#4: Couples Can Learn to Harness the Forces that Govern their Relationship

Relationships are not easy, but they can be incredibly rewarding when they work well. Unfortunately, people in western cultures don’t have much opportunity to learn about how relationships work.

We believe that with just a bit of guidance, the vast majority of couples can learn about the basic principles that govern relationships. Applying these ideas to their relationship gives them a real advantage in keeping their relationship healthy and strong.

For most of us, most of the time, life is way too busy and challenging to start making major changes. In fact, major changes can often lead to failure. But smart, simple, small changes implemented regularly can accumulate to have a noticeable impact.

We believe that any relationship program worth your time should be flexible, simple, and personal.

Flexible

We’ve designed take-aways that fit into your life. Your relationship is important, certainly, but you have a lot going on in your life. We try to build our services around this fact.

Simple

We keep it simple. We emphasize a few core ideas, because these are the ideas that emerge repeatedly in scientific research as fundamental, deciding factors. But relationships don’t need to be complicated.

A lot of people are invested in keeping relationships complicated, with the expectation that confusing people will encourage them to spend more money or buy more books. This is not our approach.

Personal

Our seminars are personal. We give you and your partner time to connect with one another and to apply the methods we present.

We break our seminars and workshops into a series of modules, each of which captures key principles – and to illustrate our points we often use videotapes of couples from our research studies.

In each of these modules we set aside time for you and your partner to work together privately on a specific exercise and explore how the exercise works in your relationship.

Other Key Premises

• #1: Relationships Equal Health, Wealth, & Happiness
• #2: Relationships Change Over Time
• #3: Three Main Forces Govern Relationships

Back to Our Philosophy.