“….though modern Marriage is a tremendous laboratory, its members are often utterly without preparation for the partnership function. How much agony and remorse and failure could have been avoided if there had been at least some rudimentary learning before they entered the partnership….And that statement is equally valid for all relationships.”

Leo Buscaglia from Loving Each Other

I found this quote on the Internet the other day. This is why I do the work that I do. After getting married, many couples are unprepared for what Leo Buscaglia calls “the partnership function.” This is why I wrote the book, The Partnership Marriage: Creating the Life You Love…Together. It is also why I have developed different education programs for couples, which focus on teaching you the skills to have a strong partnership in life. Here are descriptions of my three partnership programs.

The Foundations of Partnership Program

The Foundations of Partnership program is ideally suited for couples who want better connection, communication and teamwork in their lives. You may feel as though you are living your lives focused more on your individual concerns and pursuits than on what’s important for the health and well-being of your relationship. You may feel you don’t have a shared vision of your future and are not working together to fulfill shared goals. In this program, you will build a solid foundation for partnership and create a vision for your life together.

Working with me in eight sessions over a three to four-month period you will:

• Connect around what’s important to you individually and for your relationship
• Expand their capacity to listen to each other’s wants and needs and to effectively communicate with each other
• Learn ways to identify disempowering patterns of thoughts and behavior and shift to effective ways of viewing your circumstances and taking action in partnership
• Create a shared vision of a life that excites and fulfills both of you
• Nurture the connection with each other through appreciation and gratitude

The Partners in Living Program

The Partnership in Living Program is for couples who feel that they have a solid relationship and are up to new challenges in their lives. You may feel you want to have greater alignment, balance and partnership in creating the lifestyle you desire and in accomplishing big dreams together. You may feel that you are not on the same page around what you want or the best way to get there. In the Partners in Living program, you will establish the foundation for an effective partnership, create a vision for your future and, additionally, design a “partnership project” to fulfill the shared dream of yours within the next three to six months.

Working with me in 10 sessions over a approximately five-month period you will:

• Focus on the same five objectives of the Foundations of Partnership Program, and
• Create a vision of your future including your individual aspirations and your shared dreams
• Design a partnership project in partnership to fulfill a shared dream of yours within the next three to six months

The Partnership for Success Program

The Partnership for Success program is for couples who clearly want greater partnership in their marriage. You want to work together effectively to achieve your goals. You may have big dreams to fulfill, projects to accomplish or challenges to take on, but you don’t quite know how or where to start. You may feel your lives are full and you want ongoing coaching and support to stay on track. In this program, not only will you work together to create an effective partnership, envision your future and design a “partnership project” to fulfill that vision, but you will also take significant action to achieve what you have set out to accomplish!

Working with me in up to 12 sessions over a six to seven-month period you will:

• Focus on the same seven objectives of the Partners in Living Program, and
• Learn powerful tools to work together over time to bring your partnership project to reality, achieve your goals and achieve success

Invitation

I invite you to consider participating in one of my partnership programs. If you are interested and/or have questions, please email me at andy@thepartnershipmarriage.com or simply call me at 617-942-2757.

We can discuss what you want to get out of participating in a partnership program, any concerns you might have, the cost of each of the programs and scheduling. I can also design a program to individually meet your needs.

When you register into any of my partnership programs, you and your partner will receive two free copies my book, The Partnership Marriage, and you will have access to the complete Partnership Marriage toolkit.

My commitment is to help you to strengthen what Leo Buscaglia calls your “partnership function” so you can create the life you love…together!

When we were boys, my twin brother, Wendel, and I always found things to do together. “Let’s play tennis.” “Let’s play catch.” “Let’s ride our bicycles.” “Let’s go to the store and get some baseball cards.” We were always finding ways to play together. Wendel or I would suggest something to do by saying “Let’s…”

I notice that in my marriage with Martha, we do this all the time. “Let’s go out to dinner tonight.” “Let’s go to a movie.” “Let’s stay in tonight and eat dinner by the fire.” One of us throws out an idea for the two of us to do together.

There are other ways we engage each other as well. Like, “I want to go to a movie. What do you want to do? Do you want to go to a movie?” Or, “I’d like to go to the museum this afternoon? What are your plans?” When Martha and I talk this way to each other, it feels like we are in two separate worlds, trying to extricate ourselves from your own plans and commitments to find a way to connect.

