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What Women Really Want
Part 2 of the Quest for Happiness Series If equality in work isn’t the answer for making happy wives (see Smart Loving, The Equality Myth), what is? According to the same study that looked at the division of labour*, the best predictor of marital satisfaction among wives was emotional connection. ‘Emotion work’, as psychologists call…
Read MoreThe Equality Myth
Part 1 of the Quest for Happiness Series Inequality in the division of labour at home has long been a sore point for married women. In theory, the egalitarian model of the modern dual-income, shared-homemaking marriage should solve this problem; as women move into the paid workforce, men would assume more responsibility at home.Right? This…
Read MoreMarriage Enemy #1: Lethargy
We asked a marriage counselor friend of ours about why a marriage fails. We were expecting a long complex answer so we already had a bottle of wine open. Yet her answer was short. According to her, if there are no addictions or mental illness involved, then most marriages fail through simple, straight-forward laziness. Almost…
Read MoreSex: for pleasure or life-giving love?
From the so-called ‘articles’ in Playboy to public billboards, the social discussion on sex and its function is ever more obvious. The cultural view of sex is that it’s an activity. We talk about ‘doing it’ and ‘we did it’; an activity primarily done or performed. Moreover, the activity of sex is very clearly categorised…
Read MoreIntentional Intercourse
All natural fertility methods require the couple to abstain from sexual intercourse during the time of combined fertility if they wish to avoid pregnancy.
Read MoreKnot Yet! #4: Marriage Horizon
What comes first: maturity or marriage? Most of us think that maturity should precede marriage, but research suggests that marriage itself is a maturing process. Marriage and family are well known to have a ‘civilising’ influence on participants. We really noticed this impact in ourselves when we had our first child. All of a sudden…
Read MoreKnot Yet! #2: Age does matter…sort of
Does age matter when it comes to marriage survival? Almost everyone has an opinion, so let’s do some fact checking! It seems like good advice – well-meaning parents offer it all the time… “you’re too young to get married, you don’t know what you want from life yet.” In fact, the prevailing ‘wisdom’ of the…
Read MoreKnot Yet! #3: Ticking Clocks
‘The biological clock’ is phrase often used to describe the sense of urgency childless women experience as they age. But are women the only ones whose fertility is age-limited? We’re all familiar with the proverbial ‘biological clock’ that relentlessly taunts childless women reminding them that their time is running out. It’s one of the reasons…
Read MoreKnot Yet! #1: Too Young to Wed
When is a person too young to marry? The age at first marriage has differed throughout history and cultures. It’s no news to anyone that the age at first marriage has been steadily rising in almost every developed nation over the past four decades. In the 1960’s both men and women typically married in their…
Read MoreLoving Smart
How to Love Over many years we’ve come to realise that most of our mistakes in love come from the assumption that everyone experiences love the same way. A number of authors have developed frameworks to help us understand the foolishness of this idea. For example, in ‘The Five Love Languages’ Gary Chapman recognises that…
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