Marriage Fitness

History

The program was initially founded under MarriageMax Inc., and began with the 2004 self-published book Marriage Fitness: 4 Steps to Building & Maintaining Phenomenal Love by program founder Mort Fertel. Fertel has said that his book was inspired by the loss of his infant son and then infant twin daughters, after which he and his wife coped with the tragedy by distancing themselves from each other. Fertel became disappointed by contemporary marriage counselling methods, and decided to develop a new program to address marriage issues. Upon publication of his book, Fertel's relationship advice was published by publications including the Chicago Tribune, the Albany Herald and Chicago Bride Magazine. Between 2009 and 2010 he was also a relationship advice contributor to The Christian Post and the program's origins were also outlined by Fertel in Family Circle Magazine. The program's website has an Alexa ranking of 42,795 in the United States, and was established in 2003.

The Program

The Marriage Fitness program focuses on issues including the importance of a healthy marriage for raising children and various instructions on how to maintain this kind of marriage. The program also stresses honesty between partners and its tenets have been cited by relationship books, including the idea of learning to love the person you are with instead of trying to find the perfect person. Over time Marriage Fitness expanded its services and launched the Marriage Fitness Tele-Boot Camp, which offered group sessions with a Marriage Fitness representative via videophone. Mort Fertel also offers private tele-sessions with couples seeking counselling through the program, and the program has over one hundred thousand subscribers to its electronic magazine.

The program focuses on "building love" instead of solving problems or communications issues, with the idea that the relationship built will necessarily lead to an improvement in such issues between partners. The program also provides advice on developing the sex life between marriage partners. It focuses on exercising relationships regularly, so that they can grow and maintain the focus of the partners within them. Marriage Fitness has provided seminars in several cities that have officially declared a Marriage Fitness Week to commemorate the events, including Owings Mills, and Baltimore by Mayor Martin O'Malley. In 2016 the Marriage Fitness Program's and its founder was the subject of Back from the Brink, a documentary written and directed by Toroes Thomas that chronicles people in marriage crisis.