Online course seeks to enrich married life

By Josh Low

Helping married couples to enrich their relationships is the goal behind a seven-session online course recently run with several couples in the Archdiocese.

Aptly named “The Marriage Course”, topics explore strengthening connections, the art of communication, conflict resolution, the power of forgiveness, good sex, the impact of family and love in action.

Office of Life, Marriage and Family Director, Dr Rachel Bradley, said the course content was helpful, engaging and enriching for married couples.

“I read a line recently in a book about how to build stronger marriages that struck me, ‘the biggest enemy of marriage is everyday life’.

“The reality is, that in our hectic lives, it can often be easy to neglect connecting with each other on a more profound level than discussing what time we need to run out to pick up the kids or who’s cooking dinner this evening,” Dr Bradley said.

“We found that The Marriage Course was a good tool against that, helping to nurture married couples’ relationships.

“We recently ran it with some couples getting together on Monday nights to watch the episodes over Zoom at the same time, with others going through it themselves at home at a more convenient time.”

Huon Valley parishioner Tanya Robbie participated in the course with her husband Anthony and described it as “a good and valuable experience”.

“It was a really good to be given the opportunity to do the course,” she said.

“We’ve been married 20 years, and everything needs maintenance, so we thought it looked like an interesting thing to do.”

Mrs Robbie added that the experience highlighted things she hadn’t previously considered to be important.

“For example, there was one week where the course focused on the influence of your upbringing and how that affects the way you interact with your spouse in marriage, and how it can lead to misunderstandings between couples because they come from different backgrounds.

“It certainly opened up a lot of channels of communication and gave us ideas of ways to tackle things [in everyday life],” she said.

Dr Bradley said with the course’s simplicity and accessibility, she would encourage any couple who would like a free, easy to use course to make full use of it.

“You can sign up for access and then watch them as a couple or you might like to get a group of friends together and run a mini course yourself,” she said.

“I highly recommend making use of such a valuable tool for your marriage.”

To find out more about the course, visit their website at https://themarriagecourse.org/try/the-marriage-course

To build and run your own course with all the resources provided, visit: https://themarriagecourse.org/the-marriage-course-builder