On Christmas Eve twenty years earlier, Marlee and Jacob were married in a snowstorm. This Christmas Eve, they are ready to quit, divorce is imminent. Their relationship is as icy as the road they’re traveling and as blocked with troubles as the piling snow. They take a shortcut to get to the lawyer’s office, on a slippery, no-fault path. She thinks they need to stay on the main road. He disagrees. They fight. Story of their lives and they slam into a bank of snow , spinning, drifting, falling, out of control. Just like their lives. Reluctantly, freezing cold, hungry, scared, she trudges up the hill. Jacob is nowhere to be found. Her ears frozen, fingers and hands red, she comes to a house on the hillside, built like a Bed and Breakfast, a green wreath on the red door and the door-knocker is in the shape of a wedding ring. The red door opens and the first thing she notices is the fire in the room, blazing hot, a warm, inviting, friendly place and the voice of an old man welcomes her in. There are three golden pots on the hearth, shining, glimmering things. The old man claims that they are used to restore marriages. She laughs—and begins a journey through her past, present, and future that will test how she views her lifelong love. There are two futures available. Which will she choose?

Read this beloved classic romance by USA Today bestselling author Carole Mortimer. Divorce vs. Desire Three years ago Adam Carmichael walked out on Maggi when she needed him most. Now he’s back, to pick up where they left off in their marriage—or so he thinks! Maggi’s first reaction is to finalize their divorce. But Adam refuses point-blank, Maggi is furious—not with Adam, but with herself, because, to her dismay, part of her is relieved! Torn between divorce and desire, Maggi knows she should follow her head, not her heart. But this time, Adam isn’t going to let her go without a fight… Originally published in 1997.

From their location in the heart of Detroit, Michigan, the Weisfelds’ lab has reached out for thirty years to couples in long-term partnerships around the world. In living rooms of Detroit, London, Moscow, Beijing, and beyond, couples of all types and ages have shared their insights into adult romantic relationships. This book, The Psychology of Marriage, is a distillation of these findings, which have appeared in dozens of book chapters, journal articles, and conference presentations. The book also provides new systematic comparisons that offer insights into the mysteries of marriage and other committed relationships. Scholars, professional counselors, and family therapists will find a helpful framework for thinking about cultural similarities and differences in marital dynamics. Researchers will be introduced to a robust new instrument, the Marriage and Relationship Questionnaire (MARQ), which can be used in heterosexual and same-sex couples in virtually any cultural setting, along with ethical guidelines for conducting this research. Anyone who is interested in why committed relationships work (or do not work) will find the book filled with compelling new insights.

In her 1855 fictionalized autobiography, Mary Gove Nichols told the story of her emancipation from her first unhappy marriage, during which her husband controlled her body, her labor, and her daughter. Rather than the more familiar metaphor of prostitution, Nichols used adultery to define loveless marriages as a betrayal of the self, a consequence far more serious than the violation of a legal contract. Nichols was not alone. In Unfaithful, Carol Faulkner places this view of adultery at the center of nineteenth-century efforts to redefine marriage as a voluntary relationship in which love alone determined fidelity. After the Revolution, Americans understood adultery as a sin against God and a crime against the people. A betrayal of marriage vows, adultery was a cause for divorce in most states as well as a basis for civil suits. Faulkner depicts an array of nineteenth-century social reformers who challenged the restrictive legal institution of marriage, redefining adultery as a matter of individual choice and love. She traces the beginning of this redefinition of adultery to the evangelical ferment of the 1830s and 1840s, when perfectionists like John Humphrey Noyes, founder of the Oneida Community, concluded that marriage obstructed the individual's relationship to God. In the 1840s and 1850s, spiritualist, feminist, and free love critics of marriage fueled a growing debate over adultery and marriage by emphasizing true love and consent. After the Civil War, activists turned the act of adultery into a form of civil disobedience, culminating in Victoria Woodhull's publicly charging the Reverend Henry Ward Beecher with marital infidelity. Unfaithful explores how nineteenth-century reformers mobilized both the metaphor and the act of adultery to redefine marriage between 1830 and 1880 and the ways in which their criticisms of the legal institution contributed to a larger transformation of marital and gender relations that continues to this day.

Happily Married With Kids shows what you can do to make your marriage better and grow closer to your spouse after the kids arrive. This book is engaging, fun and practical, and filled with easy-to-follow tips to help you learn how to: * GROW even closer with your spouse * LEARN to communicate, even to disagree affectionately * CREATE warm, loving, reliable support networks * BALANCE life, love, work and parenting * REJUVENATE your sex life * CELEBRATE your marriage as much as your kids Are you having less sex, less fun and more arguments than you did before kids? The arrival of a newborn puts a tremendous strain on even the best marriages. Happily Married With Kids has steps you can take to work toward a warm, loving relationship with your spouse that will last a lifetime.