Screamfree Marriage ─ Calming Down, Growing Up, and Getting Closer

Through the best-selling ScreamFree Parenting, Hal Runkel showed thousands of parents how keeping their cool can revolutionize their family life. In his groundbreaking new book, ScreamFree Marriage, Runkel now shows couples how learning to stay calm, in the face of common marital conflicts, is the key to creating and enjoying a deep, lifelong connection.

Every committed couple strives to hold on to the marriage they envisioned back when they first said "I do"--before the end of the honeymoon phase, before kids, mortgages, health crises, and all life's inescapable issues. But the truth is this: conflict is unavoidable--it's impossible for two people to see every single thing, face every issue, and experience every situation in exactly the same way. What results are couples "screaming" at each other--sometimes literally yelling out loud, sometimes shutting themselves down and shutting their partners out, and sometimes avoiding the issue altogether--none of which leads to the passionate, intimate connection we all crave.

In ScreamFree Marriage, Hal introduces some radical new concepts about marriage, teaching couples how to embrace this inevitable conflict as a profound vehicle for strengthening a marriage. Rather than just a source of pain and disagreement, these "Fires of Commitment," as Hal describes them, can actually be the exact experience needed to grow couples into new levels of maturity and intimacy. By simply learning the ScreamFree formula of Calming Down, Growing Up, and Getting Closer, you too can cross through these fires and end up with a closer and more passionate marriage than ever before. Using accessible anecdotes and the disarming humor that readers have come to love, Runkel disproves prevailing marital wisdom, puts couples on a path to "intimate independence" and reveals a whole new, fresh approach to marriage.

Hal Runkel is a licensed marriage and family therapist, relationship coach, and international speaker. He is founder and President of The ScreamFree Institute—a not-for-profit dedicated to calming the world, one relationship at a time. Hal's principles have already helped thousands of families revolutionize their relationships. He lives with his wife, Jenny, and their two children just outside Atlanta, Georgia.

Jenny Runkel is a writer, editor, and high-school English teacher. While deftly managing her classroom of juniors & seniors, she also manages and helps produce the content on ScreamFree.com, the online presence of The ScreamFree Institute. Her humorous, insightful words reach tens of thousands sets of eyes & ears every month, including those of her husband, Hal, and their two children.