Giving your relationship a tune up
By Candice Nadler
I just took in my car for its 60,000 mile tune up. I wanted to do everything I could to make sure it runs smoothly with no unexpected breakdowns. I want all parts working at their best and ensure the car is safe and lasts a very long time.
I love my car but not as much as I love my husband. Love takes time.
I often wonder why married or committed couples don’t do an occasional checkup to make sure they are getting enough affection, humor, validation, amusement, pleasure, and joy together.
Sometimes a tune up is just what couples need to honor one another’s life dreams and create shared meaning as they pass through new stages.
Jewish Family and Children’s of Minneapolis offers a wonderful tool to help couples enhance the quality of their relationships. The program, entitled ENRICH, is generally completed in six hours of structured sessions, and is based on extensive research over several decades.
This assessment begins with a 15-page computer-generated inventory that provides information about the couple’s strength and growth areas. The inventory celebrates the strengths of the couple and looks at opportunities for making the relationship even stronger and more loving.
Using this inventory, a counselor will engage the couple in insightful dialogue, exercises and homework that can re-fire and inspire the couple to thrive in the years ahead.
Trained ENRICH counselors at JFCS can assist the couple in addressing areas such as communication and intimacy, money and finances, leisure activities, parenting of young or adult children, stage of life issues or role expectations that might be changing.
Couples find it valuable to see how their respective family histories have influenced how they interact together.This deeper awareness can lead to greater understanding and connection.
ENRICH includes strategies for conflict resolution for larger issues a couple might face. Couples have commented that now they know how to be loving and supportive while tackling the difficult issues.
The ENRICH inventory also includes communication exercises and individual, couple and family goal setting. One female partner commented, “I thought he should know what I needed. I did not understand that I had to clearly ask for it.”
Other positive couple responses included a couple who had struggled with differences in spending and saving attitudes. They said that they had never thought of doing a formal budget process. This budget process led to decreased relational conflict and an improved financial situation.
Couples may discover deeper issues and decide to do more extensive marital work with a caring therapist.
PREPARE (another inventory which promotes relationship building) is designed for pre-marital couples, and also is very popular.
In the last 11 years more than 100 couples at JFCS have benefited from the PREPARE/ENRICH process as a tool for strengthening and growth.
The intake staff at JFCS would be happy to help you find a counselor and assist you in choosing the appropriate PREPARE/ENRICH inventory for your personal needs. For information call JFCS at 952-546-0616.
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Candice Nadler, MA, LP, is a Licensed Psychologist and trained ENRICH practitioner at Jewish Family and Children’s Service of Minneapolis.
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