Gregory K. Popcak - For Better Forever: A Catholic Guide to Lifelong Marriage

FOR BETTER

Forever!

FOR BETTER

Forever!

BY GREGORY K. POPCAK

Our Sunday Visitor Publishing Division
Our Sunday Visitor, Inc.
Huntington, Indiana 46750

The majority of the Bible citations in this work are taken from the Revised Standard Version Bible, Catholic Edition, 1965 and 1966 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A., and are used by permission of the copyright holder; all rights reserved. The publisher and author are grateful to the foregoing and to other sources (mentioned in the Bibliography), whether in the public domain or protected by copyright laws, for the use of their material in this book. If any copyrighted materials have been inadvertently used in this work without proper credit being given in one form or another, please notify Our Sunday Visitor in writing so that future printings of this work may be corrected accordingly.

Copyright 1999, 2008 by Our Sunday Visitor Publishing Division,
Our Sunday Visitor, Inc.

All rights reserved. With the exception of short excerpts for critical reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without permission in writing from the publisher. Write:

Our Sunday Visitor Publishing Division
Our Sunday Visitor, Inc.
200 Noll Plaza
Huntington, IN 46750

ISBN: 978-0-87973-688-0 (Inventory No. 688)
LCCCN: 98-67325

Cover concept design by Jackie Lams
Interior design by Sherri L. Hoffman

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

For Isaiah, whose short life helped me become a better man. And for my children who remain with me. May God grant them many blessed years, may they live in health and happiness, and may they find the love He has for them.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

A lthough it has been my privilege to put these words to paper, I would not have been able to credibly write a single sentence if this book had not already been written in the daily life of my marriage. In this all-important sense, I wish to credit my wife as a true coauthor. She has allowed our marriage to be the laboratory for everything in For Better Forever! In addition to being a truly good woman, an enviable mother, and a generous lover, she is my best critic, my most astute adviser, and a patient editor. When I look at her, I can only imagine feeling something close to what Joseph must have felt for his wife. To me, she is everything God created woman to be, and I am daily blessed by her loving presence.

I also wish to thank Mike Aquilina, my dear friend and de facto agent for this book, who provided me with support, good counsel, excellent resources, and whose writing assignments allowed me to write For Better Forever! on the installment plan.

Likewise, I offer my gratitude to Our Sunday Visitor, Inc., in particular Greg Erlandson, for supporting this project before it was a project; Jackie Lindsey, for her enthusiastic reception; and Henry OBrien, for doing such a fabulous job fine-tuning the text of this book.

Finally, I wish to thank God for every chapter of my life that has been, and those yet to come; the Blessed Mother for her constant intercession; the Church, who nursed me in my youth and continues to be a source of joy, nourishment, and challenge in my adulthood; and my parents, who lovingly led me to all of these.

For better forever!

GREGORY K. POPCAK, MSW, LCSW

Preface

G regory Popcaks For Better Forever! is a book about married love. In many concrete ways it helps us to realize what love really is: how dear it is, and how much it costs.

Becoming a great lover and building with the person dearest to you a love that lasts forever is no small task.

But love can be made to last, and hearts can become great enough to love generously. What everyone wishes to have from love can be attained. Those who really want to have great lives and a great love, and are willing to do the things that they obviously must do to achieve lasting love, can take possession of what they want.

It is not easy. But every other way of living is tougher. Giving everything to grow in generous love seems demanding, but there is no other way of becoming what every person wants to be.

This is an important book. It will help many couples find the ways to make married love wonderful, and to make it grow with the years.

Mr. Popcak has drawn the advice he gives from many kinds of sources. He knows well the most creative psychologists and sociologists of our time, who have had the courage to tell people what really is needed to make married love last and grow.

He writes also out of the personal experiences in his own life, and the experiences he has shared with a great host of couples in the adventures of marriage counseling. From such experiences he has come to sketch wonderfully well-defined and encouraging ways in which lovers learn how to mount up to the generosity and greatness of heart marriage demands.

He speaks a precious earthly wisdom, and helps us to see how ordinary wisdom is enriched by the sublime but also earthly wisdom of faith.

He also helps us to realize the many ways in which Christ is the great teacher of life and of love. Christ not only shows us, sometimes in astonishingly luminous ways, things we might not have realized about love. But he also gives us the power to live and love without finding it burdensome to give more than we thought we could.

None of us can really be happy unless we find love, and learn to live love generously. Couples everywhere can find in these pages insightful and inspiring helps to live in the ways they most need to live.

REV. RONALD LAWLER, O.F.M. CAP.

Part 1

What Are We Doing Here Anyway?

CHAPTER 1

Whats In It for You?

E very married couple wants to live happily ever after.

The problem is, not too many people know what it takes. This book will show you. For Better Forever! integrates cutting-edge psychology with orthodox Christianity in a way that I believe will surprise you, challenge you, and revitalize your marriage.

Are happily-ever-after marriages even possible? Much to everyones surprise, they are, even in the Digital Age. Recent psychological research has identified a group of married couples I call the Exceptional Seven Percent. These are couples in first-and-forever marriages (or Exceptional Marriages) who report significantly greater-than-average happiness, fulfillment, and longevity. These couples have very different ideas from their less satisfied counterparts toward everything from what they build their marriages around to how they handle conflict, from how they keep love alive to how they maintain the vitality of their marriage though the years. Well, youre thinking, bully for them. They were probably born that way.

Survey said (insert obnoxious buzzer noise here): Wrong! Studies suggest that only two factors set these remarkable couples apart: relationship skills and life experience. This finding is supported by the fact that another seven to eight percent of