• Breakdown in communication
• Blame, criticism
• Unresolved, chronic conflict
• Living parallel lives
• Suspicion of infidelity
• Verbal abuse
• Frequent, useless arguments
• Unprovoked hostility in mate
• Aloof and withdrawn behavior
• Withholding affection and sexual intimacy

Here are some things you can do to reverse a downward spiral in your marriage and deal with the issues:

• Learn relationship skills through a program that offers such.
• Insist on and schedule a weekly “date night” between the two of you. Set aside time in your busy life for just each other.
• Choose a “mentor couple” to meet with once a month to learn how to be married well.
• Get professional help (see resources below).

Free Relationship Education Class Preview

Council for Relationships offers the best of nationally recognized relationship education programs available and has the most comprehensive program available anywhere in the country. These programs have proven success based on research and evaluation. Our programs, ranging from 2 hours to 120 hours in length, provide basic, intermediate and advanced skills for individuals and couples who want to strengthen, preserve and deepen their relationships. Privacy and a safe learning environment is a top priority in all of our programs. 

Our Previews are a free, no pressure opportunity to learn more!  While we have a wide range of programs at our various offices, our experienced workshop leaders are also available to lead programs at other locations throughout Philadelphia as part of our commitment to outreach and community services. 

To register, please contact Rita DeMaria, Ph.D., LSW, LMFT, Program Director at 215-628-2450.

Couples Communication Courses

The Couples Communication Course is a research-based approach to teaching couples (premarital, committed, or married) how to communicate effectively, manage conflicts without damaging closeness, and how to preserve and enhance commitment, friendship and intimacy. The premise is that it's not how much you love each other that makes a relationship or marriage work; it's how you resolve differences and preserve fun and sensuality that keeps a relationship strong. This one-day course uses teaching, videos, role-plays, group discussions and private coaching to educate couples in an atmosphere of informality and comfort. 

Communication Essentials - One Day Seminar

• February 20, 2010
  Saturday 9 AM - 4:30 PM in CFR's University City, PA office
  Course Leader: Chris Fariello, PhD, LMFT at 267-479-2388

Resolving Conflict - One Day Seminar
In this one day seminar you will learn how to identify and unblock emotional challenges that interfere with effective dialogue, how to establish loving patterns of emotional connection, and create empowering solutions to common relationship problems. The workshop will include lecture, exercises, and demonstrations of effective strategies to help your relationship grow.

• April 10, 2010
  Saturday 9 AM - 4 PM in CFR's Paoli, PA office 
  Course Leaders: Kerstin Miller, MDiv, LMFT at 610-889-0419, ext. 6 and Ray McDevitt, MSS, LSW at 610-558-4060, ext. 7

Strengthening Connection – One Day Seminar
This seminar is based on Sue Johnson’s ground-breaking book "Hold Me Tight", an effective approach that helps couples move from frustration and loneliness toward the creation of a secure loving bond. This one day seminar will provide a helpful roadmap to enhance the intimate connection by learning new ways to share feelings and needs and create a more loving connection. The class uses videos, role-plays, exercises, and group discussion to educate couples in an atmosphere of comfort and support.

For more information about these seminars or to register, please contact the leader of the class in which you are interested.

Getting The Love You Want: The Imago Couples Workshop
Presented by The Wissahickon Center for Relationship Therapy

"This workshop consists of five processes: re-imaging your partner, restoring empathy, restructuring frustrations, renewing romance and re-visioning the future. The weekend is composed of a carefully constructed blend of educational lectures and films, group discussions, self-exploration and writing work. You will learn new skills - ways to communicate that will allow you to truly see and hear each other with compassion, to melt anger and move through conflict to a place of profound connection and compassion. A significant portion of the workshop is spent practicing these new tools with your partner. While you are invited to share your insights and experiences within the larger group, all such sharing is optional."

For more information or to register, please contact Laura Marshall, LCSW, QCSW at 215-699-1238.

Council for Relationships offers workshops and seminars for couples who wish to explore and enrich their sexual relationship in a safe environment so that they can explore attitudes toward sex, improve communication skills around needs and wants, learn the language of sex, and learn ways to increase intimacy.

• Love, Sex, and Romance - A Workshop
  This 2-hour workshop will introduce you to the stages of love in intimate relationships and to the chemistry of romantic love. The emphasis of this workshop is to establish goals for improving romance, intimacy, and commitment.

• Becoming Your Best Sexual Self:
  Rewriting Your Sexual Script - 1 Day Seminar
  Do you feel like there is something important missing from your sexual experiences? If your intimate encounters are less than fully satisfying, this intensive may have answers for you. Our everyday life is filled with messages and advice about regarding how our love life should be. Taken together, cultural, family of origin, friendship, and media influences are powerful forces on our personal lives and can lead to feelings of sexual dissatisfaction and inadequacy.