When one of us says “Let’s,” we start from a place of already being related, recognizing the desire to be with each other.

• “Let’s” is connecting. You’re showing interest in being with your partner and letting them know that you enjoy being with them.
• “Let’s” is friendly. You’re sending a message to your partner that you want to do something fun together.
• “Let’s” is freeing. You’re saying that your own circumstances, for the moment, are not as important as being with your partner.
• “Let’s” is inclusive – You are saying to your partner that you want to include them in your plans. You want to do something with them.
• “Let’s” is creative. “Let’s” orients the two of you toward having conversation around an opportunity in the short-term or something that might be possible in the future. For instance, “Let’s go to the play next weekend.” Or, “Let’s go to Italy on our vacation this summer.”
• “Let’s” is inviting. “Let’s” is an invitation to your partner to join together with you and to have a choice in the matter. They can say “Yes,” “No,” or suggest another idea.

“Let’s” puts your focus on your partnership. With that simple contraction of “let us,” you both recognize that you want to be together, enjoy each other’s company and set aside time and space for sharing your lives together.

Valentine’s Day is fast approaching! Just for fun, I want to provide you with resources that you can use to plan your Valentine’s Day celebration.

If  you are looking for that special card, here’s a website I recommend:

Valentine’s Day cards from Hallmark Cards

If you are looking for a bouquet of flowers that is just right for your sweetheart, here’s a website to explore:

Flowers from the FTD flower and gift shop

If you are looking for personalized gift for him or for her, this website may be helpful to you:

Gifts from the Personalization Mall

And, finally, if you are planning a romantic date with your special someone, here is website you might want to take a look at:

Ideas for Valentine’s Day dates from the Huffington Post

Have a delightful, playful, intimate, wild, fun, rocking and romantic Valentine’s Day date with the love of your life!  Then figure out how you can put more of this in your lives all year round!

Being able to listen to each other is fundamental to a loving relationship. In fact, listening is a much more powerful act than speaking. Listening to your partner grants them their self-expression. Your partner will feel enlivened when you listen to them. They will feel validated, seen and heard when you understand what they say. Through listening, you communicate to your partner that, “I see you and I hear you. I am present and attentive to your self-expression and I value what you are saying.”

Honoring, listening to and appreciating each other’s point of view is key to a satisfying relationship. This can be, however, a difficult proposition at times. If you are having communication difficulties, you may not be taking care to validate your partner’s perspective, you both may be attached to your own point of view, thereby not hearing your partner’s viewpoint or you may be disregarding each other’s views all together. When listening is ineffective, you and your partner will struggle with satisfying communication, which can lead to repeated frustration and upset.

Each of you in your marriage has your own unique perspective, your own view of the world. As you listen and validate each other’s points of view, you’ll give each other a powerful gift: the gift of understanding. You both will feel greater connectedness and see your lives together in a larger shared perspective. You will be able to see and understand aspects of your lives that may be outside your own viewpoint. A brief story will illustrate this point dramatically.

A man and a woman, who are walking together in the woods on a summer’s evening, stop to get a drink of water in a nearby brook. They turn to look at each other, whereupon the woman sees a large black bear standing right behind her partner, outside of his view. The man looks at the woman and sees a hunter with a rifle pointed at the back of her head. Her partner says to her, “There’s a man with a gun pointed at the back of your head!” and the woman says to her lover, “There’s a black bear right behind you!” Simultaneously, they duck, the hunter pulls the trigger and the bear drops to the ground. If the couple had neglected to validate each other’s point of view, disagreed with each other about what they each saw or disregarded each other’s viewpoint altogether, one can only imagine the outcome. Someone might have been mauled by the bear or have been shot by the hunter.

This couple’s capacity to extricate themselves from their difficult set of circumstances and to act effectively was directly related to their ability to understand the unique perspective of their partner in relationship to their own. To be effective, each person had to act on what the other person saw in coordination with what they perceived themselves. Their individual perspectives were not the same; they each needed their point of view to be heard, to be understood and to be considered valid by their partner. By including both points of view in the equation, however, the couple was able to understand their present circumstances in the larger context. With such understanding, the couple was able to take action that supported their relationship.

