Grace Chatting

Get My FREE E-Book “Mend It Don’t End It” NOW

This is just a short post to highlight to you that we are now in the time of year when most couples who have been considering divorce go to a solicitor and make an application.

I have written a book outlining a 10 step process which couples can follow to turn their troubled marriage or partnership around, and I have decided to give it away.

If you would like to get a free digital copy now, click the following link which will take you to my other site Relationship Academy, and you will be able to access a free download

 http://relationshipacademy.co.uk/thinking-of-divorce-mend-it-dont-end-it/

Please feel free to pass this link on to anyone who may be having relationship problems, it could save a family from breaking up.

written by Grace \\ tags: Divorce, marriage, partnership, relationship problems

Just in case you didn’t realise that I now have a new website for all things to do with Dating, Love, Marriage, Relationships and Divorce, here is the link;

http://www.relationshipacademy.co.uk/blog

Head over there now and access 3 Free videos

Live,love,laugh and be happy,

Grace

written by Grace \\ tags: Dating;love;marriage;relatinships

At long last! The Relationship academy will officially launch on 1 June 2012.

http://relationshipacademy.co.uk

The Story So Far

I first got the idea of a Relationship Academy back in the 1990s when I saw quite a number of divorced and separated couples for Family Mediation, as they divided up their property and assets. Often this would be accompanied by a great deal of hostility amongst the parties concerned; but by far the most difficult ones for me were those where it was obvious that they still cared for each other.

I thought it so sad that here was a family which had split up when perhaps with the right intervention they may have been able to restore their relationship or marriage. Many of them had gone to seek couple counselling with various agencies but without success. I wasn’t sure what the answer was myself, because I wasn’t having as much success as I would have wished for with couples whom I saw for counselling.

Breakthrough

Alan and I went off to work at our coaching centre in Spain and during that time I offormed a view that perhaps a coaching approach was what would work best with couples. I began to have 3-4 hour Breakthrough sessions with couples  and almost immediately the outcomes were much better, and couples really enjoyed the process. The whole business was so much more positive for all of us. Increasingly I would hear people say “Why don’t they teach this in schools?”  Yeah… why don’t they? I thought.

Why don’t they teach this at school?

We all know that schools were set up to meet the needs of commerce and industry… not people. I seriously considered where DO people learn about relationships? After all we can learn to drive, ski, cook, speak different languages etc., but where do you go to learn about relationships? The obvious answer is, from their parents, but often this is not a good idea. It’s a bit like installing windows 95 on your computer and wondering why it doesn’t work very well. Likewise, even if our parents had a good relationship, we live in an entirely different world now than they did.

Fractured Families

Perhaps one of the biggest reasons that prompted me to start the Relationship Academy is the fact that many adults today (my children amongst them) have grown up in single parent households and that figure is now more than 60% of children are growing up with no role model or first hand experience of an exclusive committed couple relationship. In my view this puts these children at a disadvantage as far as having a successful relationship is concerned. We know that when people feel competent they feel more confident, and when they they feel more confident they become more competent. Somehow we need to find a way to raise people’s competence in relating skills.

My Vision

I considered how these young people and future generations might be able to learn this stuff and decided that the fairly recent advances in technology is the answer… online.What I want to do is to firstly, stem the flow of family breakdown by targeting youngish parents   and secondly, to provide some psycho-education to young people through a series of short experiential webinars. I think that providing low/no cost webinars to schools to access might be a way of reaching a wider audience.

Feedback

I would very much welcome your feedback. It has been a steep learning curve for me because I had difficulty finding techies who really understood what I wanted to do so I set about learning how to set it all up myself from scratch. It is very tempting to keep re-recording my webinars as I improve how I do them but I would never be finished at that rate… so Relationship Academy will launch on 1 June 2012.

Free Webinar Series

This link will take you through to the Free webinar series;Click Here

Love well,

     Grace

written by Grace \\ tags: Divorce, family breakdown, fractured families, marriage, relationshipacademy, Relationships

Yes, it’s leap year again. In ten days time that window of opportunity when women can ask their man to marry them will come around again. Sounds fairly innocuous, but ladies, think twice!Research carried out by the University of Denver indicates that this may not be such a good idea

.It seems that men who move in with their girlfriend without proposing to them beforehand, are less likely to be committed to any subsequent marriage. Men need to decide to commit to marriage rather than slide into it.

The research shows a difference between men and women insofar as women are generally committed when they move in with their boyfriend whereas men are not committed until they actually make that decision to get married.

Women assume they are both equally committed because they live together, but this is not always so. I have had quite a number of men clients who have been in live in relationships for years and who see it as living with their girlfriends, which is not the same level of commitment they’d feel if she was his wife. They just never made that decision. Women are usually in for the long haul and assume he is too.

It can seem a romantic gesture on a woman’s part to pop the question, but it is probably worth paying attention to the research findings. If you really  want to be married to him, then perhaps it is wiser to simply raise the subject and have an adult to adult conversation about his intentions and both your future plans. 

    Love well,

       Grace

written by Grace \\ tags: Leap Year;marriage;

One of the great Relationship Masters, John Gottman and his wife did an extensive study of what made  marriage relationships successful; looking at those couples who stayed together and made their marriages work.

They found that they could predict with 96% accuracy which couples would break up. The looked for patterns that separated the Masters from the Disasters.

The Disasters had these traits in common, they blamed each other and became defensive, and presented themselves as a Victim. They were critical of their partner whilst seeing themselves as superior and talked down to the other in a contemptuous way, or they would Stonewall them, not speaking to them for days at a time..

The Masters on the other hand, took responsibility for their own behaviours

One of the big differences was the Masters had the ability to repair the relationship; to say they were sorry and wanted to make things better. They wanted to maintain friendship with each other, and they were also receptive to the other partners repair attempts.

Gottman called the four most damaging habits, the four horsemen of the apocalypse;

• Criticism
• Contempt
• Defensiveness
• Stonewalling

If any of these are present in your relationship, know that it will not last unless you seriously set about eliminating these behaviours today!

        Grace Chatting

written by Grace \\ tags: Love;marriage;;relationship;John Gottman;Grace Chatting; Four Horsemen