What would it look like to create healthy marriage advice from the ground up?

To go into writing a marriage book with no assumptions, just data?

To take Jesus at His word that a good tree can’t bear bad fruit, and a bad tree can’t bear good fruit–so where there is good fruit, there’s also good teaching?

We’ve got the answer, and it launches today!

The Marriage You Want is here!

Written by my husband Keith and me (with loads of help from the indispensable Joanna Sawatsky, our resident statistician), we look at what’s ACTUALLY important when it comes to intimacy and creating the marriage you want.

Because this Christian marriage book isn’t about convincing you to stay in a marriage you hate; it’s about helping you create the marriage you love.

• It’s got loads of charts–which are super fun and great conversation starters.
• It’s got an audio version–that’s narrated by Keith and me.
• It’s got an accompanying study guide with premarital curriculum, small group curriculum, couples’ questions, and more.

But most of all: it’s got insights into what actually are the key issues in marriage, and helping you rid marriage of entitlement and form a teamwork mindset.

Based on our FOURTH huge survey, we had 7000 people–including 1300 matched pairs–who answered hundreds of questions that gave us incredible insights into marriage.

And we’re so excited to bring it to you today!

(supports local bookstores in the US)

This has been a long journey for Keith and me.

We started speaking at FamilyLife Canada marriage conferences twenty years ago, while still in our thirties. At the time, they were still using the American curriculum. And we found that a lot of what they taught really had nothing to do with why our marriage worked. We found that the things they said were super important really didn’t apply to us.

But we figured we were just outliers, and they must know better. We were young, after all! So we taught.

And now, looking back, I can see how so much of it was just wrong. It was focused in the wrong place and it ignored the real issues that were driving couples apart.

And much of that is because they started from a faulty premise.

The Marriage You Want starts with the premise:

God created us to be amazing partners as we serve each other and run after God together.

Because these premises are so different, the teachings that flow are quite different, too.

God made you unique, and your marriage needs both of you to show up, with everything you have, so that you can authentically be who you were created to be.

We should expect our spouse to honor their vows and care about us; and we should also guard our own hearts for entitlement–and address entitlement in our spouses. And we give you tools to do that!

The Marriage You Want says:

If marriage is hard, be curious! Figure out what’s at the heart of it. Because marriage is meant to make life easier, not harder.

The Marriage You Want says:

Marriage, when it works, is a glorious relationship that brings such immense rewards. But you can’t create that marriage on your own, and if one spouse is abusive, let’s make sure you can recognize the red flags and get to safety.

We believe that marriage advice in the Christian world has been focused on the wrong things.

For instance, what are the two biggest issues that wreck intimacy? We’re told they’re sex and money. Well, we found something that had THREE TIMES the impact on marriage as a bad sex life, and SIX TIMES the impact as money problems.

But none–and I mean NONE–of evangelical bestselling marriage books even mention it.

To no one’s surprise, we found that the key to a great sex life is not stressing frequency, but to get curious about why someone may have a low libido.

Why don’t other books do this?

Quite frankly, because they tend to be written from a male perspective. Most marriage books are written by men, but even if they’re not, evangelicalism has created this formula for marriage that everyone seems to parrot.

It’s time to break up that formula, and focus on what works.

That’s what The Marriage You Want does.

It has the potential to upend the evangelical marriage industry.

But I need your help. I can’t get the word out myself.

So will you:

1. Buy the book! Buy it for yourself; buy it for your pastor; buy it for an engaged couple you know!
2. Share about it on social media today! Tell people it’s here, and it’s awesome.
3. Direct message THREE friends or family members and mention the book to them.

Together, we can change the evangelical conversation about sex and marriage to make it something healthy, biblical, and evidence-based.

We started with The Great Sex Rescue. And now The Marriage You Want is here too.

I’m so excited to see what God does with this book!