Learning from others while making your marriage your own

If you search for the term “marriage” within the category “books” on Amazon.com, you will receive more than 100,000 results.

Some observations:

1. 
   People were married during thousands of years of human history without having access to books on marriage.  Of course, for much of human history families lived intergenerationally and so marriage advice was readily available.
2. I am confident that while there are certain consistent principles found in many of the 100,000-plus resources, there is a great deal of conflicting advice as well.
3. You don’t have time to read all 100,000-plus resources.  To put this in perspective, at one book a day, you would have more than 270 years of reading.

For what it’s worth, here’s my viewpoint.  Talk to all of the people you respect and get every bit of advice they are willing to offer.  Read all of the books you can and glean every applicable principle (determining which books to read and which principles are applicable is itself somewhat challenging).  In the end, your marriage is unique.  It is the union of you and your spouse – two people who have never existed before and who will never exist again.  So while advice and principles are helpful, you should remember that when an author writes, “You need to listen more,” what she means is that listening more worked to help the author’s marriage (if, in fact, the author is being truthful in reporting on her own marriage).  Undoubtedly there’s someone out there who’s listening too much, someone who needs to speak up!

Commit yourself to your marriage and find what works for you.  Don’t let others tell you how you must live, but learn from others what can be applied meaningfully to your relationship.  Then write your own book and offer your own advice, always with the caveat, “This is what worked for us.  Hope it helps you!”

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