You and your partner can create a vision of your partnership in a fun and creative way by creating a picture collage. It takes an hour or two to accomplish this together. Here are the instructions:

1. First, to create a collage, all you need is a piece of large poster board, scissors, a glue stick and a number of magazines. You can also use any other materials you wish, such as personal pictures, crayons, markers, etc., to construct your collage.

2. Sit together around a table where you can work in partnership. Start by each of you tearing out from 20 to 25 pictures from magazines. Do this activity individually and, at this point in the exercise, avoid sharing the pictures with your partner. These pictures depict images of the vision of you have of your partnership. The vision of your partnership expresses:

• Who you are as a couple?

• What you are committed to?

• What’s important to you both?

• What you care about and value?

• What you as a couple contribute to those around us?

• What you enjoy co-creating?

• What you love doing together?

3. After you each have your pictures, spend time, sharing back and forth what each picture represents for you individually. Have a conversation about what is important to you in your relationship. You can write down key words (or values) that you share with each other.

4. Next, work together to create your collage. Together, choose the pictures you both want to include in your collage. Trim the pictures the way you want them. You can first lay all your pictures out on the poster board or you can create the collage as you go. Paste the pictures onto the poster board.

5. Lastly, using the words that you generated, you can create a Vision Statement for your Partnership. Or, you can co-create a poem using the words you have. Or you can simply write the words on the back of the poster board.

6. Have fun creating this with your partner!

7. Place your collage in a prominent location in your home. Share your collage and the Vision of your Partnership with others.

Reference

Miser, A. (2007). Visualize your future together: Use the Merlin Principle! http://www.elysianenterprises.net/partnership-marriage/partnership-marriage-resources. Unpublished paper.

Couples live in a world today that is individualistic, consumer-oriented, media-saturated and work-oriented which often leaves them with less spark, less connection, less intimacy and less focus on the quality of their marriage or committed relationship. Here are some of what competes for a couple’s attention:

• Couples are too busy to put a priority on their marriage or committed relationship

• Couples get too focused on their children or their work life

• Couples take their partner for granted

• Couples watch too much television or spend too much time on the internet

• Couples stop dating or creating time for their relationship

• Couples are not connected to other couples where they can share their relationship

• Couples disagree about how much work to put into their marriage

Sound familiar?  Here is another perspective:

Adopt the idea that the quality of your marriage is your #1 priority.  Imagine what your life would look like if you made the quality of your relationship and the quality of your marriage your #1 priority.  Ask yourselves the question: “What is possible if we make the quality of our relationship and our marriage be a top priority  for the rest of our lives together?”

• What do you see about the quality of your lives over the long run?

• Where would you both put your attention?

• How would you solve problems together?

• How would you work together to realize not only your individual dreams but also your joint dreams?

• How would you parent your children?

• What do you see in the quality of the friendships that you have in your lives?

Just for a little contrast, imagine that you both don’t make the quality of your relationship your #1 priority. Imagine that there is always something more important that displaces your commitment to the quality of your relationship.  It could be your children, your parents, your finances, your house or your careers.  Ask yourselves the question: “How is it going to turn out long term if something else is always more important than the quality of our marriage or committed relationship?”

Consider that the quality of your relationship is the context or the container for everything else in your life to work. Everything else in your lives can occupy an important place inside the context of your marriage and your commitment to each other.  Making the quality of your relationship a top priority will go a long way to ensuring an enduring and fulfilling marriage over a lifetime.

Lynn Twist (2003) in her book, The Soul of Money, writes, “What you appreciate, appreciates.” When a couple appreciates each other and their marriage or committed relationship, their relationship appreciates.

Appreciation can be thought of the antidote to taking each other for granted.  You can express appreciation through recognizing and sharing the gifts you see in each other and the gifts of your relationship. Appreciation strengthens the foundation of your partnership.

Here is an exercise you can do periodically with each other. Find a time and a space to be together. Let go of everything that has been going on in your life during the day. Allow yourselves to just be with each other. Be aware of the person sitting across from you.

Take turns sharing with each other what you appreciate about each other by completing the sentences below.

• What I love about you is…

• What I appreciate about you is…

• What I enjoy about being with you is…

• What you contribute to me is…

• What I thank you for is…

Now share with each other what you appreciate about your relationship.

