Communication Impacts Every Area of Your Relationship
How you communicate in your marriage either strengthens or harms your family's long-term stability and vitality.
Marriage Enhances Health, Happiness and Prosperity
Recent research shows that stable marriages increase measurable success in:
- Emotional and physical health
- Longevity
- Sexual intimacy
- Financial Matters
- Career
- Education
- Children's happiness
- Personal fulfillment
Gain Skills and Tools that improve Every Aspect of Your Life
—with your partner, your family and friends and with people at work and elsewhere.
Couple Communication I is an easy-to-learn, positive, award-winning educational program that teaches you and your partner practical communication skills to produce, protect and sustain a vital partnership.
In This Program, You
- Develop confidence that you can communicate together effectively
- Create faster, better resolutions to conflict
- Increase satisfaction in your relationship
- Expand understanding of yourself and your partner
- Reduce disagreements and tension
- Experience greater caring and esteem for self and partner
In Couple Communication I, You Learn to Use:
The Awareness Wheel to:
- Organize your awareness
- Understand yourself and situations better
- Apply 6 talking skills to be clear and constructive
The Listening Cycle to:
- Tune in accurately to your partner's concerns
- Use 5 productive listening skills
- Strengthen your relationship
The Map-An-Issue Process—an eight-step discussion that combines the 11 talking and listening skills to:
- Create best-fit solutions to complicated situations
- Deal with personal and relational concerns more productively
The Styles of Communication Map to:
- Recognize ineffective and effective ways of talking and listening
- Improve the quality of your communication
Who is Couple Communication I for?
Convenient Formats
You and your partner choose one of two learning formats:
- In a group with an instructor and 6 to 12 other couples (totaling 8 hours)
- By yourselves as a couple with an instructor (6 50-minute sessions)
Enjoy Gaining Your New Skills Through
- Brief presentations of the concepts, skills and processes
- Interesting demonstrations of the communication skills and processes (live or on video)
- Useful practice of skills and processes with real issues of your own choice (appropriate for the setting) using skills mats —innovative tools— to speed learning
- Helpful coaching and feedback on your use of skills
- Valuable application of your learning in real situations between sessions
Your Privacy is Respected
- You choose together privately, as a couple, the issues you discuss and practice
User Friendly Couple Materials
Each couple uses a Couple Communication I Couple Packet containing:
2 Talking and Listening Together workbooks (one copy for each partner)
2 Skills Mats (one for talking, the other for listening) for:
- Use during sessions
- Practice at home between sessions
- Application after the course to reinforce skills when negotiating issues
Set of 4 Pocket Cards to prompt skill use
What Is Unique about Couple Communication?
- Over 600,000 couples have participated in Couple Communication since its beginning at the University of Minnesota Family Study Center.
- Frameworks are theoretically grounded and well researched.
- More than 70 independent studies, many at major universities throughout the United States. document the effectiveness of the program in helping partners learn skills and increase relationship satisfaction.
- Awards affirming the program have been received from the Association of Couple for Marriage Enrichment, the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy and the National Counsel on Family Relations.
- Special kinesthetic methodology accelerates skill learning.
- Couple Communication offers the best-integrated set of communication concepts and specific skills available.
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