
Workshop Purpose
Crafting Quality Relationships 101
A. Course Purpose. Why bother with a relationship course?
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To live life to the fullest, enjoying ourselves with another can be as good as it gets.
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Destructive behaviours occur in a relationship because we can’t see what is really going on, let alone know what to do about it.
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Conflict leads to a loss of love, affection and compassion; whilst understanding and appreciation deepen love, affection and compassion.
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A quality relationship leads to increased health, happiness and longevity. Breakdown in a relationship leads to loss and emotional pain and can be a factor leading to depression and anxiety.
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Relationship conflict, distress or break-up is disastrous for the well-being of children.
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Relationship distress for children is tantamount to the trauma, pain, and abuse parents never want their children to experience.
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Relationship breakdown usually = relationship ignorance. Rarely are individual inadequacies the source of relationship breakdown.
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Relationship reconstruction requires several components. These include:
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Replacing ignorance of the dynamics taking place with insight and understanding.
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Appreciating that conflict occurs when we don’t know how better to defend our position.
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Appreciating that your partner’s mistakes in relation to you are more about the ignorance of how to do better than malevolent intent.
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Acquiring the essential skills of relating, and practising these until they become second nature.
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Relationship success = relationship insight, knowledge, skills, practice, re-connections.
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Learning how to bring quality, gems, loving behaviour, understanding and thoughtful behaviour, needs meeting behaviour into your relationship.
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B. What can I expect from this course?
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The goal of this course is to address an understanding of:
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The hidden dynamics within primary relationships.
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How these dynamics unfold, and what you can do about them.
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How we project our childhood wounding onto our partner until we learn how not to.
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Why we become reactive and how we can manage this tendency to react.
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How to talk so you’ll be heard, and hear others so they will listen.
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How understanding your needs and wants will support better communication.
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How to send messages that are less likely to wind others up.
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How to support your partner so that s/he’ll be less reactive.
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How to restore magic to your relationship.
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C. Skills you will need to learn and use with your partner include:
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To discuss your current style of reactive behaviour, and the pattern you see this creates with your partner.
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To discuss all emotions that conflict arouses within you.
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To discuss your unmet needs, desires, wantings, and values and how you would like these honoured in the relationship.
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To discuss all your old ways of responding to conflict in light of new learning.
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To discuss the impact of the attachment style and personality differences you both have.
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To discuss new ways you must act in order to protect your relationship from damaging conflict and bring compassion back into it.
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To communicate so that everyone is heard, valued, understood, and healed of reactive childhood patterning.
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To know and practice how to support yourself when the going gets tough, so you’ll be less reactive and can take responsibility for your reactive feelings and actions.
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To practice previously used ways of bringing quality and love back to your relationship.
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D. Approaches you will be invited to take will include:
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What you put into this course will = what you get out.
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Try what I have to offer here, and accept or reject whatever you like. I’m trying to get you to break out of a belief system, so please don’t just adopt a new variant of someone telling you what to do.
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Sharing some of your own stories will add richness to the group and help all to see that we are similar and all in this boat together. Whether or not you do this is entirely your own choice.
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We invite you to keep confidential any personal stories from others who share these on the
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Reading relevant chapters and the exercises they contain will help cement your learning.
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Discussion with another person about what you’re learning will also help cement new understandings.
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Please don’t use alcohol or cigarettes at this venue.
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By signing this document, you agree to the above conditions.