Building A Lasting Connection: One Step At a Time™ is a relationship enhancement programme for early relationships and committed couples created by Dr Debi Gillmore and Dr Rebecca Jorgensen that will help you clarify the essential components of close relationships and strengthen authentic connection.
What to expect?
Building A Lasting Connection programme will help you take the guesswork out of romantic relationships. It will teach you how to confidently communicate your needs, plan your future, solve problems, share your feelings, repair hurts and get the relationship skills that actually work to make a difference to prepare relationships to have a lifetime of love.
This programme (including workshops and materials) is designed to build on strengths, prevent relational conflict and utilise the power of attachment to lay a foundation for relationship improvement and deepening the connection bond across the lifespan. Building A Lasting Connection facilitates the education couples need to be able to process emotion together through the Connection System™ – this revolutionary experiential tool supports couples as they seek to build a structured, safe, transparent, and empathy-filled relationship.
What makes Building A Lasting Connection™ stand out?
Many education courses offered to couples cover the same few topics: communication, problem-solving skills, commitment, sacrifice, and forgiveness. While these topics are each vitally important and play a key role in marital satisfaction, they fail to explore adult attachment as foundational to relationship development including knowing how to share our deeper feelings in context of decision making, problem solving, handling differences and developing a strong couple identity. When we don’t know how to communicate for closeness, feelings go underground and show up in ways that amplify disappointments and cause turmoil and relational stress.
Building A Lasting Connection: One Step At a Time™ is the only program that weaves attachment and experiential learning learning into one course that provides an actual Connection System™ – a systematic way to communicate for closeness on topics that matter: decision making, differences, affection and sexual intimacy, exploring roles and developing goals.
As you learn the importance of adult bonding and practice stepping into conversations that deepen your connection and understanding you will not only protect your relationship from the common pitfalls many relationships face you will also develop your ability to continue building a truly lasting connection.
What will we learn in this workshop?
The objectives of the workshop are to teach couples, within an active and practice-based setting, how to create and preserve a foundation of secure attachment in their developing relationship.
With a new understanding of attachment theory and attachment needs, couples will:
- Achieve a greater understanding of what “romantic love is” and how to maintain and grow it
- Learn how to communicate within a systematic framework designed to come to greater understanding and connection
- Navigate differences and solve problems together
- Discover and practice how to remove communication blocks
- How to avoid touch deprivation of both body and soul
- Learn the art of “sexual intimacy” with attachment needs in mind
- Create rituals and traditions to overcome the effects of growing up with divorce
- Establish a process to set and achieve goals together to guide you past critical relationship periods.
The Lasting Connection workshop is designed to provide couples the skills they need to keep the spark alive throughout their lifetime. Using our Lasting Connection System couples will discover the process of expressing hopes, exploring possibilities, addressing concerns, and working together to discover solutions to whatever issues and conflicts life may bring, as well as how to share thoughts, feelings and needs in a manner that ensures validation and understanding between partners.
What is relationship education and why is it needed?
It’s no secret: marriage can be hard. Studies show that couples marrying for the first time have a 50% chance of facing divorce, often within the first 10 years of marriage. Relationship researchers, professional counsellors, ecclesiastical groups and even public leaders have found relationship education beneficial in preparing couples for long-term commitment and ultimately preventing divorce.
Thanks to decades of research and thousands of studies, social scientists and researchers have recognized the causes of relationship distress and the inevitable impact that relational stress has not only on close relationships, but on the physical and mental health of relationship partners as well. Behind much of this relational stress lie deeply rooted emotions connected to personal attachment.
According to Dr. John Bowlby, the father of Attachment Theory, the purpose of emotion is to communicate essential needs, motives, and priorities to others. Research shows that “securely attached” adults are prepared mentally and emotionally to form and maintain emotionally responsive relationships. This is not to say that only securely attached adults can have fulfilling and long-lasting relationships; relational success is found with couples who are able to understand their partner’s and their own attachment styles and build on a foundation of trust, mutual vulnerability, and emotional connectivity. A sense of security and emotional safety encourages positive and constructive communication, whereas feelings of insecurity cause a breakdown in communication and ultimately a breakdown of the relationship. Understanding attachment is the first step in truly understanding how to communicate with your partner on their level.
Dates and location
This workshop can be attended in-person and online. It can also be provided to couples as part of their relationship therapy.