Build a Stronger Marriage

Best-selling author and longtime FamilyLife Today cohost Bob Lepine helps you work through the challenges that emerge in every marriage, causing couples to become isolated and alienated.

All marriages face seasons of distress and frustration—times when, thanks to a variety of factors, you don’t feel as close as you once were. Lepine helps you make the adjustments necessary to build the kind of marriage God intends for you to have and encourages you back on the path to oneness.

Build a Stronger Marriage maps out this path to oneness by first helping you and your spouse uncover how your motivations and expectations about marriage, childhood hardship, or family of origin issues, guilt, shame, or unaddressed relational wounds can impact a marriage relationship. You will be able to trade blame, dissatisfaction, and disappointment for a stronger, richer, and more rewarding relationship.

1. Opening Credits
2. Dedication
3. Introduction: Why We're Hurt A Reason for Hope
4. Part 1: How Did We Get Here?
5. Chapter 1: Married for the Wrong Reasons
6. Chapter 2: Not What I Expected
7. Chapter 3: The Central Purpose of Marriage
8. Part 2: What Weighs Us Down
9. Chapter 4: How Your Past Impacts Your Present
10. Chapter 5: Your First Family
11. Chapter 6: Bringing Trauma into a Marriage
12. Chapter 7: Confronting Shame and Guilt
13. Chapter 8: The Unexpected Wounds
14. Chapter 9: Time to Forget a Few Things
15. Part 3: The Essential Oil in Every Healthy Marriage
16. Chapter 10: Argh! Sometimes My Spouse Makes Me So Angry!
17. Chapter 11: Overlook? Or Confront?
18. Chapter 12: Without This, Your Marriage Won't Make It
19. Chapter 13: What Forgiveness Is (and What It Isn't)
20. Part 4: Restoring What Has Been Broken
21. Chapter 14: A New Marriage Wardrobe
22. Chapter 15: Marriage Best Practices: Extravagant Love
23. Chapter 16: Marriage Best Practices: Enthusiastic Encouragement
24. Chapter 17: Marriage Best Practices: Common Convictions
25. Conclusion
26. Closing Credits