Dating
Start Marriage Right
Falling in love with that special someone is one the most exciting times of your life! As you get to know each other better, our goal is to come alongside you with valuable and timely resources that will help you start your marriage right. If you’re already engaged and planning for the big day, CONGRATULATIONS!! You’ll be one of the TWO MILLION marriages happening over the next year.
As you think about preparing for marriage, what’s your biggest concern? You know, marriage is so much more than what flowers you’ll carry and the kind of cake you’ll serve at the reception. Have you thought much about the family that you’re marrying into and your extended family’s involvement in your relationship? What are their expectations and where will you spend your first Christmas together? How do you resolve disagreements and conflict? There is a way to work through differences, not walk away, and stay together. Wow, there’s so much to consider!
Startmarriageright.com is the one site that you’ll want to come back to over and over again to help answer these questions, as well as guide you as you prepare for marriage. There’ll be interesting articles, fun and insightful videos, as well as relevant links and other practical resources from marriage experts who have worked with other couples like yourselves.
Remember your wedding day is just the beginning. You can have a lifelong marriage!
Think Marriage - Prepare...Protect...Pass it On
Whether you are a teen, single, or married...there is something for you at Think Marriage. We are not marriage counselors, but rather a resource for information and workshops on healthly relationships and marriage. Better relationships start here! Looking for great web resources and healthy marriage initiatives across the U.S.? Click here. Also has Marriage and Myth Buster Guides, Love Letter Kits and a Couple Checkup.
____________________________________________________________________
Debunking Divorce Myths
Fact: Divorce rates are rising.
Fact: Nearly half of all marriages end in divorce.
Fact: There are ten myths of divorce.
Read more about the ten myths...
Divorce Care - Find help and healing for the hurt of separation and divorce
DivorceCare is a friendly, caring group of people who will walk alongside you through one of life’s most difficult experiences. Don’t go through separation or divorce alone.
DivorceCare seminars and support groups are led by people who understand what you are going through and want to help. You’ll gain access to valuable DivorceCare resources to help you deal with the pain of the past and look forward to rebuilding your life.
There are thousands of DivorceCare divorce recovery support groups meeting throughout the US, Canada and in other countries around the world. There’s one meeting near you!
____________________________________________________________________
Marriage Commitment Coin (Military Ministry)
Create a unique symbol of your marriage when you deploy.
This 1-3/4-inch coin consists of two parts which fit together to complete the design—symbolizing the completion that takes place between a husband and wife in marriage. When separated by deployment, each spouse can carry one part of the coin. At the end of the deployment, put your coin back together, symbolizing your reintegration. The smooth back of the coin can be engraved. Coin comes in a black velvet case with an attractive 8×10 Commitment Certificate, suitable for framing.
____________________________________________________________________
If there is an issue in your marriage that you have not been able to resolve on your own, then that is the time to call in the expert(s). The longer you wait, the worse things usually get. A strength of healthy couples is that they get help when they recognize the need. Most installations have a Family Life Chaplain who has received extra training in marital and family counseling. If you are not near a military installation, seek guidance from your local pastor or a Christian Counseling Center if one is available. Another source of help is Military OneSource, which offers up to twelve cost-free, confidential counseling sessions to eligible military personnel and their family members. Callers can request a local counselor based on religious preference, location, gender and variety of other qualifications. The screening call to get the referral takes about a half hour.
If you don't get help from one counselor, do not give up! Try another until you find one who helps! Marriages that endure are built by couples who are willing to do whatever it takes to succeed.
Strength at Home (New England)
Thank you for your service to our country. We know that veterans and their families face challenges in the transition from deployment back to civilian life. As a result, we are offering two programs to support you. These programs are designed to increase your ability to experience positive relationships, and to reduce arguments and conflict with relationship partners and others. These programs are part of federally funded research projects.
12 Session Men's Program: The primary goals of this program are to help veterans and service members of any conflict era improve anger management skills and prevent arguments and conflict in intimate relationships.
10 Session Couple's Program: The primary goals of this program are to help OEF/OIF military couples strengthen their relationship, increase feelings of closeness and happiness, and to prevent arguments and conflict.
____________________________________________________________________
A & E Family Publishers - Resources to strengthen long-distance marriages and families
At A&E Family Publishers we want to help strengthen marriages and families. We have created numerous products and services that can help you strengthen your marriage and family. Please check the links on our site for products and services that can strengthen your marriage and family.
