Seven Principles of Relationship Education

In the midst of my research for our training topic, which is relationship enhancement, I happened upon this. I believe this is a must-read.

1. It’s Your Ship, You’re the Captain: Relationship education is about helping people find strategies and solutions that fit for their unique circumstances, values and relationship goals. That includes respecting their own personal responsibility for their success and the decisions they make for their lives. Evidence-based skills training provides techniques that are easy to understand and use to surface greater awareness of what lies beneath the tip of the iceberg, navigate typical relationship challenges, and overcome differences that are a natural part of any close relationship.

2. One Mouth, Two Ears: Relationship education provides safe, time-limited structures for conversations that matter, which are often much more about listening than talking. Learning to actively listen with empathy and respect to another person’s perspective and experience –without judgment, defensiveness, blame, or an effort to quickly try to “fix” the issue or the person — makes it safer for intimates to develop greater awareness of themselves and each other.

3. Riding the Waves: Relationship education teaches practical, usable skills for better understanding and safely expressing the full range of emotions, including anger, sadness and fear. Upsetting feelings held in eventually either implode or explode. Confiding painful feelings to a significant other leaves more room to experience feelings of love, pleasure and happiness. Just as the most powerful waves lose their energy when they break against the shore, the same is generally true of emotions.

4. It’s Rarely the Problem that’s the Problem: Relationship education enables distressed couples — with good will towards each other, openness to learning, and a desire for the relationship to succeed — to deal with differences and problems in ways that often lead to greater closeness, understanding, acceptance and commitment. The issues that surface are typically symptoms of communication breakdowns, hidden assumptions and expectations, behaviors that come from holding in upsetting feelings, or lack of skills for constructive conflict resolution.

5. Love is a Feeling: Relationship education helps people develop their emotional intelligence, including understanding that feelings of love come from the anticipation of pleasure in our interactions with others. If instead of anticipating pleasure, we expect pain, feelings of love are unlikely to survive, let alone thrive. What’s a pleasure changes during different stages and passages of life. Sustaining feelings of love requires learning what it takes in today’s circumstances to stay a pleasure in each other’s lives. And doing it.

6. Marriage is a Contract: Relationship education recognizes that although nearly all traditional marriage vows include the promise to “love ‘till death do us part,” the marriage contract itself cannot be dependent on “feelings” of love, which naturally wax and wane. That doesn’t mean commitment or obligations wax and wane. Emotions are affected by many factors, often unrelated to issues inside our closest relationships. Marriage is the glue that’s meant to hold couples and families together during periods of growth, change and challenge that are natural part of life.

7. Relationships are Work: Relationship education is built on the understanding that what happens in our closest relationships impacts quality of life, fulfillment, happiness, and the ability to pursue cherished dreams and aspirations. Relationships take regular attention. Without intentionally nurturing relationships, it’s easy to become strangers, for relationships to wither and become vulnerable. Beyond staying a pleasure in each other’s lives, the work of an intimate relationship is to consistently meet each other’s needs for bonding (emotional and physical closeness). Relationship education provides a road map and usable skills for sustaining healthy relationships that are an ongoing source of love, pleasure, happiness, and fulfillment for both partners. 

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*taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relationship_education

Confidence

Almost two months ago, I had my hair cut. It wasn't just an ordinary hair cut. It was a drastic change. You see, I've had my hair mid length most of the time, 2-4 inches below the shoulders. The shortest I've had it, except for the time when I was still very young and my mum was the one who cut my hair, was during my final year in high school (5 years ago). My hair was at shoulder length.

So anyway, this time I had my hair cut REALLY short. Unfortunately, it was done waaaayy shorter than I wanted. I really don't know what the hairdresser was thinking, or if he even was. I left the shop and put on my beanie until I arrived home.

I was sad and thought I looked horrible, but when my sister saw me, she almost shrieked with excitement. She was raving about how it looked good on me and all other good things. It took a while before I was convinced that I looked okay.

That night, I was meeting my boyfriend and he had no idea beforehand that I was going to cut my hair. I was worried because he might not like it. I was wearing my beanie when I got into the car. After a while, I took it off and waited for his reaction. He laughed. But it was more of amusement rather than of mockery. He said nothing ill about my new hairstyle, even joking that I looked more handsome than him already.

And that was it. I was no longer conscious about my hair. It wasn't cut perfectly, yes, but what was important was that the people who matter to me like it, because their opinion really is all that matters to me. :)

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Sometimes, we get too conscious and we worry too much, especially about our looks. While it's true that we must look presentable, what really matters is what we think about ourselves. It is important that we feel comfortable so that we will be confident.