I was first approached by Mort Fertel a few years ago because he wanted to know if he could advertise his Marriage Fitness programs on The Family & Marriage Counseling Directory. At first I was skeptical, as I always am about anything that says it will "save your marriage." It's just my nature; I had to know more about this thing before I put it on my site and recommended it to thousands of people.

So I asked Mort to send me a copy, and he did.

But first let me tell you about me. I'm 33 years old, and married to a wife the same age. We have two young children, and a great relationship. My wife and I communicate really well, and are very much in love. I never considered myself a candidate for a "marriage program," so this wasn't something I was looking for. I also had a false preconceived notion that this program would only be something for couples near the brink of divorce, the really tough cases.

I was proved wrong. I was immediately surprised at some of the really good advice to improve your relationship. The thing I remember most clearly was that his advice was full of really basic things that we should all be doing to maintain good relationships with our spouse; yet at the same time, they are the things we sometimes forget to do.

Fast forward to 2008. Mort's program is still around and I haven't paid attention to it for some time. I heard somewhere that he doesn't push selling his marriage fitness programs to people - that he advertises his free newsletters, and people usually buy later on, after they see how helpful his advice is.

I thought, "no way, how does he sell this stuff by giving away free newsletters and free help to people?" There's got to be a catch... so I clicked on an ad, and there it was - front and center, "Sign up Free Today." "Free Marriage Help." So I did. I got the first email, and it was a link to some relationship assessments. "Pretty neat," I thought. I then proceeded to answer a few questions about how I prioritize my relationship with my spouse. I could see where this was going... the good news was that I really do prioritize my relationship with my spouse. But this assessment was very useful because I saw ways that I could improve while I was taking it. He also had assessments on fidelity, knowledge of your spouse, giving patterns, and  decision making. All are very useful tools that helped me look more objectively at my relationship.

Then I started getting his free newsletters. Again, I was amazed by the good advice that he gave. Best of all, it was completely FREE. I never once got the feeling that my arm was being twisted into buying anything.

With that being said, he does have some very good Marriage Fitness programs for sale on the website. The programs are designed to fix marriages that have been through all of the common problems that so many marriages encounter these days. So if your relationship is in desperate need of help, that might be the way to go. But don't take my word for it.

Go to his website: MarriageMax.com, and sign up for his free newsletter to decide for yourself. I think Mort has a good thing going on here; it should be helpful for a lot of marriages.