I’m reminded of many conversations Martha and I have had over the years when we each see a set of circumstances differently. When discussing money, I’ll say, “We’ve got to make more money.” Martha may say, “No. We must lower our expenses.” Or, when discussing our health, I’ll say, “We should exercise more often.” Then, Martha may say, “I think we should eat more nutritious foods.” In such conversations, if we each understand and consider both points of view, we will understand our lives in a bigger context and take effective action in partnership with each other. “Let’s cut expenses and make more money” or “Let’s eat better and exercise regularly.”

Problems, stress and upsets are part of the landscape for married couples. When partners get angry, frustrated or annoyed, their sense of well-being, connectedness and partnership can disappear quickly. How well you deal with each other when the applecart of your life gets turned upside down can make all the difference in how effectively and quickly you can restore happiness, balance and teamwork in your relationship.

A powerful perspective that you can embrace is that the circumstances of your life, in and of themselves, do not “cause” you to get upset, distressed or angered. The circumstances may set the occasion for your hopes, expectations and intentions to be dashed, but they do not in and of themselves “cause” you to be upset.

A little story illustrates this point. It is a Monday morning and Cindy and Joe, who are happily married, are on their way to the airport where Joe will catch a flight for his business trip. On the way, they stop at a nearby bank because Joe needs money for his trip. Cindy waits in the car while Joe gets cash from the walk-up ATM. All of a sudden, Cindy sees Joe get angry and frustrated, punch the machine and then kick the wall. When Joe returns to the car, Joe says, “I am really angry because there is no money available in our account. I have to catch my flight in an hour. I need cash.”  Cindy and Joe drive back home where Joe gets the cash that is tucked away in the top drawer of his bedroom dresser. Joe is hassled, upset and out of sorts, but he makes his plane and everything works out.

A week later, Joe is back home from his trip. On the following Monday morning, Cindy and Joe head out for a drive in the country and they stop at the same ATM to get some extra cash. Joe goes up to the ATM and Cindy watches as Joe puts his bankcard in the ATM, looks at the screen and shrugs his shoulders. Joe walks back to the car and says, “There’s still no money available in our account. No problem. Let’s just go on.”

A week ago, Joe stood in front of the ATM punching and kicking the machine when no money was available. He told Cindy he was angry because there was no money available in his account. A week later, while standing at the same ATM at the same time in the morning, Joe shrugged his shoulders when he again found there was no money available and then said, “No problem.”

To understand how Joe reacted on each Monday morning, one must understand what was occurring from Joe’s point of view. On the two consecutive Monday mornings, Joe had two different intentions or expectations. On the first Monday morning, he had to catch a plane. He was in a hurry, he had to have money and he expected the money to be there in his account. When it wasn’t, he got frustrated to the point of punching and kicking the machine. On the second Monday morning, he and Cindy were going for a leisurely drive in the country. He may have expected money to still be unavailable in his account. When cash wasn’t available again, it was not a problem for him. Had the circumstances of receiving no cash from the ATM really “caused” Joe to get angry, he would have been just as upset as he had been on the first Monday. In contrast, he did not get upset at all; he and Cindy went for a drive into the country.

Distressful feelings, anger and frustration are a function of your relationship to your circumstances, not the circumstances themselves. You might find yourself upset when your partner doesn’t understand you, when your expectations are not met or when something you intend to happen, doesn’t happen. It can be disappointing not to be able to do what you want to do. It can be frustrating when things don’t go your way.

When you partner is upset, listen for what they are feeling and for what is happening. Validating their feelings and understanding what they need to say will help their upset to dissipate. Accepting their disappointment when their expected plans don’t work out will help them to calm. Aligning with them on a new course of action will help them to restore a sense of being in control when their plans and intentions have been dashed. Upsets won’t stick around. They will dissipate. These are ways you can support your partner in restoring the applecart of their life and well-being in your marriage when things go awry.

Wishing you and your family

a Joyous Holiday Season

&

a Happy New Year!

