Marriage Help

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Every marriage goes through ups and downs. For some of us, these down times can persist leaving us feeling trapped, helpless and frustrated. Many conclude that the marriage is dead and that their only options are divorce or to live in misery.

Yet there is nearly always something you can do to alleviate your situation. …

SmartLoving Courses and Seminars

Research has shown that in many cases of marital stress, marriage education can be more effective and helpful to couples than counselling.

There are a number of excellent marriage education courses that couples can do that will help you improve your marriage.

  1. SmartLoving BreakThrough Online is a short course for use by individual spouses (not strictly a couple's course) with or without their spouse. It is also available as a live course in some places. The film above (Forgiveness) is from this course.
  2. The Marriage Kit online is is a short course for couples adapted from our secular platform (The Stick Kit). It is a solid marriage formation experience for couples at all life stages and is a good option for couples in stable relationships such as those who are rebuilding their relationship after recovering from a crisis. Although fully consistent with Catholic teaching, it is suitable for couples from diverse religious backgrounds.

SmartLoving also offers private coaching sessions to those enrolled in one or more of our courses.

When a Couple’s Course is NOT a good idea.

However, there are some situations where a couple's course might aggravate your situation. If any of the following apply to you we’d recommend you postpone your plans for marriage education while you pursue other alternatives:

  1. One spouse is vigorously opposed to attending the marriage education class. We’ve seen it many times in our courses; one spouse desperately wants to come and nags or manoeuvres the other spouse to get them there. It’s almost always a disaster – no one likes to be manipulated so please don’t do this. It is not fair to your spouse and will not help improve your marriage. Moreover, it will prejudice your spouse against marriage education in the future.
  2. One or both spouses has an addiction or mental illness. In this circumstance, you really need professional assistance to give you individual support. It doesn’t exclude the possibility of marriage education later and in fact, many counsellors will refer their recovering couples to a marriage education class once the relationship is stabilised.
  3. There is systematic physical or sexual abuse. If you are victim of violence, you need to get out before you can do anything for your marriage. When there is such an abuse of power in the relationship, professional help is needed to break the pattern before a marriage education class will help.
  4. There is an ongoing affair. When there is a third party operating in the marriage, working to undermine it, marriage education is not the first priority – reestablishing the boundaries to protect the marriage needs to happen first. Again, sometimes professional assistance may be required to stablize the marriage and reestablish these healthy boundaries.

General Counselling including telecounselling

Pastoral Solutions Institute | Catholic Counselors to help strengthen and support you on your spiritual and emotional journey.

Catholic Psych Institute | Catholic Psychologists with an integrated approach to therapy grounded in Catholic theology.

Forgiveness & Healing

The Institute for Marital Healing | Strengthening Catholic marriages and families through a time-tested approach to marital therapy.

International Forgiveness Institute | Healing Hearts, Building Peace. Resources for couples, families, adults, survivors.

Unbound (Deliverance Prayer Ministry) |  A safe, loving and effective prayer model for freedom in Christ.

Beginning Experience | Peer grief resolution for separated, divorced and widowed persons, and children of these losses.

Midlife

Survive Midlife | An online resource hub and course for husbands or wives whose spouse is in the grip of a midlife crisis

Infidelity

Extra-marital Affairs Resource Centre | An infidelity recovery service for couples, including print and digital publications.

Not Just Friends | A leading expert on infidelity in the modern age with practical advice on recovery for couples. 

Addictions

Faithful & True Ministries | Support for those with pornography addiction

Strive 21 | A 21 day detox program for men - Free

Covenant Eyes | Internet filtering and accountability program

For Your Marriage - Addictions | Tips on spotting trouble and dealing with it from the US Catholic Bishops. 

Fight the New Drug | Information and programs to help overcome porn addiction 

Magdala Ministries | A place of honesty, hope, and healing for women of faith struggling with sexual addiction. 

Connected: Recovery from Pornography | An online group counselling experience to help men recover from the obsessional use of pornography. Also, Reconnected for the spouse.

Divorce Alternatives

Alexander House | A Catholic, international apostolate dedicated to “proclaiming the beauty, goodness and truth” of God’s design for marriage 

Divorce Buster | A comprehensive website, including print and digital publications by world-renowned therapist, Michelle Weiner-Davis.

The Third Option | Most struggling couples see only two options: Painful marriage or divorce. But there is a Third Option: a way to a better, renewed marriage.

Retrouvaille | A program to help couples heal and renew their marriage.

Divorce & Annulment

Divorce and the Catholic Church | Q&A booklet from the Australian Catholic Bishops 

Rose Sweet | Coaching and resources for divorced Catholics

Posts from the SmartLoving Blog

How Often Do Men Need to Have Sex?

By Guest Author | October 3, 2015

Shaunti Feldhahn is an author and social researcher who specialises in marital relationships. In this article she responds to a question from a female reader about how often men need sex: “Even though I can go weeks or months and not miss it, he says he wants me to want it like he does.” Shaunti…

Finding a different path to fruitfulness

By Francine & Byron Pirola | May 11, 2020

Book Review By Jenny Brinkworth With one in six Australian couples experiencing infertility, a new book by Debra Vermeer will be a welcome resource for Catholic couples. When Catholic convert and respected journalist Debra Vermeer was grappling with the reality that she and her husband Tony could not conceive a child, she found the shelves…

Take Five: The Art of Apology

By Francine & Byron Pirola | June 13, 2013

Sadly many couples don’t actually know how to apologise and reconcile when they’ve hurt their spouse. People think that it’s obvious, or that it should just be instinctual, or that love should make it all happen spontaneously.   Well it isn’t and it doesn’t.   We see too many wounded couples stuck in a pattern…

Quit Brooding!

By Francine & Byron Pirola | February 24, 2016

Part 2 of It Takes One to Tango You are dissatisfied with your marriage. Your spouse may or may not share your disillusionment. Your spouse may or may not be willing to work with you towards a more loving, intimate connection. But without him/her, there’s not a lot you can do to improve your situation,…

Anatomy of an Argument

By Francine & Byron Pirola | August 16, 2012

Have you ever found that you seem to be having the same argument over and over? Sometimes this may be because you didn’t resolve the issue in the previous argument, and so inevitably, it comes up again. But sometimes, there is a déjà vu sense when the issue is new – that comes about because…

Autopsy of an Argument

By Francine & Byron Pirola | August 17, 2012

How do you recover from the carnage of an argument? Here’s a game plan to help you heal the rift and learn from the experience! 1. Stop:  Allow yourselves time to cool off. Separate and practice some self-soothing techniques such as deep breathing, taking a walk, having a cup of tea, meditating, consciously relaxing each part…