Written by Aaran and Erin Haldane after a decade of building a marriage on purpose. Practical principles, real practices, and the conversations most couples have been needing to have but didn't quite know how.
A Working Marriage
A book for couples who want to build something that actually works — together.
What this book is
Marriage isn't a status you achieve at the wedding. It's a practice you take up — and most couples were never taught the practice.
This book is the practice. Fifteen chapters of principles and conversations covering everything from the stories you brought into the marriage, to communication, money, family, intimacy, and what to do when you miss the mark.
It's a book you work through together. Both of you read it. Both of you do the practice. Both of you sit on the couch with the book between you.
Who’s it for
Newly married or newly together. You want to set the foundations now, before patterns harden. The book gives you the framework most couples figure out the hard way, ten years in.
Years in, raising kids, surviving. The household works. The marriage doesn't, quite. You've become competent co-parents and polite roommates. You want the climate back.
Quietly drifting. Nothing's broken. Nothing's great. You're not sure when it changed, but it did. The book is the conversation you've been needing to have.
Already strong, want sharper. You're solid. You want to be deliberate. The book gives you language for what you've been doing, and exposes the next layer of work.
Introduction. Welcome, how to use the book, the guidelines for going through it together.
Chapter 1 — Why you're doing this. Purpose and commitment. The thing most couples never sat down and decided.
Chapter 2 — The stories you brought in. What you each absorbed about marriage growing up, and how it's still running.
Chapter 3 — Your shared values. The values you actually share — not the ones you each assume the other holds.
Chapter 4 — The vision. What you're building together over decades, not just this year.
Chapter 5 — Communication without raised voices. Disagreement as collaboration. The medicine, not the disease.
Chapter 6 — From compromise to alignment. Why most "compromises" leave both partners losing, and what to do instead.
Chapter 7 — Total transparency. What you share, why, and the cost of holding things back.
Chapter 8 — Missing the mark. Repair as the practice. Nobody runs a marriage without missing — the marriages that work are the ones that repair.
Chapter 9 — Money. The values conversation underneath the spreadsheet.
Chapter 10 — Family and in-laws. Where the marriage sits in relation to the families it came out of.
Chapter 11 — The asymmetry. The dynamic most long marriages run into and never name.
Chapter 12 — Intimacy. The climate that makes intimacy possible, and what to do when it's faded.
Chapter 13 — Where you are now. An honest assessment, done together.
Chapter 14 — Where you want to be in five years. Building the vision into something concrete.
Chapter 15 — What to do with this work. Making the practice into a default.
What’s inside
Get the book
$19.95 + shipping for the Paperback or get the ebook.
Prints on demand. Ships in 5–7 business days.