Friendship Series

Research shows that to make a relationship last, couples must become better friends, learn to manage conflict, and create ways to support each other’s hopes for the future. We have put together a seven session series to help your relationship last.

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Workshop 1: Enhance Your Love Map

Emotionally intelligent couples are intimately familiar with each other’s world.

We introduce the principle of building Love Maps, knowing the little things about your partner’s life creates a strong foundation for your friendship and intimacy.

We also look at exploring our own personal selves in terms of Triumphs and Strivings, Injuries and Healings, Our Emotional World and our Mission and Legacy.  We take a moment to reflect as we are all involved in becoming the person we most want to be.

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Workshop 2: Nurture Fondness and Admiration

Fondness and admiration are two of the most critical elements in a rewarding and long-lasting romance. These can become buried under layers of negativity, hurt feelings, in reviving the positive we become less likely to act out of contempt (which corrodes our relationship) when we have a difference of opinion.

Sharing fondness and admiration in intentional, consistent, faithful ways is the antidote to contempt and, more importantly, it increases the amount of affection and respect in a relationship.

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Workshop 3: Turn Toward Each Other

A predictor of a relationships success can be seen in the ability to turn towards each other, making an effort every day to accept your partner’s bids for emotional connection.  Turning away and against are related to both suppressed negativity and being in attack mode.

We look at some practical ways to both reach out and respond to bids for emotional connection.

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Workshop 4: The Positive Perspective – Let Your Partner Influence You

The happiest, most stable marriages are those in which the husband treats his wife with respect and does not resist power sharing and decision making with her.  In a disagreement these husbands will actively search for common ground rather than insisting on their own way.  It’s just as important for wives to treat their husbands with honor and respect.

We explore the difference between Positive Sentiment Override (PSO) and Negative Sentiment Override (NSO) and how the tools and instructions within the first three workshops must be in place to move from NSO and achieve PSO. PSO determines a lot of things in the relationship, including the presence of positive affect in problem solving discussions and the success of repair attempts during conflict resolution.

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Workshop 5: Manage Conflict – Solve Your Solvable Problems

We’ve all been in the middle of an argument that we know we cannot win, understanding that our frustration has overwhelmed all sense of perspective.

We look at ways to successfully collaborate with our partners to make headway into the perpetually gridlocked problems you face in your relationship.

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Workshop 6: Making Dreams Come True

Embedded in our conflicts can lie the unfulfilled dreams, hopes and desires of our own life, which includes our shared life as a couple.  We will go on a journey of self-discovery were we learn how to identify those dreams and those things important to us.  We then learn how to convey those dreams and listen to our partner in a way that honours, supports and respects each other.

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Workshop 7: Create Shared Meaning

Workshop six and seven are intertwined. Working together to make each other’s life dreams come true often involves creating shared meaning, and creating shared meaning can be achieved through identifying and pursuing your and your partner’s dreams.

We begin by exploring the rituals and traditions of our past with each other. Those things that made up your individual family unit. We then look at what of those we want to keep, those we want to delete and those we want to tweak for the family unit, you and your partner have created.

By collaborating together we forge a life that is OURS which promotes health within the entire family unit.