Creating a Happy Marriage and Loving Relationship

This lecture is an overview of the course on creating a happy marriage and loving relationship. I offer some statistics about marriage, talk about the benefits of doing the course and offer an overview of the eight sections of the course.

I give you suggestions to get the most out of the course. The video is brief because I include a resource for those who want more information.

You'll learn the five stages through which relationships progress and what it means to achieve mature love.

Be able to recognize and overcome escalation and defensiveness in communication.

Recognize the subtle and blatant ways in which we invalidate our spouses, the consequences and what we can do differently.

This is a subtle and common pattern in relationships in which women tend to bring up issues and men withdraw and stonewall. The dynamic becomes very harmful in the long run. I talk about ways to break this pattern.

The most subtle of the four toxic patterns, negative interpretations are hard to recognize. However, doing so is critical because long-term negative interpretations are very predictive of failure and divorce.

Our need for love and connection is deep, not only in childhood but adulthood as well. I teach you the ARE concept from Sue Johnson-availability, responsiveness, and engagement. "Are you there for me?" is the essence of a great relationship.

I offer 8 ways to overcome toxic patterns and establish or reestablish positive connection in your relationship. These are concrete suggestions for communicating and building a loving relationship.

From lots of research and study of the topic of marriage, including the latest research, I've boiled a great relationship down to six critical habits. I do an overview of these habits in this lecture.

This overview will give you insight into why self-responsibility is a foundation of a happy marriage. You'll learn how to build your relationship by taking responsibility for your needs, feelings, thoughts, and behavior. 

Learn the difference between responsibility "to" your spouse and responsibility "for" your spouse. You are responsible "to" but not "for."

I tell a personal story in which I fell into playing the victim with my wife. I'm not alone. See if you can recognize when you also feel like a victim in your relationship as well as the consequences of doing so.

I finish my story from the last lecture by sharing how I was able to change my victim mentality into personal accountability. Making this shift is incredibly empowering to ourselves and our marriages.

A relationship is not really a "thing" or entity. You have a view of your relationship and your spouse has a view of your relationship. They are not the same. The starting point for improving your relationship is changing the relationship in your head.

It is so easy, particularly in the early stages of a relationship, to think that how we feel is the result of our partner. But this external focus sets us up to be disappointed and try to manipulate our partners to give us what we need. I teach you, through a personal example, that you have to be responsible for your needs and communicate these clearly. Don't expect your partner to read your mind or even always give you what you want.

It is easy to take offense to what our partners say or do. This doesn't work, so in this lecture I teach you how to not take offense or to take responsibility and learn and grow when you do.

We want connection with our partners. We want them to soothe us and this need is valid. However, we also have to learn to sooth ourselves because our partners are not perfect and not always going to be there for us. I teach you a number of methods to regulate your emotions and soothe yourself when you're upset.

One of the most important ways you can learn to regulate your emotions and become more emotionally intelligent is by challenging your thinking. I give you lots of examples of how to do this.

Relationships work as you let go of an unrealistic image and expectations and accept your partner for who he or she is. I share some analogies to help you understand this concept.

Just like citizens of nations, your partner has certain rights which I describe in this lesson. Your ability to recognize and respect these rights will allow your partner the emotional freedom to be him or herself which will, in turn, benefit your relationship.

We can view each other as objects or as real human beings. As we learn to look more deeply at one another we will love one another more deeply. In this lesson, I teach you to not only look at but see your partner as a person with a rich inner live, worthy of you knowing and supporting.

Gary Chapman wrote a book on The Five Love Languages. In this lesson, I describe how these languages apply in marriage. We may love one another but fail to communicate this if we don't know how to speak our partner's love language. Your love will grow as you learn to speak one another's language.

It is fun to learn about the differences between women and men. These differences are real and you'll get along much better by understanding them. Light bulbs will turn on as you realize many of your negative interpretations of your partner's behavior can be explained by these natural differences. 

Couples say and do things, intentionally or not, that hurt and cause resentment. Some of these are small and some really big. The purpose of this lesson is to help you let go of negative feelings towards your spouse. I take you through a process to recognize and the release these feelings and replace them with love and hope for a better future.

John Gottman has studied thousands of couples by inviting them into weekend "labs" in which all of their interactions are recorded and later studied. From this research, he has learned that the most important factor in a successful relationship is positive feelings or friendship. This is more important than communication. You can even communicate poorly but if your overall feelings towards one another are positive then you'll weather the storms of marriage.

Happy couples know each other well. They spend lots of time talking. Some of this is daily communicating about their day. And some comes from deeper exploration of one another's past or inner world. In this lesson, I teach you to be curious and ask questions that help you get to know one another and thereby love one another profoundly.

The happiest couples admire and like each other. Sometimes we lose this after living together. But it can be reclaimed. I teach you four methods for nurturing greater admiration. The purpose is to help you like each other as you probably did when you first met.

