Sixteen years married and 17 years divorced, I have retraced my steps to assess the damage from my childhood and adult divorce scenarios. In reconstructing a new path with the hard lessons learned, I’ve assembled a 5-book toolkit just for you to spare your children the divorce legacy. Think of these books as five pavers leading you safely through the minefield of married parenting life. To enter this territory, there's one password: put the children first so that divorce isn't an option.
It should have been required reading for me in premarital counseling because it would have provided the template I lacked and failed to construct for myself before getting married. It also would have provided me with a blueprint for what it was going to take in the years ahead to remain together with my children’s father.
Because it was so profound to read in hindsight, I’m thinking of how much foresight it could give you while there’s still time to save your family. One sentence of this book could save your marriage.
The wisdom just permeated my soul like a healing balm, weaving its way into the broken, sharp pieces and reassembling them into a mosaic, as if the truth was enough to restore the damage.
For instance, just knowing that we are to live for the other, we can’t look to our spouse for what only God can do,…
"Incredibly rich with wisdom and insight that will leave the reader, whether single or married, feeling uplifted." -The Washington Times
Based on the acclaimed sermon series by New York Times bestselling author Timothy Keller, this book shows everyone-Christians, skeptics, singles, longtime married couples, and those about to be engaged-the vision of what marriage should be according to the Bible.
Modern culture would have you believe that everyone has a soul mate; that romance is the most important part of a successful marriage; that your spouse is there to help you realize your potential; that marriage does not mean forever, but…
I'm an award-winning journalist, a frequent New York Times contributor (and former business columnist for The Times), and the author of, most recently, Duped: Double Lives, False Identities and the Con Man I Almost Married. Duped was turned into the #1 Spotify-original podcast, Impostors: The Commander, which I hosted and executive produced. I was also a producer/reporter on The NY Times Presents documentary film To Live and Die in Alabama, about the execution of Nathaniel Woods. As of press time, my greatest accomplishments have been summiting Mt. Kilimanjaro (with a broken wrist!), learning to play the cello at 35, and naming Karamel Sutra for Ben and Jerry’s.
I read this novel when it came out in 2014, before I even got my own book deal. I was fascinated by the premise: A marriage counselor who had no idea that her own marriage was a sham, and her husband a psychopath. It hit home for sure. I prefer the book to The Undoing, the recent film on which it was based.
"A great psychological thriller...I couldn't put it down". (Daisy Goodwin). It is a New York Times bestseller. Grace Sachs, a happily married therapist with a young son, thinks she knows everything about women, men and marriage. She is about to publish a book called You Should Have Known, based on her pet theory: women don't value their intuition about what men are really like, leading to serious trouble later on. But how well does Grace know her own husband? She is about to find out, and in the place of what she thought she knew, there will be a violent…
Winner of two gold medals (Reader's Favorite & The Global Book Awards), one silver medal (Reader Views), and also an international bestseller on Amazon!
Bernard Marks and Martha Alford met by chance. The odds were long that they would hit it off. That wasn’t in the cards they’d been dealt…
I have dedicated four decades to guiding couples toward deeper intimacy and understanding. My passion for relationship dynamics has driven me to teach couples courses for over 30 years, experiences from which my book listed below was directly inspired. Witnessing countless relationships blossom through improved communication and emotional connection fuels my enthusiasm. I have selected books for this list that personally moved and enlightened me, each contributing unique insights into cultivating richer, more fulfilling relationships and sparking genuine transformations in myself and the couples I've supported.
I find this a fascinating book in part because it has an original concept of the “imago”. Hendrix’s concept of the “imago,” that we are unconsciously attracted to someone to heal old wounds, is not something I buy—that is, I don’t think it is usually true as a primary cause of our attraction—but I do think it is worth considering both in my own marriage, and also in the work I do with couples.
In Getting the Love You Want, Dr. Harville Hendrix and Dr. Helen Hunt offer the relationship skills that have helped millions of couples replace confrontation and criticism with a process of mutual support that facilitates healing and growth at any stage of a relationship. This extraordinary practical guide describes the revolutionary technique that combines a number of disciplines - including the behavioural sciences, depth psychology, social learning theory, Gestalt therapy, and interpersonal neurosciences, among others - to create a program that transforms conflict into creative tension that deepens connection and renews passion.
I grew up in a small town, with wonderful librarians who introduced me to books I remember fondly to this day. The Flicka, Ricka, Dicka series, the Bobbsey Twins, Trixie Beldon, Nancy Drew, and, of course, Little Women shaped my love for stories about relationships and the simple pleasures of daily life. Whether it’s a mystery or a memoir, I want interesting interactions between the main characters, meaty descriptions of daily activities and affairs, and, of course, a happy ending. As I’ve gotten older, I like books with older protagonists; those are hard to come by—one reason I wrote a novel about the adventures of five middle-aged girlfriends!
