Trauma is something that most of us have experienced in one way or another, whether it was through abuse, abandonment, or a circumstance that we had no control over. As children, when we do not have access to resources that help us navigate through the pain of these experiences, we will often develop coping mechanisms that can be unhealthy in the long term.
Read MoreYep, you read that right. We are doing a podcast this month on bedroom talk for married couples! We partnered up with Adam and Karissa King, licensed marriage and family therapists, to do a podcast with the Zicks on what it looks like to pursue intimacy and connection in the marriage bed. Grab a cup of coffee, your spouse, and tune into this month’s podcast!
Read MoreTake 2 of the MR Podcast with Adam and Karissa King! We are excited to share more of our two part series for married couples with you, and we think that you'll love it as much as we do. Adam and Karissa even offer practical guidance counseling to Cole and Caitlin Zick in this episode, offering an example of what professional marital counseling often looks like.
Read MoreIf you don’t think porn is a healthy habit (and research would back you up, there), you may have to have some hard conversations about this potentially awkward topic. And not only that, but it can be difficult to know what to say when you’re talking to someone about something as personal as recovery from a porn habit—especially when you care about that person and are being hurt by their porn consumption. You want to be able to encourage them into getting better rather than shame them back into their hidden habits.
Read MoreCompatibility. Common goals. Chemistry. If you’re dating, or single and looking to date, these are probably high on the list of things you’re hoping to discover about the person you’re getting to know. While all of those are valid, there’s something deeper, yet just as important, that you need to be paying attention to as you date, and that is this: Is this person healthy and capable of building a healthy relationship? And since it takes one to know one, how do I answer the same question about myself?
Read MoreThe same day I said “yes” to Ben’s wedding proposal, I began receiving marital advice. The. Same. Day. And I kept getting it all the way through my wedding day. The advice was mostly unsolicited, but I suppose the influx of tips and experiences from both strangers and friends can be expected for life’s bigger milestones.
Read MoreTom Crandall and Cole Zick address the reality of what happens when you form an intimate sexual connection outside of marriage, and the strong influence that can have on us and our life choices. How can we become free from shame? What can we do to move past attachments that we have with people from our past that we’re tied to because we’ve had sexual experiences with them?
Finding someone to whom you are physically attracted is an important part of the equation of a healthy relationship. But it’s not the only part of the equation of attraction. It’s important for us to understand that attraction is multi-faceted. While attraction may start as physical, it’s fueled by other aspects of connection: emotional, mental, and spiritual.
Read MoreWe must first start with the core value that sex is about connection, intimacy, and love. Sex is designed to be a safe place where both people are present and vulnerably giving themselves to each other. If sex is a beautiful part of connection with your spouse and not just about orgasming, even when your body, hormonally, may not want sex, your heart and emotions can still desire it.
Read More92.5 million. That’s how many times just one porn site was visited each day last year in 2018. EACH DAY! It’s devastating and straight-up frightening. Pornography and explicit imagery have become a custom of modern culture and, tragically, our kids are being targeted. What is now being called a public health crisis, the porn industry is fighting for the minds and hearts of the next generation.
Read MoreSexual sin can creep in as a result of trying to meet our healthy need for connection in an unhealthy way. How does this happen? I’ve found that many people don’t have the skills that they need to build proper friendships in the first place, which can lead them to feeling rejected, isolated, and unworthy of healthy relationships--and they can turn to porn, masturbation, or sex outside of marriage in an attempt to get those relational needs met. But don’t worry, these skills can be learned!
Read MoreThe loss of self has nothing to do with losing our identity or our personality. It doesn’t mean we ignore our needs, wants, and desires or let go of our goals and dreams. It doesn’t mean we forget our opinions, our beliefs, and our ideas. No, letting go of self means one thing and one thing alone: we choose to lose all that is wrong in exchange for all that is right. Losing our “selves” means we let go of all that God has called us not to be in exchange for all he has called us to be.
Read MoreChristmas is a beautiful season of giving and spending time with the people we care about, but sometimes it comes with the realization that life did not turn out the way we expected it to. We look around at family or friends or people we’ve known forever, and it’s hard not to compare our life to theirs. It’s hard not to remember where we thought we would end up or how we thought things would be at this point in our life.
Read MoreDann Farrelly and Cole Zick dive into the importance of open and healthy communication in families, marriages, and relationships. Dann gives useful tips for conflict resolution, navigating emotions, and practical insight on how to create a new normal from unhealthy communication habits in the past.
Read MoreShame seduces us into secrecy, insists on silence, and results in judgment. When we begin hiding, and are afraid to be vulnerable, we begin blaming others and ourselves for the disconnection that we feel. Instead of pulling people towards us, we push them away, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy that we are not worthy of love and acceptance. So then, disconnection is the result. What can we do to help people who are stuck in this cycle?
Read MoreWe can often feel the most intimidated by things we don’t understand. The fear of the unknown can lead us down paths of thinking that cause us to over-emphasize the worst-case scenarios while losing hope that good is possible. Pornography and sexual addiction, in general, actually falls into this category for most. It is hard to understand something that is so damaging and yet those who find themselves in the cycle of it see no way out.
Read More“Do not identify your self with your desires. Letting desires define us is the most abject form of slavery. Self-mastery is true freedom.” He also said, “We can have reasons for wanting to do this or that; but wanting to do something is not a reason for doing it. Desires are not reasons.” My point is that “gay” and “straight,” along with “heterosexual” and “homosexual,” are ideological terms, and false ones. They don’t exist. There is no straight or gay.
Read MoreIt can be hard if you’ve been single for a long time to, as you say, keep hope alive. The two keys we’ll focus on in this Q&A are to have faith and live a full life. In this section we’ll start with the topic of faith, as our belief systems are what shape our experiences of life.
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