Hi there,

My fiance and I got engaged just a few weeks ago, we are happily in love with no big issues. I am a fan of the concepts here and want to introduce my man to marriagebuilders as a kind of premarital counselling strategy.

He prefers audio books to reading, so I thought maybe we'd do the 24 lesson course and listen to one lesson a week. Or maybe if there are other books on audio that would be preferable?

I'd like to hear from anyone who has experience with the audio course - do you have to read books in addition? Is it worthwhile or does it only repeat the information on the website? Is everything discussed in a gender neutral way (ie, not assuming that all women have the same top needs and all men have the same top needs)?

Any other comments or advice you'd have for a couple preparing to get married would be welcome.

Thanks everyone.

Well, if I were to follow what (I recently found out) the US Navy Pastor in Guam requires sailors to read before he will marry them;

His Needs, Her needs.

Good for you two for learning about the Marriage Builder concepts now. If we had done so and kept up with it throughout the years, our marriage would have been so much better.

By the 24-lesson course, do you mean the Home Study Course? I recommend to add Love Busters to the book HoldHerHand recommends--His Needs Her Needs. LB teaches a couple how to negotiate (the Policy of Joint Agreement) as well as how to avoid withdrawals from the Love Bank. The workbook Five Steps to Romantic Love is very helpful with worksheets that go along with both books.

If you sign up for the Home study course, you get access to the seminar Dr. Harley used to teach during Marriage Builder Weekends, which are no longer done. Now you get the best of what he has to teach and don't have to book flights or lodging.

We found it helpful to read the books aloud together. That way we could stop and talk about whatever came to mind during the reading.

The audio repeats a lot of what the books offer, but it's great to have it on hand to listen to periodically in the car.

Listening to the radio archives is a very good marriage education as well, putting the principles into practice. It's free unless you want to download the programs.

Another good book is Draw Close. It's a compilation of all the concepts wrapped up in a book of short devotionals. You and your fiance can start the book and just keep going through it year after year to keep all the concepts fresh in your mind.

Hi, Budgie,

There is a lot of repetition in the Marriage Builders material, but it is helpful. It shows things from different points of view and in different situations, and also it's helpful to hear it later when you have more experience.

If your husband is not a reader, I think the best thing to do is to turn him on to Dr. Harley's radio show. It's a free hour of audio every day. If he's got an iPod/iPad or Android phone/tablet, he can get an app that will get him the new show every day. As 51CD30 pointed out, you can also listen to older shows online. My wife and I often listen together, and it has been great for us.

You might also get the audio book Fall in Love, Stay in Love. He can listen to the audio and you can read the book. This book lays out Dr. Harley's program in the most organized and complete way, compared to other books.

I would almost recommend that book over the home study course at this point. After you've been married a little while you might get more from the home study course. However, if you are both willing to plunge in now, go for it!

Regarding being gender neutral, yes, the home study course is pretty good about that. Dr. Harley talks about what needs are "typical" for a "typical" man or woman, but the course leads you through picking your own top needs so your mate can learn to meet those. I would say the course is better about that than His Needs, Her Needs, actually.

One other Marriage Builders book you might want to take a look at is Buyers, Renters, and Freeloaders.

I too agree with this ... Get THIS one ^ .. it has been a great eye opener and I am not even finished it yet. Then follow up with His Needs Her Needs (for parents?) and Love Busters! All these books area amazing ... and reading them together makes GREAT undivided attention time.

I think "I Promise You" is supposed to be for engaged couples, but I have not read it yet. It is sitting on my shelf.


I Promise You
preparing for a marriage that will last a lifetime


Soon you'll be standing before a minister and you'll be asked to repeat very important promises to each other -- promises to love and care for each other, protect each other, and spend the rest of your lives together. You'll make those promises before God, your family, and all who have come to witness your marriage. You'll exchange rings that symbolize your commitment to those promises. FREE Leaders Guide

Click Here for the free 92 page
I Promise You Leaders Guide.
(file size - 980 KB)

But when you make them, will you really understand what they mean? And will you keep them every day for the rest of your lives?

Care. Protection. Honesty. Time. These are the four key promises I encourage you to make to each other -- and to keep for a lifetime.

I Promise You walks you through the four key promises, showing you practical ways to make them work in your marriage. Give these gifts to each other, and you will begin your marriage the right way. Continue to give them through all the ups and downs of daily married life, and you will grow in love and compatibility throughout your lifetime together. (Hardcover - 192 pages)

http://www.marriagebuilders.com/graphic/mbi6012_iprom.html

Thanks so much everyone.

He is not enthusiastic about reading, so I want to stick to audio format. Sounds like Fall in Love, Stay in Love in audio may be the best choice, or the audio parts home study course. I'll think on this some more.

I'll ask him how he feels about listening to the radio show too.

What about you read out loud and he listens while you snuggle in bed? This would make it easier to discuss the topics as they unfold.

That might be a good idea after they are married.

I'm not so keen on the reading aloud to him idea becuase he might feel like I'm teaching him. I'm relatively well-versed in the concepts already (have read all the info on the site), whereas he is a bit reluctant about any kind of marriage help because he's scared it will create more problems than it solves.

