Marriage Seminars Selections 1999-2006 (for churches and organizations)

For several years we traveled about putting on seminars by making arrangements at friendly locations and advertising and promoting them with mailings, press releases, radio interviews, and TV interviews. Then we discovered we had far more impact on individual's marriages when we worked with an organization or church because of the great ongoing encouragement, follow-up and peers support available for many years after we left. Thus, in combination with our current church ministry, we contract out at a reasonable cost to organizations who sponsor us. Thus, if you are interested in attending one of our seminars, see if you can interest your church or organization in booking us.

After completion of the BASIC workshop, the advanced one day training workshop meets the finishing touches needed to achieve all of Dr. Gottman's marriage success principles, including soft start-up, being influenced and the strategy for dealing with unmet, underlying dreams.

The training directly addresses increased admiration and appreciation, how to complain with out criticizing, turning toward each other at times of disagreement, influence, solving the six major areas of marriage conflict, achieving dreams, and increasing shared meanings.

Covers all the major aspects of marriage strengthening found in longitudinal study with the many couples in his research 'love lab'.

Available for churches and organizations, both training in the use of the PREPARE/ENRICH Inventory and the Growing Together Workshop. While the first trains Professionals and Pastors to administer and interpret PREPARE/ENRICH inventories, the latter is a group application of same with five or more couples in a variety of situations and with several reasons to participate--including Mentor Training.

Originally given as the Ten Absolute Essentials to Happiness in Marriage, we changed the title after a TV reporter asked the question: "Are all ten of these really necessary?" Yes, if you want more than a mediocre marriage, all ten are really necessary! According to the randomly selected and stratified sample of over 6000 research subjects, all ten are required for a marriage which is happy, satisfying, and strong--i.e., all ten came up with a statistically significant relationship with marriages rated a nine or above on a ten point scale.

While the presentation format follows levels of significance, it also is divided into three areas: (1) core relationship skills which pertain to both marriage and friendship, (2) intermediate skills which apply to close friendships and marriage, and (3) specific marriage skill-issues such as finance, sexuality and mutual or shared spirituality. The skills taught are: Commitment, Communication, Friendship, Fidelity, Conflict Resolution, Shared Interests and Goals, Sexual Satisfaction, Financial Security, Mutual Worship and Shared Prayer.

This presentation series comes with a workbook for each participant and repeatedly cycles through presentation to reflection to sharing, etc. All ten factors are covered in an all day Saturday session of six to seven hours, generally from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.