What Makes Building A Lasting Connection® the Ultimate Premarital Education?
Premarital education courses offered across the United States generally cover the same few topics: communication, problem-solving skills, commitment, sacrifice, and forgiveness. While these topics are each vitally important and play a key role in marital satisfaction, they fail to explore adult attachment as foundational to relationship development including knowing how to share our deeper feelings in context of decision making, problem solving, handling differences and developing a strong couple identity. When we don’t know how to communication for closeness feelings go underground and show up in ways that amplify disappointments, cause turmoil and relational stress.
Building A Lasting Connection®: One Step At a Time is the only program that weaves attachment and experiential learning into one course that provides an actual connection system – a systematic way to communicate for closeness on topics that matter; decision making, differences, affection and sexual intimacy, exploring roles and developing goals.
As you learn the importance of adult bonding and practice stepping into conversations that deepen your connection and understanding you will not only protect your relationship from the common pitfalls many relationships face you will also develop your ability to continue building a truly Lasting Connection®.
What will we learn in this workshop?
The objectives of the workshop are to teach couples, within an active and practice-based setting, how to create and preserve a foundation of secure attachment in their new and developing relationship.
With a new understanding of attachment theory and attachment needs, couples will:
- Achieve a greater understanding of what “romantic love is” and how to maintain and grow it.
- Learn how to communicate within a systematic framework designed to come to greater understanding and connection.
- Navigate differences and solve problems together.
- Discover and practice how remove communication blocks.
- How to avoid touch deprivation of both body and soul.
- Learn the art of “sexual intimacy” with attachment needs in mind
- Create rituals and traditions to overcome the effects of growing up with divorce.
- Establish a process to set and achieve goals together to guide you past critical relationship periods.
The Lasting Connection® workshop is designed to provide couples the skills they need to keep the spark alive throughout their lifetime. Using our Lasting Connection System® couples will discover the process of expressing hopes, exploring possibilities, addressing concerns, and working together to discover solutions to whatever issues and conflicts life may bring, as well as how to share thoughts, feelings and needs in a manner that ensures validation and understanding between partners.
What is Premarital Education and why is it needed?
It’s no secret: marriage can be hard. Studies show that couples marrying for the first time have a 50% chance of facing divorce, often within the first 10 years of marriage. Relationship researchers, professional counselors, ecclesiastical groups and even public leaders have found premarital education beneficial in preparing couples for long-term commitment and ultimately preventing divorce.
The benefits of Premarital Education include:
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- Support in the transition from single hood to marriage
- Divorce Prevention – premarital education helps families and societies avoid the high cost of divorce
- A high correlation with greater marital quality
- Making a contribution to having lower levels of marital conflict
Many states have proposed and enacted legislation that requires premarital education before issuing a marriage certificate or offers incentives to participate in premarital and relationship building programs before marriage. Despite multiple studies proving both the short- and long-term effectiveness of premarital education, only a handful of these programs are available and there are large differences in curriculum between religious institutions and state or national guidelines.
These programs tend to focus mostly on behavioral skills—like basic couple communication— but completely ignore adult attachment and its role in building a warm, enduring, and fulfilling marital relationship. As one of they key elements of romantic relationships, adult attachment, in our opinion, is of utmost importance when preparing two individuals to merge their lives into one.
What is Adult Attachment and Why Does It Matter?
Thanks to decades of research and thousands of studies, social scientists and researchers have recognized the causes of relationship distress and the inevitable impact that relational stress has not only on close relationships, but on the physical and mental health of relationship partners as well. Behind much of this relational stress lie deeply rooted emotions connected to personal attachment.
According to Dr. John Bowlby, the father of Attachment Theory, the purpose of emotion is to communicate essential needs, motives, and priorities to others. Research shows that “securely attached” adults are prepared mentally and emotionally to form and maintain emotionally responsive relationships. This is not to say that only securely attached adults can have fulfilling and long-lasting relationships; relational success is found with couples who are able to understand their partner’s and their own at attachment styles and build on a foundation of trust, mutual vulnerability, and emotional connectivity. A sense of security and emotional safety encourages positive and constructive communication, whereas feelings of insecurity cause a breakdown in communication and ultimately a breakdown of the relationship. Understanding attachment is the first step in truly understanding how to communicate with your partner on their level.
The Lasting Connection® relationship pyramid.
The Lasting Connection® workshop is built on the five pillars of our relationship pyramid that are essential to romantic relationships.
Attachment
Communication
Embracing Differences
Physical Connection
Ritual, Roles & Goals
Information is provided through instruction, interactive exercises and skill practice to keep the learning segments interesting and engaging.
You can do your premarital workshop with a trained facilitator on your own or with a group of other couples.
Are you, or would you like to be, a premarital educator?
Join us for the facilitator training, or contact us for how we can help you, your church, mosque, synagogue or organization teach and reach more couples with this essential information.