Therapy Duo

Psychotherapy & Counselling for Individuals & Couples

Category: Communication

Articles on communication.

  • Are We Sleeping with our Expectations?

    Are We Sleeping with our Expectations?

    Sleeping with our Expectations

    Are we sleeping with our expectations of our partner? Have we made up a day-to-day story of what we need from our partner? Have we made any hidden deals with them, to make ourselves feel safe, to complete or fix an old story?

    (We’re using “sleeping” here as a metaphor for a deal or arrangement that we’ve forgotten we’ve made – it’s become unconscious.)

    And are we willing to investigate this – perhaps even to bring our unconscious expectations into the light in therapy?

    We spoke in our last article of the narcissistic wounding that can drive a relationship. And here we’ll touch on expectations (which is another lens on the same issue).

    Meeting in Diversity

    We often see in relationships that people come together out of a sense of the difference between (rather than the similarity between) the partners. Each person seeks completion in some way. Aspects of the other represent parts of their personality that are (psychologically) in the shadow; to some extent, at least, out of awareness.

    There’s nothing wrong with joining out of a sense of difference as long as this dynamic is seen and acknowledged in the relationship. What doesn’t work is when the joining is driven by an old loss that may pre-date the relationship, that is unseen and that continues to drive one or both of the partners.

    There can be a fantasy of union and a continual fusional grasping to avoid repeating the original loss.

    An Aside – Original Loss

    Much has been written on original loss and its investigation by many of the greatest minds in psychotherapy.

    Original loss is not just a lingering, painful sense of wrong done to us personally (early betrayals by our primary carers – although this can be hugely important) but also has an existential aspect: the loss of being born, of being thrust out of paradise into a world that (even in the best of circumstances) is subject to chance, luck, and sometimes relentless and difficult realities.

    And original loss has deep cultural aspects as well (the loss of paradise) – as talked about by religions since time immemorial.

    Fusional Grasping

    Fusional grasping is an evocative term used by Aldo Carotenuto. In his book To Love To Betray Carotenuto says:

    [An] implication of this fusional grasping is that in the relationship, the partners recognise each other only in proportion to the degree that each fulfils the other’s needs… It is interesting to observe that the causes of rancour and incomprehension between two partners are always the same and remain the same for years – at times an entire lifetime – without a real solution being found.

    Carotenuto goes on to say how a betrayal (such as an affair by one of the partners) can be an angry attempt by the betrayer to recognise the parts that s/he feel have been suffocated by the fusional grasping of the other – and for those parts to get mirrored by a third party.

    Expectations

    To work through the acute pain of an actual betrayal, or to work through fantasies of betrayal, can be a way of revealing the fusional grasping on which the relationship may have been based.

    This work can start with each partner in the relationship attempting to make an inventory of their experiences of the other’s expectations of them; and (sometimes painfully) working through the evidence (real or imagined) together.

    This work is valuable, for if we can be accepted only so far as we fulfil the other’s expectations, we are both imprisoned.

  • Revelation and Intimations of a Dark Couple

    Revelation and Intimations of a Dark Couple

    Gary Shead’s Etching Revelation

    We recently moved Revelation (image above) to our therapy rooms and it was interesting to do so – we began to notice it more than we’d done in quite a while (having lived with it at home for at least 10 years).

    Shead’s work presents powerful icons of Australia and the Australian psyche: the strangeness of the land, the kangaroo and the koala; the way we relentlessly hark back to Britain and its monarchical structure; and of course the world of the displaced aboriginal (almost imperceptible to the right of the scene).

    But what’s been capturing our attention recently is the couple in the shadow to the extreme left of the work, the dark couple.

    The Dark Couple

    A view in couples work is that every relationship has (to a greater or lesser extent) a dark couple. To call it the dark couple is a shorthand for those aspects of our relationship that we’ve agreed not to see, and that live out this unseen and unexperienced life.

    In therapeutic language, it’s also called the unconscious dyad, or the dark dyad. (In Shead’s work, the embracing couple is to the left of the scene. The left side is often associated with unconsciousness.)

    The dark couple is a consequence of an agreement, made by both parties to the relationship, to make themselves and the relationship safe; to deny the possibility (present in any relationship) of rupture and change. Ironically, this can be played out as fighting and a lack of trust.