  This intensive has been developed to help you explore and identify unhelpful messages, relationship styles, and patterns of relating that you can change. Participants, individuals and couples will be empowered to create uninhibited intimacy in their lives, allowing them to free their sexual selves to engage wholly and fully in their relationship. The importance of mutuality as a guide to balancing giving and receiving within the dance of intimacy will be highlighted.

For more information about any of these courses, please visit CFR's website or call Rita DeMaria, PhD at 215-628-2450.

This workshop is for anyone who wants to understand more about how their unique family history provides legacies for living and shapes their individual strengths. Participants will learn how to use the genogram to create an action plan for growth and change.

For more information or to register, please contact Rita DeMaria, PhD at 215-628-2450.

"The word Retrouvaille simply means 'rediscovery'. The program offers tools needed to rediscover a loving marriage relationship. Thousands of couples headed for cold, unloving relationships or divorce have successfully overcome their marriage problems by attending the program. The Retrouvaille Program consists of a weekend experience combined with a series of 6-12 post-weekend sessions over 3 months. It provides the tools to help put your marriage in order again. The main emphasis of the program is on communication in marriage between husband and wife. It will give you the opportunity to rediscover each other and examine your lives together in a new and positive way."

• February 12 - 14, 2010
  Malvern, PA

For more information please visit Retrouvaille's website or contact Bob & Joyce Gillespie at 302-832-8044.

Anger Management Course at Council for Relationships

"A program for individuals who want to learn how to effectively manage their anger. Class focus is on identifying the causes of anger, learning to avoid 'anger triggers', learning how to ask for and get what you want without resorting to anger, and developing less destructive ways of dealing with anger." 

• January 25, 2010 - March 15, 2010
  Monday Evenings: 7:30 - 9:00 pm in Paoli, PA
  Course Leaders: Kerstin Miller, MDiv, LMFT at 610-889-0419 ext. 6 and Ray McDevitt, MSS, LSW at 610-558-4060 ext. 7

For more information or to register please visit CFR's website or contact the course leader for the session in which you are interested.

This 8 week program will teach you how to manage the stress in your life in highly effective ways. Rather than utilizing approaches that work on the surface, from the outside in, perhaps temporarily removing the symptoms, the cultivation of Mindfulness as a basis for Stress Management works at a more powerful level, using meditation as a tool. The practice of Mindfulness involves learning to pay attention in a new way to the experiences of the present moment. Working from the inside out, you will learn how to slow down and notice your own unique patterns of thoughts, feelings and behaviors right in the moment as you experience them. You will feel empowered to make healthier choices. You will see yourself as your own agent of change, in the supportive framework of this program.

For more information or to register please visit CFR's website please contact Ruthy Kaiser, RN, MFT, at 610-642-2648 ext 4.

Within the safe community of other women this class will support you to strengthen your self-esteem to achieve your life-goals. The purpose of this class is for women to identify and release old hurts, reverse destructive attitudes, and strengthen self-acceptance and assertiveness.

With a wide range of therapeutic techniques including empathy work, journaling, relaxation techniques, and assertiveness exercises the class will support women to work on themselves emotionally and behaviorally. This 12 hour course will empower women to explore and expand their sense of self.

For more information or to register, please contact Rita DeMaria, PhD at 215-628-2450.

The Men’s Group is an 8-week Empowerment Program to help men explore their past and present relationships. Attention will be paid to the myths of masculinity as well as negative messages that challenge men as they seek emotional maturity and intimacy in their lives. Using lecture, movie clips and group discussion, participants will learn how to develop and strengthen relationship skills to foster healthy connections with others. 

The Men’s Group emphasizes that the adult experience of feeling and acting like a man is set into motion in childhood. During this time, the availability of a secure, loving bonding relationship is important because it is within this ‘attachment relationship’ that a boy evolves into an emotionally healthy, empathic man.

• January 20, 2010 - March 10, 2010
  Wednesday Evenings; 7:30 pm - 9:00 pm in Concordville, PA

For more information or to register, please contact Rita DeMaria, PhD at 215-628-2450.

Military Family Support Services:
Delaware National Guard Family Readiness Program

Delaware National Guard Family Readiness Program provides support, training, enrichment, social events, support groups, summer youth camp and array of services for military service members and their families. For more information please visit their website or contact Mrs. Frank Vavala, Advisory Council Chairperson at 302-326-7001 or CMSgt Dawn Peet, State Family Program Coordinator, at 302-326-7268.

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