• What I appreciate about our relationship is…

• What I am thankful for in our relationship is…

• What I value about our relationship is…

• What I enjoy about our relationship is…

• What I love about our relationship is…

Appreciation is like a floodlight shining brightly, illuminating the magnificence of your relationship and revealing the quality, the durability, the brilliance and the essence of what you share together.  When you appreciate each other and what you have together, your shared experience of your relationship and your marriage expands in value.  What you appreciate, appreciates!

Reference

Twist, L. (2003). The soul of money: Reclaiming the wealth of our inner resources. W.W. Norton: New York, New York.

In a committed relationship, couples unwittingly adopt joint perspectives or ways of seeing their world together that have great impact on the quality of their relationship. Some couples view their lives together through a joint perspective that they are sharing an exciting adventure. There are couples that view their relationship as hard work requiring much effort, while other couples see their relationship as easy and carefree. Still, other couples view their relationship as being a problem that needs to be fixed. These perspectives are not necessarily permanent; in fact, couples can find themselves shifting perspectives about their relationship at different points in their journey together. The point is that whatever perspective the couple has adopted for their lives and relationship will impact their experience of living and shape the very reality they share at that time.

Synonyms of “unwitting” include unknowing, unintentional, inadvertent, unthinking, unmeant, unpremeditated, unplanned for, unexpected, involuntary and without consent. An unwitting perspective is an undistinguished perspective that is shaping the worldview of the couple. It is a point of view that is limiting what they see as possible and, as a result, is constraining their action. Such an unwitting viewpoint, since it is unintentional, unknown and inadvertent, holds great sway in the relationship without the couple being aware of it. All that the couple may know is that things in their relationship are not working as well as they would like them to.

An unwitting perspective is like wearing a pair of rose-colored glasses without recognizing that the circumstances have a rose-colored tint to them. It is like a filter that only allows information through that conforms to its framework. “We have to work hard in life to get ahead.” “We never have any time to do what we really want to do.” “We can never do anything spontaneous.” “Money is scarce.” Such frameworks, when they operate outside awareness have powerful impact on the lives of two people in a committed relationship.

Couples who are committed to bringing partnership fully into their lives work together to become aware of unwitting perspectives that keep a lid on what is possible for them. To be jointly aware that there are unwitting perspectives at play in the dynamics of their relationship can give a couple great power in not being stopped or hindered in having the life they envision together. By becoming cognizant of and being responsible for unwitting perspectives, a couple can then co-invent new empowering perspectives that give them access to a new level of possibility, partnership and passion.

A great way you and your partner co-create your lives is through inventing a future for your partnership. To create the future, first anchor yourselves in what you value and the vision you have for your relationship. Then, visualize and share with each other your dreams for your future, irrespective of time. As you share your vision of your future, step into those future images and experience what it is like having that future be real and manifested in the world. Where are you living? How does it feel for you both? What do you experience? What does it look like? What is it that lights you up about what you visualize? Examine all the areas of your life, such as your home, family, friends, community, work, career, retirement, play, recreation and health.

As you stand in the future you are co-creating, you are using the same abilities that Merlin the Magician used as mentor to the great King Arthur of the Round Table. Merlin had an uncanny ability to see the future before it occurred. The process of standing together and visualizing images of the future gives you, as a couple, a magic wand like that of Merlin the Magician. The “Merlin Principle” applied to couples is the phenomenon of looking from the future to the present time which allows you to see, feel and sense your future in a clear and tangible way.

Once you share and experience your possible desired future together, you can choose and align on a time frame for the manifestation of the future you have both co-created. You can choose a time frame of 25, 15, 10, 5, or 2 years. Standing together in your co-invented future, you can view the path from the future to the present moment and see clearly what actions you took and what you accomplished along the way. You can also see when those actions and accomplishments occurred. Working from the future (say, 10 to 15 years out) to the present time, you can articulate, in a timeline, the milestones, accomplishments and the actions that naturally occurred on the path to your future.

Committing together to the future you have co-created is essential for expressing your partnership in action. Almost immediately after making this commitment to your future, you will see a host of “partnership projects” needed to fulfill the future you have envisioned. You will experience an alignment of focus and action when you undertake these partnership projects as an expression of your commitment to manifest your future.