    The problem with such agreements being unexamined is that they stifle the relationship, and for some people, stifle a lively engagement in life generally. The couple constructs a co-dependent system in which neither party is challenged, but in which new growth cannot occur. As Nathan Swartz-Salent says in The Mystery of Human Relationship (in which he takes the work of medieval alchemists as a powerful lens for understanding couple relationships):

    The union state that exists in relationships generally involves the unconscious elements of each party rather than the more conscious elements. Consciously, two people may seem to be loving and cooperative even while their unconscious dyad, which may be the major locus of the union between them, can behave in significantly different ways from the conscious image and values to which both people adhere. By its nature, the “dark” couple underlying the “conscious” couple is strange and usually unpleasant. For instance, the dark couple may be like two vicious animals locked in a life and death struggle, or as described in the Turba Philosophorum, two lovers locked in an embrace – one a human being and the other a serpent.

    Union State (Coniunctio), from the Turba Philososphorum

    Union State (Coniunctio), from the 12th century alchemical text Turba Philosophorum. (The Turba recorded an important discussion between early alchemists, in which many of the key themes of alchemy were laid out.)

    Working On The Dark Couple

    We can start to tune our eyes and ears to the presence of the dark couple in our relationships (and this applies not only to our intimate relationships, but to business relationships and those with other family members). We might begin to notice the way little give-aways occur (such as a lifting of the eyebrows when our partner responds, or a caustic comment made as a “joke”).

    The Revelation is in what, with an open attitude, we can discover. Just as in Shead’s work, there many things to be explored about the characters in the scene. What’s required is the ability to withstand the sense of wounding and injury we may encounter in seeing the darker sides of ourselves being laid bare. The danger in not doing so is that the energies contained within the dark couple subtly and gradually affect the life of the relationship and the environment of the couple; taking their toll on others, such as family members or colleagues.

    Seeing the dark couple and realising the power it holds enables us to undergo a process of realising that we may have been acting in ways that are unconscious and destructive to the relationship, all the while believing that the opposite is true.

  • I Want To Build Trust But S/he Is Not Trustworthy

    I Want To Build Trust But S/he Is Not Trustworthy

    How to Build Trust?

    We often see this: the couple want to work on “building trust”. The issue shows up in many different ways. One person may allude to not trusting the other with money, or one person might say “If I am vulnerable it will be used against me later”. And these things may have been true in the past, maybe even recently.

    We find that the way trust gets built is subtle. On the one hand it requires openness, diving into the deep end, a leap of faith. On the other, it requires real evidence that change has occurred. Let’s explore both sides.

    Openness and a Leap of Faith

    Faith is for zealots and extremists, you might say to yourself. You’re more rational about trust. And your feelings and concerns are based on real hard evidence, your past. You’ve been hurt before, right? And possibly badly and you won’t let that happen again.

    There is a problem with this attitude. Our brain collects experiences and makes meanings from them. But it’s often lousy at figuring out matters of the heart. It likes to be in control, and with the heart, it isn’t. So in trying to regain power it usually does damage. And this power struggle is painful for all concerned.

    Why does this happen? Well, we learn early and we hold on dearly to what we learn, even if this means denying what is clearly in front of us now and sabotaging our dreams and desires. This is survival mode. It’s somewhat useful early in life – learning from our mistakes or finding ways around a father’s criticism or a mother’s bad mood, for example.

    But what happens when we believe our partners are often critical or scary when upset? Then we are stuck. We reinvent (in adult behaviours) our coping mechanisms from childhood and we fool ourselves that we are being objective, protecting ourselves from the onslaught, when in fact we are missing the truth. The difficulty is that we do not want to see the truth. Our beliefs are comfortable – more than that, worth fighting for even if they are wrong.

    Somehow the brain makes up that if we act differently now, then maybe we had it all wrong before too. And we dig in deeper, not wanting to lose our sense of ourselves. Our beliefs are who we are.

    But the things that were scary in our past need not be so scary anymore. We can hold on to the fear and the belief that we will be hurt again, stronger than we can hold the possibility that we can have a new experience. Holding the idea that things could be different now is what is scary! Is there a chance that this person may be critical sometimes or may have mood swings occasionally, but that we can cope in a different way, maybe even be there to help them when they are most in need, rather than running or fighting?

    If we defend our beliefs and, when things fall apart, say to ourselves “I knew it couldn’t work” (with a mix of satisfaction of having preempted the failure, and sadness at recognising this) then we have lost a chance of things being different.