I can’t remember when I’ve enjoyed a book this much.
Sean is a brilliant writer, and funny as all get out. We share a love of the South, a love of words, a fear of snakes, and an aversion to traffic. As I read, I earmarked nearly a dozen passages I shared with family and friends, like, “Covid cases climbing like decisions at a Billy Graham crusade” and “I have nothing against fog machines and stage lights, but ordering a Starbucks in a church lobby just feels wrong."
His account of his and his wife’s bicycle trek down the Great Allegheny Passage and the C&O Canal Towpath trail put to rest once and for all any aspiration I harbored about walking the Appalachian Trail. Some things are better read about!
A laugh-out-loud funny true story of a loving relationship, a grand adventure, and a promise kept.
It was only a few years after the starry-eyed young couple got married when scary news threatened to take the wind out of their sails. But Sean Dietrich's wife, Jamie, wouldn't let it. She dared to hope for and plan for a great big adventure, and she made him promise to do it with her. For love and the promise of biscuits along the way, Sean--who was never an athlete of any kind--undertook the bike ride of a lifetime and lived to talk about…
I am a historian with a PhD in history from American University. My research has focused on the changing nature of U.S. citizenship after the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment. In particular, my newly released book, Gendered Citizenship, sheds light on the competing civic ideologies embedded in the original conflict over the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) from the 1920s through the 1960s. My research has won recognition through several grants and fellowships and my writing has appeared in the Washington Post, History News Network, New America Weekly, Gender on the Ballot, and Frontiers.
In Public Vows, Nancy Cott explores how the history of marriage in the United States reflects the creation of a very public and political institution. As Cott shows, in the early years of the United States, the common law doctrine of coverture allowed white men to hold a monopoly over the country’s civil and political institutions. For Cott, marriage has always been a public institution with political implications. As Cott explains, the political undercurrents and legal aspects of marriage have often allowed men to have control over women in law and in custom. Cott’s study was a vital component for my own work as her analysis helped me to better understand how the early U.S. legal system privileged husbands and fathers over wives and daughters with regard to property, earnings, contracting, and guardianship rights.
We commonly think of marriage as a private matter between two people, a personal expression of love and commitment. In this pioneering history, Nancy F. Cott demonstrates that marriage is and always has been a public institution.
From the founding of the United States to the present day, imperatives about the necessity of marriage and its proper form have been deeply embedded in national policy, law, and political rhetoric. Legislators and judges have envisioned and enforced their preferred model of consensual, lifelong monogamy--a model derived from Christian tenets and the English common law that posits the husband as provider and…
I am an unusual scientist in the sense that I have doctorates in both biology and anthropology, so I am very interested in the dichotomy between what our bodies truly want (biology) and how we are supposed to behave, or tell others to behave, in our cultural settings (cultural anthropology). Amazingly, studies show that we spend more time and attention in our lives living for others for what they think of us, than doing what we truly want, and that we often regret that, when we are close to dying. These books make us reconsider that way of living, so we can change this before it is too late.
The book is, to my knowledge, the only one that fully covers the evolution of marriage in the West, including historical details and interesting biological and anthropological data; it changes the way we are indoctrinated to think by showing that sex, love, and marriage were for most of the time completely separate things, while we now try as much to force the three items to be always together.
The most surprising part for people who have not been familiar with the history of these topics is how recent and geographically localized it is the expectation that love, sex, and marriage should be together.
Just when the clamor over "traditional" marriage couldn’t get any louder, along comes this groundbreaking book to ask, "What tradition?" In Marriage, a History, historian and marriage expert Stephanie Coontz takes readers from the marital intrigues of ancient Babylon to the torments of Victorian lovers to demonstrate how recent the idea of marrying for love is—and how absurd it would have seemed to most of our ancestors. It was when marriage moved into the emotional sphere in the nineteenth century, she argues, that it suffered as an institution just as it began to thrive as a personal relationship. This enlightening…
Marriage and Fatherhood in the Nazi SS
by
Amy Carney,
When I was writing this book, several of my friends jokingly called it the Nazi baby book, with one insisting it would make a great title. Nazi Babies – admittedly, that is a catchy title, but that’s not exactly what my book is about. SS babies would be slightly more…
Marcia Naomi Berger's passion is to help people create lasting, fulfilling marriages. An experienced clinical social worker, psychotherapist, and medical school clinical faculty member, Berger has held senior-level positions in child welfare, alcoholism treatment, and psychiatry. She says, "I stayed single for a long time because of my parent's divorce. Now happily married for over thirty-four years, I fill my books with the hard-earned wisdom I've gained professionally and personally."
