• Pursue a healthy sex life. Connect with your wife emotionally as well as physically. Ask your wife what specific things you can do to make the sex life you share better for her. Remember the importance of touching, kissing, and talking for a woman. Ask God to give you the grace to focus your sexual energy solely on your wife and avoid temptations to infidelity.

• Don't let your parents or in-laws run your marriage. Make sure you and your wife - not your parents or in-laws - set the boundaries for your new life together. Always side with your wife over your parents.

• Change yourself, not your wife. Don't waste your time trying to change your wife. Instead, focus on changing yourself. Know that changing your own attitudes and behavior will change the dynamic of your marriage.

Read Part I of this article for steps wives can take to enrich the first year of marriage.


Adapted from The Most Important Year in a Woman's Life, copyright 2003 by Susan DeVries and Barbara J. Wolgemuth and The Most Important Year in a Man's Life, copyright 2003 by Robert D. Wolgemuth and Mark DeVries. Published by Zondervan, Grand Rapids, Mich., www.zondervan.com.

Bobbie Wolgemuth is the author or coauthor of several books, including With Love from Mom, the four-book series, Great Hymns of Our Faith, and Hymns for a Kid's Heart with Joni Eareckson Tada. The Wolgemuths have two married daughters, five grandchildren, and live in central Florida.

Susan DeVries has made a career out of being a wife, mother, and supervising editor of every word Mark has ever written. Over the past 23 years, Susan has partnered with Mark in providing premarital counseling and leading marriage retreats and classes for couples. Mark and Susan have three children and live in middle Tennessee.

Robert Wolegemuth is the owner and president of Wolgemuth & Associates, a literary agency. He has authored or coauthored 16 books, including She Calls Me Daddy, the notes to The Devotional Bible for Dads, and Men of the Bible.

Mark DeVries is the Pastor for Youth and Their Families at First Presbyterian Church in Nashville, Tennessee, where he has served for the past 17 years. In addition to authoring several books, including Family-Based Youth Ministry and True Love Waits, he is the founder of Youth Ministry Architects, a strategic-planning service for churches.