relationships and community on Marriage Counseling

Where do you turn for marriage advice when you aren’t religious? This is becoming an ever-increasing question as western cultures become more and more secular. One option is to turn to the London-base...

I challenge those who come to me for marriage counseling this way: “If you do what I tell you to do for an entire month, I can promise you that by the end of the month, you will be in love with your m...

The story is often told of a man who made an appointment with the famous psychologist Carl Jung to get help for chronic depression. Jung told him to reduce his fourteen-hour workday to eight, go direc...

One day we were out running errands. The radio in my car was playing in the background, and between songs there was an advertisement for an online dating service. The spokesman-doctor-expert guy was d...

In his book The DNA of Relationships counselor Gary Smalley argues from countless hours of research and observation alongside the wisdom of the Bible that we are hardwired for relationship. This i...

Marriage is tough because you have to deal with feelings and lawyers.

Destructive to marriage is the self-fulfillment ethic that assumes marriage and the family are primarily institutions of personal fulfillment, necessary for us to become “whole” and happy. The assumpt...

O curse of marriage, that we can call these delicate creatures ours and not their appetites.

A few years ago Christian friends of ours, after several years of marriage, came to see Esther and me to explain that their relationship had reached an impasse and that they could see no alternative b...

Marriage starts as a joy and ends up an education.

Marriage calls us to an entirely new and selfless life. . . . Any situation that calls me to confront my selfishness has enormous spiritual value, and I slowly began to understand that the real purpos...

In sharp contrast with our culture, the Bible teaches that the essence of marriage is a sacrificial commitment to the good of the other. That means that love is more fundamentally action than emotion....

Marriage has a unique place because it speaks of an absolute faithfulness, a covenant between radically different persons, male and female; and so it echoes the absolute covenant of God with his chose...

A few weeks ago, our family celebrated a very special occasion: my mom's remarriage after being widowed several years ago when my father died of a rare disease. The ceremony was Catholic, and I fo...

It seems almost oxymoronic to believe that this new idealism has led to a new pessimism about marriage, but that is exactly what has happened. In generations past there was far less talk about compati...

Marriage is like twirling a baton, turning hand springs or eating with chopsticks. It looks easy until you try it.

Weddings are easy; marriages are difficult. The couple wants to plan a wedding; I want to plan a marriage.

I have known many happy marriages, but never a compatible one. The whole aim of marriage is to fight through and survive the instant when incompatibility becomes unquestionable. For a man and a woman,...

Marriage is not a union, merely between two creatures - it is a union between two spirits; and the intention of that bond is to perfect the nature of both, by supplementing their deficiencies with the...

Marriage is an adventure, like going to war.

A man or woman’s aim is to find a mate who completes him or her. In this view, marriage is an end in itself, and sexual consummation is a celebration of such completion. Yet the Bible teaches that God...

People tend to criticize their spouse most loudly in the area where they themselves have the deepest emotional need.”

Pray less that God would show you who is the right husband or wife and pray more to be the right kind of husband or wife.

Marital love is a reflection of how God loves. It is free, total, faithful and fruitful.

One summer I spoke at a church in Pennsylvania, and a young woman came up to me afterward. She and her boyfriend were talking about marriage. She asked my advice, and we discussed her boyfriend’s stre...

The tension between autonomy and intimacy is most clearly evidenced in the trend toward cohabitation. Today, between 50 and 70 percent of American couples are cohabiting before or instead of marrying....

I have always considered marriage as the most interesting event of one’s life, the foundation of happiness or misery.

Today I pray for those of us who are married. Because of sin, we will never experience exactly what you intended for marriage. But, by your grace, we can approach this ideal. Help us, Lord, to make ou...

Get married. If you have a good wife, you’ll be happy; if not, you’ll become a philosopher.

Marriages can never be perfect because people are not perfect. Being human, every bride and groom has faults as well as virtues. We are at times gloomy, cranky, selfish, or unreasonable. We are a mixt...