How to move a rock! Part 2
The second book that changed my life is :
Saving Your Marriage Before It Starts: Seven Questions to Ask Before (and After) You Marry
My wife and I read through this book and workbooks on our own while in college. We both thoroughly enjoyed it. Again it is quite a simple read, and has a decidedly Christian slant in the last chapter. My wife and I both wanted to connect and create a solid foundation going into our marriage, and this is a way that we could agree on. This book facilitated some very interesting conversations, and caused us to learn a lot about each other even though we had been dating for years. It helped shape our expectations heading into marriage, and deepened our relationship. Putting in some extra effort up front has paid amazing dividends. My marriage and family continue to be a wellspring of life and joy that compliments my goals in life.
This book made the list, because it was the first time that I not only desired to grow, but also took the initiative to find information to aid my growth. I was learning humility. It was a good lesson to realize that even if you can do tasks on your own, it may not be the most effective way. Many people much smarter then me have spent their lives researching their areas of expertise, and I should leverage their work. Reinventing the wheel and retracing their steps is not a valuable use of time. This doesn’t preclude challenging popular opinion and creating your own ideas.
Here is the link to the eBook version at Google.
-HappyRock
How to move a rock! Part 3
Marriage and Money – The Budget Meeting
It’s so refreshing to see that there are still people who take the commitment of marriage so seriously. It’s really great that you and your wife explored the commitment so deeply before you got married. It’s also great that this book helped you two prepare for your wonderful life-changing experience.
Thanks for the words of encouragement. It will probably be the biggest and so far the best decision of my life. We did the best job to prepare for the long haul given our age, skills, and abilities that we could. You have to be in it to win it, or what is the point.
One of the things I have found to be remarkable is that the tension between the wife and the mother in law (grooms mother) can truly be the “elephant in the roomâ€. As a man, and someone who has talked to a lot of his male friends I have been amazed by the natural contention that occurs between the mother-in-law and the daughter-in-law. It almost has become a joke between my friends. One thing we have commented about more than once is the fact that the conflict always seems to be between the bride and the groom’s mother. Never the groom and the mother-in-law. The crazy thing is that if you watch sitcoms they always portray the issue as between the groom and mother-in-law, where in reality it is very seldom the problem.
I really think more marriage counselors need to talk about the dynamics of the relationship change and tensions that will occur between the wife and the mother in law.