I like this book because the author shares her story of transforming a heartbreaking broken engagement into enhanced self-understanding and a happy marriage. The book is easy to read. As the title suggests, if a woman loves herself before entering a relationship, she'll choose wisely instead of marrying someone who's not right for her to prove she deserves love.
I'm impressed by the author's affirmation of serendipity, willingness to be open to the unexpected. Christine used to think her future marriage partner should have traits like her ex-fiancé had: average height, a full head of hair, and professional occupation.
Before she felt ready for another serious relationship, Christine writes that she started dating a man who was bald, very tall, and seemed to lack ambition. She found him fun, comfortable, and with excellent character traits. Christine married him.
Full of sass, soul, and the type of empowering wisdom that no woman should live without, Choosing ME before WE is like a heart-to-heart with your closest girlfriend. And best of all, you’ll discover that your closest girlfriend is your own truest self, inside you, always ready to offer wise, loving advice about what is best for you.
Designed to challenge and guide women to create the relationships they want instead of the ones they often find themselves stuck in, this book is packed with stimulating questions to uncover what’s true for you, powerful techniques to change old habits that…
I can’t remember how many times I thought someone was The One, but I know I’ve had to kiss a lot of frogs before I found my own Prince Charming. The path was riddled with self-doubt, interfering wicked witches, and wondering whether it was all worth the heartache. As it turns out, none of them were until I finally did find my HEA. I’d become an expert on navigating all the Single Lady tropes: moving to another country in search of the elusive happy ending, getting a better job, enduring the gossip about why I was single. I’d recommend all of these if you are having relationship trouble or doubts about yourself. You're not alone!
Much like my own themes, Pastures Nouveaux is not only about starting over in the country, but having the courage to look at your relationship in the eye.
Rosie is engaged to a horrible columnist, Mark. And she keeps making excuses for him; he’s stressed, he’s unhappy, he’s on a deadline, etc. But he never shows her any great amount of genuine affection. It’s like he’s given up on them. And, perhaps, so has Rosie, who has chosen to ‘live with it’.
And when they move to the country village, Eight Mile Bottom, things take a turn for the worst, as nothing could be further from what they had expected from this move. Or is this the best thing that’s ever happened to Rosie?
The witty new novel from number one bestselling author of "Simply Divine" and "Bad Heir Day". Artist Rosie has always dreamed of a peaceful country cottage - but once she gets what she wants she finds out that village life is not the way she predicted it. A cast of hilarious characters conspire to ensure that life is not the same.
I’m
a sucker for Fredrik Backman’s work, and this was a long-awaited and satisfying
conclusion to the Beartown trilogy.
Yes, it was over 600 pages. Yes, the plot
was complex and meandering. But each book in this series got better and more
endearing, and I couldn’t put it down.
Backman knows how to inhabit a story,
and the residents of Beartown will forever inhabit my heart.
'It's often said that winners write history, but there are no winners here'
This is a small story about big questions. It's a story about family, community, life. It starts with a storm - and a death. But how does it end?
Two years have passed since the events that no one wants to think about. Everyone has tried to move on, but there's something about this place that prevents it. The residents continue to grapple with life's big questions: What is a family? What is a community? And what, if anything, are we willing to sacrifice in order to…
My life has never been very conventional. As a 6’6 nonbinary queer writer who’s been polyamorous for over a decade, I’m very fortunate to live with my two loving partners here in Berlin. My writing focuses on nontraditional and nonmonogamous forms of love, from novels to articles and short stories which have been published in The Sun Magazine, Passages North, Booth, and Guernica. I’ve served on the review committee for the Conference on the Future of Monogamy and Nonmonogamy at UC Berkeley, publicly debated the issue at UCL, and my campaign work for LGBTQ+ and polyamory rights has been referenced in The Mirror, Buzzfeed, and BBC News.
An exploration into the future consequences of China’s one-child policy, I discovered An Excess Male by accident, finding a battered second-hand copy in a local Berlin bookstore. And what a find! Maggie Shen King’s novel skillfully weaves together the narratives of its four protagonists, all of whom are part of — or about to join — a single group marriage. With this future China housing far more men than women, such marriages are increasingly common, yet the novel doesn’t limit itself, as it also explores the status of closeted gay men and people with autism. It’s a horrifyingly real and addictive story.
From debut author Maggie Shen King, An Excess Male is the chilling dystopian tale of politics, inequality, marriage, love, and rebellion, set in a near-future China, that further explores the themes of the classic The Handmaid's Tale and When She Woke. Under the One Child Policy, everyone plotted to have a son. Now 40 million of them can't find wives. China's One Child Policy and its cultural preference for male heirs have created a society overrun by 40 million unmarriageable men. By the year 2030, more than twenty-five percent of men in their late thirties will not have a family…
