Connecting YA to Young Married Couples

Getting married, just married, or have been married? Like all relationships, being married takes time and effort. It's a special vocation and the more we invest in each other, the more our marriage will thrive. Below is a list of great resources to compliment the experience you'll get each month after hanging out with the Young Married Couples Ministry.

 

 

Want to meet some cool young married couples like yourselves?  Here's your connection!

 

 

 

 

 

Starting off on the Right Foot

The Five Languages of Love: How to Express Heartfelt Commitment to Your Mate. Gary Chapman, Northfield Publishers, 1992. This enlightening book describes how people communicate love in different ways and show the wonderful things that happen when men and women learn to speak each other's language of love.

Getting Married, Living Together: A Guide for Engaged Couples. Anthony Garascia, Ave Maria Press, 2002. Written in sensitive, yet straightforward language, this book provides an insightful examination of common assumptions and misconceptions about living together. This book reviews potential problems and offers positive steps couples can take toward a happy, enduring, and sacred union.

The Catholic Answers Guide to Family Finances. Philip Lenahan, Catholic Answers, 2001. More than a how-to guide on financial management, this crucial money management book helps families build a basic foundation for making money decisions.

Fall in Love, Stay in Love. Willard F. Harley, Jr., Baker/Revell, 2001. This book shows how couples fall in love by meeting each other's needs and how they stay in love by avoiding habits that chip away at their love for each other. Couples learn to negotiate in marriage and enjoy a romantic, passionate, lifelong love for each other.

Prayer and Spirituality

One Faith, Two Religions: Reflections for Engaged Couples of Two Different Christian Denominations. Rev. Gerald Foley, 1986. This booklet helps couples seriously consider what it means to sustain a marriage and raise a family with a partner who shares one's faith in Jesus but little else in terms of religious practice and traditions.

The Interfaith Family Guidebook: Practical Advice for Jewish and Christian Partners. Joan C. Hawxhaurst, Dovetail Publishing, 1998. This comprehensive guide is for families living with two faiths in one household.

Unconditional Love: Love Without Limit. John Powell and Jean-Claude Lejeane, Thomas More Publisher, 1995. This publication shows couples that regardless of whether they feel that someone "better" is out there for them, they have given each other the gift of love and chosen to love one another.

Family Life

Traits of a Healthy Family: Fifteen Traits Commonly Found in Healthy Families by Those Who Work with Them. Dolores Curran, Ballantine Books, 1990. This book teaches how to evaluate family strengths and weaknesses, how to work on problem areas, and how to make families healthier.

The Smart Stepfamily: Seven Steps to a Healthy Family. Ron L. Deal, Bethany House Publishers, 2002. This book explores the myths of the blended family and examines practical, realistic issues that step families face.

The Art of Natural Family Planning. John and Sheila Kippley, Couple to Couple International, 1996. This book promotes healthy families and strong marriages and compliments the classes for Natural Family Planning.

Parenting with Love and Logic: Teaching Children Responsibility. Foster W. Cline and Jim Fay, Navpress, 1990. This practical guide offers parenting strategies to help parents prepare their children for a world that requires responsibility and maturity for survival. Jim Fay has other "Love and Logic" books for teens, toddlers, and teachers in the classroom.

Marriage Education

The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work: A Practical Guide from the Country's Foremost Relationship Expert. Dr. John Gottman and Nan Silver, Crown Publishers Inc., 1999. This detailed book offers exercises to help couples identify what is important to them and learn to understand, honor and respect each other and their marriage. Focusing on seven principles, this book encourages couples to become intimately familiar with each other's worlds, nurture fondness and admiration, turn toward each other instead of away, let their partner influence them, solve solvable problems, overcome gridlock, and create shared meaning.

For Better...Forever: A Catholic Guide to Lifelong Marriage. George K. Popcak, Ronald David Lawler (preface), Our Sunday Visitor, 1999. This resource presents a solid Catholic foundation for marriage and offers down-to-earth, practical advice.

Take Back Your Marriage: Sticking Together in a World that Pulls Us Apart. Dr. William Doherty, The Guildford Press, 2001. This book presents the core argument that marriages are affected by consumerism and offers solutions that focus on communication, rituals, and "intentional" marriage. This book contains quizzes and lists of questions that examine couples' behavior and communication in marriage. William Doherty wrote Take Back Your Kids, which has chapters for single parents and step-families, and The Intentional Family, which focuses on time together and rituals to enhance daily life.

Becoming a Couple of Promise. Dr. Kevin Leman, Navpress, 1999. This resource illustrates how couples can keep the promises they made on their wedding day. This contemporary curriculum provides information on understanding each other's needs, making marriage great for kids, affair-proofing marriage, blending families, and more. Kevin Leman has written many books on marriage and children.