There are sooo many books out there on marriage and relationships, and it is so hard to decide which books are the best and what you should read. I love this genre of books because they are always so applicable to my day to day life. Some people think that marriage books are just for couples who are going through a rough time, but that is so far from the truth! Marriage books are AWESOME for ANY couple!
I do not understand or believe in this concept of waiting until your marriage is in trouble before you start putting in the work to strengthen it and help it grow. I believe that if you constantly learn new ways to improve and develop your marriage, then you decrease your chance of it ever reaching a point that you would classify it as “in trouble”.
For example, if you want to be the best employee at your job then you will be constantly looking for ways to learn and grow in your field. The same goes for your marriage. If you want to be the best spouse possible, why wouldn’t you want to do the same thing for your significant other?
I have read quite a few marriage books, but two have stuck out to me, 5 Love Languages and Love and Respect. Both of these books, while very different, take a Christian stance on marriage (my top priority when looking for marriage books) while helping you strengthen your marriage.
I read Love and Respect for the first time a few years ago when my husband and I were dating, and I read 5 Love Languages while we were engaged. While we have only been married for a couple of months, I am so thankful for these books because I can already see how they have helped us set a foundation for our marriage that will help us in years to come.
Book one: 5 Love Languages
Most of you have probably heard of this book or series. This book was written by the amazing Gary Chapman and suggested to us during premarital counseling. The premise of the book is that there are five different love languages that humans have. People usually have a dominant love language and a secondary love language. This book walks you through how to pick out your own love language and has a chapter on every individual love language. These chapters provide insight on how to best express love to people who have each love language, which I think is super useful!
I thought this book was great to get a birdseye view of the entire concept of love languages, and I find myself frequently using the things I learned about my husband’s love language in day to day life. They also have an entire company based on the love language concept that includes books on using love languages with teens, children, and military deployment.
You can get the 5 Love Languages book HERE, or go to the 5 Love Languages website to learn more HERE.
Book 2: Love and Respect
This book. I love it. I read it for the first time a couple of years ago and have suggested it to many people since then. This book by Dr. Emerson Eggerichs is an amazing book that talks about something you don’t hear about often in today’s world. In a world where everyone is trying to make everything equal between women and men, we forget that women and men are indeed programmed differently and that is exactly how God designed it to be. Eggerichs describes this as seeing through pink glasses vs. blue glasses and that we also feel loved in different ways too. The more I read this book, the more it made sense. Women feel loved when they are shown love, while men feel loved when they are shown respect. Eggerichs uses so many references to the Bible to strengthen his points and you can tell his points are well researched and thoughtfully made. He also uses many real-life couples as different examples throughout his book. This book layout helps every reader be able to relate to this idea of love and respect and picture how it could affect their own marriage.
You can get Love and Respect HERE, and visit their website to learn more HERE.
There are SO many different books out there that cover all sorts of topics! The relationship books on my to-read list include:
Do you have any books you have read and loved? Or any you are wanting to hear my feedback on? Let me know in the comments below!