    Actuals over Intentions

    On the other hand, if there is not yet trust, then trust cannot be willed into existence. Fears and hurt will just become alienated from the relationship, to live their life in secret.

    Truth is what’s required, and truth must be communicated, even if it’s the truth that “I do not yet trust”. Real trust requires evidence that things have changed, over time. It requires evidence of the actual over the intention stated by either party in the relationship.

    Holding Both Sides

    The solution, as we see it, is to hold both sides.

    The couple needs to decide that this work is paramount, and that it is ongoing. They learn to return to openness for however long it takes for actuality to win out over intentions.

    The magic is that in so doing, the relationship becomes transformed. We’ll talk more about this in a future article, but there’s sufficient evidence that the act of working in this way, of focussing on the issues of trust and intimacy together, can itself be transformational.

    Openness and the leap of faith is not just trusting that bad things that happened in the past won’t happen again; it’s trusting that a transformational process is possible. It’s in the results of this transformational process that we really know that bad things that happened in the past are unlikely to happen again.

    The transformational process is about speaking, in a dialog of deepening truth, saying words that might not have been said or heard in the relationship before. If the couple can learn to hear those words and learn to trust that the other wants the same as them, then they can heal. If not, then old beliefs win and the relationship loses.

    Will you take the leap to openness in your relationship, while patiently holding your need for seeing the actuality of change?

    (The image above is the fourth woodcut from the Rosarium Philosophorum.)

  • Are Hormones Making you Fight?

    Stress Hormones and Interactions

    Most of us know that hormones play a big role in how we feel, but we don’t know how or why. We know that men have testosterone and we know about women having their monthly moods… but there is obviously much more to it than that.

    We want to share a little about how our interactions are influenced by our stress hormones. This can have an impact on how we relate to others and in particular you might recognise some of this playing out in your couple relationship.

    The Normal Stressful Day

    The world has changed. Imagine a time when men protected the community, went out and hunted and fought. They used their stress hormone, testosterone, and would come back depleted. The women would nurture and use their oxytocin (female stress hormone). Nurturing for a woman is a stress relieving activity. Oxytocin has that effect, it’s relaxing to give but then the woman needs to be replenished. This happened, then, by spending time with the other women; being listened to, talking and pampering each other and working together when the men were out hunting etc.

    Now very often both men and women go out to work, both using their respective stress hormones and then quite likely come home depleted. This is where we can get into trouble. We need to understand the differences at this point. Men and women replenish their stress hormones in different ways.

    Men need 30 times more testosterone than women. Testosterone is replenished by “zoning out”. There are many ways to do it: meditating, watching TV, playing in the shed. The point here is that the man needs to shut out all stressing factors to fill back up again. It may only take 30 minutes or so but he has to shut out all things he finds stressful… that means even his partner if he finds her “demands” stressful. Have you ever wondered how a man can just sit down and “relax” when there is so much that needs to be done? This is why. He has to!

    If the woman has had a stressful day of doing, listening, giving and not receiving she may well have used all of her oxytocin and needs to feel she is important, her needs are being met, that she is cared for and pampered to replenish her stress hormone. She literally “has nothing left to give”.

    Coming Home at the End of the Day

    So let’s paint a picture. It’s the end of the day. You both arrive home. The rubbish needs to go out, the food needs to be cooked and you are both ready for a rest but things have to be done. What happens? Do you notice this difference playing out? As a woman do you feel shut out or hurt if your partner “disappears” to do other things when you want to connect or have help with something? As a man do you feel “nagged” if your partner wants to talk or needs something as soon as you walk in the door?

    Understanding the differences in the ways we replenish our stress hormones can help us understand each other’s needs and not take them so personally. It is normal for a guy after a stressful day to need some down time before he gets back up and is able to interact and help. It helps if a man’s need to replenish is respected and understood. It helps too if men can talk about what is happening when they need “space”.

    Women need to receive attention for oxytocin to be replenished. Although women feel a relief in giving, they need to be aware that being nurtured, pampered and listened to is essential for building up what is needed to be able to give again. So a chat to a girlfriend on the phone (if the friends a good listener) or going to get your hair done makes more sense!

    The Nurturing Relationship

    These needs can be fulfilled in the relationship too – listening to one another and nurturing each other’s needs. The work for the couple is to recognise each other’s needs and express them so the partners can support each another in replenishing stress hormones – this helps create a feeling of peace at home.

