Creating Extraordinary Relationships

"I feel greater intimacy with my partner. The workshop gave me the tools I needed to deal with a specific problem in my relationship."

"I feel more connected to my husband. Our marriage got a workout."

Two people creating and sustaining intimate relationship is a remarkable achievement. To create a lasting relationship requires generosity, discipline, patience, effort, focus, and the willingness to develop an awareness that supports freedom and full self-expression.

In the usual course of a relationship there is initial attraction, open communication and ecstasy of emotional and sexual connection, and the thrill of exploring many things together. We yearn to experience unconditional acceptance by one other person. As couples, straight and gay, we imagine that the romantic love we first experience will last forever. Love, however, is often fragile, affected by life's realities. Differences emerge. Struggles and conflicts develop. Love is no longer easy or romantic.

Communication, acknowledgment and appreciation, conflict management, and forgiveness and empathy skills have to be intentionally developed to support the possibility of love or to recover and renew love in a relationship.

In our couples therapy work, in our day-long workshop -- Creating Love: A Communications Workshop for Couples, and in our weekend workshop -- The Recovery of Love, we commit ourselves to creating a safe process where a couple can work on ways to be together that make a difference to each person. Working separately and together, Jeffrey and Miriam bring 34 years of relationship and marriage and 30 years of doing couples therapy and couples groups to create a space for couples to enhance your capacity to love each other.