Andy 

The following is a tool that you and your spouse can use to get a sense of the degree of partnership in different areas of your life.  First, find some time in your calendars to have this conversation. Get together and talk about how you know when your partnership is strong. For instance, you both may feel that your partnership is strong when you are able to:

• Understand each other
• Agree to disagree
• Know what your partner needs
• Avoid blame and criticism
• Have a shared vision
• Align on goals and ambitions
• Utilize each other’s strengths and abilities
• Create a plan of action

Next, identify areas of your relationship where you both can agree that partnership is required or needed. Here are some examples of a number of areas you could consider:

• Finances
• Recreation
• Home Care
• Vacations
• Parenting
• Health
• Friends

In each life area that you choose, individually rate the degree to which partnership is present. Your ratings will be completely subjective. Rate what you feel is the degree of partnership in each life area on a scale of 1 to 10 with a “1” being “experience no partnership” and “10” being “experience full partnership.” A “5” might be “experience some partnership.”

Once you have each rated all areas individually, share your ratings with each other. You can come up with a “couple rating” for each area by averaging your individual ratings. A rating of “4” and another rating of “8” would provide a couple rating of “6.”

Once you have determined your couple rating of partnership in each of the areas you initially identified, talk about what you see. You might find that you experience great partnership in parenting, but not so much in caring for your home or in planning vacations.

Choose an area where you are both committed to expanding a sense of partnership in your lives. Imagine what new future you could create in that area of your lives if you worked as full partners. What difference would that make to the quality of your marriage?

Step into that future you see. Share what you would need, make requests of one another and make a note of your promises to each other. Plan to get into action over the next week and periodically share how things are going.  Finally, acknowledge yourselves for your commitment to creating a life you both love…in partnership!

When Martha and I got married in August of 1974, it seemed as if that was what everyone was doing right after college. Today, that’s not what everyone is doing. Today, many young adults are waiting until much later to get married or are forgoing marriage altogether.

For every subsequent generation in the last fifty years, fewer young adults are getting married and, if they do, they are marrying when they are older. There have been a number of reasons suggested for this trend today:

• Many women with full-time careers are more economically independent and can afford to wait before plunging into marriage.
• Couples with less financial means tend to put off marriage and are cohabitating for longer periods of time.
• Young adults are waiting until they are financial stable before getting married.

Several weeks after Martha and I were married, we drove to Clinton, New York, where we lived while Martha completed her senior year in college. I had just completed a two-year graduate program and was looking for work. We were both in our early twenties.

When we reflect on that time of our lives, neither of us can remember having much money. Neither one of us was employed yet we felt that our future was bright. We were going to make it up together by “the seat of our pants.” We planned to support each other in building our careers and our financial success.

For young adults today, the calculus seems completely different. Cherlin (2009) in his book, The Marriage-Go-Round, says that marriage has become a “capstone” or a milestone that marks the arrival of adulthood for young adults. Today, young men and women want to achieve some measure of financial independence and success in their careers prior to jumping into marriage.

There is a good deal of evidence that marriage today favors those who are college educated and financially more successful. If the forecast of economic growth in this country continues to be lackluster, one wonders if marriage rates also will continue to fall and couples will continue to put off getting married until later.

Reference

Cherlin, A.J. (2009). The Marriage-Go-Round: The state of marriage and family in America today. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

My wife, Martha, and I are baby boomers. Many of our good friends are baby boomers. We are in that cohort of Americans born after World War II between 1946 and 1964. This year the youngest baby boomers are turning 50 years old! The oldest of us are closing in on age 70 years.

As I have been sharing the publication of my book, The Partnership Marriage: Creating the Life You Love…Together, with others, I have had many people say to me that they know couples who have been married for years, are now empty nesters and are getting divorced.

I’ve looked into this and, sure enough, the divorce rate among baby boomers is currently higher than the divorce rates for every other generation. In fact, couples over the age of 50 today are twice as likely to get a divorce than couples the same age 20 years ago. What is more, this increase in divorce for baby boomers is occurring when the divorce rate for married couples in the United States is generally declining, if only slightly!

We, the baby boomer generation, have been committed to happiness, individual growth and self-expression. Right? Well, today, if baby boomers aren’t happy, growing or self-expressed in their marriages, they are throwing in the towel in record numbers! Typically, wives are filing the papers in two-thirds of these divorce proceedings.

