SilverCrest Books

The hope of finding someone wonderful to marry is the most intense dream most of us ever experience. Yet the challenge seems impossibly great for so many of us. In this compassionate and deeply practical book, Blaine Smith offers a mountain of advice and encouragement to those at their wits end searching for a spouse. Drawing on decades of experience teaching and counseling singles, he provides multiple strategies for finding a marriage partner, including many the reader hasn’t likely thought of before.

Smith also looks closely at expectations, and how they can help or quickly defeat us in our search for a mate. Friendship, he stresses, much more than romance, is at the heart of a blissful, healthy, enduring marriage. Grasping this time-honored principle can simplify our marriage quest, sometimes greatly, for we recognize possibilities we haven’t considered. Smith looks carefully at what sort of friendship works best for marriage, and at what role romance and sexual attraction should, in fact, play. (If you're wondering, Should I marry my best friend?, Blaine addresses that question head-on.)

Other topics include --    

Embracing the desire for marriage

Why your prospects of finding someone are good --

regardless of your age

Rebounding from rejection

Why you probably don't have "the gift of singleness"

Recognizing opportunities you already have

Getting others' help in finding someone to marry

Changes -- major and minor -- that can help you

The best places for meeting someone

Dating and launching a serious relationship

Using Internet matching services successfully

Taking initiative effectively as woman

Making every day count

M. Blaine Smith, a Presbyterian pastor, is author of nine books, including The Yes Anxiety, Overcoming Shyness, and the best-selling Should I Get Married?. He is director of Nehemiah Ministries in the Washington, D.C. area.