See Through Marriage

Marriage is all about sharing: sharing space, sharing joys and sorrows, sharing hopes and dreams. Yet we often hold back a part of ourselves because we fear that being wholly transparent--about our past, our desires, our failures, our faults--will bring judgment, rejection, or even just unwanted friction to our relationship. We are afraid to be fully known. As a result, we never experience being fully loved. Fierce Marriage authors Ryan and Selena Frederick think your marriage deserves better. In this new, paradigm-shifting book, they show you how to develop a see-through marriage, one that is marked by full transparency and confident vulnerability. Through personal stories, testimonies from other couples, and biblical truth, they make the case that living authentically in front of each other is the only way to experience love the way we were designed to. If you desire an honest, no-holding-back marriage where you are fully known, fully accepted, and fully loved, you need this book.

Ryan and Selena Frederick were newlyweds when they landed in Switzerland to pursue Selena's dream of training horses. Neither of them knew at the time that Ryan was living out a death sentence brought on by a worsening genetic heart defect. Soon it became clear he needed major surgery that could either save his life--or result in his death on the operating table. The young couple prepared for the worst. When Ryan survived, they both realized that they still had a future together. But the near loss changed the way they saw all that would lie ahead. They would live and love fiercely, fighting for each other and for a Christ-centered marriage, every step of the way. Fierce Marriage is their story, but more than that, it is a call for married couples to put God first in their relationship, to measure everything they do and say to each other against what Christ did for them, and to see marriage not just as a relationship they should try to keep healthy but also as one worth fighting for in every situation. With the gospel as their foundation, Ryan and Selena offer hope and practical help for common struggles in marriage, including communication problems, sexual frustration, financial stress, family tension, screen-time disconnection, and unrealistic expectations.

“After years of debate and inquiry, the key to a great marriage remained shrouded in mystery. Until now...”—Carol Dweck, author of Mindset: The New Psychology of Success Eli J. Finkel's insightful and ground-breaking investigation of marriage clearly shows that the best marriages today are better than the best marriages of earlier eras. Indeed, they are the best marriages the world has ever known. He presents his findings here for the first time in this lucid, inspiring guide to modern marital bliss. The All-or-Nothing Marriage reverse engineers fulfilling marriages—from the “traditional” to the utterly nontraditional—and shows how any marriage can be better. The primary function of marriage from 1620 to 1850 was food, shelter, and protection from violence; from 1850 to 1965, the purpose revolved around love and companionship. But today, a new kind of marriage has emerged, one oriented toward self-discover, self-esteem, and personal growth. Finkel combines cutting-edge scientific research with practical advice; he considers paths to better communication and responsiveness; he offers guidance on when to recalibrate our expectations; and he even introduces a set of must-try “lovehacks.” This is a book for the newlywed to the empty nester, for those thinking about getting married or remarried, and for anyone looking for illuminating advice that will make a real difference to getting the most out of marriage today.

The only way to secure her dream is to marry a handsome stranger . . . When Rose and Jack meet, she has just lost her uncle, and with him her dream of owning a coffee shop. Rose wanted nothing more than to open a café in her uncle’s building. But her uncle’s will is clear – the building goes to Rose’s husband. Not to her. Then, his lawyer, Jack, offers an unusual solution… she can marry him. She’ll get the café and he’ll get the building. For some reason, Rose agrees. It might be a marriage of convenience but it’s anything but simple. Despite it being his idea, Jack is unbearably surly... But then he does something that shows Rose he might just have a softer side. Maybe love can start with a contract… but will Rose still feel that way when she learns the full terms of their deal?

Earlier in my post-divorce life, I thought marriage would never happen again for me. Having exited a painful one, I had no desire to enter another. Why would anyone want to repeat a difficult experience? . . . I felt that my heart would never be as trusting as it once was. I had lost my faith in marriage. I wasn’t sure it was the best custodian of love. And I still feared how the wife identity could sabotage me. I was content to sit to the side and let others have their turn at giving the institution a whirl. – from Happily Ever After Marriage: There’s Nothing Like Divorce to Clear the Mind by Sarah Hampson After eighteen years of marriage and three children, Sarah Hampson finds herself amongst the growing ranks of divorced MLWs (“Mid-Life Women”). “This is what happens when you are outside the marriage bubble,” she writes. Suddenly, you are in a parallel universe, across some mythic river in a place where you are the un-wife – and you and your un-husband are on the un-married side. And once there, as some kind of compensation for the hardship of the journey, you develop relationship X-ray vision. You know more than if you had never inhabited the bubble. Illusions (and delusions) drop away. Everything is clearer. (pp. xi­­­ – xii) Hampson uses this newfound vantage point outside the “marriage bubble” to bravely explore the institution of matrimony. She applies her famously warm, perceptive and frequently hilarious perspective, not only to her own marriage experience, but also to those of her family and friends, along with the myriad celebrities she has interviewed in more than a decade of journalism. Hampson asserts that the tradition of unveiling the bride after the vows have been made is all wrong. “A bride wears a veil after she becomes a wife,” she writes. “For many, it’s a question of denial, not just of what they want and their unhappiness but also of the characteristics in their mate” (p. 138). With the veil lifted from her eyes, Hampson scrutinizes the marriage assumptions she made as a child, better able to see the domestic compromises made by her mother and grandmother, as well as her own. As a young girl growing up in a comfortably privileged household, Hampson felt secure in her expectation that she would one day be taken care of by a husband. “The message in all quarters of our upbringing was that marriage was the life glue” (p. 30), she writes. Now an Un-Married, Hampson has no end of worries to keep her awake at night. Will her children be irreparably damaged by the divorce? Will her “Ghost Dad” ex stop disappointing them, and her? How will she manage financially? Will she find the serenity she craves? And yet, despite her worries, Hampson finds that as a mature and independent woman she has access to the sort of security and self-possession that she sorely lacked when married. She traces her divorce journey, from her hilarious “Un-marriage Ceremony” (selling her wedding ring to a junk gold broker), to a more fully realized state of being, in which life can be viewed as “a carnival of choices, good and bad, wise and regrettable, designed not to teach us pride in ourselves for engineering whatever successes we may have, but humility in acceptance of how it happened to unfold” (p. 280). Candid, humorous and full of fascinating stories, Happily Ever After Marriage is part modern guide, part passionate conversation with friends and part meditation on what can be seen as a new rite of passage to self-actualization in mid-life. By bravely examining her own life, Hampson brings clarity to the underlying cultural messages that inform the choices we make – and shows how embracing change at mid-life can open oneself to new possibilities of connectedness.

A book for married couples, from newlyweds to those married for fifty years or more, advice on how to maintain a healthy sex life.

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 and hugely entertaining book brings intelligence, perspective, and wit to today’s marital debate.

a deeply probing book that gets to the heart of what all healthy romantic relationships need: fairness Most couples enter marriage hoping it will last forever-so why are more and more relationships failing? As Dr. B. Janet Hibbs explains, the key to solving most relationship problems-whether relating to money, children, chores, sex, or in-laws-is through a shared sense of fairness. Intuitively, we think we know what's "fair." But as this book reveals, the way we each understand fairness is much more complex, and is powerfully shaped by our family expectations and experiences. Dr. Hibbs provides readers with a road map for recognizing imbalances and building a stronger, more loving relationship based on a new kind of fairness. Filled with compassion, practical advice, and compelling, real-life examples throughout, this book offers a groundbreaking understanding of the issues that divide couples over time-and how they can be happier and closer than ever.