Dr. Gary and Barb Rosberg - Your marriage coaches
24 hour coaching line, submit a prayer request, e-mail a question or comment for the radio program. XM Radio, Northwestern and Houston radio listeners can hear Dr. Gary and Barb Rosberg everyday by subscribing to the daily radio podcast.
The Rosberg Marital Assessment Program
- The first step in living The Great Marriage Experience is for you and your spouse to answer this question, “Where are we in our marriage relationship?” Dr. Gary & Barb Rosberg have created an assessment that will in a step-by-step format, ask you questions to gauge where you are. After completing the assessment, you can begin your life-long journey to obtain a marriage that is real and one that will last....click here for details.
Military couples receive:
- A free membership to The Great Marriage Experience
- Mp3 players with pre-loaded marriage strengthening messages
- Date with a Purpose subscriptions sent to military chaplains to be distributed to all of their married couples
- DVD series of a military marriage conference
- And more...click here for details
Enhancing Your Marriage and Family Ministries
Welcome to Enhancing Your Marriage and Family Ministries, a ministry designed for women who want to follow God in their marriages and in their parenting. He won't disappoint you, because as the Author of marriage and family...
- God wants to be a major player in yours
- Whether your marriage and family are solid or sickly, He wants to share His input with you
- He wants to deepen your walk with Him and enhance your role as wife and mom in the process
- As the Creator of life ~ specifically yours and your husband's ~ He knows how you two should fit together and how to make your children a part of that fit.
- And He knows that when wives and moms follow Him, the entire family dynamic benefits
Judy Rossi, author and founder of this ministry is the wife of a retired Colonel in the U.S. Army.
Faith and Marriage Ministries - Providing encouragement and support for marriage restoration
Faith And Marriage Ministries provides encouragement and support when standing for marriage restoration, even if you’re divorced and the only one who wants to save your marriage. Through the love, power and grace of Jesus Christ, marriage restoration is possible, even after years of separation and divorce, as proven by our Restored Marriage Testimonies!
This site has a wealth of marriage restoration resources to include: marriage restoration prayers, marriage restoration Bible verses, fire proof your marriage, marriage support groups, restored marriage testimonies, and much more.
Family Life Today - Marriage, parenting resources
Resources include marriage and parenting resources, a Momblog, radio broadcast, daily devotionals, spiritual growth resources, military marriage, etc.
Five Love Languages - Dr. Gary Chapman
The leading author in biblical marriage counseling speaks love in your language. With over thirty years of experience in marriage counseling, Dr. Gary Chapman has worked closely with thousands of couples struggling with countless issues. But at the heart of every marriage he has encountered–including his own–rests the same core longing: all people need to feel loved. Learn your love language in 30 seconds! Take a personal profile assessment in 10-15 minutes!
Focus on the Family - Military Marriage articles, Christian marriage resources, post a marriage question, etc.
Has a Marriage/Relationships section with topics that include: God's design for marriage, preparing for marriage, the early years, sex and intimacy, divorce and infidelity, communication and conflict, money and finances, daily living, strengthening your marriage, marriage challenges, facing crisis, marriage and the military.
Marriage Community - Post a marriage question and get an EXPERT response.
Military Marriage Articles - Articles are covered under three categories: Coping with Deployment, Post-Deployment: The Short- Term Reality and Post-Deployment: The Long-Term Reality.
Inverse Ministries - Reconciling marriages in crisis
The reconciliation of our marriage after an eleven-year divorce and a distance of over 3,000 coast-to-coast miles is nothing short of a modern-day miracle. Each year, we embark on several 40-Day Marriage Ministry Mission Trips across the United States to minister to couples through churches and other ministry organizations. Through the work of Inverse Ministries, we share their testimony of reconciliation and have written several publications to challenge believers to be reconciled to God, then to one another. We currently serve as leaders for The Association of Marriage and Family's (AMFM) Reconciling Troubled Marriages Ministry Team as well as being an active part of the Ask the ExpertsPanel of Christianity Today's BuildingChurchLeaders.com.
Marriage Team - Empowering couples for winning marriages
MarriageTeam improves marriages and reduces divorce by delivering couple coaching services. It also works with non-profits to provide effective marriage coaching and educates couples through marriage building seminars. We do this by:
- Providing a marriage coaching service with trained couple coaches
- Helping communities establish effective coaching programs
- Training coach couples
- Leading marriage building seminars
Marriage Vine - Helping marriages remain in The Vine
Our passion is to help marriages grow and thrive by consistently remaining in The Vine. Our mission is to provide tools and resources to help disciple married individuals into a growing and thriving relationship with God and each other so that they might in turn effectively display the love of God to the nations.
