Les and Leslie Parrott - Saving Your Second Marriage Before It Starts: Nine Questions to Ask Before (and After) You Remarry

Resources by Les and Leslie Parrott

Books

Becoming Soul Mates

Getting Ready for the Wedding

The Love List

Love Is

The Marriage Mentor Manual

Meditations on Proverbs for Couples

Questions Couples Ask

Relationships

Relationships Workbook

Saving Your Marriage Before It Starts

Saving Your Marriage Before It Starts Workbook for Men

Saving Your Marriage Before It Starts Workbook for Women

Saving Your Second Marriage Before It Starts

Saving Your Second Marriage Before It Starts Workbook for Men

Saving Your Second Marriage Before It Starts Workbook for Women

When Bad Things Happen to Good Marriages

When Bad Things Happen to Good Marriages Workbook for Men

When Bad Things Happen to Good Marriages Workbook for Women

Video CurriculumZondervanGroupware

Relationships

Saving Your Marriage Before It Starts

Mentoring Engaged and Newlywed Couples

Audio Pages

Relationships

Saving Your Marriage Before It Starts

Saving Your Second Marriage Before It Starts

When Bad Things Happen to Good Marriages

Books by Les Parrott III

Control Freak

Helping Your Struggling Teenager

High Maintenance Relationships

The Life You Want Your Kids to Live

Seven Secrets of a Healthy Dating Relationship

Once Upon a Family

Books by Leslie Parrott

If You Ever Needed Friends, Its Now

God Loves You Nose to Toes (childrens book)

ZONDERVAN

Saving Your Second Marriage Before It Starts

Copyright 2001 by Les and Leslie Parrott

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of Zondervan.

ePub Edition July 2009 ISBN: 978-0-310-86018-1

Requests for information should be addressed to:
Zondervan, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49530

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Parrott, Les.

Saving your second marriage before it starts : nine questions to ask before (and after) you remarry / Les and Leslie Parrott

p. cm.

ISBN 0-310-86018-1

1. Remarriage. 2. Stepfamilies. 3. Marriage counseling. I. Parrott, Leslie L., 1964- II. Title.

HQ1018.P37 2001

306.84dc21 2001026749

This title is also available as a Zondervan audio product. Visit www.zondervan.com/audiopages for more information.

All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible: New International Version. NIV. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any otherexcept for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher.

19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 9

To our good friend Monty Lobb,
And his new bride, Lora,
On the occasion of your wedding,
With every good wish and prayer.

Below is a listing of the exercises and self-tests you will find in the two workbooks we have designed to go along with this book (one for men and one for women). In each chapter we will point you to a specific exercise to work on once you have read a particular section. This list can serve as a quick reference to the location of the exercises within the book.

How can I avoid the same problems that plagued my first marriage? Sarah asked this question during a break at one of our marriage seminars. Tom and I are getting married in a few monthswere very much in lovebut we both know its not going to be a cakewalk.

Sarah went on to tell us that her first marriage ended after just three years when her husband walked out on her for reasons that are still a mystery. Maybe we were too young, I dont know, she confessed, but I do know that this time I have my eyes open and we want to do everything we can to ensure lifelong love together. She asked again, What do I need to know as a person whos getting married for the second time?

The seminar was about to begin so we had to postpone our answer for Sarah. We eventually spoke with her and Tom at length over the lunch break. We learned that Tom was coming from a nineyear marriage that ended when his wife died of cancer. We also learned that he was bringing two young children into his new marriage with Sarah. Do you have any tips for helping the kids make a smooth adjustment to all this? Tom asked us. And what should we do about his parents? Sarah chimed in. They think were rushing into this marriage.

Needless to say, we didnt have time to do justice to the many questions Sarah and Tom had about starting their second marriage. And truth be told, we didnt feel all that confident about what little advice we did have. We passed along a few bits of information and underscored the importance of healing the wounds from their previous marriages. But both Les and I felt bad that we could not do more to help Sarah and Tom get started on the right footfor the second time.

That was more than a half dozen years ago. Since that time, we have dedicated much of our professional lives to helping couples like Sarah and Tom build the best marriages possible. Up until that time we had worked with countless couples entering marriage for the first time, but it wasnt until we met Sarah and Tom that we began to realize that we were neglecting critically important concerns for nearly half of all couples marrying today. We realized that these couples, where one or both were marrying for a second time, faced a unique set of circumstances that desperately needed attention. These couples needed a special set of skills for saving their second marriage before and after it started.