Every marriage is really made up seven mini-marriages, according to Mel and Pat Krantzler. The mini-marriages reflect a couple's changing lives and needs. These challenges can make or break a relationship.

Packed with case histories and practical techniques, this guide to lasting love empowers couples to sustain and enrich their most important commitment.

Publishers Weekly reported: “The Kranzlers, California psychologists who are married to each other, describe the seven stages (``marriages'') of married life in these Passages for married couples. They take readers from the initial ``Movie-Marriage-in-Your-Mind'' stage (characterized by the ``clash of expectations with reality'') through career-building, child-raising, middle-age and retirement stages to the final ``After-Death Marriage'' of the surviving spouse. Along the way they point out the threats to mutual love and opportunities for personal growth inherent in a developing relationship, citing examples from their own lives and from their shared practice as illustration. Their occasional forays into the issues of the day--women's rights, the need for affordable child care--add to their sound, self-help manual's appeal.”