Part 1: Introduction

Think how much time we spend learning/qualifying so we can function professionally and financially in our society.  We have career upgrading, online courses, night school, part-time or full-time studies.  As we are growing up, we attended school to learn how to read and write and manipulate numbers.  We learned about geography and history and the science of the world around us. And then we had to prove what we knew via tests and exams.  Even learning how to drive a car is regulated and licensed.

And yet a marriage licence requires no training or regulation or even a qualifying test.

So we are left to learn about relationships on our own – in our own families or from those around us or from movies or books. Unfortunately, very few of us live in a Disney movie where the couple/family lives happily ever after.

Yesterday one of my couples commented that it takes real work to be in a relationship that is happy and healthy.  This is true AND the payoff is immense.  Studies have found benefits to being in a successful relationship and have detailed the negative health consequences, both psychological and physical to being in a relationship that is unhappy, abusive or toxic.

Over the next few blogs, I would like to give you some of the basic and foundational strategies that, if practiced, lay the foundation for relationship happiness.  Extracted from the book, You Are Tearing Us[1], these are:

• Core value Living – maintaining your personal integrity
• Crossing the Bridge- learning the world of your partner
• Compassion – holding onto the desire to help/repair not hurt
• Increasing connection and protection – keeping your relationship safe
• Emotional Regulation – managing your emotions
• Integration –  being you and being connected to your partner

Notes:

[1]  You are Tearing Us Apart by Pat Love, Eva Berlander and Kathleen McFadden Published, October, 2015