Frequently, people ask me why they should attend a workshop designed for couples. This question commonly comes from those trying to choose between a workshop and weekly couples counseling. Although there are many similar benefits from each modality, there are also some significant differences.
Let me start by saying that most of us understand the benefit of regular, weekly sessions in the privacy of the therapist’s office. The work happens over several weeks or months, it’s individualized, and slowly produces deep change and growth. Typically, weekly sessions are also a fairly big investment in time, energy and finances.
Couples can also come away with similar benefits from workshops. Much of the same growth and improvement that occur in private sessions can also be experienced in a group setting. No one is ever under any pressure in a workshop to share private information and everything is kept strictly confidential in the group. My own experience is that couples feel very safe and comfortable. The energy of the group dynamic encourages everyone to participate and support one another.
One of the main advantages of a couples’ workshop is the affordability. One or two day workshops give you a lot of learning and exploration for a fraction of the cost of therapy. The tools acquired are immediate and ready to be put to use at once. Change, therefore, can be quick! For some couples, a workshop is the perfect jump start they’ve needed to turn things around.
In a typical couples’ workshop, I balance the material in ways that keep it fun and fast-paced. Most people are eager to learn from the research about what makes marriages succeed or fail. There is some amount of presentation complete with slides and videos to enhance learning.
Demonstrations of effective communication tools are an important part of the day. These are followed by ample opportunity for each couple to practice new skills with one another. I also coach you to design a Relationship Vision so that you and your partner know what you’re trying to achieve by being together. We explore your communication styles and learn about the stages of romantic relationships through discussion and exercises.
Couples who’ve attended my workshops say that they’ve had fun, learned new tools and grown closer to their partners. Workshops are not therapy, per se, but they can be very therapeutic!
For those experiencing deeply held trauma or conflict, a workshop might be just the right beginning to their therapy journey. It might also be the perfect ending to a course of therapy or an adjunct to ongoing work.Who, then, should attend a couples’ workshop? I believe that all couples, at any stage of their relationship, would benefit, including:
Couples in the early stages of a relationship who are looking to deepen their commitment. The Start Right, Stay Connected Workshop is specifically offered for engaged or newly married couples.
Couples who feel bored or “stagnant” in the relationship and want to hit the “refresh” button.
Couples stuck in an unending cycle of bickering or arguing who need better communication tools.
Couples who are trying to decide whether to stay in the relationship.
Couples moving toward divorce or who are already separated and want to know if it is worth putting any energy into saving the relationship.
Couples who have a good relationship, but want it to be great by deepening the connection.
Couples who want their marriage to be a good role model of love for their children.
Mental Health Professionals who want to experience first hand with their partners the power of couples’ work.
Please let me know if you need further information to determine if a workshop is right for you. I also offer private workshops, called Intensives or Break-through Sessions, if groups are just not your thing!
Last night I had the rare privilege of attending a talk by Record-Breaking Athlete and Master Storyteller Diana Nyad. When we first purchased tickets to the Distinguished Speaker Series of Southern California, I knew that I had heard Diana’s name before but was a little fuzzy on the details of her story.
On September 2, 2013, at the age of sixty-four, Diana Nyad swam 111 miles from Cuba to Key West, Florida in fifty-three hours. Millions of people from around the world cheered her on, willing her to be the first to make this brutal crossing without the aid of a shark tank or fins. After thirty-five years and four crushing failures, she emerged on to the sands of Florida triumphant.
I am stunned by her perseverance. She swam for fifty-three hours straight. She was thrown around by 60 miles per hour winds and huge swells and caught in the powerful current of the Gulf Stream. The water was cold and infested with sharks and deadly Box Jellyfish. She couldn’t eat as many calories as her body was expending by swimming.
I am in awe of her physical stamina and talent for swimming, and even more so of her tenacity and heart. Don’t get me wrong, her physical prowess is remarkable. I have been known to cry after 20 minutes on a rowing machine at the gym. I’ve also been known to complain about the cold weather when it dips to 75 degrees. And she was sixty-four years old when she accomplished her record breaking feat!
