Douglas Weiss - The Ten-Minute Marriage Principle: Quick, Daily Steps for Refreshing Your Relationship

Copyright 2007 by Douglas Weiss

All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Faith Words

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First eBook Edition: June 2009

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ISBN: 978-0-446-56301-7

THE TEN-MINUTE MARRIAGE PRINCIPLE provides invaluable tools every couple should know and apply. Whether you are newlywed or married sixty years, this must-read will deepen your relationship and foster a greater level of intimacy.

Lisa Bevere, bestselling author, Kissed the Girls and Made Them Cry

All marriages go through times of disaffectiontimes when you don't feel close. It is what you do during these times that makes or breaks the future of your relationship. THE TEN-MINUTE MARRIAGE PRINCIPLE is an awesome tool to keep your hearts close.

Dr. Tim Clinton, president, American Association of Christian Counselors

Douglas Weiss's excellent book, THE TEN-MINUTE MARRIAGE PRINCIPLE, offers profound insight into how we can better create bonds of matrimony that reflect God's marital design. It offers an array of practical and inspirational illustrations and exercises to expand your current views and beliefs regarding how marriage really works. It's an excellent, fun, and resourceful handbook that's full of creative, stimulating, and out-of-the-box strategies for refreshing and renewing your marital commitment!

Paula White, senior pastor of Without Walls International Church and author of You're All That!

To all of those who said I do
to the most amazing person they have ever met.

Sean and Kate were married for seventeen years. They had three children and life was good. Sean had a steady job and was liked at work. Kate made a part-time income with a home business and the children were doing well in their school.

As we all know, looks can be deceiving. During the past few years, the spark has begun to dwindle in their marriage. Kate feels that Sean works too much and doesn't really connect with her at home. Sean believes he has to work a lot to provide for their family's ever-growing bills and Kate doesn't understand his world of responsibility.

Sonya and Ben are a couple who also look good on the outside, but their secret is even deeper. Ben is busy with his company, employees, and hobbies. Sonya feels she has been raising their three girls by herself most of their twenty years of marriage. They have grown so far apart they call each other friends. They're right, in that it has been two years since they have been physically intimate, although they still sleep in the same bed.

There are also couples like Ed and Sue, who not only look good on the outside but, in reality, are truly still in love. Sue is affectionate toward her husband in public and says positive things about him. Ed loves to be with Sue. He is helpful around the house, he takes her on dates, and he smiles just talking about his wife.

Ed and Sue, like Ben and Sonya, have been married for more than twenty years. They are also on the last phase of raising their teenage children. Ed works hard and Sue has worked part-time as a nurse on and off. They had life happen to them over their two decades together: health issues, tough financial times, and plenty of long talks about the children.

The difference for Ed and Sue is that they intuitively know how to have a loving marriage, or they somehow discovered the secrets to a successful marriage and are actually applying them. If you, like the first two couples, are struggling to enjoy marriage, you can discover a profound secret to a happy marriage and begin implementing it today.

Ten minutes a day, that's all I ask. I know it sounds odd, but really that one variable can make such a significant difference that it has astounded me for more than nineteen years in counseling couples.

Sean and Kate were able to apply the Ten-Minute Marriage Principle and the spark came back to their marriage. Even after two years of isolation, Sonya and Ben applied the Ten-Minute Marriage Principle and in six weeks they were not only enjoying physical intimacy, but they really liked each other too!

The Ten-Minute Marriage Principle works! I have worked with couples far more desperate than Sonya and Ben or Kate and Sean. I have counseled couples who, for decades, had loveless and sexless marriages, and yes, within weeks of applying the Ten-Minute Marriage exercises they were enjoying their relationships again.

What is the principle? The Ten-Minute Marriage Principle is taking a few minutes each day with your spouse for some intimacy workouts. This is ten minutes of focused work that you and your spouse will do for your marriage to keep it fit and happier than it may have been for years.

I define the Ten-Minute Marriage Principle as intimacy workouts because these are comparable to physical workouts. Most of us have heard about the importance of working our core muscle groups. Those who have adopted routines to work those muscles have reported greater strength and endurance.

With the Ten-Minute Marriage Principle, the exercise routine I will introduce here will work on the core of your relationship. As the intimacy core muscles are strengthened daily, you can experience incredible closeness and endurance to run this marathon we call marriage.

To support your core strengthening, I have included support principles in this book so that not only your relational abs look great but your other muscles are toned up too.

Why does the Ten-Minute Principle work? Because it is based upon the realitynot the fantasyof marriage. When we are young, we often approach marriage idealistically. We say or think, Our love will always be enough or I know he will always look at me that way or a hundred other beliefs that time and circumstances challenge. We were young and naive. We didn't even know what we didn't know about marriage.

For example, I simply knew that when I was away from Lisa (then my future wife), my heart ached. I felt incomplete. When I was with her, I felt taller, more handsome, and fortified in an incredible way. That feeling was so strong, I wanted to have that connection my entire life. Lisa also had all kinds of such feelings and loved me more than she thought it was possible to love anyone. So we both knew what we knewbut we didn't know what we didn't know about marriage.

Lisa and I married during the marriage improvement movement, so we read many marriage books and thought we knew what we were in for. But reading a marriage book is very different from experiencing a real-life marriage.

Fantasy is common in Americans. Most of us fantasize about the bodies we'd like to haveeven when we eat ice cream at 10:00 PM and our only form of exercise is pushing the buttons on the remote. As we keep gaining weight, we rationalize buying new clothes. We're living in a fantasy but want the reality of those who work out and watch their diets.

You see, if we watch too much television, we miss many of the real story lines of success. You could define