References

Smith, C.E. The Merlin Factor: Leadership and strategic intent. Business Strategy Review, Oxford University Press, 5(1), Spring, 1994.

Many couples early in their relationship set up a model of responsibility that could be called 50% – 50%. If each person in the partnership does their 50%, then all 100% of what needs to be done gets accomplished and presumably both partners will be happy and satisfied. The 50% – 50% model is an additive model. While this model appears to have its merits, it is insufficient to creating a true partnership. As soon as one partner does not do “their” 50% in the relationship, the other partner may experience a sense of being taken advantage of. It is a model that is based on what each person is doing in a relationship, rather than based on who each person is being for the relationship.

A committed relationship requires a model of 100% – 100% responsibility. Responsibility in this framework is the act of owning one’s own happiness and creating one’s responsibility for it by saying: “I am completely responsible for my happiness. In addition, while I am not responsible for my partner’s happiness, I am committed to it.” The corollary to this is also very powerful: Each person is responsible for his or her unhappiness and not responsible for their partner’s unhappiness. This clear understanding of responsibility, together with a commitment to each other’s happiness is an important aspect of workability in a partnership.

If both partners are responsible for their own happiness and committed to the happiness of each other, who then is ultimately responsible for the workability of the relationship as a whole? Both partners are. Both partners naturally commit themselves to being 100% responsible for the workability in their committed relationship. Each person views himself or herself as being the relationship.

In giving advice on marriage, Kahlil Gibran in The Prophet writes, “And stand together, yet not too near together: For the pillars of the temple stand apart, and the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other’s shadow.” Like two strong pillars, partners are compassionately committed not only to the well being, success and fulfillment of each other but also to that of their relationship.

Reference

Gibran, K. (1923) The Prophet. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Publishers.

Couples have an extraordinary opportunity to share their dreams of a happy life together when they create a vision for the quality of their lives and their relationship. A vision conveys what a couple wants to express as the fulfillment of their partnership. It is not just the achievement of life goals or objectives. A vision for one’s relationship represents what a couple stands for together in the world. A vision could be thought of as a co-created stand for one’s quality of living that touches others around them. This quality of living is an expression of the couple’s values and what they deem as important in their life together.

Vision is often associated with organizational change as it is well recognized that a powerful vision is crucial to inspiring and motivating people as well as providing a direction and a mindset for success (Miser, 2006). Similarly, couples expressing partnership in their lives co-envision the desired quality of life together and, then, standing in that vision, take action to bring what they imagine together into reality. It is important for  married couples on their long journey over the course of a life span to co-create a vision for their partnership on a renewable and periodic basis.

Martha Miser (2006), in her article “Vision: The Engine of Change,” articulates the six “Golden Rules” of vision that hold as true for a committed couple or a “partnership of two,” as they do for employees of a multinational corporation. These “Golden Rules”  are:

• A vision is purposely and consciously co-created by the couple
• A vision is a flexible and dynamic process
• A vision is always about greatness
• A vision is both future focused and grounded in reality
• A vision does not tell the couple how to get there
• A successful vision is shared by the couple

Zander and Zander (2000) distinguish “vision” in their book on personal and professional transformation, The Art of Possibility, as articulating possibility, fulfilling a fundamental desire of humankind, making no reference to morality or ethics, and being a freestanding and timeless picture. A vision is a committed couple’s stand for the kind of world they a committed to co-creating as an expression of their partnership. It might be expressed as a set of descriptive phrases that capture the essence of life itself. Several years ago, Martha and I created a vision for our partnership. We entitled our vision, “Our World.”

• Visionary, inspired leadership
• Big sky, nature calling forth the human spirit
• Powerful, natural beauty
• Wonderment and mystery
• Appreciating history
• Respect and tolerance
• Healing, wholeness, and forgiveness
• Joy, music and dancing
• Grace
• Self-expression, magnificence and adventure
• No one left out

Creating a vision is a powerful way to have one’s partnership expressed in the world. Standing in their vision, a couple is able to powerfully create their future together.

References

Miser, M. (2006) Vision: The engine of change. Unpublished paper.

Zander, B., & Zander, R. S. (2000) The art of possibility: Transforming professional and personal life. Harvard Business School Press: Boston, Massachusetts.

