Sex & Fertility
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 soap opera than real life…
Read MoreCan we change the subject, please?
One of the hardest conversations to have as a couple, is one about our sex life. Yet lovemaking is central to the Sacrament of Matrimony and is crucial to the flourishing of our relationship. There are couples in every one of our communities who have never once had an honest conversation about their sex life. Not because they don’t love each other.…
Read MoreMarriage: to be happy or to be holy?
“And they lived happily ever after”… it’s the ending of the fairy tale love story and has become the expected story line of most modern day couples. Swept away by passion and the overwhelming experience of ‘falling in love’, couples expect the wedding to seal their happiness in permanent (and effortless) marital bliss. Of course,…
Read MoreRestoring Fertility…. God’s Way
The Catholic Church has some surprising treasures. No – we’re not thinking of the Vatican museums or its countless historic churches! We’re thinking of the remarkable services that exist to support couples with subfertility. Restorative Reproductive Medicine is a rapidly growing field that seeks to treat subfertility by restoring it to healthy functioning, rather…
Read MoreThe Maybe Baby Conversation
How do couples decide when and how many children to have? The Maybe Baby Conversation can Help. During our engagement, we took lessons in a Fertility Awareness Method (FAM), then known as Natural Family Planning. Wanting to live a Catholic marriage, we accepted the Church’s wisdom and rejected contraception to follow her moral teaching.…
Read MoreThe Natural Revolution
Rediscovering Fertility Awareness We’ve been promoting and teaching Fertility Awareness Methods (FAMs – also known as Natural Family Planning) for over two decades. One of the things we hear often, is how couples, and especially women, lament that they didn’t hear about FAMs earlier. Disenchanted with popular contraceptives, they welcome a natural…
Read MoreTeaching love to university students
Later this year, population experts and pronatalists will meet in Texas to explore practical solutions to declining worldwide fertility. It’s one of several signs that attitudes to fertility rates are shifting. Fertility rates have been in decline for decades, and not just in developed countries like North America, Europe and Australia. China and India have…
Read MoreThe Ecology of the Body
When we were preparing for marriage some decades ago, we undertook training in Fertility Awareness Methods (FAMs). As graduates in biological science, we got right into the study and application in anticipation of beginning married life. Five years and three children later, we took up a leadership role in the fertility awareness space and Francine…
Read MoreKiss to Connect
Many couples find the excitement of sex somewhat diminished within a few years of marriage. Their physical intimacy seems somehow perfunctory, unimaginative, even boring. Soon they are moving through life with regular sexual encounters but little connection. Some years on, even the regular sex may become less frequent and sometimes entirely absent. One way that…
Read MoreMyths about Natural Fertility Methods
Despite decades of research that have made Fertility Awareness Methods (FAMs) an effective way for couples to manage their fertility, myths still abound. It’s time to correct the misinformation about these life-affirming alternatives to invasive birth control. July 25 marked the 55th anniversary of Humanae Vitae – St Pope Paul VI’s document on birth control.…
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