Our Methods:
- Daily Marriage Focus Emails to over 23,000 subscribers
- Marriage conferences and date events
- Community Date Nights
- Publishing resources
- Web content
- MarriageVine Book Club
- Marriage Resource Provision
- Professional Marriage and Family Counseling (coming soon)
Web site also includes Marriage 411 -- Our passion is to help your marriage grow! Whether you’re in a crisis or just have a looming question, we’d like to help. We’ve assembled hundreds of videos, articles and answers to past questions in order to help you – and we’re always adding more! Simply enter your question or phrase in the search box, and let us find resources to help you.
Military OneSource - Resources
How to Deal with When a Relationship Hits the Skids? - If you’re going through a breakup or your relationship is in trouble, the world can seem out of control. When you’re in the military, you face the extra challenges of staying ready for duty while you deal with what’s going on in your life. Don’t tough it out alone. Talk about it. With others in your unit, with trusted friends. With your medic, corpsman, chaplain, medical officer, or combat stress control unit.
Military OneSource consultants are ready to talk with you, too – 24/7. To help you through tough times. By phone or online. At no cost to you. Contact Military OneSource toll-free 1-800-342-9647, e-mail a consultant, or register online to chat via instant messaging.
Some other resources available include: articles, books, audio/video clips, cds and dvds to help strengthen your marriage.
Operation Faithful Support
Operation Faithful Support (OFS) is a faith-based, pro-marriage program for all spouses of deployed service members irrespective of religious affiliation. OFS is designed to strengthen spouses on a monthly basis by hosting facilitated discussion groups on a pre-determined topic relevant to the deployment cycle. OFS is relationship centric, and emphasizes the need for combined community support for our nations heroes and their families. OFS operates in conjunction with FRG, Unit Command, Chaplainry, and other Military resources and services, while maintaining its distinction as uniquely a spouses program.
Operation Military Family - Support network, action plan, resources, book
It started as an idea. As a veteran who traveled many parts of the world, Mike Schindler knew the complexities and adventures surrounding deployments. When his best friend was deployed to Afghanistan, Mike captured his experiences by compiling his friend’s notes, emails, pictures and instant messages in order to put them in a keepsake for his best friend's son (Mike's godson).
Like many ideas, it grew into more than a keepsake. Mike went on to interview numerous military couples, marriage experts, chaplains, and support organizations in an effort to uncover what keeps military couples together. Thus was born the book "Operation Military Family" that later became endorsed by leading marriage experts and former Commander in Chief, US Central Command General Tommy Franks.
The book was only the beginning. Couples wanted not only a road map but a peer to peer, mentoring type program. So Mike, along with his wife, Keri, founded the organization Operation Military Family, and set out to develop a mentoring program that would move beyond the classroom and into the community.
Teamwork often makes a dream work with collaboration being the key. Mike teamed up with Jeff Kemp, who is the eldest son of the honorable Jack Kemp and the president of Stronger Families to ensure this dream became a reality. Stronger Families, formerly Families NW, has been a leader in the marriage movement for over 15 years, having been recognized for dropping divorce rates, helping establish community marriage initiatives, and rallying communities around strengthening relationships.
Now a division of Stronger Families, Operation Military Family delivers "Oxygen for Your Relationship" workshops and seminars to military service members and family members with the help and expertise of the staff at Stronger Families.
With an idea that became reality and is destined to serve hundreds of thousands, we are here to serve our military families.
Other Marriage Websites
Here are some healthy relationship sites that you will find valuable, followed by sites existing in the United States, state by state. Courtesy of thinkmarriage.org.
Promisekeepers - Men transformed worldwide
Promise Keepers’ mission is to to ignite and unite men to become warriors who will change their world through living out the Seven Promises. Promise Keepers’ vision is simply put in three words: “Men Transformed Worldwide.”
Real Relationships - Transforming relationships to transform lives
This website has tons of relevant video clips from Drs. Les and Leslie Parrott who answer questions people have e-mailed in. Video topics include: children, communication, conflict resolution, divorce, faith, finance, health, in-laws, premarital, recreation, sex, and marriage mentoring.
