We’ve always believed that our platforms are bigger than us. “Influence” comes with responsibility.... As couples, we need to create healthy environments within our homes to start having these hard conversations honestly. Change can only come when we face this head-on

Couples should keep their love pure before it poisons the purest love of all - that between them and their children

I’ve been married fifty years.
If I was to give one piece of advice to young couples, it’d be this: Never lose your temper at the same time. If somebody’s really mad, the other one better make a retreat.

a healthy relationship is when two people equally take turns being the one who steps up when the other is going through a turbulent moment each is capable of listening and holding space each is self-aware enough to check in with themselves and not project onto the other

Were we disposed to define more specifically the conditions necessary to secure the most harmonious matrimonial unions, it would be useless to do so; for unions of this sort never have been, and never will be-with rare exceptions-formed in accordance with a prescribed method independent of any emotional bias. Nor is it probable that such a plan would result in remedying, in any appreciable degree, existing evils. It is a fact too patent to be ignored that a very large share of the unhappiness in the world arises from ill-mated marriages; but it is also true that nearly the whole of this unhappiness might be averted if the parties themselves would endeavor to lessen the differences between them by mutual approximation.

Domestic and matrimonial issues, which have been on the rise for a long time, will decrease if husbands and wives treat each other with love and respect and focus upon the demands of their faith.

The youth should be encouraged to study social work to assist in dealing with GBV. There is a huge gap that needs to be filled in this regard

Celebrity couples should stop living their lives on twitter and Instagram; it’s ok in the real world for couples to disagree.

The support of the communities implies concrete assistance to young couples because it can offer them knowledge and an important wealth of experience, while encouraging them, above all, to open themselves to the presence of God in their lives, a presence that will help them to support their love in a long, faithful, and fruitful marriage. When the parish communities take this responsibility seriously the ministry of marriage preparation has the potential to be a life-giving joy for communities and families. Their love is contagious and does everyone good.

Children cannot grow to psychological maturity in an atmosphere of unpredictability, haunted by the specter of abandonment. Couples cannot resolve in any healthy way the universal issues of marriage — dependency and independency, dominance and submission, freedom and fidelity, for example — without the security of knowing that the act of struggling over these issues will not itself destroy the relationship.

remember, trust blossoms in the absence of control, and vibrant relationships should feel like a balance of freedom and home. your partner should accept you as you are but also help you feel safe enough to do the deep work of healing and growth not because they want to change you but because their presence energizes and inspires you to flourish into greater emotional maturity

Healthy relationships should always begin at the spiritual and intellectual levels - the levels of purpose, motivation, interests, dreams,and personality.

Young people -it is obvious -cannot achieve such a relationship, but they can, if they understand their life properly, grow up slowly to such happiness and prepare themselves for it. They must not forget, when they love, that they are beginners, bunglers of life, apprentices in love- must learn love, and that like all learning wants peace, patience, and composure.

'Tis safest in matrimony to begin with a little aversion.