Every second Thursday my husband and I have “Date Night”. This is something I can really recommend all those of you who live with children or with busy schedules. We noticed that it was so easy to schedule activities and social events but “forget” to schedule time together, just the two of us. This “Date Night” event is actually quite new and was introduced to us only a couple of months ago when we attended The Marriage Course. This course was run in our local church, in English, by a (married) couple who seemed to have been through a lot in life, not to mention in their marriage. When I told my friends and colleagues that we were attending this course, many got a worried look in their eye. Correct me if I’m wrong, my feeling is that in Sweden, unless you have a problem in your marriage, you DON’T attend marriage therapy. Besides, it’s expensive, “embarrassing” and you definitely don’t tell people about it.

I probably haven’t spent enough time in Sweden to familiarise myself with all our strange customs. This is one course I believe all couples should take (and no, it’s not expensive), especially if you have children. In my opinion, you owe it to them and to your partner to make the relationship work. That’s just me, though, and no, I don’t know what divorce is. Both my husband and I have been fortunate to have parents who have stuck it through.

What surprised me the most about this course was that my husband actually agreed to take it with me. I think the main reason for this was that when we lived in London we attended some Sunday services at Holy Trinity Brompton (HTB), a dynamic church located close to my university, which also enabled me to pop into the lab. I don’t know how many of you have heard of the Alpha Course. Well, this is the place that invented it. We were pretty impressed by HTB in general. However, we almost stopped going because they were talking so much about Alpha during the services and sometimes about very little else. Then they suddenly mentioned the Marriage Course, which is also their invention, and our ears perked up. We weren’t married at that time, but it sounded interesting and we weren’t rolling our eyes.

You know what I wish? I wish there were Alpha Courses for Islam, Non-Adherence, Hinduism, Chinese folk religion, Buddhism, Paganism, Sikhism etc. I would be the first to sign up. I am not about to convert but I have so many questions and my list is currently getting longer than the list I have for my doctors.