Generation NeXt Marriage: The Couple's Guide to Keeping It Together - Softcover

Goyer, Tricia

 
9781590529102: Generation NeXt Marriage: The Couple's Guide to Keeping It Together
Softcover
ISBN 10: 1590529103 ISBN 13: 9781590529102
Verlag: Multnomah, 2008

Inhaltsangabe

Do you still find yourself humming the love songs of the 80s and 90s?

Do you still believe that every marriage should be between soul mates?

But...do you wonder how you can succeed at love and marriage when the generation you grew up in didn’t?


Marriage isn’t what it used to be–it can be better than ever.

If you are a Gen Xer, your marriage has challenges and potentials that no other generation has known. A Gen Xer herself, Tricia Goyer offers realistic help to achieve the God-honoring marriage you long for. She includes…

•Ways to protect your marriage despite the broken relationships modeled in your youth
•Stories, suggestions, and confessions from fellow Gen Xers facing the “What now?” question of real-life marriage
•Advice from the ultimate marriage survival guide: the Bible
•Stats, quizzes, sidebars, and study questions related to this “relationally challenged” time in history
•Practical helps for negotiating kids, work, sex, money, and dirty laundry–sometimes all in the same evening

If you are part of a generation of adults who don’t want to bow to their culture or live and love like their parents did . . . this book is for you.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Tricia Goyer is the author of twelve books of fiction and nonfiction, including the Gold Medallion finalist Life Interrupted. Tricia writes for Today’s Christian Woman and Focus on the Family, speaks numerous times each year to women’s groups, and has been a workshop presenter at the Mothers of Preschoolers (MOPS) national convention. Generation NeXt Marriage is the companion book to the popular Generation NeXt Parenting. Tricia and her husband, John, live with their family in northwestern Montana.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

I was in the sixth grade in 1983 when Billy Idol’s song “White Wedding” hit the charts. I remember doodling designs for my wedding dress on the cover of my English book. Funny thing though: Somehow, I forgot to daydream about what would happen after I married my Prince Charming. I forgot that a marriage follows the wedding.

Growing up during the 1970s and ’80s, I remember hearing Billy Idol’s wedding song and, oh, about 2,573 other songs about love. “Addicted to Love” by Robert Palmer, “Crazy Little Thing Called Love” by Queen, “Groovy Kind of Love” by Phil Collins…to name just a few. Yet I can’t think of a single romantic song that addressed the day-in day-out of marriage. Or commitment. Or forever “I do.”

Now that’s messed up.

Not too surprisingly, I wasn’t thinking about forever commitments when I became sexually active in high school. Or when I dumped “loser” boyfriends and exchanged them for better models. Or when I broke many hearts and found mine broken as well. In fact, I didn’t think much about marriage until after I was married in 1989, at age eighteen. I’d signed up for the “I do” after finding someone “safe.” Someone who loved me and my son. Someone who had a relationship with the God I was just starting to know.

I fell in love with my new beau, John. And he was great! I had a grand time planning the wedding… And then I woke up one day with this guy sleeping beside me and What now? going through my head. As someone raised by a mom and stepdad who were already contemplating divorce on my wedding day, I couldn’t think ahead to what the next year held for John and me, let alone the next fifty years. I wanted the best marriage possible, but I had no idea how to make that happen. That, my friends, is an anxiety-filled, confusing place to live.

The Scoop on This Book
You may wonder how this book differs from other marriage books out there. For one, I’m not the head of any marriage organization, nor do I have a national radio broadcast. I don’t have a degree in psychology or training in marriage enrichment. I’m just a Gen Xer who’s written a lot about parenting, life, and marriage over the last ten years. But perhaps my best credential is the fact that John and I have been married for seventeen years. Quite a statement for a thirty-five-year-old!

Although many of our friends’ marriages have ended in divorce, John and I are still together. We support each other’s careers. We’re raising a God-loving family. We volunteer in our church as a team. And most important, we’re more in love now than the day we got married.

