What is the secret to lasting love? How do couples create a beautiful marriage of love and respect that will last for a lifetime? These are questions American writer Susan Tiberghien is asked most often at writers’ conferences held in the United States and Europe. These questions took her on a journey of personal reflection. Meditating on what led her to fall in love with a Frenchman and what went right in their marriage, she recalled the good moments and began writing them down. Susan and her husband Pierre have been married for more than fifty-five years. They raised six children while living in five different countries. SIDE BY SIDE: WRITING YOUR LOVE STORY is a memoir of Susan’s marriage and an invitation to you, the reader, to write your own love story with your partner. SIDE BY SIDE: WRITING YOUR LOVE STORY is organized by seven stages of a relationship: courtship, commitment, outward reflection, inward reflection, growing, wellbeing, and celebrating. Beginning with falling in love and courtship, Susan shows you how to recall those early moments of seduction and being seduced. This dance between partners is key to the next stage of commitment. Marriage is beautiful because it is a commitment couples choose to renew with one another every day. Whether you are engaged to be married, or you’ve been married for a few days or for more than 20,075 days (fifty-five years), it is natural to experience feelings that lead you to question the commitment you made do each other. Everyone has doubts. The journal practice exercises in this chapter help to explore both the sunny and dark side of doubts, allowing you to focus and to build on what is working in the relationship. As a couple, you face many challenges together, especially with raising children and working outside of the home. SIDE BY SIDE: WRITING YOUR LOVE STORY is filled with life stories every parent understands, especially when each partner was raised in a different country. For instance, what will be the family’s common language? In addition to managing cultural differences, all parents share the same challenges around discipline, rules, and the unique needs of each child. Journal prompts provide a framework for your memories and insights. Described by her readers as a lyrical writer with a compassionate approach to telling and sharing life stories, Susan weaves her journal entries and life stories throughout the book, and adds inspirational quotes from well-known writers such as Rainer Maria Rilke, Brenda Ueland, William Zinsser, Dorothea Brande, Annie Dillard, and Thomas Merton. When you make writing a habit, you change your life story. SIDE BY SIDE: WRITING YOUR LOVE STORY teaches you how to make writing a habit and how to transform your story as a couple into your marriage memoir, expressing the best of each of you as an individual, and the powerful entity you are as two people who love each other.
