Generation NeXt Marriage: The Couple's Guide to Keeping it Together

Do you still find yourself humming the love songs of the 80s and 90s? Do you still believe that every marriage should be between soul mates? But -- do you wonder how you can succeed at love and marriage when the generation you grew up in didn't? Marriage isn't what it used to be-it can be better than ever. If you are a Gen Xer, your marriage has challenges and potentials that no other generation has known. A Gen Xer herself, Tricia Goyer offers realistic help to achieve the God-honoring marriage you long for. She includes:

• ·Ways to protect your marriage despite the broken relationships modeled
  in your youth.
• Stories, suggestions, and confessions from fellow Gen Xers facing the "What now?" question of real-life marriage.
• Advice from the ultimate marriage survival guide: the Bible.
• Stats, quizzes, sidebars, and study questions related to this "relationally challenged" time in history.
• Practical helps for negotiating kids, work, sex, money, and dirty laundry-sometimes all in the same evening.

If you are part of a generation of adults who don't want to bow to their culture or live and love like their parents did -- this book is for you.
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Did that get your attention? It sure got mine, especially the "practical helps for negotiating kids, work, sex, money, and dirty laundry-sometimes all in the same evening" part! So I dove into this book with my eyes wide open, looking for all those practical helps it promised. But you know what? The thing that struck me most about this book wasn't the practical helps, it was the insight that Tricia has into the marriages of our parents and how they affected our own marriages. You're shocked aren't you? Well, if you know me at all, you should be!

I'm not the type of person who wants to know a lot of the "whys" of life. I don't have time for that. I just want to know the "hows": How can I get more done in less time? How can I get my children to behave....consistently? How can I get dinner on the table in five minutes flat, and then how can I get them to eat it? You know, the practical stuff that's going to make my life easier. So, when I received this book in the mail, I was looking for ways to make my marriage better....with minimum effort on my part. :) But what I found was understanding. Understanding not just of why our generation is facing the problems we're facing in our marriages, but why my husband and I face our marriage the way we do. I discovered how we approach things differently and why. I discovered how our parents influenced the way we see married life, and children. And surprisingly, this is what I have found most fascinating about this book.

The premise is that the "Baby Boomer" generation (our parents generation) was focused more on themselves and less on their families resulting in record numbers of divorces, and therefore the "Generation Xers" (our generation) have put more focus on their children and keeping their marriages together because they saw the damage that all that divorce had on the children...themselves. Obviously this isn't a blanket statement and not every "Boomer" is self-centered, just as not every Gen Xer is child/family-centered. But as a generation, those were the trends.

My own family doesn't exactly fit into this discription. While my parents did divorce, my mother remarried and I was raised in a loving and happy home with two very unselfish parents. In fact, while my mother did have to work when we were young, she and my step-dad sacrificed so that she was able to stay home later, when we were in our tween and teen-aged years because they felt that this was a more crucial time to be there for us....and to keep those eagle eyes on us, no doubt! I remember coming home from highschool and college every day and sitting in the kitchen just talking to my mother while she made dinner. We talked about nonsense stuff like how it would be nice to have a laundry basket with three handles so that you could rest it on your hip and still have a handle to hold onto...you know, important stuff like that. But we were talking. To each other. And one Christmas I remember that I bought my mom just such a laundry basket and I filled it with some of the other nonsense things we had talked about. It was silly, but it meant something to us, because it was something we shared... together.

My husband's family was more of what Tricia describes in her book. His father was married several times, and his mother was married three different times. He and his brothers spent some time living with another family while his mother worked. He always understood that his mother wasn't at his ball games and activities because she was working, and he didn't hold it against her, but he tries his best to not only be at all of our kids' games, but practices as well. And he coaches their teams whenever he can. He knows that it's important for the kids, and for our family.

And we both know that no matter what, we will stay together. Somedays we don't like each other all that much :), but we both know that our marriage is worth it. We love each other, and despite differences, and obstinance (his of course, not mine, lol) we will stick it out. And now that I see, from Tricia's insights, why we both approach marriage and family the way we do, it makes the daily decision to stick with it that much easier, and even more important to me as well.

So, now are you ready for some of those practical helps for fitting it all in, and being happy about it? Well, I'm afraid you'll just have to get the book and read them for yourself, hee-hee! But to make that just a little bit easier, Tricia is giving away copies of both of her "Generation Next" books, "Generation NeXt Marriage" and "Generation NeXt Parenting"! You just have to leave a comment on this post to be entered in the drawing...and yes, I'm posting on the right day this time!

But wait! There's more!

Love Gen X Style!

Share your story and WIN a dinner for TWO to the restaurant of your choice! ($50 maximum)
Tell us the story of how you and your spouse met. If you have photos, send those along, too! All the stories will be published on Tricia's GenX Parenting blog. The winning story will be the one with the most comments...so tell your friends.

A winning story will be chosen at the end of the blog tour and will
be published in Tricia's monthly newsletter!
Contest entry form for Generation NeXt Marriage blog tour!

And now, I have just a few more little links that you might be interested in:

• For Tricia's Bio and photo, go here
• For an excerpt from her book, go here
• To find out what people are saying about Generation NeXt Marriage, go here
• To read other reviews of this book on the Blog Book Tour, go here
• To buy the book, go here
• And finally, to get to Tricia's website, go here

Truly, this book was full of truth and insight that has changed the way I look at both my marriage and my family. I can't wait to read "Generation NeXt Parenting" to see where it will take me. If you can't wait either, then leave a comment and I'll enter you in the drawing to win both books! And if you write a post on how you met your spouse for the contest, be sure and come back here and tell me so I can come by and read it!