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Text Box: Couples Counseling: Couplehood

Text Box: The Couplehood Workshop will next be held October 27th from 7pm to 9pm at the BCC North Campus, sponsored by the Overlake Hospital. Tickets are $25 or $40 per couple and proceeds will be given to the Overlake Hospital. Please call 425-688-5259 or go to www.OverlakeHospital.com to reserve your seats.
        Couples counseling, and the "Couplehood" workshop, are both best described as a process of discovery that inspires as it informs couples, who seek to become best friends and loving partners. "Couplehood" refers to a family of two people, with or without children, who co-create a history, a home, and a purpose as a couple, while grappling with their own individual humanity, amidst the challenges and joys of the world. Couples who can do the work of learning to grow together in this way, better develop a resilience toward life's challenges, as well as a deeply human compassion for one another.
        Relationships can mirror issues we need to explore and life lessons we need to learn. Sometimes, our partner pushes our emotional buttons as they tread upon our issues and we either respond wisely in order to grow more consciously compassionate, or react unwisely because our learning process makes us a bit uncomfortable. What if we were to take a moment and feel grateful, have a laugh, and thank our partner for the gift of providing us with yet another opportunity to grow?
        It is important to remember that we bring our lives with us to each relationship we engage in. In this way our biography and our character help to create our lives today. We will within the dance of our relationships, reinvent and repeat, old life patterns in present relationships in order to heal old wounds and resolve unfinished business. Our relationships with ourselves, our partner, our family, our friends, our community, our spirituality and God, teach us how to love, what our purpose in this life is, and who we are, through the process of our relationships.
        Seven steps one can explore when working on one's "Couplehood" are as follows:
        1. Building a lifetime relationship.
        2. The dynamics of individuality and unity in "Couplehood".
        3. Yours, mine and ours; identifying and resolving issues we bring with us.
        4. Communication and action; what we say and do and why.
        5. How to bring our hopes and dreams into our relationship wisely and well.
        6. Relationship mapping.
        7. Finding resources to support your journey.

        It is also helpful to make a map of your relationship on a weekly basis, in order to keep current with issues that need attention. This kind of weekly maintenance meeting can be followed by a date night, to keep the process of working on your relationship enjoyable. Sometimes enlightenment includes lightening up!
        If however, during the course of time, one or both parties feel it is time to part ways and terminate the relationship; or transform it from that of loving partners to caring friends, it is always best to do so with tenderness and respect for one another, in order to honor the past and move on with one's life in a positive way.
        In summary, co-creating a positive, lifelong, loving relationship is possibly the hardest work you will ever love to do. Good luck on your journey!