The Grace-Filled Couple

The Grace-filled Couple

Religious practice is often a point of difference for couples, especially if they each come from a different religious tradition. Regrettably, couples frequently respond by making spirituality a taboo topic. Even for couples of the same faith, sharing their spiritual life is a challenge. In our marriage, one of us expresses their spirituality in a…

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Take Five: Improve your Marriage

Do you feel trapped in a dissatisfying or troubled marriage? Do you feel powerless to ‘fix’ it because your spouse refuses to join you in counselling or a marriage enrichment course?   Take heart! There are lots of things a husband or wife can do on their own that can have a dramatic impact. Here…

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Loving 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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Respect & Cherishment

What’s the Diff? While everyone experiences love uniquely, some clear gender patterns have emerged through relationship research. In one study, when given the option between the negative choices of being ‘alone and unloved in all the world’ or ‘inadequate and disrespected by everyone’, 74% of men preferred be alone and unloved, compared to only minority…

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Daily Appreciation

We all love to be appreciated. It feels good; it helps us to feel positive towards ourselves and towards the person expressing the appreciation. It is a genuinely loving gesture to express appreciation to another and, in marriage particularly, it is a positive relationship habit. Why is expressing appreciation of our spouse such a powerful…

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Marriage: to be happy or to be holy?

”… And they lived happily ever after”… it’s the ending of the fairy tale love story and has become the expected story line of most modern day couples. Swept away by passion and the overwhelming experience of ‘falling in love’, couples expect the wedding to seal their happiness in permanent (and effortless) marital bliss. Of…

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