Alisa’s Reading List for a Good Marriage, Part 1

I’ve been putting off writing this post for a long, long time. It’s #3 on the You Get What You Ask For List. Yet, I’ve already tackled 12 other topics before finally getting to this one.

Why? I wasn’t sure what to write. Two issues kept getting in my way.

1. My book Project: Happily Ever After tells the story of the 12 marital improvement books I read, and how they saved my marriage. That book is 80,000 words long. How could I ever condense that down into a 1000 word post?

2. I’ve listed the books that helped me save my marriage on the Marriage Advice page of this site.  I’ve also reviewed Hot Monogamy,  the 7 Best Things (Happy) Couples Do, and Passionate Marriage. I thought about writing a one sentence post that said, “Want to know what books helped save my marriage? Click here or buy Project: Happily Ever After in December.” But that seemed like cheating.

Thus, I put off writing this post.

Then I took some time off, and the solution came to me.

Today, in part 1 of this series, I’ll offer tips that will help you read your way to a better marriage. Then, in part 2, you’ll learn about the books I’m reading now to continually bring my marriage to a better place.

How to Read Your Way to a Better Marriage

Don’t assume one book will provide all of your marital answers. The books I read to save my marriage were great books. Yet, not a single one of them would have saved my marriage all by itself. David Schnarch’s Passionate Marriage, for instance, taught me about the importance of standing on my own two feet. Pat Love’s Hot Monogamy got my bedroom steamed up and taught me how to teach my husband to romance me. Barton Goldsmith’s Emotional Fitness for Couples provided important communication techniques and helped me to understand my husband on a deeper level. Some books helped me more than others, but none of them were a waste of my reading time. They all helped. More important, if I had held one book up to the high standard of fixing my marriage all by itself, the book would have failed—and so would have my marriage.

Go beyond the bestsellers. Many of the books I read did not top the bestseller list. That doesn’t mean they were not useful. Some of the most obscure titles had the most impact.

Don’t expect your partner to read along. If you are married to an avid reader, great. If not, don’t sweat it. I read the books, highlighted important passages, and then paraphrased them for my husband. At first, this did not seem fair. I thought, “Shouldn’t he be working harder?!” Then one of the books asked me what I wanted more: fair or happy. I choose happy and I kept reading.

Have fun. Not every exercise a book suggests will work. In fact, I’m convinced that some book authors dream up some of their suggestions on the fly in order to reach page count. You don’t have to try everything a book suggests. More important, if an exercise flops, it doesn’t mean your marriage has terminal issues. It either means that the exercise was just plain silly or that the exercise works great for some couples and not so great for others.

Keep reading. I now have a good marriage, but that doesn’t mean I’ve stopped reading marital improvement books. During my blogcation, I read three such books—books I’ll tell you more about in the next post. And I have Position of the Day (yes, that’s about sex positions, folks) sitting on my nightstand, patiently waiting with very bated breath for me to open and peruse. Each book helps me to improve my marriage even more.

Do you have advice about reading your way to a better marriage? Leave it in the comments.

This is Post #3 in the You Get What You Ask for Series.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Tagged as: reading list