He's agreed to do it though because I explained that it's very important to me. My parents got divorced when I was a child, there was infidelity and it was horrible. It's extremely important to me that we take steps to safegaurd against an unhappy marriage. Learning about the mb concepts before getting married might even be a dealbreaker for me.

Just by the way, in case you were wondering, we are 27 and 29, and have been together 5.5 years, living together for 4. I know some of you will not be happy that we are living together - we have been committed for a long time (and in a legal de facto marriage) but have never made formal promises to each other.

Good insight. I think that is probably true for a lot of people, particularly men. It might work for some and might be worth a shot in many cases, but if you think it's a bad idea, I wouldn't.


He is very rational in this fear. Most marriage help does create more problems than it solves. Quite a bit of premarital counseling damages marriages, did you know that?

Check this out: http://www.marriagebuilders.com/radio_program/play_segment.cfm?sid=738

There is actually very little evidence that premarital counseling, per se, helps at all.

But there is evidence that if your relationship progresses from a freeloader stage to a renter stage to a buyer stage that that will definitely build a strong marriage! That's what happened to Dr. Harley and Joyce.

If you can get your fiance to adopt the Buyer's agreement, and the two of you live by it, you will be happy with your marriage for life.


I would love it if you got on Dr. Harley's radio show and talked to him about it. Selfish motives, I'd like to hear what he has to say about this! I have children who are probably going to want to date and court and get married some day. But hopefully it would help you, too.


I don't see why it would make us unhappy. It is your life and happiness at stake. I'm sure you've read Dr. Harley's article on the statistics; I can pull up a link if you want.


That gets into all kinds of epistemological issues about what is and is not a marriage that I definitely don't feel competent to resolve here.

I will point you to one additional interesting radio show segment:

http://www.marriagebuilders.com/radio_program/play_segment.cfm?sid=940

May or may not be applicable.

I just gave a couple Fall in Love, Stay in Love.

A friend just gave his daughter Love Busters, because he said they are in love now, and unaware of how easy it is to slide into LBs.

Markos, thanks for those radio links, I just gave them a listen. It's great to hear Harley explain things live. I'll definitely be listening to more.

I've decided to go with Fall in Love, Stay in Love.

Retread, thanks for weighing in also.

Hi there, we've run into some trouble and I'd really appreciate any advice on what I should do next.

The audio books turned out not to be a good option because they are on CD, and my fiance is not a voracious reader the way I am, so instead he agreed to read through the basic concepts on this site which I printed out for him. He took weeks and weeks to read through these, during which we got into some arguments that I felt we could resolve easily if he'd just get on board with the MB stuff, so, conscious of trying not to nag, I requested a few times that he finish reading the material and tried to express its importance to me. He resented me asking him to do this, it felt like doing unpleasant homework, and he said "Why can't you just tell me what you need from me?!"

So I thought this over, and wrote down a list which I then shared with him. It had the basic stuff, starting with 1. Spend 15 hours a week of quality alone time together, 2. Never do anything without enthusiastic agreement from the other spouse, etc. I shared the list with him, it went well. In the mean time he also expressed that my messy habits are a love buster, so I have been made changes in that area.

I was concerned about our UA time. I was worried that it wasn't enjoyable enough and that we weren't getting enough and I could feel that some of my intimate emotional needs were not being satisfied. So we did the recreational inventory together, and the upshot is, I got a ukulele and now we jam together while he plays on his guitar We also started going rollerblading together, and have a list of other stuff we like to do so finding fun stuff to do together is not a problem anymore.

So here's the problem. I started tracking our hours of UA time this week for the first time. From Monday to Friday, we got about 7 or 8 hours in, which means to make up 15 we'd need to do about 4 hours each on Saturday and Sunday.

Last night (Friday night) we were out with a group of friends when one of the guys mentioned an activity that he and my fiance have been talking about doing for ages. Suddenly they were making plans to do it the next day (today). Between needing to get 4 hours of UA time plus other commitments we already had, there would be no time for him go do this activity with his friend. So I said to the guys, "I'm not sure we'll have time for that tomorrow", but the idea of them going tomorrow kept coming up. I tried to say stuff like, "We need to talk about this, we'll get back to you" etc, but in the end I felt pretty much forced to say to my fiance in front of the others that I didn't want him to go do this because I wanted to have couple time.

After we left we got into an unpleasant discussion. He felt like I was bossing him around and being disrespectful, and in front of our friends which makes it worse. I explained how we wouldn't be able to make up our 15 hours if he went and did this thing. He feels that having to schedule 15 hours is too much like work, and is demanding too much, and our relationship is supposed to be fun, and not like work. He also doesn't think 15 hours is too important, that it would be fine if we got fewer hours than that. He said, "I should be able to go [do activity] on the weekend if I want to".

