Required Reading: Marriage

Recently, I found myself in the midst of a minor freakout about getting married. I started to realize that there were some life aspects we hadn’t solidly figured out- like our future kids’ religion, where we’d live when I found a new job, how long we planned to stay and where we’d go next. We had ideas about these, but no definitive plans.

So being the complete geek book junkie that I am, I bought a book to help structure our little chats: 1001 Question to Ask Before You Get Married, by Monica Mendez Leahy.  The book includes exhaustive lists of questions on tons of topics, including children, relationship to parents/in-laws, childhood, career, unemployment, money, situational questions, even specifics like defining what you both consider cheating.  

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Mr. B and I decided to go through the book. 1001 questions is a lot, and sometimes it only takes one question to spark a long discussion, so it’s not exactly something you do in a day. But we have covered some topics I never thought to discuss, like how our childhoods affect us today, our individual relationships with our parents, and what we wanted to copy or avoid from our parents’ marriages. The discussions were eye opening and interesting, plus helped us verbally solidify things that were maybe instinctive, but not previously discussed. It’s possibly a cheesy thing to do, but we are entering into an institution with a pretty high fail rate, so I figured anything that might give us an advantage going in is good to me!

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I also loved the realistic and adorable Project Everlasting, by Mat Boggs and Jason Miller. The two bachelor authors travel the country, interviewing couples still in love after 40+ years, as they attempt to discover what makes marriage work.  The stories range from couples who knew from the first second they met, to challenges couples had faced over the years and how they overcame them. Almost every couple went through a crappy period that could have led to divorce, but they worked through it to become stronger than ever, and their tips and stories are things I hope to put into work in my own marriage if need be.

The authors also have a website, and here is a recent story from the site that totally made me a little teary at work today. It’s pretty similar to the type of stuff in the book:

Trapani Love Story

Okay fine, one more because I am a total sap for these stories!

Nancy and Bill 

Has anyone read either of these books, or something similar they’d recommend?