE G UTTERIDGE , author of the Boo and Occupational Hazards series

To John,
you are forever loved.

My lover is mine and I am his.
Song of Songs 2:16

Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. Love does not demand its own way. Love is not irritable, and it keeps no record of when it has been wronged. It is never glad about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.

1 C ORINTHIANS 13:47, NLT

I was in the sixth grade in 1983 when Billy Idols song White Wedding hit the charts. I remember doodling designs for my wedding dress on the cover of my English book. Funny thing though: Somehow, I forgot to daydream about what would happen after I married my Prince Charming. I forgot that a marriage follows the wedding.

Growing up during the 1970s and 80s, I remember hearing Billy Idols wedding song and, oh, about 2,573 other songs about love. Addicted to Love by Robert Palmer, Crazy Little Thing Called Love by Queen, Groovy Kind of Love by Phil Collins to name just a few. Yet I cant think of a single romantic song that addressed the day-in, day-out of marriage. Or commitment. Or forever I do.

Now thats messed up.

Not too surprisingly, I wasnt thinking about forever commitments when I became sexually active in high school. Or when I dumped loser boyfriends and exchanged them for better models. Or when I broke many hearts and found mine broken as well.

In fact, I didnt think much about marriage until after I was married in 1989, at age eighteen. Id signed up for the I do after finding someone safe. Someone who loved me and my son. Someone who had a relationship with the God I was just starting to know.

I fell in love with my new beau, John. And he was great! I had a grand time planning the wedding And then I woke up one day with this guy sleeping beside me and What now? going through my head.

As someone raised by a mom and stepdad who were already contemplating divorce on my wedding day, I couldnt think ahead to what the next year held for John and me, let alone the next fifty years. I wanted the best marriage possible, but I had no idea how to make that happen.

That, my friends, is an anxiety-filled, confusing place to live.

The Scoop on This Book

You may wonder how this book differs from other marriage books out there. For one, Im not the head of any marriage organization, nor do I have a national radio broadcast. I dont have a degree in psychology or training in marriage enrichment. Im just a Gen Xer whos written a lot about parenting, life, and marriage over the last ten years. But perhaps my best credential is the fact that John and I have been married for seventeen years. Quite a statement for a thirty-five-year-old!

Although many of our friends marriages have ended in divorce, John and I are still together. We support each others careers. Were raising a God-loving family. We volunteer in our church as a team. And most important, were more in love now than the day we got married.

But if I were to gush about how weve done everything right, Id be lying. And you most likely wouldnt want to read another word. After all, Gen Xers have a hard time relating to perfection. Maybe its because were so very far from it. And we know deep down that everyone else is too.

To be truthful, the last seventeen years havent been all cupcakes and sprinkles. To put it bluntly, John and I were young and dumb when we got married (or at least I was). And weve made a lot of mistakes (mostly me). But we made a commitment to see this thing through. To work