The “Tao” is Chinese for “the way.” For committed couples, there is a natural flow in which effective action tends to move. Two partners come together and plan an activity, create an idea, invent a vision or design a project. After co-creating some aspect of their lives, they move into action. They participate together, they collaborate, they cooperate in their venture and they fulfill their plans. Then, after taking action, they jointly look at what they have accomplished and what results they now have in their lives.

The Tao of partnership consists of the processes of co-creation, cooperation and co-ownership. The prefix, “co,” in front of the words “creation,” “operation” and “ownership” means “together, with, joint or equally.” The prefix refers to two people jointly engaged in the activities of creating, operating and owning with each other and as equals.

The act of co-creation could be seen as a pre-requisite for true partnership. Throughout the lifespan of a committed couple, during the time they date, get engaged, marry and live together, two people co-create their lives by making commitments and promises to each other.

Over time, couples honor what they co-create by continually recommitting themselves to their relationship and by taking action that not only expresses the values and vision of their relationship, but also fulfills the future they envision for themselves. Couples in true partnership co-create their lives, cooperate in their daily activities and co-own what they have together. Over their life span, couples in a partnership marriage express themselves repeatedly through the processes of co-creation, cooperation and co-ownership.

The foundation of a partnership rests on a set of shared values that guide your choices and actions in life together. The values you share with your partner can be seen as intrinsic to your “couple-ness.” Your values reflect the very heart and soul of your relationship or your “us-ness.” Some couples value mutual understanding, validation, openness, compromise and friendship. Other couples value individuality, expressiveness and passion. Still other couples value harmony, common ground and autonomy. Couples who share and co-create shared values can have a very successful partnership in their marriage over the long-term (Gottmann, 1994).

When a couple co-creates and embodies shared values in their daily lives together, they express what is fulfilling to their relationship (Whitworth, Kimsey-House, & Sandahl, 1998). The couple expresses what is important to them through their words, their actions and their accomplishments. People around them, their friends and families, experience their “couple-ness” in palpable and real ways. The qualities that make their relationship unique and special radiate to everyone around them.

Whitworth, Kimsey-House, & Sandahl (1998) wrote that a valued life is a fulfilling life and a life lived as a “radical act.” When one thinks of the word “radical,” one thinks of going to an extreme; however, this is not what is meant in this context. The dictionary definition of “radical,” as an adjective, is “of or from the root or roots, going to the center, foundation or source of something; fundamental; basic; as a radical principle” (Webster’s New World Dictionary, 1957).

Couples who articulate and generate their core values are able to co-create a foundation for their relationship that is strong and durable. They share their “couple-ness” powerfully with others. As a couple, your alignment around what is important to you contributes quietly and gently, yet powerfully to everyone you touch. As partners in life, your gift is giving the possibility and value of your “couple-ness” to others.

References

Gottman, J. (1994). Why marriages succeed or fail: And how you can make yours last. New York: Simon and Schuster.

Webster’s New World Dictionary of the American Language, College Edition. (1957) New York: The World Publishing Company.

Whitworth, L., Kimsey-House, H, & Sandahl, P. (1998) Co-active coaching: New skills for coaching people towards success in work and in life. Palo Alto, California: Davies-Black Publishing.

To create partnership in your marriage or your committed relationship, adopt the perspective that for your relationship to work, it must work for both of you. A relationship can only be a partnership when it is collaborative and a “win” for you, for your partner and for your relationship.

A partnership by its very nature requires a context of “you and me.” The context of “you and me” provides a powerful perspective that for the relationship to be successful, it must be a “win-win” proposition for both persons. Each individual’s needs, desires and goals must be satisfactorily met as well as those of the relationship. Each person in the committed relationship must be committed to having the partnership work for both of them, individually as well as collectively.

Two people cannot have a sustainable relationship if one of them feels that what is going on in the relationship is not working. If the relationship is not working for one person, it can’t work for the other person or for their partnership. To sustain a partnership over time, two people must become aware that the perspective “win-lose” does not and cannot work; it is, in fact, an illusion. If one person in the relationship feels that they are “losing” or not getting their needs, desires or dreams fulfilled, then the other person will be losing as well. In the “game of relationship,” two people are either winning (win-win) or losing (lose-lose). Having a partnership work requires both persons being committed to “our relationship will work for both of us.”