I tried to explain that it is very important to me that we get the 15 hours. The whole conversation was very hurtful to me, because I keep worrying that if we don't both get on board with MB stuff then we are doomed to not have a great marriage. He said I'm only so into the MB stuff because my past with my parents has skewed my views on marriage, and that it mostly all works out ok and I don't need to worry about our marriage so much, and that it's my personality to like rule based things and I just like to follow textbooks. Essentially, he doesn't see the value of the MB stuff at all.

At this point I was very upset and had to go to another room to cry. After a while we snuggled and were affectionate again, but this morning I still feel off.

While I have been typing this post, he has looked online and found something that talks about the low success rate of marriage counselling. I told him about how Harley talks about that too, and that he explains why MB is different, but fiance said "Of course he's got to say he's different, so that he can sell books and make money out of it." Then he looked up a John Gottman book on Amazon that recommends only 5 hours of quality time a week is needed.

I'm trying to think of what my options are. We still have a couple of issues, like some minor independent behaviour that goes on, that I don't think we can address until he somehow gets convinced that independent behaviour is actually a problem. I feel like I've done about everything I can to persuade him to get on board.

The only next step I can see is to continue to try to be the best wife material I can, and maybe get him on phone counselling as the best shot on getting on board. Thank you for reading this far. I'd really appreciate any input you have.

Can you email radio the show? Email your questions to Joyce Harley at mbradio@marriagebuilders.com.

Will he listen to these radio clips so he can hear Dr. Harley himself?
Radio clip on engagement
Radio clip on engagements
Radio clip on preparing for Marriage
Segment #2

Are you two living together?

Dating is an interview for marriage. You are hearing loud and clear from your fiance that he is not interested in MB.

A good marriage is based on the Policy of Joint Agreement and Radical Honesty, as well as the Policy of Undivided Attention (which is a minimum of 15 hours per week.)

Many men have a tough time agreeing with POJA, and you are getting the indication right now, before marriage, that he is not going to do this with you. That's really fortunate for you, because you can, and should, get out of this relationship.

Lots of people are fun to be with and make fun friends but someone not willing to follow POJA is likely to make for a poor mate for marriage.

What I recommend:

Let him know gently and lovingly that you would like a Marriage Builders marriage and it is based on these principles and will make for a great and fulfilling marriage for both of you.

If he's on, great, watch and see if he will follow POJA with you now. Give this a year to make sure it's consistent.

If he's not and calls you bossy and controlling for wanting this and for wanting 15 hours a week of UA,it sounds like he's a poor marriage risk and you should walk.

Only about 20% of marriages are happy and thriving. The rest divorce (40%,) are deeply unhappy but together (20%) and the final 20% are permanently estranged.

Which group do you want to be in 20 years from now?

These boards are riddled with people who are the only ones in their marriage willing to give MB a chance. My marriage was, in part, a casualty of this tragedy.
I would also say that people who are dating tend to put their BEST foot forward.
I don't know about engagement -- I would expect people perhaps would act a little more like you would expect them to act when they get married.
I'm dating a lovely woman. I hope to be engaged pretty soon. I plan to have enough time in that engagement period to see if it changes the way either of us view our relationship. A final pre-view, if you will, of what married life will look like with this person. (and her for the same benefit of me).

I hope that she has no reservations about pulling the plug on me any time she starts getting the idea that I'm not the right marriage partner for her.

opt

Thank you Brainhurts, Longwayfromhome, and Optimism (I like your name) for taking the time to respond to me. I did listen to the radio links, and thought about your posts. I thought I'd give you an update on my situation.

Not long after I had put that post up, we were able to have a safe discussion around it all. I ended up explaining again about how I had wanted to spend 4 hours with him that Saturday, which was why I was not enthusiastic about him going out with his friend. Suddenly he seemed to understand and went, "Oh, you mean you had plans for us! Making plans is different than having a schedule" - he doesn't mind plans, he just doesn't want a schedule (though really, I'm not so sure what the critical difference is). Some of the problem was just a communication block - I hadn't adequately communicated to him before hand that I had been hoping to spend those hours together. We actually did end up spending more than 4 hours together that day, and he enthusiastically chose to spend them with me rather than see his friend.

He is also on board with the idea of the POJA, we are both radically honest with each other all the time, and our love busters are surmountable - some annoying habits and some minor independent behaviour (around money. We are going to discuss it and make a budget tonight). So as you can imagine, I feel a thousand times better, and I realise that when I said he doesn't see the value in MB, that's not actually true.

I also ordered copies of HNHN and LBs which arrived yesterday. At this point I feel optimistic and well-equipped to iron out our remaining issues as we head towards the wedding.

Please read everything you can about Dr. Harley's philosophy/research about living together before marriage. Understand the "renters agreement." It is important that you at least know what you are up against.
It's not that we will "not be happy" about your living together -- that has nothing to do with it. We promote happy marriages here.
Dr. Harley would advise you to move out and live apart until the wedding -- I've heard him advise other couples to do so on the radio show.
Sounds extreme, but most of these marriages fail eventually.

Opt

Other good books by Dr. Harley called "I Promise You" and "Buyers, Renters and Freeloaders".

Keep working on POJA and I agree with opt that Dr. Harley advises you not to live together before marriage.