You may think you don’t have the time to date anymore. You used to date and spend quality time connecting with each other before you married — before you had as many responsibilities with “scratching” out a living, taking care of your family, your home, and other demands upon your time.

And when (and if) you do have any spare time, you just want to “veg” out and do mindless things. You may think there isn’t the time available to just be together to closely connect as you did before life became as complicated.

But how’s that working for you? How’s that working for your relationship? Maybe it’s time to re-think your priorities. As Dr James Dobson said, “We must work to protect ‘what God has joined together’ with all the creativity and passion we can pour into it.” We agree! Dr Dobson continues, “This is done (in part) by taking time for romantic activities despite pressing obligations and over-committed schedules.”

What it comes down to is that if we don’t take and make the time to spend quality time together, we’ll lose out big time. We’ll still have all the demands life can dump upon us, but our relationship with each other will eventually erode to the point where there will be little left.

So, what can we do if we’re over-committed, time-wise, and stretched financially? How can we carve out time to be together? Well, Cindy and I came across something a few years ago in a magazine article that we found to be highly successful in giving us some “quality” date time. It’s called the “22 Minute Date.”

This was based on an experiment that was conducted with a number of couples who were “happily married” but said they needed a “boost” in their relationship. Can you relate? Here’s how it worked: [Read more →]

• Caleb and Catherine obviously had a lot of problems to work through in their marriage. Do you think their problems were “unique” to them or do you think they are pretty universally experienced — even with Christians? Explain.

• Who was more at “fault” for the near failure of their marriage — Caleb or Catherine? Explain.

Co-writer/director Alex Kendrick says the old adage “Never leave your partner behind” has “significance to non-firefighters” as well. In a television interview aired September 25, 2008 on the Dr Phil Show (www.drphil.com) he said,

“You know, it’s now national policy for firefighters: two in, two out. If you go to a fire, you stay with your partner, you go in and you come out, and that applies to marriage as well. You’re going to go through fire. The meaning of Fireproof is not that fire will never come, but when it comes, you can withstand it. And the only way to do that is to purposefully stay together, to have a higher standard than living just for yourself, but in meeting the other person’s needs.”

• Think of one thing that impressed you or that you learned from this movie that could help you to meet your spouse’s needs and improve your marriage relationship? Share what it is and how you think you can implement it.

• What was it about the “Love Dare” that impressed you?

In the movie, there is a scene where Caleb and his wife Catherine are involved in an explosive argument about being disrespected. Dr Phil asked Kirk Cameron, who played Caleb, if that was a hard scene for him to do. He replied, [Read more →]