Communication
Knowing what to love
You can’t love what you don’t know. This saying has profoundly influenced our marriage and our faith. About once a decade we book tickets to the opera in the expectation of a romantic date night brimming with artistic delight. We have to confess though, we usually come home vaguely disappointed. Not being particularly musical, we…
Read MoreDeep Impact Conversations
“How was your day?” It’s one of the most common questions couples ask each other and either leads to a dead-end response like, “fine” or “busy” (which usually means “I don’t want to talk about it”), or a long-winded description of meetings, frustrations, errands and other ‘busy’ stuff. It’s what we call a ‘data transfer’…
Read MoreThe Art of Apology
Have you ever experienced the situation when someone has apologised but, while the words were said it lacked something, making it difficult for you to accept it? Sadly, most of us are not as good at apologising as we need to be. We think that it’s obvious, should just be instinctual, or that our love…
Read MoreWhen I am winning, WE are usually losing
“You can either be right, or you can be one, but you can’t be both”. Our mentors were talking to us about a frustrating argument, and we were both digging in. They were right, of course, but we struggled to put it into practice. It would not be the last time either. Like just this…
Read MoreProtesting Against Disconnection
Have you ever had an argument and been left wondering what it was actually about? We can remember a number of occasions where we dug in and defended our opinion with great vigor, only to find ourselves twenty minutes later losing track of what we were defending. Somehow, the original point of disagreement – which…
Read MoreHear Me, Touch Me, Know Me
In relationships, the word ‘intimacy’ is often used as a euphemism for sex, but this is a very narrow and impoverished view. Some people have suggested that the meaning is better encapsulated through its sounds: “in-to-me-see” better captures the idea that intimacy involves the knowledge of the interior life of each other. In any relationship,…
Read MoreThree Ways to a Resilient Marriage
We’ve been hearing from many of our SmartLoving leaders around the world looking for help in supporting couples under stress. There’s certainly lots of stress going around with pandemic induced changes and uncertainty. It got us reflecting on marital resilience – the ability of a relationship to endure and persevere through difficulties. There is quite…
Read MoreStonewalling: A Silent Killer in Marriage
Stonewalling – aka ‘the silent treatment’ – is common in many marriages. Never helpful and poorly understood, we ignore it at our risk. Stonewalling is the practice of withdrawing from an interaction, shutting down and closing ourselves off from the other. We may be physically still present, but we become un-responsive, emotionally withdrawn, and non-communicative.…
Read MoreDefending our hearts
Is defensiveness crippling your relationship? Do you feel regularly on edge, reactive and punchy? Read on for our process for managing defensiveness. Recently, Byron shared a new idea with Francine. Instead of encouragement, Francine responded with “when will you get time to do that?!” The conversation immediately terminated in gloomy withdrawal. Afterwards we unpacked the…
Read MoreKiss to Connect
Many couples find the excitement of sex somewhat diminished within a few years of marriage. Their physical intimacy seems somehow perfunctory, unimaginative, even boring. Soon they are moving through life with regular sexual encounters but little connection. Some years on, even the regular sex may become less frequent and sometimes entirely absent. One way that…
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