We often think that relationships turn on big events, but daily mundane interactions say a lot about the quality of your relationship. In this lesson, I teach you three ways of responding to one another's "bids" for interaction. You can turn against, away or towards. 80% of couples in happy marriages turn towards each other. You can improve your marriage by learning being more aware of "bids" and responding in a positive way.

Caring Days are actions you can take, daily, to build friendship or restore feelings of love and goodwill. I help you understand the concept, including examples, and then give you a process for making this part of your marriage.

Research shows that the happiest couples have fun together. And all couples can increase their fun through recreation and doing activities that you both enjoy. I teach you what qualifies as a fun and play and give you a process for coming up with ideas to engage in fun on a regular basis.

Sex is a natural desire but also something that has lots of negative or conflicting connotations. Sexuality is not purely physical but starts in the head. In this lesson, I help you examine your beliefs about sex. I present some of the myths of sex and encourage you to make sure your beliefs and thinking support you in a great sex life.

Most couples who have great sex talk about their sexual relationship. It is opposite for couples who have a poor sex life. So, in this lesson, I teach you some principles and a process for having healthy conversations about your sexual relationship.

A lot of couples treat the act of sex as quiet time but it is actually helpful to talk during love-making. I offer you some tips for doing so during this lesson.

We communicate all the time. In fact, we cannot not communicate. However, in this lesson, I explore communication as a pathway to mature love. The root of the word means to "communion." It is heart-to-heart or soul-to-soul. I talk about the importance of communicating in a way that builds deeper intimacy and connection. 

In this lesson, I present two dimensions of communication--concern for self and concern for other. Good communication is high on both of these dimensions. However, most of emphasize one or the other dimension. Some of us are dominators, some accommodators and some avoiders. Although these three styles work fine in many day-to-day interactions, they break down when topics become more sensitive and intimate. It is then that we need to use a collaborative style of communication.

I present five common patterns of interaction based on the four styles of communication. It's helpful to recognize these patterns in your relationship so you can know when to shift to a different and more helpful pattern as emotions are aroused and you enter into conflict.

In this lesson, I talk about the importance of being vulnerable in our communication. We don't want to be hurt and so avoid communicating vulnerably, thinking we have to put on a strong exterior. But this keeps us from deeper intimacy. I help you understand what is means to communicate in a more vulnerable way.

It often takes great vulnerability to listen well. You might hear your partner say something you don't want to hear and so it's easy to react emotionally. But if you can be open and vulnerable as you listen, you're communication is going to go deeper to a place in which you can be more available, responsive and attuned to one another.

Listening is such an important skill in marriage that I want to give you some tips in how to be a better listener. In this lesson, I talk about our natural responses that prevent good listening and then offer several guidelines to make you a better listener.

After completing this lesson, you'll understand two pathways you can travel during conflict, one which leads to bad outcomes and the other to good. This awareness and understanding from our lessons on communication will help you know how to choose the better pathway. You'll also be able to test your assumptions to know if they are based on trust or fear. Your assumptions will determine which path you tread.

I do an overview of the three steps to resolve conflicts or disagreements in your marriage. Understanding these steps will give you skills to turn potentially negative conversations into constructive conversations.

I give you a number of tools to begin your conversations about sensitive topics in a positive way, so you can move towards mutual understanding and resolution. Conversations that start well end well 96% of the time.

This step is the heart of resolving conflict. It is about learning to disclose your point of view and also listen to the point of view of your partner. You'll come away knowing how to keep conversations on track as you deal with real issues in a safe way for both of you.

I give you a real-life example of creating a pool of shared understanding from my marriage. My wife and I could have become polarized from each other but, using the tools I'm teaching, we developed a mutual understanding of each other's point of view. You'll follow our dialogue to understand how to do this.

In this lecture, I teach you the final step of resolving conflicts. I take you through the three keys to finding solutions that you can both agree upon and which feel like a win to each of you.

The purpose of this quiz is to see how well you understand the basics of good communication and conflict resolution.

Like any aspect of life, the clearer your vision, the more you will achieve. You'll come away from this lesson understanding the importance of a shared vision and steps you'll go through to achieve it.

I teach you the process for creating your shared vision. I talk about the steps and leave you with an exercise to make it happen in your relationship.

Structures are anything you put in place to enable you to take positive action. I teach you about different kinds of structures and invite you to consider and improve the structures in your marriage.

In this lesson, I teach you three rituals (forms of structure) to enrich your marriage. I talk about guidelines and also give you and agenda for holding weekly Powwows and well as Quarterly Relationship Building Retreats.

A coat of arms is a way to ground your marriage in powerful images and symbols that will sustain you over time. I teach you what goes into a coat of arms as well as how to develop it together. Working on your coat of arms will deepen your roots and make you stronger and move devoted to your marriage.

This is a critical time as you come to the end of the course. It is easy to put learning aside. But I look at this as the beginning and offer you eight suggestions to enable you to continue to learn and grow and practice the lessons from this course.

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