But even more than all of that, I was most impressed with the way she stuck to her dream. Growing up in Miami, Florida, she used to look out over the water and wonder about Cuba. As a young girl, she put it in her head to know Cuba someday. Her heroic swim opened the doors for Cuban-U.S. diplomacy and brought her honors at both the Palace in Havana and the White House in Washington DC. She never gave up and she succeeded.
So, what do your marriage and swimming with sharks have in common?
Many couples, over the years, have asked me to explain what I see as the difference between couples that stay married and those that divorce.
While there are plenty of research-based answers to that question such as:-
They share appreciations,
learn to resolve conflict,
don’t go to bed angry,
spend quality time together,
remember date night, etc.
The simplest answer is this:
They don’t give up in the face of challenge. The only real difference between the married and the divorced is that the married haven’t given up on the quality of their relationship. They have stamina, tenacity and heart.
Couples that make it in marriage are those that, like Diana, honor their dream. Like her, they focus on their commitment and they ask for help when they need it. They put together their team of supporters and they never stop swimming despite the sharks that lurk below.
Diana Nyad in her New York Times best-selling book, Find a Way, is quoted as saying, “The spirit is larger than the body. The body is pathetic compared to what we have inside of us.”
Did you know that the overall divorce rate among couples over the age of 50 has more than doubled in the last two decades? This has left an aging population looking to remarry. Because we are living longer, many Boomers are taking a second chance to find marital bliss.
When falling in love as older adults, we dream of having a mature love, lasting companionship and a continuing sex life. Rarely, do we anticipate the kind of drama that can ensue as we attempt to join our families.
Combining families where adult children are not on board with our new marriage can be especially tough. Additionally, there are often family ties with an extended network spanning decades which also need to be included and negotiated.
Sometimes, these obstacles leave the happy couple wondering if it’s really worth it.
Even though the kids might be grown and out of the house, there are many established family traditions that can make your new love feel left out. It will be important for both of you to follow some of these simple guidelines as you navigate these tricky waters.
Stay sensitive to your partner’s feelings and show some compassion for the inherent challenges of breaking into a new family. It’s not easy to deal with your children’s loyalty to their other parent, or with your sister’s friendship with your ex-wife.
Go slow and be patient. Acceptance happens over time and cannot be rushed. Take baby steps and look for and celebrate small breakthroughs.
Talk to one another about the disappointment you feel rather than attacking or blaming each other’s family members. Say, “that was a difficult dinner for me” instead of “your son is such a jerk”.
Have good boundaries. Limit your time with family to give yourselves time alone to solidify your bond and to establish yourselves as a couple. Eventually, everyone will see how happy you are and will begin to get used to seeing you together at family functions.
Forget what you learned by watching The Brady Bunch! Step-family members may never love, or even like, each other. Because everyone is an adult, you should express your expectation for them to be cordial and polite. Lower expectations lead to fewer disappointments.
Marrying in the last half of life can offer a deep, carefree, and well-deserved joy to your life. You have most likely lived the first half of life catering to your family‘s needs and desires.
Now that the kids have their own lives, it’s the perfect time to focus on yourself and your own happiness. With greater wisdom, maturity and focus, you can live many more years of marital bliss.
There is no simple answer, but here are my thoughts:
Between you and your partner, there’s a space. This is the space where your relationship lives. When we are not aware of that space, we pollute it. We pollute it by being distracted, by not listening, by being defensive, blowing up or shutting down. There are thousands of different ways to pollute the space between you and a loved one.
When we are paying attention to the space between us and our partner, we are able to consciously clean up the pollution and make it sacred space. We do that through being fully present, listening deeply, staying calm and expressing curiosity rather than judgement about our differences.
In an intimate relationship, both parties are 100% responsible for taking care of the relational space. That’s 100% each, not 50%-50%. The 50%-50% approach is a divorce formula that has people keeping score and practicing tit-for-tat. Healthy marriage requires 100%-100% consciousness and effort from two people.
For a moment, imagine you and your partner as magnets. When you approach a tense, pollution-filled space, you know instantly that it’s dangerous and uncomfortable and you don’t want to be there. You move apart like the same poles of two magnets repelling one another. But when the space is sacred and loving, you stick together like opposite magnetic poles. Your relationship becomes a place you both want to be.
