THE COURSE OF LOVE

A Committed Couple’s Map of THE Terrain

Coming Soon…

Online, self-paced enrichment course for pre-marital
and newlywed couples

Early romance can be a heady experience of euphoria and elation. As couples progress beyond the early bonding stage into more formalized commitments they must develop skills for managing differences. What does this mean? In plain terms, some rather unromantic tasks: accepting differing beliefs, sharing power, negotiating decisions, coordinating schedules, managing extended families, balancing the needs of self-directed pursuits with the needs of the relationship. Maybe or maybe not raise children together.

Couples who learn the skills to tackle these tasks advance toward mutual interdependence, the goal for all couples. In this golden stage couples carry forward some of the passion and idealization from the beginning, but house it within a more companionate, grounded love. In this stage, they understand that conflict will arise as it does in all relationships, but they know how to turn conflict into a tool for discovery, not dominance. They achieve a balance of commitment to self and to the relationship. At this stage, a marriage/partnership can even serve as a container that allows each individual to live a richer, more authentic selfhood. These are exceptional, even transcendent, relationships. I believe education sets couples on a path toward this long-term goal and this course intends to do just that.

The course of love is for you if…

  • You have a growth mindset

  • You want to be proactive about developing good habits and deepening your relationship knowledge

  • You are an individual or a couple in the pre-marital, newlywed, or committed partnership stage

  • You are a therapist or coach seeking to learn more about pre-marital enrichment

This course will…

  • Guide you to conversations you need to be having that you currently aren’t

  • Educate you about the developmental stages of romantic relationships

  • Instill in you expectations that set you up for success

  • Help you assess for both strengths and growth areas in your relationship (ex.relationship roles, sex, work/life balance, money, family-of-origin boundaries)

  • Equip you with fundamental communication skills so that you stay connected instead of drifting toward discord when managing differences

The important questions to ask yourself and your partner

Instead of solely focusing on the windowdressing decisions that starting a life requires (napkin colors for your wedding, rug swatches for your nursery) this course will widen your aperture and guide you to the deep conversations that, arguably, are far more important to be having at this stage.

Here are some conversation prompts to give you an example of the kind of communication that will help you thrive over the years. More on this in the Course!

  • Does my partner have a growth mindset? Is it important to me that my partner has a growth mindset?

  • Do we have a sense of our strengths as couple and our trouble zones? Can we talk about them or is it too scary?

  • How do we handle external stressors? Have we been stress tested yet? If so what did we learn about how we cope?

  • How was conflict modeled in my family-of-origin? How is that different from my partner's family-of-origin modeling? What do we want to retain and shed from our respective family-of-origin patterns?