Long Live the Ten-Second Kiss

In a world that pulls couples apart, a simple ten-second kiss IS a small act of love with big rewards.  Regular readers of SmartLoving will be familiar with the Connect Kiss – a daily connection ritual we promote to couples. It consists of a smoochy kiss that lasts at least ten seconds.  We recommend it…

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Intentional Relationship

  No matter how easy it is to fall in love, staying in love requires attention and effort. Most people drift into love, marriage and family without a whole lot of conscious planning about the kind of relationship they want to have five, 10 or 20 years down the track. Whether you are married, engaged…

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Keeping 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…

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The 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…

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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…

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The Growth Mindset

At our daughter’s recent award assembly, the school Principal addressed the topic of ‘Growth Mindset’. She noted how education was more than merely preparing students for exams and aiming for maximum marks on their university entrance ranking. In a country where we have national examinations of all school children every two years from the age…

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Power of Prayer

Prayer does not change God, it does not always change the situation, but it does change the heart of the person praying. Many people do not trust prayer, or doubt it’s power to have an impact. After all, we’ve all had experiences of praying earnestly for something, only to be disappointed when what we sought…

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Making marriage last is all in the Intention

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No matter how easy it may seem to fall in love, staying in love requires attention and effort. We all start out in marriage bright in hope and full of brimming love. Yet rarely do those wonderful, euphoric experiences of early love persist unabated; for many of us disillusionment creeps its way into our consciousness…

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Deep 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’…

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The 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…

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