What’s more, your children, or future children, live in the space between you. The space between two parents is the playground of the child. When it’s safe and sacred, children grow and thrive. When it’s dangerous and polluted, they develop complicated psychological patterns to survive. They learn to shut down or to tantrum to get their needs met.
Recently, I was asked to comment on the question, “Should people stay married for the sake of the children?” My answer, “People should create good, solid, healthy marriages for the sake of the children.” Nobody would contest the fact that staying married is hard. Research shows, however, that there are many benefits of long term commitment for both the marital partners and for their offspring.
Karl Pillemer, A Cornell University gerontologist who did an intensive survey of 700 elderly people for his book 30 Lessons for Loving found, “Everybody–100%–said at one point that the long marriage was the best thing in their lives. But all of them also said that marriage is hard or that it’s really, really hard.” So why do it?
Over the years, there have been many studies that suggest that married people have better health, wealth, sexual lives and happiness than their single counterparts. Married women have more robust finances than single women. Long term commitment saves us from wasting time and effort on constantly hunting out new partners and from the time and effort it takes to recover from the pain and betrayal of break ups and divorces.
And staying married also has advantages and benefits for the children. Most sociologists and therapists agree that children from “intact marriages” do better on most fronts than kids from divorced families. This has proven true over and over in studies and seems to only NOT hold up if the marriage is considered very high-conflict. Clearly not every marriage should be saved and if a spouse is in physical danger, he or she must leave.
Generally, however, research suggests that in the long term, children of divorced parents are more at risk of having financial difficulties, poorer educations, being unhealthy, having mental illnesses and getting divorced themselves in the future. It seems that overall children from divorced parents face more challenges than children whose parents stay married.
There are some good reasons to work at cleaning up the relational space and not throwing in the towel too soon. First and foremost, partners in the relationship need to feel physically and emotionally safe. Safety comes when you eliminate criticism, defensiveness, contempt and refusing to address issues from your interactions with one another. Intimacy requires vulnerability and nobody will risk it until they know their partner is a safe harbor.
Other practices which lead to more sacred relationship space include figuring out what specifically makes your partner feel loved and offering those loving behaviors often. Finding or developing common interests and activities is important as well as carving out the time to enjoy them together. Have sex. A 2015 study found that sex once a week was optimal for maximizing marital happiness and connection.
Experts also advocate some attitude changes to make marriage last. One suggestion is to let go of the idea of finding your soul mate. There are a lot of people you could be happily married to. I hope you’re beginning to see why it might be good to craft the ideal marriage rather than go on the hunt for the perfect partner. Also most long-married couples say that they really want to stay married and they don’t think or talk about divorce as an option.
Should you stay married for the sake of your child? Generally, I think yes. As long as there is no immediate physical danger and you are able to commit to cleaning up and making sacred your relational space, you and your children will most probably benefit from a long and stable marriage.
The short video clip below made me laugh when I saw it. It reminds me of the differences we humans have when expressing our emotions.
Some of us have expanding energy when emotional…we puff up, get demonstrative and express outwardly (like this little fellow on the right). These folks are called Maximizers or Tigers in Imago Relationship Theory.
Others constrict their energy, shut down, get quiet and eventually leave (like the bird on the left). We call them Minimizers or Turtles. It’s not that one is better or worse, they’re just extremely different!
Typically we are drawn to choose a mate with the opposite adaptation of our own. These reactions come from our Limbic System which has learned these reactive patterns when we were children in order to survive. When we are locked in an interaction as either Tigers or Turtles, we typically go around and around in an endless cycle of arguing and escalation. The bigger the Tiger gets, the deeper into the shell the Turtle goes. The more unavailable the Turtle gets, the louder the Tiger roars for connection. Learning to override these reactions is a skill I teach couples to do in order for them to remain calm and capable of resolving conflicts. I call it “mastering the art of relational maturity”.
Ask yourself what you do when you start to feel angry, hurt or upset with your partner.
Do you fight, run, freeze or submit?
To stay in connection with your partner, you actually have to do what feels counterintuitive to you. When you feel like shutting down, you must stay present and listen. When you feel like blowing up, you must stay calm and listen.
