Communication
How to Help a Struggling Marriage – A Catholic Guide
“I wanted to help, but I didn’t know how.” If you’ve been in the position of having a friend, parishioner, or family member confide their marital problems, you’re in the majority – 69% of adult men and 78% of adult women have been there. For priests, we suspect that number reaches 100%. Unless you’ve had…
Read MoreKeeping Love Alive in the Present Moment
Our romantic memories are the fabric of our couple history. When we reconnect with these memories, we reinvigorate our emotional connection in the present and set a positive tone for our future together. The Power of Memory The Hebrew word for “remember” literally means “make me present to you.” This beautiful insight captures the true…
Read MorePursuing a Lasting Love
Lessons from St. Valentine | A reflection for World Marriage Day 2025 As we approach World Marriage Day on February 9th, we are reminded of another celebrated figure of marital devotion – St. Valentine. Today, his name evokes thoughts of flowers and romantic dinners. Yet St. Valentine’s true legacy speaks to something far more…
Read MoreThe Gift of #staretime
A corporate leader in India recently made headlines by suggesting his employees should work a 90-hour week, quipping, “What do you do sitting at home? How long can you stare at your wife, how long can the wife stare at her husband?” His remarks sparked quite the reaction, with some couples posting photos of themselves…
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 MoreKnowing 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…
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