7 Day Love Challenge - Find oxygen for your relationship
Each day a simple challenge will be given to you in hopes that you will take it on and see a new spark start within your marriage, or will continue to fan the flame that is already burning. The daily challenges are simple and the benefits undeniable.
The 7 Day Love Challenge is renewing romance and bringing marriages into deeper intimacy than they have ever experienced before. Greg and Lisa White took on the challenge and have broken new ground in their marriage, deepening the intimacy that they share with one another. Even by day four, the Whites noticed an incredible difference...
Site includes free downloads 50 Ways to Love Your Spouse and 50 Valentine's Day Ideas.
Smart Marriages - The Coalition for Marriage, Family, and Couples Education
The Coalition for Marriage, Family and Couples Education is dedicated to making marriage education widely available –
to getting the information couples need to create successful marriages out of the research labs and and clinical offices and to the public. Our goal is to make the information user-friendly, affordable, and accessible.
We believe that people can "get smarter" about marriage and that when they know better, they will do better.
The Coalition serves:
- as a clearinghouse to help couples find marriage and relationship education information, classes, DVDs, and books ;
- to help marriage counselors, clergy, mentor couples, and lay educators find marriage education training programs
- and/or TOOBs - teach-out-of-the-box programs;
- to connect those interested in the continuing development of the field;
- to support community marriage education initiatives, legislation, and research;
- and, to help the public understand that marriage education offers an effective and affordable solution to the epidemic of divorce and family breakdown - one that is ready NOW.
Some site resources include: Ask Dr. Romance, Free Stuff (includes 50 free or cheap Valentine's ideas, 50 ways to love your lover), cds, dvds
The Coalition is non-denominational, non-partisan, non-sectarian and is supported solely by the proceeds of the annual conference. Conference presenters volunteer their time and expertise.
Stronger Families
Stronger Families partners with Association of United States Army to strengthen military families. The mission of Stronger Families is healthy marriages and strong families.
The Gottman Institute - Researching and restoring relationships
The Gottman Institute provides practical, research-based skills to strengthen and repair marriages & relationships.
We offer Weekend Workshops for couples, Professional Training for therapists, and books, DVDs, and other products on Parenting and Relationships. Site includes a relationship quiz.
Two Equal One
No, it's not strange math, it's God's plan for marriage. We are a network of couples in over 90 nations teaching and coaching other couples. Our goal is to help equip marriages and families to fulfill God's purpose for their lives.
____________________________________________________________________
Deflating Six Common Marriage Myths
Top Ten Marriage Myths
The most recent U.S. Census figures confirm what most everyone already knows - divorce rates, indeed, are on the rise. With nearly half of all marriages ending in divorce, many couples are starting to re-evaluate their relationships. But before you start any heady analysis, it's important to know the facts from the myths when it comes to marriage.
____________________________________________________________________
Dirty Girls Ministries
Dirty Girls Ministries is a Christian anti-pornography ministry created to help women struggling with pornography addiction. Founded by author and speaker Crystal Renaud in February of 2009, Dirty Girls Ministries launched as a marketing and research website about women and pornography addiction.
In less than one week, over 300 women participated in surveys as part of this anecdotal research. But as traffic to our website continued to soar and emails flooded in—we began to notice a movement among women and the Church, a desire to break the silence encircling pornography addiction.
Dirty Girls Ministries is offering that opportunity. Through confession, prayer support, resources for accountability and many other tools, Dirty Girls Ministries comes alongside women desiring freedom from pornography addiction. We also offer online recovery groups as well as coaching/consulting networks for churches and individuals wanting to begin addressing pornography with the women in their influence.
Pure Life Ministries - Overcoming addiction to pornography
Pure Life Ministries (PLM) exists to serve Christian individuals and organizations dealing with sexual sin throughout the world by providing biblically based counseling, teaching materials and a public speaking ministry with the goal of leading Christians to victory over sexual sin and into a deeper life in God.
Military marriage
Advice, resources, retreats...
___________________________________________________________________
Click on the topics below for more information on:
Other helpful links:
(includes suggestions from military spouses as well as books)
Resources specific to
- Military supporters
Military community resources
- Christian encouragement
- Deployment support for
- Downloads and printables
Operation We Are Here
Follow us on
resources
Copyright 2008 - 2013 Benita Koeman, Operation We Are Here. All rights reserved.
Operation We Are Here is a HUB of RESOURCES for the military community and military supporters.
Military support is not a concept to embrace; military support is sacrificial action. Visit our military support TOOLKIT.
