When Marriages Rise from the Dead
The power of forgiveness can bring even the most broken marriage back to life. One spouse willing to take the first step is sometimes enough.
Don’t Exasperate Your Kids: What Every Dad Needs to Know
Are you building your kids up or wearing them down? Discover practical ways to become the dad who makes his children feel safe, known, and loved.
Dad Bashing
In contemporary Australian society, fathers are increasingly depicted as insignificant or inherently flawed within family life. This cultural trend, often described as 'dad bashing', reflects a broader pattern of diminishing the value of fatherhood.
Echoes from Childhood
Parents are our first educators because we learn through them how relationships work, and that forms the foundation for our adult relationships. No matter how wonderful our families are, they’re all limited and wounded somehow – it’s part of the human condition. The reality is, we’re being formed from childhood for both good and for trouble.
When Mercy is Hard to Do
Every-day offences and deficits in our character make it necessary for every couple to practise mercy as a regular, even daily habit. When we fail to do this, minor upsets accumulate into overwhelming piles of resentment and shame that seem to be insurmountable.
Making the Connection…with Arguments
Rightly or wrongly, arguments happen. Whatever the trigger, according to author and therapist Sue Johnson, arguments between lovers are essentially a ‘protest against disconnection’. The subtext of every argument is a question: Do you care about me? Love me? Know me?
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.
Defending Our Hearts
Is defensiveness crippling your relationship? Do you feel regularly on edge, reactive and punchy? While the intention of our instinctual reaction is to protect ourselves from harm, three things happen in a chronically defended state.
Attached – For Better or Worse
An intentional marriage that is loving and affirming, is a powerful way to heal the wounds of insecure attachment. It’s one of the great graces of marriage as we grow in attachment to each other by providing consistent and responsive care.
Defending Our Hearts
Defensiveness is a self-protective response to a perceived judgement, criticism, rejection, or risk of future disappointment. While it is a natural reaction, ironically, it rarely protects our hearts.
