To Have & To Hold: A Guide to Successful Marriage

To Have & To Hold is Nancy Van Pelt’s guide to building a marriage that lasts. It works through communication, conflict, money, roles and intimacy with the same practical method as the rest of her work: name the pattern, explain why it forms, then give the couple something specific to do about it.

What’s inside To Have & To Hold

Van Pelt’s starting point is that most marriages fail at communication long before they fail at anything else, and that communication is a learnable skill rather than a personality trait. The book gives couples the mechanics — how to raise a difficult subject, how to listen without preparing a rebuttal, how to stop a disagreement escalating past the point where either party is still hearing.

It then works outward: how money arguments are usually about something other than money, how expectations formed in childhood surface in a marriage, and how physical intimacy responds to what happens outside the bedroom.

• Communication skills, taught as skills rather than described
• Handling conflict before it becomes damage
• Money, roles and unspoken expectations
• Physical intimacy and emotional connection
• Exercises couples work through together

Who this book is for

This suits engaged couples preparing for marriage, couples in the first years still forming habits, and couples further in who can feel something has drifted. It is also widely used by pastors and marriage counsellors as a structured resource to work through with a couple.

It is written to be used. Couples who read it separately and never do the exercises get a fraction of the value.

About the author and publisher

Nancy Van Pelt was a certified family life educator whose marriage and parenting seminars ran internationally for decades. Her books are the most widely used family life resources in Adventist publishing, and she wrote from clinical practice rather than theory. Published by The Stanborough Press.

This title sits in our Marriage & Family range. Couples with children often add Train Up a Child.

Questions about this book

Is this for couples in trouble or couples doing well?

Both, and it works differently for each. Couples doing well use it to build habits; couples struggling use it to name what has gone wrong. It is not a crisis intervention book.

Does it require both partners to read it?

It works best that way. The exercises are built for two. One partner reading it alone will still get value from the communication material.

How is this different from Highly Effective Marriage?

Both are Van Pelt titles covering similar ground. To Have & To Hold leans toward couples establishing or re-establishing the foundations; Highly Effective Marriage goes further into ongoing marriage dynamics. Most people need one, not both.

Is it suitable for pre-marital counselling?

Yes, and it is regularly used that way. The chapters on expectations and money are the ones that do the most work before a wedding.

Is it explicitly Christian?

Yes. It is written from a Christian understanding of marriage, though the communication and conflict material is practical rather than doctrinal.