the school for couples

Our work and our lives are based on these guiding principles:

The quality of our relationship is defined by the activity of relating to each other; that is, how we talk, think about and act towards each other. Looking at the quality of our relationship is like monitoring the running balance in our cheque book – if the debits outweigh the credits we are in trouble. It’s rarely the big things that destroy a relationship – like my Grandma used to say – “if you pay attention to the pennies, the dollars look after themselves.” As it is for bank accounts, so it is for relationships.

We have never seen dishonesty produce happiness and intimacy. So we advocate absolute honesty in any relationship that matters to you. If your relationship to yourself matters, be scrupulously honest in acknowledging your feelings and motivations to yourself. If your relationship with a specific person matters, scrupulously tell the full truth about your feelings and your deeds to that person. Almost every relationship disaster people have brought to our office began with lying to protect the feelings of another person. For this reason, we never advocate concealment.

Commitment is crucial to relationship harmony. Almost all relationship problems are problems of commitment. We have worked with couples married for twenty years in which one or both people had not yet made a full body-and-soul commitment to the relationship. In other situations, problems were caused by a person being more committed to an addiction--such as smoking, alcohol, work or others--than to the ongoing dance of intimacy with a partner. Unconscious commitments can best be discovered by listening to what you complain about, out loud or in your mind. When people complain about something repeatedly, it is almost always because they have an unconscious commitment to it. We advocate a monogamous sexual commitment, and have never seen any other model work.

Arguments start when someone points the finger of blame and races to occupy the position of "wronged victim." This causes the other person to blame and race toward the victim position. Both people end up feeling wronged, justifying that position, and burning immense energy in a futile attempt to get the other person to accept the role of villain. Our work deals with this problem in a radical way: We invite both people to take full responsibility for any problem in a relationship. Both people are invited to shift to asking "What's my role in this problem?" and "How can I shift my consciousness so it doesn't re-occur?" rather than "Why is he/she doing this to me?" When people are courageous enough to do that, the energy that previously was burned in the race for victimhood can be re-channeled into creative activities.

Our work focuses on learning to appreciate other people, and learning to receive appreciation, rather than trying to get other people to appreciate us. When you open to receiving appreciation and learn how to appreciate skillfully, other people go to great lengths to appreciate you.

We are much more interested in how people are the same than how they are different. While some approaches focus on the differences between men and women, for example, we focus on the underlying unity of genders. Whether you are in a same-sex relationship, a multi-cultural relationship or any other variation, you still face core issues common to all.

Creativity is crucial to relationship harmony. Unless both people express their creativity, they are going to think the other is oppressing it.

Most relationship problems can be resolved with five questions: What am I not facing? What truths have I not spoken? What have I been blaming others for that I need to own responsibility for creating? What choices do I need to make? What actions do I need to take?

When we work with you, the format can be quite varied depending on your needs. Some of our clients come from some distance so we sometimes work in one or two day intensive sessions every few weeks. For local clients, a weekly session is often preferred. We see clients in our home office on the shores of Lake Stoco in Tweed. We are about a 2 1/2 drive from Toronto, Kingston or Ottawa. We’re lucky to be located in one the most picturesque areas of Eastern Ontario. When clients come for a full or two-day session they often stay overnight in our private guest suite or at a nearby motel or bed and breakfast.

Regardless of the format, the work remains essentially the same—learning new ways to communicate and resolve differences, developing a relationship vision and putting in place the steps to realize the vision, identifying personal dreams and learning how to support each other in achieving them.

One of the important realizations we made over the years is that the most frequent instigator of relationship problems is our own personal past. One day our wonderful, gentle, loving partner will say or do something that triggers in us the memory of emotional pain that comes from a long time ago. In the moment it is happening, we often don’t recognize that this is just a memory and think that it (the old pain) is happening again. We then treat our partner accordingly usually resulting a disconnection that hurts us and confuses our partner.

So we also teach you how to recognize when your own historical issues (ghosts) are being triggered in the relationship and how to enlist your partner in helping you to clear these up.
While every relationship is unique, we have identified a set of skills that generally speaking) most couples need to learn:

• How to listen to understand what your partner is saying from their perspective (instead of listening to see if you are being blamed or need to fix something)
• How to speak in a way that your partner can understand
• How to identify your own ‘love language’ and your partner’s so that when you do express your love, your partner knows you are doing so! (hint: there are five distinct ways we receive love and usually one or two work better for us than the others)
• How to identify and work with your own personal ‘ghosts’
• How to distinguish between problems that can be resolved and those that you will need to learn to live with (Hint: there are about 10 things about your partner that will annoy you to no end and guess what ? That will be true about any partner. Leaving one partner for another just trades one set of issues for another).
• How to express your feelings about your partner's behaviour without blaming your partner
• How to listen to your partner express feelings about your behaviour without feeling blamed.
• How to respond to your partner when they have a complaint about your behaviour (Hint: defending, explaining, justifying isn’t it)
• How to resolve—truly resolve—problems. (Hint: you need to express your feelings about the problem before you can resolve it.)
• How to create and use a relationship vision to create the lifestyle and relationship you truly want