Wedding Stress Tamed!

Planning a wedding is busy and stressful. There’s lots to think about and lots of factors to consider in every decision: the budget, the aesthetic, and the cost-benefit.   The practical reality of organising the many details is complicated by the tension of negotiating differences between each other while navigating the expectations of extended family and close friends. Well-meaning parents, siblings and friends can inadvertently ramp…

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Spare the Left-Overs

It’s that time of year again – the season of joy and gluttony. By the time Christmas day is over, our refrigerator will be filled with yummy, delectable left-overs. Unfortunately, not all left-overs are so delicious. Too often in a marriage, instead of our best selves, we serve up the less than appetising left-overs. We…

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Marriage Lessons from a Dog Trainer 

A few months ago, our young Australian Shepherd went to doggie boot camp. Over five weeks she was trained by professional dog-handlers to walk calmly, socialise nicely and keep her focus under the pressure of distractions.   Video footage taken by the trainers proved she was capable. What really remained was the question: can her owners be similarly trained?  When the time came to…

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Pandemic Weddings – Keeping our Eye on What Matters 

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For those who had a wedding planned this year, the disruption imposed by Covid19 has created all sorts of complications, frustration and additional expense.  Last week, a young man from New Zealand called us. His fiancé lives in Canada and neither country will permit the other to enter for a wedding. Fortunately, they discovered that they could meet in France, get married there, and…

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Marriage on Fire

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At the time of writing, fires are still blazing across the Australian landscape with many tragedies of life and property lost. Even if not directly impacted, many of us have friends, family and colleagues who are. And it is not over yet. In our case, Christmas Day saw Byron and two of our sons depart…

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BreakThrough Strategy – TaNGo

Do you feel stuck in your relationship? Going nowhere? Frustrated and hurt by your spouse’s behavior?   Read on to learn about TaNGo, a powerful strategy from the BreakThrough workshop. For additional notes, visit the slide show at http://www.haikudeck.com/p/vT9bK4GbW4/breakthrough# Breakthrough – Created with Haiku Deck, presentation software that inspires To find out more about the BreakThrough…

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Mid-Life Madness and other Stressors

Midlife Madness and other Stressors

As mid-lifers in the midst of working through some of our ‘issues’, we are acutely aware of how easy it would be to let our individual stuff derail our marriage. It’s normal for a person in midlife to be irritable and volatile. Some react with depressive symptoms, others get angry and aggressive, others withdraw or…

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Anatomy of an Argument

Anatomy of an Argument

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…

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