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Originators of Imago Therapy and authors of Getting the Love You Want, Harville Hendrix and his wife Helen LaKelly Hunt are offering free relationship therapy workshops to Dallas-area couples. Many of the couples who attend have never gone to relationship counseling. At a church in South Dallas, in one of the poorest parts of town, the room is packed with hundreds of couples. They’re sitting, holding hands and staring into each other’s eyes. Their hosts, multi-millionaire couple Harville Hendrix and Helen LaKelly Hunt, are on a mission: to save marriages. They’re trying to saturate the city with relationship counseling at workshops like this one, aiming to reach couples who wouldn’t or couldn’t otherwise afford to attend conventional marriage counseling. Read and listen to the NPR story hereContent goes here

Research has shown that the sign of a healthy partnered relationship is the ratio of  5 positive, connecting interactions for every 1 difficult, disconnecting interaction. So here are 5 easy ways to refresh and bring happiness into your relationship today. Each of these actions have been proven to enhance warm connection. You might call these your “relationship vitamins”!

ONE:  A 60 second full-body, non-sexual hug.

TWO:  Share something you appreciated today about your partner (such as:bringing me a cup of coffee; laughing with our son; how you look in your new dress;  your kindness to our neighbor …)

THREE:Go for a short walk just holding hands. FOUR:  Share with one another 1 thing that you each felt good about in your day (such as: completing a task; contact with a friend; seeing a beautiful view; laughing at a good joke…)

FIVE:  Intentionally greet your partner warmly at one (or all) of the 4 major transition times in the day (1st seeing each other in the morning; leaving each other at beginning of the day; returning to each other at end of day; going to bed/sleep at night).

ENJOY!

  Learning the Intentional Dialogue can be a crucial part of growth and healing in relationships. This is because the structure of the dialogue teaches us how to listen to our partner and gives us the experience of being heard and validated. In the dialogue we practice mirroring which allows us to see our partner, as well as discover ourselves. It is a way of making contact and beginning the process of differentiation.

We live in a culture that says wholeness comes in finding a “good enough” partner. We need to become aware that we EACH need to BE that good enough partner. Through practicing the Intentional Dialogue we will discover that it is a tool with which we can get our needs met by entering the world of the other and feeling the fullness of connection. There are four main steps to the full intentional dialogue. They are mirroring, summarizing, validation and empathy.

1. Sender sends one or two sentences.

2. Receiver mirrors: “If I heard you correctly…” “Did I get it?” “Is there more about that?”

3. Summary: When the sender says, “There is no more,” the receiver summarizes (as a check for accuracy) the essence of the sender’s message.

4. Receiver asks: “Did I get the essence?” Receiver mirrors and additions or corrections to the summary.

5. Receiver validates: “What you have said makes sense to me. It makes sense because…” Validation IS NOT AGREEMENT. Validation lets your partner know that, based on how you know them and the way they perceive the world, they make sense.

6. Receiver empathizes: Pick two or three feeling words, that is all, that describe how you imagine your partner is feeling right now.

7. Sender confirms or alters the feeling words based on how they are actually feeling. Practice with the following sentences as your topic:

1. What will your relationship look like, be like, and feel like if our work together is wildly successful?

2. What are you doing now that keeps you from having the relationship you long for?

3. What could you do differently that would help you create that relationship?