But if I were to gush about how we’ve “done everything right,” I’d be lying. And you most likely wouldn’t want to read another word. After all, Gen Xers have a hard time relating to perfection. Maybe it’s because we’re so very far from it. And we know deep down that everyone else is too. To be truthful, the last seventeen years haven’t been all cupcakes and sprinkles.

To put it bluntly, John and I were young and dumb when we got married (or at least I was). And we’ve made a lot of mistakes (mostly me). But we made a commitment to see this thing through. To work for our marriage. To love the other person even when he or she seems unlovely.We’ve dealt with many of the same struggles as other young couples, including but not limited to:
> communication problems
> money woes
> emotional burdens from past relationships
> struggles with in-laws and out-laws
> the joys and anxiety of raising kids
> even my draw toward an ex-boyfriend

Without a doubt, this is the hardest book I’ve ever written. My novels are stories I create in my head; they contain make-believe characters who make plenty of mistakes. The children’s and devotional books I write are just plain fun. Even Generation NeXt Parenting felt like a breeze compared to writing about my glaring relationship faults. Sure, I shared my struggles with parenting in that book, but now it’s time to share my secrets. Yikes!

I noticed something else while writing this book. Most of the topics in Generation NeXt Parenting are ones you can talk about with any other parent you meet at McDonald’s, but this book goes deep and delves into intimate topics—things you share in confidence with your small group or a dear friend…maybe.

What This Book Is About…
In this book, you won’t find me talking about how to “fix” your spouse or your marriage. Instead, I’m going to talk about our generation, married and grown up—our strengths, our weaknesses, our similarities, and our desire to succeed where so many of our parents and role models failed. I’m also going to dig into God’s Word to find hope and help. The idea emerged after I noticed how different my marriage is from those of previous generations. Different doesn’t mean wrong…it just means different.

Personally, I find myself wanting to do it all—love my spouse, discover God’s purpose for my life, make a difference in my community, build a career, and provide my children with every opportunity. But is that possible while still achieving a semblance of balance? Each of us needs encouragement and help when dealing with the most complex relationship we’ll ever commit to in our lifetime.

Neil Clark Warren—a writer who knows his stuff—issued a challenge in his book The Triumphant Marriage: that each year we commit to making our marriages 10 percent better.1 I like that. Hey, who knows? Maybe you’ll even get to 11 percent with the help of this book!

"Today’s society views marriage as a contract or a legal arrangement. The marriage covenant has been all but eliminated in the world’s eyes. To me, that makes marriage the last line of defense for our Christian faith in this secular world. It convicts me to make my marriage the absolute best it can be and to show other couples what a great marriage looks like so they’ll want it too." —Chris, born in 1974 Florida, married thirteen years

"Sometimes I think Gen Xers have had more realistic expectations than other generations when it comes to marriage. Seems like my parents’ generation had high expectations, and many of them got out when reality set in. I have a lot of hope for my generation. I believe our low divorce rate will stay low. We are fighters, and we don’t need things to be perfect. Most of our relationships have not lived up to our expectations (boyfriends, girlfriends, parents, etc.). When our marriage relationships don’t live up to our expectations, I don’t think we’ll be too shocked." —Jennifer, born in 1969 Wisconsin, married thirteen years.

The Facts

How the Generations Break Down
GI: Born 1900s to 1920s
Silent: Born 1920s to 1940s
Boomer: Born 1940s to 1960s
Xer: Born 1960s to 1980s
Millennial: Born 1980s to 2000s2

The Facts About Gen Xers
¥ Gen Xers consist of 41 million Americans born between 1961 and 1981, plus the 3 million more in that age group who have immigrated here.

¥ Gen Xers are serious about life. We don’t take life as it comes, but give great consideration to critical decisions about our present and future. When it comes to marriage, we want to do it right. We take marriage seriously because half of us were raised in homes where our parents divorced.

¥ Gen Xers are...

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Verlag
Multnomah
Erscheinungsdatum
2008
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
1590529103
ISBN 13 
9781590529102
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
272
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Buchpark GmbH
gpsr@buchpark.de

Krügerweg 1
Trebbin
Brandenburg
14959
Deutschland