Podcasting love lessons

ONE local couple is bringing everything they know about relationships to the airwaves in the Rekindling Relationships podcast.

Vern Hardie, ringmaster at The Connected Circus and male mentor, created the podcast with his partner Bec in February this year.

“We were under COVID, home schooling four kids and realising that there’s a lot of stress happening on our relationship we were working through,” he said.

“Because I work with men mentoring and my partner works with women mentoring, it was an opportunity for us to work together work with couples.

“That’s where Rekindling Relationships came from, we want to reach out to couples, we want to help couples in some way.”

The podcast has been downloaded over 1500 times in 25 countries, and Mr Hardie said they have had a lot of positive feedback from couples.

“We’ve had people comment, contact us to say we’ve really helped them and it’s helped their relationship so it’s been really exciting for us.”

Mr Hardie said he and his partner, parents of a blended family of four, release seven episodes at once, allowing listeners to binge listen to the episodes.

The latest series delves into the seven stages of a relationship, which include passion, discovery, commitment, power struggles, stability and growth, romantic love, and crisis and recovery.

As a male mentor, Mr Hardie said he hopes his own experiences can help men understand their own relationships better.

“One of the things I think is the best part about the podcast is a couple talking about relationships, but we’re talking about our own relationship as well, we get this stuff, we’ve been working through this stuff ourselves,” he said.

“Listening to a podcast that’s a man and a woman speaking, I’m hoping that men will go, I totally get where that guy’s coming from.”

The podcast is available on Apple Music, Spotify and Google.