Skip to main content
Tag

communication styles

couple with good communication holding hands while walking on urban pavement

5 Habits That Sabotage Good Communication

By Relationship Basics13 Comments

When it comes to communicating with your partner, not every conversation is created equal. Sometimes you’re able to clearly convey what you want and you come out of it on the same page – and same team. Other times, wires get crossed, an innocent exchange gets derailed, and you find yourselves feeling frustrated and misunderstood.

We’re human – our own emotions, biases, and expectations can cloud our ability to convey exactly what we mean or accurately interpret what our spouse is telling us. Despite good intentions, you might actually be sabotaging your efforts toward good communication with these five habits. Read More

June 1, 2022
Love0
Man kissing woman on the forehead

The Keys to Productive Complaining

By Conflict7 Comments

It sounds like an oxymoron. Complaining doesn’t usually get associated with being productive. But in the context of your relationship, complaining is actually preferable to the damage of criticism.

Renowned marriage researcher and therapist John Gottman has pinpointed what he calls the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse – four communication habits that can be predictive of divorce with a shocking 90% accuracy. You guessed it, one of the Horsemen is criticism.

Now for the good news: as we mentioned earlier, complaining is the healthier alternative to criticism. It helps ensure you’re both making an effort and can be an antidote to complacency. Want to complain more productively? Keep these tips in mind:

Read More

May 5, 2021
Love0

7 Reasons Why This Year’s Valentine’s Day Won’t Be Like Last Year’s

By Uncategorized4 Comments

A brief synopsis on what happens every year on Valentine’s Day and what you can do this year to make it better than ever.

1. This year you will open up and communicate to your partner what you want for Valentine’s Day, figuratively and literally. It’s time to be assertive and vulnerable with your partner.  You will both appreciate that you were able to open up and say what you are really thinking. Read More

February 7, 2018
Love0

Love and Intimacy Takes a New Form

By Uncategorized2 Comments

Words to think about from our staff at PE

They have been married for 66 years. The wife lives in the family home. Her husband is in a full time care facility.  She won’t drive much anymore and he can’t drive at all.

Every Sunday morning he hires the accessibility van to bring him home. If the bus is late picking him up, he knows she will worry.  He calls her from his flip phone to give her a new ETA.

She cooks his favorite breakfast and has it ready as soon as he arrives. For a special treat for lunch, some Sunday’s she will go to the local fast food place and bring home his favorites. When she asks him what he wants for supper, he always answers “Whatever you make will be delicious.” They share and enjoy the comfort of eating their meals together at the dining room table; the same table that in the 50’s and 60’s sat a family of five, then six, and finally a family of seven.

These people are my parents.

Read More

August 24, 2017
Love0
A couple doing ballet together with the statue of liberty in the background.

The Art of Jumping to Conclusions

By Uncategorized3 Comments

We all do it – we all make quick decisions without hearing the whole story.  It’s our human nature; we had to make these rapid pivots to stay alive as cave dwellers.  Imagine yourself as a Neanderthal – there’s a giant snake in front of you, blocking the entrance to your home.  Unfortunately for the snake, you don’t have time to research if it is poisonous or not, you just have to smash it with a rock so you can protect yourself and your family back in your cave.

We still do this, but instead of a giant snake in front of the entrance to our home, it’s the garbage over-spilling in the kitchen, the same garbage your partner promised to pitch out last night.  She knew you asked her to do it, since you did it the last two times.  She must have decided it wasn’t a priority to take out last night.  This thought is appalling, what did she do all last night?  Watch documentaries about people with weird addictions?  That’s more important than committing to your partnership? Read More

August 10, 2017
Love0
A map with locations circled.

Map Your Marriage

By Uncategorized2 Comments

Your marriage (or future marriage) will be the adventure of a lifetime.

You will literally journey through clearings of joy and fulfillment, canyons of darkness and life’s challenges, and valleys of hope, passion, and love. You will push and pull yourselves through the balance of staying connected to family and friends while establishing yourself as a couple, and you will have the potential to experience the freedom of growing alongside a partner who supports and encourages your individual growth.

It would be nice to have some guidelines, or a map of sorts, to help you out along the journey, would you agree?

Search no more. Read More

July 6, 2017
Love0

Marriage is More than a Piece of Paper

By Uncategorized3 Comments

This is part one of a mini interview series the team at PREPARE/ENRICH conducted during the month of May to celebrate anniversaries with couples like you.

As we approach the month of June, wedding season is upon us.  With weddings come anniversaries – many, many anniversaries.  Relationships are our priority here at P/E and we wanted to highlight the lives of some of our couples as they reach milestones in their relationships.  We have found that couples at all stages in their relationships have unique stories and great advice that we believe every couple could benefit from indulging in.  Take a few minutes out of your day to share in the laughs, well-rounded advice, and insights from our P/E family.

 

Introducing our first couple, Anna and Eric Read More

May 31, 2017
Love0
A couple embracing on their wedding day.

Why You Need Not Marry the Wrong Person

By Uncategorized5 Comments

A letter from our VP:

The New York Times most read story of 2016 recently popped back up on the most popular list again, nearly a year after in first ran last May. As is often the case for the most popular story, the topic was love and relationships: “Why You Will Marry the Wrong Person” by Alain de Botton.   A primary argument de Botton offers to support his pessimistic title is that couples entering the commitment of marriage can’t possibly know enough about themselves or each other to make an informed, data-driven decision to spend (or at least plan to spend) the rest of their lives together.  Our society is such that a person “in love” fails to get past the shiny veneer and discover the idiosyncrasies, the warts, the psychoses of their potential spouse…the ways in which they “are crazy.”  Even when preceded by years of dating, the curtain is pulled back only after vows have been exchanged.  Real life sets in and exposes expectations, personality quirks and manifestations of past hurts that can form a toxic brew – a vicious cycle of reactions and overreactions that severely test or even destroy the relationship. Read More

April 28, 2017
Love0

Mold Your Melancholy Mondays

By UncategorizedNo Comments

Have you ever woken up one morning, nothing is actually wrong, but you feel like you’ve got a huge weight on your shoulders?  Or that your body aches, even though you darn well know you didn’t exercise the night before?  Or that it seems to take much more concentration to smile than usual?  We all have self-pity days – days where nothing is actually wrong but we can’t shake this overwhelming feeling of melancholy.

Discomfort is a natural part of life, not usually one we like to shine a light on.  A part we tend to shove in a dark corner and pretend like it doesn’t exist.  However, we should bring those feelings to light and talk about them so we can normalize a completely natural part of life. Read More

April 6, 2017
Love0
Close Menu