Building a Marriage: Ten Tools for Creating,Repairing Maintaining Your Lives Together

Writing with the warmth and wisdom gained from years of counseling married couples, Cranor Graves shares with us the simple tools that work to create the foundation of any successful marriage. Plainspeaking and down-to-earth in his advice, this former priest points out that a wedding does not a marriage make and encourages you to build the marriage you want.

Graves has put together a marriage-repair kit so that any couple from the newly wed to the long-married, will have the tools to build and maintain a strong, rewarding relationship. His book promises to become a small classic, the kind of book youll want to give to newlyweds and those celebrating their golden anniversary.

This slender volume by a marriage counselor plies couples with common sense and good cheer. Too often, Graves contends, people think that a wedding is the marriage, and that once the honeymoon ends the marriage just takes care of itself. In fact, he argues, good marriages, like houses or cars, need regular maintenance. He speculates that 90% of all married couples "are living well below the level of their relationship potential," a term he defines as "how happy they could be." Graves explains 10 "tools" for promoting or enhancing healthy marriages: forthrightness, conflict, courtship, labels, realism, trust, friendship, distinctions, respect and sharing. Filled with anecdotes from his own marriage and those of couples in his practice, this friendly, optimistic guide would make a thoughtful Valentine's Day gift.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.