Today is a day to remember! Our publisher officially released our multiple award-winning book in paperback! Our labor of love – our heart’s work for the past 26+ years – has come to fruition in a format that will reach even more people.
Excerpts of many of our interviews with successfully married couples in the USA and around the world, and their secrets to marital success, are revealed in our book – Building a Love that Lasts: The Seven Surprising Secrets of Successful Marriage (Jossey-Bass/Wiley).
There was dancing in our kitchen this morning! There will be champagne tonight! It’s fun to birth a book. Life is good.
We quickly contacted via email and telephone all those involved in our collective “labor of love.” There were lots of congratulatory messages. There were tears. There were lots of folks wanting to hold the book – wanting to touch it, squeeze it, admire it, kiss it, and hug it. Everybody expressed their appreciation and admiration for their work – for their labor of love. What started out as our book so many years ago became everybody’s book.
You can’t beat that feeling of satisfaction that you get when people know a job has been done well. It felt good to feel the love and the excitement.
Photographs now record the event for today and for posterity. It is a day to remember for sure.
The interview requests are pouring in. The book signings are being confirmed. The lessons of successful marriage we have shared in our book will now be revealed for even more of the world to see. It feels good.
Successful marriage, successful relationships, and successful love – all depend on those who inhabit these relationships to do the simple things required to build a love to last – brick by brick, day by day.
Successful marriage, love, and relationships all require simple acts. Simple gestures. Simple conversations. Success in love and marriage and in love and relationships depends on an accumulation of having done the simple things. Success is really no more complicated than this. Our book is about doing the simple things. The simple things are the building blocks required to build a love to last. The simple things are the “seven surprising secrets of successful marriage.”
So friends, on this exciting day, we offer you the teasers – the seven surprising secrets of successful marriage. To get the whole truth and nothing but the truth you will have to read the book available wherever books are sold!
Here are our teasers!
1. In successful marriages, two becomes one. It is not you and me, it is WE!
2. In successful marriages, couples talk about anything and everything.
There are no sacred cows – no secrets.
3. In successful marriages, couples understand that you do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Successful love and marriage is about mutual love, respect, and understanding.
4. In successful marriages, couples understand that taking care of themselves in a health sense is not sufficient. You must also promote health in your spouse.
To live until “death do us part” requires a mutual concern about good health.
5. In successful marriage, it is not YOUR money and MY money. It is OUR money.
6. In successful marriages, touching each other multiple times per day is the norm. When you touch your spouse you are acknowledging their presence and telling them, “I love you so much I simply must touch you!”
7. Successful marriages are full of variety and spice. They are exciting and rarely dull or boring. Successful marriages don’t always follow a path to predictability. They upend expectancies – they stir the pot. They laugh a lot. The notion that “variety is the spice of life” is their daily mantra.
The simple truth is this – those marriages that succeed are those that have accumulated over time a basket full of having done the simple things day in and day out in their relationship! A marriage that fails is, more often than not, characterized by the refusal of one or more of the two inhabiting the relationship to do the hard work of doing the simple things day in and day out.
To make no mistake about it, no successful marriage or loving relationship can expect to succeed if those who inhabit the relationship are not committed to doing the simple things that matter, day in and day out of their relationship. We know this to be true based on our nearly three decades of research on the topic.
In our thousands of interviews with successfully married couples over these past 26+ years on SIX of the world’s seven continents, it has become patently clear to us that no love was ever made, sustained, or endured without a clear commitment to building a love that lasts.
It have chronicled more than15,000 years of marriage from 26+ years of interviews with successfully and happily married couples on six continents of the world (Antarctica is next!). We think you will enjoy our book. We sure do.
The simple things matter in love and marriage. Why not build your love to last? Love well!
