Contributing editors to the renownedLadies Home Journalcolumn "Can This Marriage Be Saved?," Drs. Paul and Evelyn Moschetta draw on their twenty-eight years of counseling and their own twenty-five years together to reveal the secret to a happy, enduring marriage. InThe Marriage Spirit,they highlight the importance of spiritual intimacy in creating and maintaining love and passion and teach you how to:rediscover the best in each otheraccess your higher, spiritual selfcreate unquestioned trustheal hurt and defuse angerEncouraging readers to take responsibility for their own behavior when facing marital difficulties, the authors offer practical guidelines for moving from roommates to soulmates by learning how to give and receive soul-centered love.

Drs. Evelyn & Paul Moschetta, happily married for twenty-five years, are marriage counselors and contributing editors to Ladies Home Journal, where they collaborate on the monthly feature "Can This Marriage Be Saved?" They live and work in Huntington, New York, and New York City.

Introduction: Seven Steps to the Marriage Spirit	p. 11
Rediscovering Each Other - Renewing Reverence	p. 19
Becoming Your Best Self - Your Spiritual Self	p. 55
Seeing Each Other Without Judgment - Imageless Perception	p. 87
Defusing Anger	p. 123
Creating Marriage's Strongest Bond - Unquestioned Trust	p. 165
Being Free to Do the Right Thing - Right Action	p. 199
Soul-Centered Love	p. 243
The Marriage Spirit	p. 299
Index	p. 307
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From the Introduction: Seven Steps to the Marriage Spirit

Helping couples, as a husband-wife marriage counseling team, has been our life's work. This we have done in weekly counseling sessions, on weekend workshops and retreats, and as contributing editors to theLadies' Home Journalmagazine and their immensely popular columnCan This Marriage Be Saved?

Over the years we have helped partners face just about every issue that exists in marriage: infidelity, in-law problems, religious differences, money problems, child-rearing issues, prolonged unemployment, communication failures, sexual problems, physical and emotional illness, physical and emotional spouse abuse, alcoholism and drug abuse, dual-career problems, issues of power and control, and the loss of love and passion.

To deal with these issues we have taught partners to communicate better, showed them how to overcome past anger and resolve conflicts, analyzed their dreams, given them parenting skills, helped them heal their wounded inner child and guided them through the maze of confusing messages stamped on their psyches by loving but often misguided parents.

While these efforts usually helped a great deal, we felt the need for a larger perspective, one that would not only address specific problems but also give marriage a greater sense of meaning and purpose. Solving problems was essential but the next step was just as important—making sure couples did not drift into a mechanical, soulless kind of intimacy. To be more effective we searched for a broader context for marriage.

This search was also a personal journey. Both our first marriages had ended in divorce and neither one of us wanted to risk repeating such a painful experience. In the early years of our present marriage of twenty-three years we were subjected to some of the same stresses other couples, especially those in second marriages, find so disruptive. Not only were we both completing our doctorates, working, and starting to build a private counseling practice, we were also raising children while attempting to integrate stepchildren and former spouses into a somewhat harmonious whole.

We have fared well. Our marriage has enriched us as individuals, has deepened our love, and was a help in carving out a satisfying family and professional life. No doubt our therapy training was a saving grace for us. Yet the need for a larger meaning to our own marriage, as well the marriages we worked with, persisted.

The Evolving Picture of Marriage

Historically, marriages were based on socially prescribed roles and expectations. Husbands worked while wives had the major responsibility for raising children and caring for the home. By filling these roles couples shared a sense of basic security and partnership and, if they were fortunate, love feelings as well.

These were marriages of duty and obligation; their main function was maintaining family ties and protecting family assets. Such marriages fostered the greater good of the larger society but often failed to meet deeper individual needs. Social and religious prohibitions against divorce rather than a deeply meaningful bond between husband and wife held many of these marriages together.

Because of their focus on basic needs and social roles the quality of a couples intimacy, their degree of closeness emotionally and sexually, was not recognized or considered important. How they appeared and functioned as a social unit in the community was given highest priority.

Over the last fifty years this traditional model has been evolving into the companionship marriage. Here fixed roles are deemphasized, as both partners usually work outside the home. Husband and wife both pitch in to get household jobs done and parenting children is more of a shared responsibility.

What counts most in companionship marriage is the quality of a couples togetherness, the degree to which they can create a mutually satisfying emotional and sexual relationship. To meet this expectation couples devote much of their attention to how they interact. Great importance is placed on learning to communicate, fight fair, and negotiate conflicts. Too often, however, the sexual component takes center stage and leads to an overemphasis on methods, techniques, and performance.

In the companionship-marriage couples learn to be more expressive and less antagonistic, but when they stop there they sometimes end up feeling discontented and yearn for a deeper kind of togetherness.

A vibrant, alive marriage has to be more than just problem free. The concept of "good health" is a useful analogy here. Good health is much more than the absence of illness. It includes all the benefits of optimum functioning, a zest for living, and the harmony of body, mind, and spirit working together as a unified whole. Similarly, marriages, when they are strong and healthy, become powerful vehicles for personal growth and self-transcendence. They are sacred places for the generation of unselfish soul-centered love.

A New Vision for Marriage

As you readThe Marriage Spirityou will encounter what may be new spiritual ideas and practices. Here spiritual does not mean "religious." It refers instead to a growing awareness of your divine nature and its connection to a larger universal life force, a shared energy and intelligence that pulsate through all of us.

Our search for a broader context for marriage led us to where Western psychology and Eastern mystical teachings come together. Here we found a point of view that blends psychology and spirituality, an inspiring vision that merges the language of the psyche with the language of the soul.

While Western psychology encourages analyzing the fragments of a confused and divided self, the Eastern view is one of not analyzing but observing, carefully watching or witnessing the movements of that self, the ego.

We learned that through witnessing you begin to sense the larger, invisible presence in which your smaller ego self operates. This living presence has no beginning and no end. It cannot be located in time or space. It is eternal and illuminates all that appears in it. The same invisible force that rotates the planets, creates mountains, and grows flowers moves inside you.This is your spiritual self, the self of your true divine nature. Becoming aware of this self transforms your marriage into a sacred place.

Excerpted from The Marriage Spirit: Finding the Passion and Joy of Soul-Centered Love by Evelyn Moschetta, Paul Moschetta
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