The Benefits of Mindfulness
What's all the buzz about Mindfulness? Is it just a fad? Nope. It's here to stay because it works. Read the latest blog post by Stephanie Cook, LCSW, to learn how to begin integrating mindfulness into your everyday life.
Want a Better Relationship? Update Your "Love Map"
Stephanie discusses how in every day of your relationship, you are creating a "love map" of your partner, which is essentially your understanding of them...how well you really know them. Intimacy depends on curiosity about who your partner is as a person. For this intimacy to be sustainable, these "love maps" need ongoing updates, otherwise you may lose touch with the person your partner is becoming as time passes. In a happy, long term relationship, who your partner is today is not who your partner will become in 10 or 20 years, and so on (how boring would that be if we never evolved!).
So maybe you haven't "updated" your love map in a while? Well the good news is you can get to know your partner again and again, for who they are today. So go ahead, get to know each other better. Start by asking the questions in the "Love Map Questionnaire" on my blog post today.
Fondness & Admiration: Key (However Mushy) Ingredients for Happy Relationships
I often recommend Dr. John Gottman's most famous book, Seven Principles of Making Marriage Work, to any of my clients interested in improving their relationship, married or not. In couples therapy, I teach the skills in this book to help partners with the many difficulties related to conflict styles, communication, and strategies to heal long-term romantic relationships.
If you're looking to build strong, sustainable, happy relationship, you have to work hard to keep liking your partner. No matter how much you love someone, if you spend enough time with them, you can grow annoyed and bored if you stop appreciating them . But this doesn't have to happen. Everyone can learn to create a healthy relationship with a culture of "fondness and admiration".
In today's blog post, I share with you the key findings from Dr. Gottman's research on fondness and admiration, which is the second principle of making a marriage work.
How to Not Destroy Your Relationship When You're Mad
Jessica Settle, MFT, discusses what you can do when your arguments get heated, so that you don’t destroy your relationship. In Gottman Method Couples therapy, which is the single most evidence-based form of couples therapy, based on decades of research on thousands of couples, we’ve learned a lot about what healthy couples do, and what disaster couples do….
Reading Between the Lines
In today's blog, Stephanie discusses the importance of more advanced listening skills, including "reading between the lines". We all communicate literally and directly sometimes, as well as figuratively and indirectly at other times. This is a skill of emotional intelligence that everyone can learn, and implement, to have healthier and happier relationships.
How to Be A Great Listener... The Basics
Do you know how to listen to someone? Really listen? It seems simple, right? Well, not always. If you've been in a relationship for a while, you may fall into the bad habit of "half-listening" to your partner. In today's post, Stephanie discusses the basic components of effective listening, an essential skill for any healthy relationship, as well as the common pitfalls that many of us fall into.
What Couples Can Learn From the Ashley Madison Scandal
Stephanie Cook, LCSW, licensed psychotherapist and Gottman Method Couples Therapist, discusses the recent Ashley Madison hacking scandal in which over 40 million married users' information was released. She discusses the real-world implications for the couples who have been affected by infidelity, why people cheat, and what couples can do about it.