    (For more on this topic, see John Gray’s new book Venus on Fire, Mars on Ice: Hormonal Balance – The Key to Life, Love and Energy.)

  • Bert Hoff on The Shadow

    Bert Hoff on The Shadow

    The Shadow

    In the article Bert Hoff on MenWeb and Fathers we shared Bert’s process around reconnecting to a father we possibly never had or didn’t want. Later in the same talk Bert gave a great summary of a psychological concept: the shadow.

    Bert Hoff Interview

    So here’s Bert on the shadow (again interviewed by Lion Goodman).

    Bert: There’s another aspect of the Men’s movement that needs to be brought out in the short time we have left. Robert Bly worked a lot with Marion Woodman, and one of the tapes that we have on MenWeb is Facing the Shadow in Men and Women. They did a fabulous workshop on Men and Women…

    Lion Goodman: When you refer to the shadow, could you say what that is for you?

    B: The side of ourselves that we don’t want to admit that we have, and if you repress it it’s going to come out and bite you in the rear end.

    L: Oh yeah, that part of me, that part I know!

    B: I didn’t say that… Think of a person who drives you up the wall. And when you think of that person think of the qualities that drive you up the wall. Now look at yourself. See, John can be sitting there picking his nose in public, but that’s just John being John. But Joe throwing that racquet down, that really pisses me off… You know, sometimes we’re ready to accept anyone, that’s just the way they are, but sometimes something somebody does just really gets to us. Well, that’s your shadow. You don’t want to admit that that’s what you have in yourself.

    L: Good, so that’s another part of the Men’s movement, looking down at the parts of ourselves that we don’t want to talk about, don’t want to admit, don’t want to even look at or admit that that’s a part of our deeper inner selves.

    B: And it works beautifully with [an earlier presenter who’d admitted that due to his advanced age he might not remember some facts]. He was doing straight shadow work with you when he said “I’m 90 and my memory might be slipping”. When he brings out the shadow that he doesn’t want to admit, and openly acknowledges it before you can even be thinking of it, then he’s done his shadow work.

    L: He can admit to what he doesn’t want to be known as, and then suddenly it’s not hidden any more.

    Telling the Truth in Relationships

    So here’s another facet of telling the truth in relationships: being prepared to dig for our shadow and bring into the light whatever is revealed – either so-called “bad” or so-called “good” aspects. For example, you might hide anger – or it might be joy that you keep hidden.

    When these aspects are repressed, it’s energy that’s being repressed – which in being released becomes available for creative expression in our relationships.

  • Bert Hoff on MenWeb and Fathers

    Bert Hoff on MenWeb and Fathers

    MenWeb

    Here’s a fantastic resource we’ve just discovered, primarily for and about men, but likely of interest to women as well: MenWeb. It’s a sprawling and quirky repository of writings and speakings from over the years, by such original thinkers in the Men’s movement as Robert Bly, Robert A. Johnson, James Hillman, Marion Woodman, Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Robert Moore and Sam Keen.

    Bert Hoff Interviewed on Fathers

    Bert Hoff has been the driving force behind this site, and here he is in interview with Lion Goodman on the recent Ultimate Men’s Summit. It’s a piece where he speaks gently of a powerful technique available to any of us with fathers, for clearing unfinished business:

    L: Let’s talk about fathers for a minute Bert… a lot of men I know either had violent fathers that they pushed away from, or they had absent fathers that they yearned for, or they had mysterious fathers that where there but were cold and incommunicative. Do you have any suggestions for the men in this conference and who somehow want to reconnect to the father that they never had or didn’t want?

    B: I have an example that they might like.

    L: Is this something you can lead us through now?

    B: … I can lead you part way through it now…
    [speaks slowly with long pauses]… Sit back and take a deep breath… close your eyes and take another deep breath… now visualise a chair opposite you… your father walks in… and he sits down in the chair… you look into his eyes… and you tell him what you need to tell him… [long pause]… you’re telling him about all the feelings that you have… [very long pause]… reach down inside yourself… find those feelings, and express those feelings to him… he does not make any replies, this is your opportunity to tell him what you need to tell him… [long pause] Now thank him for his time, and tell him “I love you, I know you did the best you could with what you had”… [pause] Thank him, rise from the chair and leave the room.

