Truth on Tap 2012

SmartLoving: Relationships that really work from dating to marriage Last week, Francine and Byron Pirola spoke to the youth at Truth on Tap in the Brookvale pub. They addressed key issues surrounding marriage breakdowns and focused on the concept of ‘Smart Loving’: how to love your spouse or fiancé so that both are cared for…

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Criticism Cancer

Criticism Can Kill Criticism kills not only the self-esteem of the one criticized, it also kills the spirit of optimism in the criticizer. In marriage it is a deadly cancer, eroding our trust and destroying confidence in our relationship. Criticism damages our sense of worthiness. When we are criticized, our doubts about ourselves are confirmed.…

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On a Mission to Love

Invest in Love Our ten year old son is a great rugby player. He spends hours in the backyard kicking the ball around, usually over the neighbours’ fence! He eats, sleeps and talks rugby. And if he’s not playing rugby, he’s watching it on TV or ‘playing’ it on the X-Box. It’s not surprising that…

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Married Singles Unhappily Ever After

We all start out in marriage with a dream; a dream of a life-long, love affair. But after a year or two, disillusionment sets in and the unreserved trust and intimacy we enjoyed becomes tentative and fragile. We join the army of other ‘married singles’ living our parallel lives and wishing that the other sex…

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Finding Reverse

Stuck in drive When visiting Rome recently, we borrowed a friend’s car to drive out of the city for a day. Everything was going fine (despite the fact that Roman drivers ignore the lane markings!), until we turned down a one way street the wrong way. Another car, traveling in the right direction, stopped, waiting…

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Mid-Life Madness and other Stressors

Midlife Madness and other Stressors

As mid-lifers in the midst of working through some of our ‘issues’, we are acutely aware of how easy it would be to let our individual stuff derail our marriage. It’s normal for a person in midlife to be irritable and volatile. Some react with depressive symptoms, others get angry and aggressive, others withdraw or…

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The Language of Love

A sacrament makes visible in a human way something that is invisible or spiritual. In other words, a sacrament images and reveals the mystery of God. Every sacrament has two key aspects which make the sacrament visible: words and gesture. In marriage, the sacramental words are the wedding vows, in effect “I freely give myself…

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The Pill and Partner Choice

The Pill and Partner Choice

It has long been known that hormonal contraceptives diminish a woman’s natural sexual drive (also called ‘libido’). Now there is real life evidence that the Pill also affects a woman’s partner choice. In a study published in Royal Society B: Biological Sciences,  the authors speculate that hormonal contraceptive use before marriage could have a long lasting impact…

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Reconciliation

Love needs more than "I'm sorry".

Love means more than saying “I’m sorry”. There’s a difference between the ‘I’ centred statement “I’m sorry”, and the other centred statement, “Will you please forgive me?” The ‘I’ centred statement simply acknowledges a fact. A person might recognise that they behaved poorly, inconsiderately, insensitively, thoughtlessly or carelessly. They might also just want to move…

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New Product: Sexuality as Gift

SmartLoving @Home - Sexuality as Gift

In a world where sexuality is crassly exploited it can be difficult to connect with its giftedness. Yet gift it is: given by God to each man or woman to draw him or her into love. To be human is to be sexual. Sexuality is fundamental to being human – after all, every single cell…

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