As premarital coaches, our goal is to help couples learn more about one another and themselves before taking their next big step in their relationship. Marriage consultant Gary Chapman introduces five ways in which we feel love and connected: 1) Words of Affirmation, 2) Quality Time, 3) Receiving Gifts, 4) Acts of Service and 5) Physical Touch. Gary has an online self-assessment that we ask all our premarital couples … (Read more)
If we had only… As relationship coaches, something we hear from married couples is that they wish they had done some premarital work. They’re not saying it necessarily would have stopped them from getting married. Rather they say this could have been a positive step prior to marriage in helping them really understand and know one another on topics they had not discussed together – … (Read more)
In our work with relationships, experience teaches that struggles and challenges are a natural aspect of relating… even the most successful ones. Our differences with one another is a given. Avoiding and running away from conflict particularly in loving, intimate relationships never works. It will somehow always catch up to us. I’m a big fan of John Gottman. He is a professor of psychology known for his … (Read more)
Yikes! The Holidays are just around the corner. Yep, it’s true! Halloween marks the beginning of the Holiday Season- a time that is marketed to be all ho, ho, ho and jolly and yet for many it takes some ‘work’ to be jolly and have a holiday season that brings the peace, joy and love we all want and deserve. So how are you feeling… … (Read more)
My last blog Are You Ready To Get Off The Fence, was about how being stuck and indecisive keeps us from moving toward our goals or making the changes that we want in our lives. Many times it’s our reluctance to have what we perceive to be a difficult conversation that keeps us in limbo- and keeps us in that place we don’t want to be. Having talked … (Read more)