    Now return from the space you’re in into the real world… five, four, three, two, one… we’re now in the real world. Now when you’re in the real world, write a letter. You don’t need to mail it… take the time to write a letter, and then when you’re complete with writing the letter, do something with it ritualistically. You can mail it, you can burn it, you can send your thoughts into the universe… whatever ritual will help you close with your father. And I hope that that is a lot of help to a lot of men.

    L: That was great Bert, thank you. And probably to women too, we have women on the line as well, and women have issues with their fathers in the same way as men do of course, women have also experienced the absent fathers, the violent fathers, the unknowable fathers, and we all have that father wound.

    Family of Origin Work

    We highly recommend the wealth of knowledge and understanding on MenWeb. And of course, we recommend the process of psychotherapy in working through family of origin issues, around our fathers and our mothers, issues that if unaddressed can keep us locked in unconscious patterns of defence and pain.

  • Gorilla Consciousness

    Gorilla Consciousness

    Non-Verbal Communication

    We recently posted an article on the trio of Attention, Appreciation and Affection from the recent Art of Love 2011 online series. And here’s another snippet from the series that also caught our eye, from an interview with Gay and Kathleen Hendricks on a common issue for couples: how to break potentially endless cycles of conflict.

    Interview Snippet

    Gay:

    The adrenaline that’s roaring around in your system is a powerfully addictive drug, and many people are actually addicted to the adrenaline of conflict so that they depend on it kind of for a fix and to keep the relationship interesting. And we call that having a wargasm. It’s a big energy experience you have in yourself, but not a very positive one.

    “…having a wargasm.”

    And so what needs to happen there is you need to shift out of that state of consciousness. One good way to do that, that we teach couples, is to drop out of words at that point and just make sounds. Because it’s more to the point because you’re actually functioning kind of in gorilla consciousness at that moment.

    And so you might as well just drop out of human language and just growl. And we’ve had couples that tried that and about ten seconds into it they dissolve into laughter. They can’t keep the conflict state of consciousness anymore.

    So that would be one of the quickest recommendations I could make, is just drop the words out, make some sounds and kind of blow the energy of it out so that you’re not kind of sitting on a whole bunch of pent up energy.

    And then try to talk about what’s going on in some kind of way that you’re feeling sad about something, or you’re scared about something.

    To get out of that anger state of consciousness, it’s good to shift to talking about something you feel sad about or something you feel scared about. Because that takes you down out of the super riled-up state of consciousness with anger.

    Katie:

    One of the things you can add to dropping the words out, is noticing what you’re doing in your body. Because always when people are in a conflict, they’re doing some gesture, some repeated thing.

    It could be poking your finger at your partner, it could be folding your arms and standing there like a sentinel. And we find that people exaggerate what they’re doing. It seems counter-intuitive, but it actually works really well.

    “Notice what you’re doing in your body.”

    If you exaggerate what you’re doing and drop the words out, you can actually get some insight into what filter you’re speaking out of. Or what trance you’re in, or what role you’ve taken on in that moment, that has you seeing your partner as the enemy. And so we have people begin to play with that and it works really quickly.

    Going Into Feelings

    What a way to turn a really tense and painful situation into an illuminating and even humorous experience!

    And we strongly recommend this technique on getting out of an anger state and talking about something you feel sad about or something you feel scared about: Three Simple Sentences to change the way we discuss our upsets.

  • Deepak Chopra’s Three “A”s

    Deepak Chopra’s Three “A”s

    Art of Love

    We’ve started listening to the online series Art of Love 2011 and highly recommend our email readers follow along while it’s still happening.

    A segment that really caught our attention was in the Kick-off Webinar, where the presenters speak with Deepak Chopra on his three important “A”s of relationships. We share these here as they’re all ones that arise as issues in our practice.

    Attention

    Attention means deep listening, being totally present, having empathy, trying to see from our partner’s perspective. It means we’re not in a hurry to give advice and react; not in a hurry to interrupt. Our body language actually shows we are deeply listening.

    Chopra reports that, according to neuroscientists, when we practice deep listening the amygdala of the person speaking and the hippocampus of the listener start to “cool down” (show less activity).

    The amygdala is the place in the brain where we process fear and anxiety. So we’re actually cooling down those primitive parts of the speaker’s brain just by listening attentively to them. We’re changing not only their brain activity but the actual structure of the brain, which depends on proteins being laid down and that requires gene modulation. We’re influencing the on-off switches of another person’s genes in their neurons by deep listening.