I can teach you how to communicate in a way that will keep your reactivity at bay, keep your brain calm and allow you to maintain your emotional connection to each other. In the meantime, enjoy this pair of Maximizing and Minimizing Birds while listening to a little Elvis!
In my last blog, I answered the question “why get naked with your finances?”
Today, I’ll give you tips to get started on the slow strip tease of taking off your layers of protection and hiding about money.
One of the first things I ask couples is to examine is how transparent they’ve been in discussing their personal assets and debts. I’m constantly surprised at how many people don’t actually know whether or not their partners are carrying debt, have savings, or even how much they earn. Take that layer of protection off first. When married, assets, debts and income have implications for both of you. Share the information.
Make a commitment to have at least one shared spending account. Your mortgage or rent, insurance, utilities, cars, food, entertainment, cell phones, etc. are all shared expenses and can be paid from a shared account. I recommend that you have a “household account” and that you work jointly to set up a budget for those expenses. If you’ve been secretly overspending on shoes, now is the time to come clean. Your budget needs to be honest and realistic. This is also a time to set up at least one savings or investment account for those mutual dreams. Do it together and be sure to discuss who will actually take responsibility for paying those bills and monitoring the accounts.
Bring your best communication tools to the discussion of trust in managing your finances. People sometimes mistakenly think that money is merely a pragmatic issue. Wrong! That’s like saying sexual relating is merely a biological urge! No, it’s emotional, as well. Depending on your early childhood experiences with money in your family of origin, money will symbolize security and power. Your joint plan must give each of you the sense that you’re saving enough to feel safe and able to spend enough to feel empowered. You will most likely have differences in these areas, so get help if your sharing gets too conflicted or stuck.
I hope that you’re feeling a little more confident about why and how to get naked with your finances. Marriage is about building a life together and finances play a major role in that endeavor. You are not the same two people and so differences will most likely exist. Start with naked truth and move through how to manage the emotions that come up as you navigate creating and maintaining a joint financial plan.
For more ways to explore your financial picture before marriage, sign up here to receive a download of my free Ebook entitled, 8 Essential Topics to Discuss before Saying “I Do”.
What do you need to do next to get naked with your finances?
Thanks to advances in neuro-biology and technology, we know a lot more these days about our “brains in love”. One thing we have learned is that our past is in our present.
What does that mean?
In terms of dating, it means that even when we think we’re dealing with the present moment of what’s going on here and now, our stored memories of everything that came before are present and activated. Even when deciding whether or not we’re attracted to someone, there are unconscious forces at work. Our brains are busy sifting through stored memories to determine whether or not this other person has enough similarity to our “love template” to make the cut.
This template, sometimes called our Imago (a term used by Harville Hendrix, PhD. in his book Getting the Love You Want) is our unique mental map of what love is supposed to look like.
The shocking news for some, is that this map holds the memories of all that was good and safe in our early lives as well as all that was hurtful and wounding. We are actually drawn to fall in love with someone who embodies both these positive AND negative traits of our early childhoods.
Why would we ever be attracted to, let alone fall in love with, someone who yelled like our moms or drank like our dads? We’d have to be nuts. Nuts or on drugs. Well, science has shown that we ARE actually on drugs in the early stages of love. Nature supplies us with a big dose of chemicals in the brain which allow us to exaggerate the other’s positive qualities and blind us to their negative ones. Through the work of the brain’s “chemical cocktail”—increased levels of testosterone, oxytocin, and dopamine—we experience increased sexual desire, bonding, and delight in each other’s presence. In other words, we fall in love. Possibly with someone who we will discover, after the cocktail wears off, yells like our mom or drinks like our dad.
I recently finished reading a very powerful, best-selling book by Wally Lamb, entitled, We Are Water. In it, we get to see up-close the love relationship of two very complex characters, Annie and Orion, who fall in love, marry, have three children and later divorce. That’s not a unique plot these days, but I mention it to illustrate the way in which the unconscious process of falling in love takes place. When these two fall in love, they have no idea why they choose one another.
