Making your marriage last the distance

making marriage last

Falling in love is easy! Staying in love requires deliberate effort. We all start out in marriage full of hope, brimming with love and unbounded generosity towards our spouse. Yet rarely do those euphoric experiences of early love persist unabated. Disillusionment edges in as our natural selfishness and thoughtlessness crowd out our earlier bliss-generated altruism.…

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When Mercy is Hard to Do

Our last column (Bringing Mercy to Marriage) generated some interesting comments from readers on our blog so we thought we’d expand on the topic – what it is, what it isn’t and how to be merciful when your spouse is seriously flawed. All of us are prone to selfishness. The task of Christian maturity requires…

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TIME – The Currency of Relationships

There’s an old adage in the world of parenting advice: Kids spell LOVE as T.I.M.E. Kids don’t need things nearly much as they need a parent’s attention and availability. It’s a classic mistake that we make all too often; we give them stuff we’ve bought instead of the thing they most need from us –…

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St Valentines Day 2017

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For almost a decade, the Australian Catholic Marriage & Family Council has produced a printable flyer for use on the Sunday before St Valentine’s Day. This year, The Parish & Marriage Resource Centre is pleased to take up this task. Why the fuss about St Valentine? It’s true, St Valentine is a ‘minor’ saint in…

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The day after the big day

Yesterday we celebrated our daughter’s wedding to a wonderful man and family. Our daughter Kiara looked absolutely radiant with an interior joy; her now-husband Doug, was magnificent – strong, steady and adoring. Their evident love for each other lit up the church and the celebration that followed. As parents of the bride we were afforded…

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Marriage Nomads

We’ve been reading a book on the writings of St John of the Cross and in one section the author talks about perseverance in the ‘Nomad Culture’. St John was a Spanish Carmelite in the fifteenth century so we were confused by this reference to Nomad Culture – it didn’t sound like he was talking…

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How Often Do Men Need to Have Sex?

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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…

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Love Overcomes F.O.M.O.

In our previous column, we talked about FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) and the harm it does to relationships, especially among young adults who can so easily be diverted from pursuing enduring values and life ambitions by the fear that their peers are having more momentary fun than they are. Of course, it’s not just…

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Choosing to Love

Mothers Day Reflection If there is one thing that makes motherhood so worth celebrating, it’s a mother’s capacity for love for her children. Whether it’s her willingness to give over her body to nourish a newborn, her patience with the endless ‘but why’ questions of a toddler, or the testing rebellion of a teenager, mothers…

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