Building a Love that Lasts: The Seven Surprising Secrets of Successful Marriage

Celebrities’ marital transgressions make headlines news for weeks while marital triumphs are rarely reported with such fervor.  It’s become common for American audiences to see failed marriages as the norm in the absence of successful models. “The best way to understand how to make a marriage a success is to study successful marriage,” emphasize long-time spouses and marriage experts Drs. Charles and Elizabeth Schmitz. Following their own advice, the couple spent twenty-six years in six continents researching the pervasive characteristics present in all successful marriages. In the process, they demystified the simple tools required to make any marriage work. 

BUILDING A LOVE THAT LASTS: The Seven Surprising Secrets of Successful Marriage (Jossey-Bass, a Wiley imprint; January 2010; $16.95; Paperback; ISBN: 978-0-470-57154-5), now in paperback after being called the "Best Relationship Book of 2008" by the Indie Book Awards, is the authors’ culminating treatise on lasting love. It offers a warm, candid, and fresh approach to reducing divorce and increasing the success of marriage.

In addition to exploring the seven key ingredients that define a successful marriage—togetherness, truthfulness, respect, fitness, joint finances, tactile communication, and surprise—Drs. Charles and Elizabeth Schmitz have included hundreds of insightful and practical interviews with happy couples of different faiths, ages, and ethnicities from around the globe. Whether just starting out or just starting over, couples from all walks will glean practical resources for cementing their relationship. The book even includes a seven-week conversation program to strengthen anyone’s marriage, salad recipes to improve healthy living, a financial exercise to review a couple’s status and goals, and the top ten benefits of marriage.

By focusing on what's right about a successful relationship, rather than what's wrong, BUILDING A LOVE THAT LASTS is a positive approach to the small things spouses can do to make marriage work. For couples, counselors, therapists, ministers, and professionals, this book provides hopeful, yet grounded expectations for the future of marriage.