Customer Reviews

Before You Remarry: A Guide to Successful Remarriage

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Over the years I have counseled many couples coming at marriage the second time around. Before You Remarry was just the tool I needed to guide couples through the dangerous waters of remarriage. So often, couples simple find a new mate and quickly fall into the same old patterns that helped destroy their first marriage only months or years earlier. But this workbook provides a helpful guide for those who truly want a fresh start with hope for a new and improved outcome. Buy it, use it and take it's advice!

This large, easy-to-read workbook makes a great study guide for couples who are considering remarriage. Written in clear language and with simple guidelines, the main purpose of the book is to raise the kinds of questions you need to be asking yourselves as you plan to marry.

Norm Wright is an excellent counselor, gifted author, and engaging speaker.
You will not regret the purchase of this book: it's helpful, clear, and wise.

Dr. David Frisbie
The Center for Marriage & Family Studies
Author of 8 books, including Happily Remarried: *Making Decisions Together *Blending Families Successfully* Building a Love That Will Last

My fiance and I live 1000 miles apart but wanted to complete premarital counseling. How best to do that long-distance? This book has fit that need perfectly. It nicely covers a wide spectrum of topics that anyone considering remarriage should examine: closure of previous marriage, step-parenting, roles and responsibilities, conflict management, communication, finances... like the spaghetti sauce commercial, "it's in there"!

This is a workbook, so plan on spending a few days working through each chapter. We are finding it to be quite an enlightening experience, leading to a richer and more focused relationship.

This is an excellent tool to use when counseling couples who have been married before. It gets them thinking about things that they might not otherwise address. We will use this book again and again!

Excellent workbook equipping people with the skills to make their new marriage work if their first did not. I am not a counselor, but would recommend that any couple using this book, use it along with pre-marital counseling. Above all - be honest! An excellent tool.

There is a lot of information in this book for my fiance and I to discuss. Our pastor asked us to purchase and we are reviewing with him a chapter at a time before the wedding. It has helped confirm our commitment to each other and I have enjoyed the time discussing the quotes in this book that give us food for thought together.

I opened up this book expecting a nice discussion of the issues facing people who remarry. Instead, I found biblical quotes and religious dogma passing itself off as "couples counseling". I consider myself a Christian, but I think some of the information in this book harkens back to the middle ages (or at least the 1950's!) Here's a sample question from the book: "What one word summarizes a wife's responsibility to her husband? Compare with 1 Peter 3:1" Curiously, the book does not ask what word summarizes a husband's responsibility to his wife. The chapter on sex is ridiculous in that it assumes that you and your partner have never been intimate with one another (I don't know, maybe you haven't been intimate). In any event, I think the book might be appropriate for 2 born-again Christians who are remarrying. But for the rest of the world, this book might not be very helpful.

I have specialized in providing professional education and therapy to divorced, courting, and re/wedded couples since 1981. I am (a) 66, (b) a stepgrandson, stepson, and ex-stepfather and stepbrother, (c) an invited Board member of the Stepfamily Association of America, (d) a contributing editor to 'Your Stepfamily Online,' and (e) the author of six personal-growth and family-relations books.

I recommend this booklet to readers who (a) are comfortable with Biblical references, (b) want to raise their and their partner's self-awareness of basic marital factors, (c) were raised in a high-nurturance (vs. "dysfunctional") family, and (d) do not have potential stepchildren to consider. Other readers will not find practical illumination and advice on these essential points:

1) why and how to assess and reduce co-parents' psychological wounds from childhood (vs. divorce). Most divorced and stepfamily adults appear to be significantly wounded - and don't (want to) know it;

2) the origin and impacts of blocked grief in adults and kids, and how to spot and reduce it.

3) partner unawareness of - and/or indiference to - five key topics: (a) normal personality formation, composition, and function; (b) keys to high-nurturance families and relationships, (c) effective communication skills, (d) healthy 3-level grief, and (e) stepfamily realities, norms, implications, and hazards. And...

4) the implications of little effective stepfamily help (i.e. courtship coaching, co-parenting classes, informed counseling, and co-parent support groups) available in most communities and the media.

In my clinical experience, these factors will often promote needy, love-dazed courting co-parents to commit to the wrong people (wounded, unaware partners, ex-mates, and stepkids), for the wrong reasons, at the wrong time. Then the factors inhibit mates from identifying and resolving core personal, role, and relationship problems, despite well-meant advice like Mr. Wright's. See these for more detail:

For more perspective on these essentials, see "The Remarriage Book," by Peter Gerlach, MSW. (2002)