Building a Future Together

Sometime after our third child was born in 1991, Martha and I sat down and created 50-year vision of our future. We imagined our three children going to college and each of them pursing their interests and work that they love. We envisioned traveling overseas and even talked about living in a foreign country at […]

The Power of Alignment

Webster’s dictionary defines alignment as “the act of bringing into close cooperation, to ally with, to associate with, or to side with.” Couples who see themselves as partners in life together tend to be aligned on their values, in their lifestyle, and in their vision for their relationship and their future. When something in their […]

Creating an Intentional Marriage

Coontz (2005) writes that married couples today “need to be more intentional about their lives and about the reasons and the rituals that help them stay together.”  Doherty (2001) suggests that there are two kinds of marital commitment: The tentative commitment and the permanent commitment.  When couples make a tentative commitment, they are committed to […]

Exploring Your Unique Friendship

At the core of a successful marriage and/or partnership is friendship.  Fowers (2000) writes that the best marriages are “partnerships in which spouses are devoted to creating a shared life that is larger than the emotional payoff of the marriage.”  He suggests that one of the important virtues in a partnership marriage is friendship where […]

Co-creating A Life Together

Getting married and sharing life with a loving partner remains one of the most important and compelling dreams for young people today. Harrar and DeMaria (2007) found in their survey of attitudes about marriage that 96% of those people who were polled say that they want to get married someday despite the fact that so […]

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 […]

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 […]

A Vision for Partnership

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 […]