Why is Forgiveness So Hard?
As we work more with couples, and get more life experience under our own belt, we’re gaining better insight into why forgiveness is so elusive. Here are some of the reasons why people commonly resist forgiveness.
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 ...
Experience is Not Always the Best Teacher
Lots of people think that dating (and being sexually intimate) with a number of different people before marriage is an essential part of forming a successful union. But is this kind of ‘experience’ the best way to prepare for marriage? A lot of people think that having a few failed ...
How Can I Make Your Day Better?
I read a blog post recently from a husband who brought his marriage back from the brink with this one simple, daily habit. Each morning he asked his wife: how can I make your day better? The wife was suspicious at first and deliberately gave him tedious and demanding tasks, ...
The Autopilot Marriage
Crammed schedules, kids to care for, a demanding boss, the ever-present television. No wonder our attentiveness to our couple relationship erodes over time, leaving us with less connection, less spark, and less intimacy. Without an active, intentional mindset, most contemporary marriages end up on ‘autopilot’. During courtship, our relationship is ...
The Power of Ritual
Routines can be very useful in keeping our lives purposeful and organised. Rituals are like routines with one important difference -- they have positive emotional meaning. Rituals connect us with others by providing a focus or activity that enables us to interact together in an enjoyable and meaningful way. Almost ...
How Senior Couples Make Marriage Better
In a culture that glorifies youth and sanctions the euthanising of the sick and elderly, it’s easy to lose sight of the gift of seniors. Here are three ways that senior couples make marriage better for all of us. Earlier this year, Pope Francis released a series of homilies on ...
Being the Rock
While much in the way of traditional gender roles has shifted in modern times, most women I know still want a man who can be the rock in the relationship. But just what does being the rock entail? I asked this question in the Community, and this is what a few ...
Going From Good To Better
Marital health is about more than minimising conflict. If we want to go from ‘good’ to ‘better’, we need to capitalise on the positives. Most marriage counselling and education focuses on conflict and incompatibility. It seeks to help couples find constructive ways of dealing with challenges in the relationship. It’s ...
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. ...
Making a Change for the Better
Change is difficult. It can also be complicated. Despite our best intentions, sustained change often eludes us. We’ve had many spouses tell us that their husband or wife promised to change, and things were good for a while, but then there was a relapse. Their good intentions were not enough ...
Let’s Stick Together
“For an increasing number of long-term marriages, it’s no longer a case of ‘until death do us part,’ it’s a matter of until the children depart from the family nest,” writes Rachel Browne in a Sydney Morning Herald article, “Parents wait until children go, then do the same thing.” Suddenly ...
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 ...
Love is a Battlefield
Editorial Note: Songs capture moments and sometimes the moments live on. ‘Love is a Battlefield’ is such a song from the eighties that people still sing today and for good reason. The truth hurts and the truth heals. Listen if you dare. ~~~ We are young, heartache to heartache we ...
Passion and Domesticity
One of the greatest challenges couples face in our contemporary age is the presumption of sexual excitement. When the romance wanes, marriages are at risk -- but what’s a couple to do when passion is in decline? We’re all in favour of a vibrant and passionate sex life for couples ...
Victory for Mothers and Fathers
Believe it or not, any victory for mothers is also a victory for fathers, and ultimately for children. Sall Dover, a new young mother, after protesting on Twitter about the forced use of the Orwellian phrase "birthing parent", has scored a victory for motherhood. It takes a man and a ...
The Most Beautiful Woman in the World – the Art of Eternal Love
Keeping the flame of love alive in your marriage through the years, is the best gift you can give your children -- a daily example of how to cherish their mother, no matter what life brings. “It will never happen to me”; “No way -- too much fun to have”; ...
Finding Our Way to Heaven
We’ve been listening to Mike and Alicia Hernon’s podcast called Messy Families. One of their recurring messages for parents is: stop worrying about getting your kids to heaven -- parenting is about helping you get there! When we first heard them say this it stopped us in our tracks. Mike ...
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 ...
The Passion Principle
One of the great delights of running marriage enrichment retreats for couples is hearing all the amazing love stories. From beginning to end, every one of them has mystery, radical self-sacrifice and epic persistence in some capacity. We often joke that our own love story is more akin to a ...
Business Lessons for Marriage
Doing business requires finesse in communicating with your clients. Similar skills and strategies can be applied to your relationship with your spouse. Byron’s life-long career has been as an advisor to large companies on their strategic directions. As an outsider to the company trying to help its leaders make difficult ...
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, ten or twenty years down the track. Whether ...
Relationships Matter: Keys to Be a Good Father & Build a Good Marriage
Harvey MacKay said, “The quality of your life is determined by the quality of your relationships.” MacKay knows a thing or two. Harvey is a very successful businessman, married for over 50 years to his architect wife, with three children and eleven grandchildren. Harvey MacKay has sold over 10 million ...
Three Ways to a Resilient Marriage
We’ve been hearing from many of our SmartLoving leaders around the world looking for help in supporting couples under stress. There’s certainly a lot of stress going around with pandemic-induced changes and uncertainty. It got us reflecting on marital resilience -- the ability of a relationship to endure and persevere ...
The Little Things in Marriage
In marriage, the little things are really the big things. In business, it is well recognised that getting the ‘big things right’ is important, but it is often the so-called ‘little things’ that make the difference between good and great companies. We were reminded of this the other day when ...
Unity in Couple Decision-Making
Behind every behaviour or decision that you make, is a value -- something that you hold in high esteem and is advanced in some way by the action. For example, making the choice to work back late, may reflect any one of a number of values, such as: having pride ...
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The Daily Dad is a forum for Dads to be able to express themselves and encourage other dads. Mothers write articles as well. The opinions of the various writers are not necessarily the opinion of Dads4Kids. Read More
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