Posts by Francine & Byron Pirola
Unconditional Love is a Contradiction of Terms
A Story Over the last few months, we have had several conversations with a woman who is struggling with a difficult situation. Her best friend is having an affair and is planning a new life without telling her existing boyfriend with whom she has lived for almost seven years. Not only is this woman distressed…
Read MoreChange Starts Here
Part 4 of It Takes One to Tango. See others in this series here, here. and here. All change in our relationships should start with ourselves. While it’s comforting to be able to blame our spouse for the inadequacies of our marriage, expecting them to change to meet our demands is not only ineffective, it’s not…
Read MoreMaking Stumble-Stone Altars
There will be mistakes. We will make errors and we will mess up in this marriage business. Obstacles and challenges will be part of every romance. The critical issue is how we respond to these inevitable stumbles. We attended a beautiful wedding recently in country NSW and came away inspired by the depths of faith…
Read MoreWhy Reality TV Makes Us Stupider
These days we rightly talk a lot about exploitation and abuse. It comes in many forms and we worry we might walk past it without noticing. Recently 665,000 Australians not only walked past but sat and watched something that we should recognise for what it really is – workplace exploitation abuse. The airing of ‘reality’…
Read MoreForward Planning your Family Planning
Some years ago, I (Francine) was teaching a couple fertility awareness. They had been married five years and assumed that once they discontinued the pill, they would get pregnant straight away. Two years later it still wasn’t happening for them. From what I could see, there was nothing obvious in the their fertility biomarkers that…
Read MoreFamilies on Mission
In 2016 Pope Francis published Amoris Laetitia which translates as the ‘Joy of Love’. The document, the result of discernment over several years and two international gatherings of bishops and other leaders, is a pastoral exploration of the challenges facing families and their role in the Church. Five years on and Pope Francis is again…
Read MoreMyths about Arguments
When it comes to marriage and relationship, there are a lot of myths out there. Here are five of the most common. Myth 1: Good couples don’t argue. The presence or absence of arguments is not a good indicator of the health of a marriage. Some couples who don’t argue are living detached, parallel lives.…
Read MoreWe Married Too Young
Lots of people told us so. Neither of us had really experienced life: Byron at 27 had at least lived out of home for three years. On the other hand, Francine at 21 was still studying, had never had her own bedroom let alone lived independently. From university professors, mentors and friends, she was repeatedly…
Read MoreWhy Two is better than One
One of the more popular posts on the SmartLoving blog features Couple Projects. First published in 2014, our search data over the years shows that its title is a common search theme but the stats really jumped during the pandemic lockdowns of 2020. Faced with spending an unknown amount to time in each other’s company,…
Read MoreHonest Talk about Physical Intimacy – Messy Family Podcast
The sexual intimacy we share as spouses is both wonderful and complicated!
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