Suspending Blame and Fault

One of the patterns that couples can get into in their relationship when things are not working is to make each other wrong and then start blaming each other. Ultimately, there is no real responsibility in blaming another person. Blaming your partner is not being responsible for either what happened or for the way that […]

Giving Up Having to be Right

Everyone has a valid point of view. Every person’s point of view has a particular ‘rightness’ to it. The difficulty in a relationship often begins when one person holds too tightly onto their point of view as the only ‘right’ point of view. At that point, the person is ‘being right about being right.’  One […]

Making an Important Life Choice

When you and your spouse have an important choice to make that will have major ramifications for your lives, give yourselves ample time to clarify and align on each specific scenario that you are considering. Using separate pieces of paper or large flip chart paper, write down each of the scenarios you are considering at […]

Partnership in International Living

Many multinational corporations, non-governmental organizations, foreign-service agencies and educational institutions are increasingly sending their employees to work and live internationally (Miser & Sjodin-Bunse, 2012). Additionally, many employees who choose this path do so with their spouses and partners. Of the thousands of expatriates employed at the 118 international organizations surveyed in the most recent Brookfield […]

A Life of Shared Meaning

A recent survey found that 96% of those people who were polled say that they want to get married someday despite the fact that so many marriages in the United States fail each year (Harrar & DeMaria, 2007). After questioning 1,001 people about their attitudes and beliefs about marriage, 93% of them said that having […]

Creating a Partnership Collage

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 […]

Having your Marriage be a Top Priority

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 […]

Expressing Appreciation

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 […]

Being Aware of Unwitting Perspectives

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 […]

Visualizing your Future

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 […]