A PATHWAY TO SELF-DISCOVERY & RE-INVIGORATING YOUR MARRIAGE
Being Better at Being Married follows a very different path toward helping you be better at being married. Authors Ronald Joyner and Terry Smith do not focus on how couples should best behave. Rather, they offer readers the necessary tools for discovering why spouses relate to one another the way they currently do.
Couples often underestimate the importance of their personal beliefs. This is true for matters such as power and control, safety and security, affection and esteem. Deeply held beliefs tend to prevail over what people know and how they think they ought to act.
Being Better at Being Married is full of stories, tools, and structure for focused and intentional discussions. Each element is designed to create growth through learning and interaction, which are needed for better understanding your spouse and yourself. Study, discuss, and adapt what you read in this book to help transform how you see yourself, how you perceive and interact with your spouse, and how much you experience life being enriched by being married.
Excerpt from Foreword
A lot of marriages are in trouble for a lot of reasons. And there is no magic in a box that can fix what ails them.
My own experience says that many of the challenges to marriage lie in our unresolved personal issues. Why am I fearful? Why don’t I take things seriously? What makes it so difficult for me to trust people? Why am I afraid to express my honest feelings?
If people enter a relationship with the baggage of unidentified, unexplored, and unresolved issues of such magnitude, those things aren’t going to be sorted out by virtue of a wedding ceremony. Then—horror of horrors—suppose that person marries someone who has his or her own bundle of issues that is equally large. Would you suspect there might be problems on the horizon? That the marriage could be threatened? That the relationship could fail?
The hard-for-many-to-face truth is that everybody has baggage.
Excerpt from Preface
Being married can be a richer, fuller experience when understanding, knowledge, and good approaches are used. The fact is many couples are not doing well. But there is a way to be better at being married!
The purpose in writing this book is to help those who are discouraged restore enthusiasm in being together. We want to help reverse the tide for couples caught in the undertow of a deteriorating relationship.
Watch a Core Story interview
In this video, learn about the benefits and insights that occur through the Core Story process.
RONALD G. JOYNER, LFACHE
Ronald received a Master of Hospital Administration degree from the Medical College of Virginia and served twenty-five years as a hospital executive. He has also served in church governance and marriage ministry oversight. He and Terry Smith integrate the concepts of personality with the elements of spirituality to improve the experience of being married. He lives with his wife, Sandra, in Mt. Juliet, Tennessee
TERRY S. SMITH, D.Min.
Terry received from Boston University a Doctorate of Ministry in Personality, Religion, and Culture. He has served as a university-based teacher and counselor, & a counseling center director, and a life coach in church and corporate settings. Terry currently serves as Founder and President of Coaching: Life Matters, a non-profit educational organization. He lives with his wife, Charlotte, in Brentwood, Tennessee.