    Appreciation

    Appreciating our partner has a direct effect on their health and well-being. Recent interesting data from Gallop shows the following statistics:

    • If a manager criticises his or her subordinates then disengagement grows to 25% and people who work for that manager get sick
    • If the manager ignores them, disengagement grows to 45%
    • But if a manager notices a single strength and appreciates that strength, disengagement falls to less than 1% and people stay healthy.

    (Aside from the disastrous effects on the couple relationship, which is our focus here, economically this is said to cost $280 billion to the U.S. economy.)

    Affection

    Affection is deep caring and knowing that we are there for the other person.

    In the language of neuroplasticity, we can say this kind of engagement in relationship rewires the brain in a direction where love actually becomes a healing force. It influences hormones, cell repair, homeostasis (biological self-regulation and self-repair).

    Love Is a Powerful Healing

    So it turns out that love is the most powerful healing that can happen. And this is so through a phenomenon called limbic resonance. When people are in love their brains are resonating, their hormones are resonating and they are healing each other and monitoring each other’s biology and moving each other in the direction of healing.

  • Warring Couples

    Warring Couples

    Stop the Violence

    We recently posted The Golden Rules of Relationships which highlighted the importance of feeling our feelings.

    Another way to say this is “Stop the violence within ourselves“. What violence? That caused by the self-imposed requirement, based on our experience in the world, to push down how we really feel, how we would naturally react.

    Soldier’s Heart

    We listened to a compelling audio piece (part of the recent Ultimate Mens Summit) in which Edward Tick of the U.S Soldier’s Heart talked passionately about the urgent need to provide tools to re-humanise returned service people and those who have been living in traumatic situations:

    The crusaders of the Middle Ages were considered, even after they came back from war, even though the wars were considered holy and blessed by the church … the crusaders were considered soiled and that they had fallen from grace, and that they had to perform penance for three years, non-violent penance, rebuilding the world, before they were able to take communion again and be considered to have worked their way back into holiness. We absolutely need to retrain people, to re-humanise people when they’ve been trained to kill, whether it’s in the military or the inner city or in prison … we do de-humanise people systematically and they ache to be re-humanised.

    What Ed’s taking about is an extreme case of what’s being played out in some relationships: people so hurt by trauma that a war continues to be played out. And here is where “Feel You Feelings” becomes an imperative, and also a task of some proportion.

    Re-Humanising the Relationship

    We need to remember that the relationship that has become a battleground needs to be re-humanised, and that there often needs to be some kind of ritual (non-violent penance) to enable that to occur.

    Some couples do this by daily recommitment to the process of change; some are helped in couples therapy to take this path of non-violent transformation.

  • The Golden Rules of Relationships

    The Golden Rules of Relationships

    Let’s Talk About the Rules

    Let’s talk about the Golden Rules of Relationships.

    These are the “make or break” rules for increasing intimacy. We either embrace them, or the relationship stagnates (or worse). So here they are.

    Feel Your Feelings

    Feel your feelings is about checking in with ourselves, finding out what is really going on inside emotionally. This might at first be experienced as a physical feeling (“I feel heat as I notice I am getting angry”). Or it might be getting in touch with an underlying sadness or depression.

    These experiences can be explored and then be spoken of truthfully to our partner (see Tell The Truth below).

    Tell The Truth

    We were recently listening to an audio piece by Neale Donald Walsch on relationships where, in his inimitable style, he speaks of his top three rules for relationships. In no particular order, these turn out to be:

    1. Tell the Truth.
    2. Tell the Truth.
    3. Tell the Truth (Neale’s now shouting).

    It’s that simple really, the relationship can’t move unless truth-telling gets to this level of importance.

    And truth-telling, to be really effective, is about our feelings. To tell the truth about our feelings is to be willing to show who we are, to be vulnerable, and this is the key to increasing intimacy.

    Keep Your Commitments

    Last year we posted an article The Hendricks and the Essential Co-Commitments We want to ask, How are you going with these? That’s because we know how important they are, and how effective they can be (in our own experience, in our own relationship).

    And to gently ask, if they don’t seem so important, what’s standing in the way to them being stated in your relationship, in being a regular topic of conversation with your partner?

    Call us!

    If you’d like support with these Golden Rules, please give us a call.