He thinks it’s, perhaps, because she’s beautiful. She thinks it’s because he’s kind, serious and has a job. Upon further analysis, years into the story, we learn how each fits nicely into the Imago of the other. We find that both have grown up virtually fatherless: his abandoned him at birth, hers drank himself to death. Both have suffered deep levels of loss and rejection. Both have secrets that they keep from themselves and from each other. Orion has grown up “being the man” in his mother’s life. He spent his childhood rescuing her, in a sense. Annie has always needed rescuing…When they first meet he notices that she has a flat tire and fixes it. The Imago of one has met the Imago of the other and it’s a perfect match.
Okay, so falling in love is complicated, chemical and happens unconsciously. What’s a couple to do to ensure a happy relationship? Good question. The answer lies in a couple’s commitment to consciousness. By this I mean that couples must be aware that good relationships don’t just happen. In the marriages that last, both individuals are aware that the other is in their life to help them to heal the past and move forward together as mature adults. Without an exploration and understanding of the early Imago attraction, many couples get stuck in the power struggle which can ensue after the chemicals wear off and differences become more obvious.
Many simply give up and live their marriage as if it’s a life sentence of boredom, conflict and lack of connection. Others, about 50%, get separated or divorced. The problem with divorcing to solve the problem is that, often, couples unconsciously carry their Imago to the next lover and start the same dynamic pattern with a brand new face. In We Are Water, Annie leaves Orion and marries a woman. Different person, even a different gender, but again she chooses someone older, more powerful to rescue her. I couldn’t help but wonder how long it might be before she and her new wife experience disappointment and question whether or not the other is the “right person”. My hope is that Wally Lamb allows them to have a more conscious union where they can honestly explore the pain of their pasts in deep connection with one another.
When we show up with an open heart, curiosity and lack of judgement to the story of our partner’s life, we experience profound healing and intimacy. This is the antidote to the disconnection that proceeds divorce.
Relationship is an adventure—not a problem to be fixed. Sometimes it helps to have a guide along the way. In my work with couples, I find that most people are protesting the lack of connection and clamoring to get back to the feelings they had early on in the relationship.
Most are trying to criticize, whine, cry or stonewall their partners into loving them the way they used to. Of course, this doesn’t work!
I emphasize that passion and relaxed joyfulness are by-products of deep connection and that deep connection can only occur when both parties feel consistently safe—both physically and emotionally. Safety comes from deep listening, full presence, lack of judgement and sustained curiosity about the world of the other. John Gottman, PhD, a leading researcher in the field of marriage tells us that couples who stay together are the ones who have a deep knowledge about the “interior landscape” of one another.
When the task of loving is made conscious, couples rise to a level of relational maturity only hinted at in the beginning of falling in love. By making our pasts clear to ourselves and our partners, we are able to heal “then” in the “now”. This is an exciting adventure and leads to long, lasting and deep love.
“My marriage isn’t what it used to be; it’s not that anything particular has changed, but we just don’t seem as happy as we once were. We have sex less often, we talk less and I’m worried that we’re growing apart. How can I fix this before it’s too late?”
This is a great question and you are not alone!
It is not at all unusual for couples to experience less connection and passion as the relationship ages. In the beginning of a relationship there is a lot of novelty which stimulates chemicals and hormones that keep things spicy and exciting. Over time, you get to know one another better and get set in some routines of interacting which, although comforting, may start to feel a bit boring. You are busier, have less to talk about and the sexual excitement you once had wanes.
How smart you are to want to do something about it! You’ve already made an important first step just by recognizing the symptoms and wanting to make improvements.
The key is to have a talk with your partner and to make a decision to prioritize your relationship. — Make time for one another.
Do you have a regular night set aside without your phones and children just to be together? It’s a good idea to put it in your calendar and honor it as the most important thing you do all week. Another great idea is to make a sex date. That’s right. Plan for sex.
Put it in your calendar. Set the scene with candles, soft music and uninterrupted time.
Change out of your sweats and make yourselves attractive to one another.
When you make a sex date you’ll have days to anticipate being with one another and to let the excitement and anticipation build.
I teach couples positive communication skills which deepen the connection and intimacy between them. By becoming conscious of how you speak and listen to one another, how much you actively appreciate one another and your particular Love Language, you can recapture the joy and happiness you once had.
The latest in a number of marriages highlighted in the news over the past year tell the remarkable story of Mitchell and Mattie Atkins of West Philadelphia.
Deepen Emotional Intimacy