What makes someone fall and stay in love? This might be one of mankind’s most sought-after answers. The quest for lasting love has fueled the plot of countless books, television shows and movies. And there’s a corollary that’s at least as important: Can love be rekindled once it’s cooled? Joe Beam, Ph.D., has spent his career helping couples restore lost love and repair relationships on the brink.

“Anyone can find and experience love, relationships can be built to last, and relationships can be rescued if they fail,” he said. Dr. Beam has personal experience rekindling lost love. He speaks openly about how he and his wife, Alice, divorced after 15 years of marriage, then remarried three years later.

After spending a decade as a pastor, Dr. Beam studied clinical psychology and earned a Ph.D. from the University of Sydney in Australia. He researched scholars, marriage and love experts worldwide and worked with thousands of singles and couples in all stages of marital happiness to provide him with information he crafted into his Marriage Helper resources. He’s written more than a dozen books on marriage, parenting, and spiritual warfare and has posted thousands of YouTube videos (Youtube.com/marriagehelper) and blogs that cover a number of relationship topics. Hundreds of thousands of people have enrolled in the courses, workshops and seminars he’s led through the Marriage Helper ministry he founded in 2012 and previously through his 14 years at the helm of the Family Dynamics Institute. Now Dr. Beam continues to write, lead a Marriage seminar for churches and train leaders for his Marriage Helper Turn-Around Workshops. His youngest daughter, Kimberly Beam Holmes, Ph.D., earned her doctorate in psychology and now leads Marriage Helper as CEO and curates its content.

In the last 10 years (from 2016-2026) Dr. Beam numbers more than 25,000 couples who’ve been served through Marriage Helper materials (www.marriagehelper.com).

Dr. Beam has worked for decades developing his innovative approach to relationship repair taught at the three-day Marriage Helper Workshop. Couples who attend the workshops are not quarreling over trivial matters. Most are on the brink of divorce. It’s not uncommon for some to report they have already filed, like the man Dr. Beam remembers who brandished his divorce papers to those assembled. He told the group the only reason he agreed to attend was because his wife promised to sign her papers if he would participate. Three days later, he publicly tore up those same papers. Dr. Beam has seen this situation repeat itself multiple times as a result of a Workshop.

Dr. Beam credits the Marriage Helper Workshop with a three out of four-success rate in saving marriages that were likely headed for divorce. Topics addressed include:

• Conflict resolution

• Anger (healing from and how to prevent future build up)

• Affairs (how to prevent them, how to end them and how to heal)

• Dishonesty

• Trust (how to rebuild it)

• Resentment

• Boundaries

• Mental and emotional health

• Life priorities

• Expectations within marriage

• And, most importantly, how to save your marriage from the crisis it is experiencing

The Marriage Helper Workshop can be accessed live online or in-person. While ideally couples participate together, there are versions for solo spouses. In addition to the team who work at the ministry’s Nashville headquarters, highly trained leaders are spread across the nation and world – including a couple in South Africa. People have sought help from every corner of the globe – even researchers working in Antarctica! Dr. Beam invites therapists and counselors interested in his process to observe the workshop or participate with their spouse at no cost.

The Marriage Helper Workshop draws from the process Dr. Beam calls The LovePath, which teaches people how to fall in love and rekindle love lost. In his book, The Art of Falling in Love: 4 Steps to Falling in Love, Staying in Love, Renewing Lost Love, published originally in 2009, Dr. Beam unpacks what he calls “the 4 Guaranteed Steps to Falling in Love.”

“Love is not some magical thing that suddenly appears or disappears. It is a process. Learn the process and you can use it to develop, deepen, or rescue true love,” he wrote. “The LovePath is a road map for a life of love that shows us where to walk tomorrow. It gives us hope and the chance for a new beginning.”

The journey starts with attraction, which leads to acceptance, attachment and aspiration, “where the relationship passes from the ordinary to the extraordinary.”

Dr. Beam breaks attraction into four categories: physical, intellectual, emotional and spiritual – for which he created the acronym PIES. He describes attraction as something that spouses can and should continue to cultivate, and especially if they have drifted apart. But he frames the process as becoming one’s best self, not just to win back another, but for the sake of one’s own wellbeing and confidence.

He acknowledges the impossibility of competing with Madison Avenue’s definition of youthful beauty but encourages men and women to “be as physically attractive as you can be at your age and situation in life.” He also noted that increasing the other PIES components can compensate for a lack of physical beauty.

Dr. Beam describes intellectual attraction “when someone stimulates your thinking. You realize this is a person with whom you can have meaningful conversations, someone with whom you are proud to be associated, and who stimulates you to grow mentally.”

Connecting emotionally is a crucial factor throughout the life of a relationship, he wrote. “Emotional attraction is finally established when both people display caring, tenderness, and emotional investment in each other.” For a marriage to reach the highest levels of fulfillment there must be a shared spiritual component. “That means shared meaning for life, purpose, values, morals and deep beliefs.”

In short, “to make yourself the most attractive you can possibly be, take care of your body, stimulate your mind, find peace and happiness in your heart and provide for your soul,” he wrote.

After attraction, Dr. Beam moves people down the LovePath to acceptance, where he claims, “the single most important ingredient between partners is respect.”

As a couple masters attachment and grows “wiser as partners, deeper in intimacy, better at giving, and more joyful in receiving, the marriage can either spiral upward or downward on the LovePath. The key word in a marriage that spirals upward is cooperation. The key word in a marriage that spirals downward to destruction is control.” Dr. Beam names the upward spiral aspiration and cautions against its opposite. “No one ever intends to bring about their own unhappiness – but it happens with the accumulation of smaller choices that are unhealthy and unloving.”

But hope is available. Dr. Beam believes that just as any marriage can be lost, any marriage can be saved. That is, after all, the premise not just of his book but of the Marriage Helper Workshop. Couples must stop doing the things that are destroying the marriage and start doing the things that lead to the right direction on the LovePath.

“Keep learning, keep growing and in particular, in awareness of what’s important to your spouse,” he said. “If the marriage is lacking and you want to put it back together, doing those things (to become attractive) might fix it. That’s where you start. That’s something you can do something about. We’re trying to save the marriage you are in now.” And if their spouse does not respond, a person still will have developed resiliency and improved self-esteem.

“Follow the LovePath with dedication, and the lack of love will develop into a wonderful love,” he wrote. “The LovePath is the path to true love. Consciously follow it and your love life, and your lover, will be the best part of your life for a lifetime.”