Getting Ready for Marriage Workbook
By Jim Burns and Doug Fields
4/5
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Marriage
Communication
Premarital Counseling
Conflict Resolution
Marriage Preparation
Power of Love
Mentorship
Second Chance at Love
Second Chances
Spiritual Journey
Power of Trust
Communication Breakdown
Blended Family
Healing From Past Wounds
Self-Discovery
Personal Growth
Divorce
Education
Intimacy
Remarriage
About this ebook
Great as a stand-alone resource or partnered with the Getting Ready for Marriage: A Practical Road Map for Your Journey Together book and companion video package.
Jim Burns
Jim Burns is the president of HomeWord. He speaks to thousands of people around the world each year and has more than three million resources in print in twenty languages. He primarily writes and speaks on strong marriages, confident parents, empowered kids, and healthy leaders. Some of his most popular books are Doing Life with Your Adult Children, Creating an Intimate Marriage, Have Serious Fun, and Finding Joy in the Empty Nest. Jim and his wife, Cathy, live in Southern California and have three grown daughters, Christy, Rebecca, and Heidi; three sons-in-law, Steve, Andy, and Matt; and four grandchildren, James, Charlotte, Huxley, and Bodhi.
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Reviews for Getting Ready for Marriage Workbook
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Book preview
Getting Ready for Marriage Workbook - Jim Burns
CONTENTS
CONGRATULATIONS!
HOW TO USE THIS BOOK
QUESTIONS TO ASK
CHAPTER 1 – Are You Ready for Marriage?
My Story / Five Crucial Questions / My Baggage
CHAPTER 2 – Writing Your Marriage Script Through
Goals, Hopes, and Expectations
My Expectations / Making S.M.A.R.T. Goals / Where I See Hope in Our Relationship
CHAPTER 3 – In-Laws: You Marry the Family
Your Family Map / Holidays and Traditions / Honest Conversations about Your In-Laws
CHAPTER 4 – Communication: The Fastest Route to Connection
Your Personality Inventory / Replenishing Your Relationship with A.W.E. / Blocks to Healthy Communication
CHAPTER 5 – Conflict: The Rules of Engagement
The Conflict Dance / The Power of an Apology / Conflict Triggers
CHAPTER 6 – Finances: The Best Things in Life Are Not Things
Your Budget / Creating a Debt-Reduction Plan / The Big Ten: Just Say Yes!
CHAPTER 7 – Sexuality: The Naked Truth
The Sex Questionnaire / The Purity Code Challenge / The Five Sex Needs of Men and Women
CHAPTER 8 – Spiritual Intimacy: The Power of Compatibility
Your Spiritual Journey / Committing to the Closer Challenge
/ Finding a Marriage Mentor Couple
CHAPTER 9 – Remarriage: A Fresh Start
What I Have Learned from My Past / Successfully Blending a Family / Remarriage Readiness Survey
A MESSAGE to Pastors, Counselors, and Marriage Mentors
NOTES
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
CONGRATULATIONS!
We are excited for you and your upcoming journey. You are entering into something that many fear, some mock, others delight in, and nearly everyone attempts: marriage. It’s a big deal … a really big deal.
You are wise to recognize the importance of preparing for one of the most significant decisions of your life. We want to help you do more than make a committed attempt at success; after completing this workbook, we want you to be prepared to develop, and thrive in, an exceptionally beautiful marriage. We are big fans of marriage and believe it’s the most exciting and transforming relationship in the entire world.
If you are seriously dating but not yet engaged or want to find out if you should move toward engagement, this workbook is also for you. Simply replace the word fiancé
with the name of the person you’re dating, and bingo, this workbook is now for you too.
But!
We’ve also been married long enough (seventy years combined between our two marriages) to know that it isn’t easy. In our book Getting Ready for Marriage, we ask couples if they would willingly board a plane if they knew it had a 30 to 50 percent chance of crashing. Seems crazy, right? No one in their right mind would take that risk.
But did you know those are the same percentages of failed marriages? Too many couples are willing to embark on the marriage journey without intentional preparation to avoid disaster. That’s why we’ve taken concepts from our book and put them into exercises for this workbook.
We’re definitely not anticipating disaster for you, but we know you will experience some relational turbulence as a couple—every married couple does! That’s why spending time thinking through and talking about the issues in this workbook is so important to the future health of your marriage. Anyone can plan a wedding, but it’s the wise couple that prepares for a marriage. You are taking wise steps, and we’re excited to help you on your journey.
For those reading a book like this or involved with premarital counseling, the chance of divorce decreases by 31 percent.¹ Please pause to think deeply about that statistic for a moment …
HOW TO USE THIS BOOK
There’s no one right way to use this workbook. You may approach the material in whatever way works best for you. It really is that flexible! We have designed the exercises on the following pages to help you think and communicate about important issues while honestly expressing your expectations to each other. Within this flexibility we have some suggestions to help you get the most out of your experience.
Each of you should have your own workbook.
Our companion book, Getting Ready for Marriage, is one you can share and read together, but this workbook is intended for you to complete as an individual. Having your own will allow you to work on the exercises whenever you have a few moments rather than waiting until you are with your fiancé.
Fight the temptation to save a few dollars by sharing the workbook—it will add so much more value if you each have your own copy. (If money is an issue, don’t be afraid to ask for help. Probably someone in your life would gladly buy you a second workbook, knowing it will ultimately help your future marriage.)
We guarantee you will get much more out of this experience if you complete these exercises on your own—reflecting deeply on yourself and your relationship—and then share your answers as a couple.
Schedule a weekly time to talk about your answers.
We advise couples to set aside about an hour each week to discuss the exercises they’ve completed. If you’re in a long-distance relationship, you’ll want to be even more intentional to create time within your schedule to make this happen. Maybe you think that talking about your upcoming marriage won’t be as fun as planning your wedding. However, we believe that if you choose to, you can have a great time in these discussions. You will get to know your fiancé in new ways, understanding who he or she is and what is within his or her heart possibly better than you ever have. And we think that’s pretty exciting.