Seven Keys to Success
Research has identified seven specific
areas of relationship skills and knowledge that contribute to successful
marriage:
·
Compatibility
·
Expectations
·
Personalities
and families-of-origin
·
Communication
·
Conflict
resolution
·
Intimacy
and sexuality
·
Long-term
goals
MST builds your skills
and knowledge in each of these areas and beyond by helping you to:
·
Identify
and enhance your relationship strengths
·
Better
understand yourself and your relationship style
·
Better
understand your partner’s background and style
·
Understand
your relationship compatibility profile
·
Explore
your expectations
·
Set
key relationship boundaries
·
Accommodate
your personality styles
·
Appreciate
gender issues that affect your compatibility
·
Understand
family-of-origin issues that impact on your relationship
·
Strengthen
your relationship skills, including conflict management, resolution
and consensus building abilities
·
Select
the set of strategies and skills that work for you and your style
·
Identify
areas that need change
·
Apply
your own style and new skills to key relationship issues and challenges
(including sexuality, finances, family-of-origin issues, personality
and style conflicts, etc.)
·
Avoid
unhealthy or destructive relationship habits and behaviors
·
Identify
and develop attitudes and approaches that enhance intimacy and promote
growth
·
Deepen
intimacy and enhance sexual compatibility
·
Plan
long-term strategies to build on strengths and address areas of
challenge
·
Plan
long-term strategies to address the issues associated with the normal
stages of marriage
Positive
marriage success strategies that you can adopt and will learn more
about at MST, include:
·
Keep it positive. Learn
about the important five-to-one ratio. Be sure to 'make up'
after fights and when your relationship takes a negative turn.
·
Protect your relationship:
Don't neglect the needs of your relationship (including your sex
life) because of outside pressures - work, children, etc.
·
Your expectations for
change must be realistic. Sometimes the only way you can change
your partner is by changing yourself.
See the tips articles
in the box at left for more detailed info on marriage success factors
and strategies. We especially recommend Bonding & Marriage Success.
Click
here for related reading and references list.
Marriage renewal
/ rescue seminar - Click here if you're married more than a year
Now
that you know about the keys to successful marriage, consider attending
a Marriage Success Training seminar with your partner. Click here
to learn about the benefits of MST.
Copyright
2004, Patricia S. & Gregory A. Kuhlman. You may copy this article
for non-commercial use provided that no changes are made and this
copyright notice, author credit and stayhitched.com source citation
are included.
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