There would be a whole library’s worth of books about marriage. But how many of them would actually be good for you to read and beneficial for your relationship. I’ve read four and would claim that they are not just good and beneficial but that they are a necessity for all couples to read and discuss prior to getting married.
Mine was a long distance relationship. Reading through books and discussing them via emails brought us closer together and helped set a firm foundation.The first book we went through was “Five Love Languages” by Gary Chapman. Most arguments occur due to communication issues. Chapman points out the possible origin and rectifies it with an attainable solution. Start speaking your partner’s love language. Sounds easy but it can be very hard depending on many variables. Find out each others love language then speak it freely and you’re on your way.
Further down the track when our relationship seemed to be going somewhere more serious we moved onto “Things I Wish I’d Known Before We Got Married” also by Gary Chapman. It covers a broad range of topics that are good to sort out prior to getting married. The topics seem so obvious that they needn’t be there. But after reading and discussing the chapters I saw the potential for conflict due to different expectations of roles and responsibilities once married. Areas such as housework, cooking, budgeting, etc seem small at first but if left to fester they can cause major rifts in an otherwise healthy relationship.
Closer to the wedding I had two books recommended to me – “One Flesh” by Amelia & Greg Clarke; and “Sheet Music” by Kevin Lemen. These are best read close to the wedding and parts of them post wedding. They assist in setting up realistic goals, expectations and also boundaries for the honeymoon and beyond. It can be tough to bring up these matters with a future spouse. These two books encourage it and it is very worthwhile to heed their advice. Without these books I would have been very unprepared.
Of course there’s so many similar books. These examples are written from a Christian perspective. They were recommended to me and I recommend them to anyone considering marriage.
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1 comment:
Being a blog novice I will attempt to be brief. I completely agree with your assessment of the necessity for pre-reading of suitable books prior to the lead-up to marriage. Many difficult topics are prompted for discussion when reading such material, and in our case I was fore-warned about the possibility of my expectations in certain areas being unlikely to be met. There is, however, the possibility that we can get hooked on reading books so that we can be a better "live"-er, rather than keeping our eyes open and our hands ready to respond to the actual situations before us rather than the possible or theoretical scenarios depicted in these books. This is not to denigrate the value of these books, but I think sometimes they are of limited value- and besides I read them when I am tired and remember little of what I read when I wake up the following morning!
H
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