Some of the possible reasons for this phenomenon:

• Couples are confronting the reality of their lives and the unhappy state of their marriages once their grown children leave home.
• Many baby boomer women have professions that can support them living independently.
• Baby boomers will be living longer than previous generations, putting new pressures on the success of marriage over the long-term.
• Many baby boomers have the economic resources to divorce successfully.
• Baby boomers are also confronting other significant life transitions, such as the death of a parent and retirement, which can have a destabilizing impact on their lives.
• While raising their children and building careers, baby boomer couples fail to routinely invest in the health and well-being of their own relationship.

The current trend in the baby boomer divorce rate has much to teach younger couples who are heading off into marriage.

The most important lesson might be that happiness is not a compelling purpose for marriage today. In a partnership marriage, each of you must fully commit to nurturing the quality of your relationship, while working together to realize your individual and shared dreams.

Happiness might better be thought of as a by-product of creating a fulfilling partnership, in which you and your spouse are devoted to creating a life that is an expression of your shared values and vision.

For all the empty nest baby boomers out there, if you haven’t already done so, it is time to put your focus on your relationship with your partner! Celebrate! The kids aren’t home!

Reference

Miser, A. (2014) The partnership marriage: Creating the life you love…together. Charleston, South Carolina: Create Space Publishing.

Fall is a time of the year when there is so much to do! Summer is over and there seems to be a billion projects on the horizon: Home improvement projects, landscaping projects, visits with family and friends, health and fitness commitments and so much more.

Martha and I often sit down together and put our endless list of commitments into different projects. We call them “partnership” projects. We call them partnership projects because we recognize that it will take both of us to be 100% committed to get the projects competed.

A project is designed to realize the vision of what you want to fulfill at some future time. Projects are time-limited, often two to thee months, and are designed around a specific, measurable result.

For instance, we’ve recently had some home improvement plans, such as insulating the basement, repointing brickwork, cleaning the basement, rebuilding the front stairs and pruning the trees in our garden. We put all those activities into a home improvement project. Here are steps we used in planning a “partnership” project:

• Create what you want to accomplish in your partnership project. Write it down in the following way: “Our project is to have accomplished _____________ by this specific date ___________________.” Be as specific as possible. For example, “Our project is have completed all five home improvement tasks by December 15, 2014.”
• Identify any concerns you have about the project. Identify any disempowering individual or shared perspectives that might unwittingly be shaping your relationship to the project. Examples of perspectives might be, “This project is going to be a lot of work to accomplish” or “This project will take a lot of our free time” or “The costs of the project may get out of control.” By identifying your current perspectives, concerns, or anticipated obstacles, you are better able to deal powerfully with them.
• Next, brainstorm several empowering perspectives and choose a new way to view partnership project. Imagine the accomplishment of your project. Invent other perspectives from which to view your partnership project. Look at what you intend to accomplish from these other perspectives and get the impact of each new perspective on your project. Then, together choose a perspective that empowers both of you. For instance, “It is fun to beatify our home with the help of others!”
• Create the actions and the interim accomplishments necessary to fulfill the partnership project and put them into a timeline. Once you have an empowering perspective for your project, imagine yourselves in the future having accomplished what you set out to do. Look from the future accomplishment of the project. Brainstorm all the interim accomplishments that will occur during the project and all the actions that you will take. Put the actions and accomplishments in a timeline. Use whatever format works for you.
• Name the project. Align on a name that expresses the project in a creative and self-expressed way. Martha and I named our partnership project, “Home Beautiful.” The name can call forth the perspective of the project, your values and your vision for the project or the future accomplishment of the project.
• Schedule project meetings. Make sure you have a plan to meet on a regular basis. In the beginning, it is often wise to meet frequently, say once per week for an hour or so, and then meet less frequently or as needed as your project progresses.

To date, Martha and I have completed a number of our home improvement goals. We had workmen insulate the basement and repoint brickwork in the basement. After Labor Day, Martha and I cleaned the basement. During this time, our gardener did a beautiful job pruning the trees in our garden. We are now contracting with a mason to come and rebuild our front stairs. The work we want to do around the house is more fun when we are aligned with a clear vision, plan to get it done and doing it together!

If you have a lot to do, sit down with each other and create a project or two! You’ll have more fun accomplishing what you want in your lives in partnership!