Secrets of great marriages : real truth from real couples about lasting love

Without criticizing or judging, therapists (and couple) Linda and Charlie Bloom offer more than 100 tips and observations about establishing and maintaining lasting love. They don't promise that long term relationships will be easy or that they will always be smooth, but they do promise that the advice in this book is based on real couples facing real challenges who have come through those challenges with better, happier marriages. The idea for the book came to Linda and Charlie as they looked at some of their friends, couples who had been married thirty-plus years but seemed as blissfully happy as newlyweds. They must not have had many problems over the years, the Blooms thought. They're just lucky. When they asked these couples questions, however, they discovered that many had overcome life-shattering challenges, from the deaths of children to old war wounds to previous relationship disasters to the betrayal and loss of trust from an affair. Each of the tips in this book is presented in the form of a positive statement. Each statement is illustrated through the story of one of the 29 couples married more than 20 years that the Blooms interviewed. These interviews took the better part of two years, and the book distils these talks into the most important parts. Each statement will inspire the reader to see his or her partner in new ways and to approach each day and challenge with love instead of judgment.