Cultivating Your Couple Bubble
By Margaret Martin, LCSW
PACT Level 3 Candidate, PACT Ambassador
In a healthy romantic relationship partners create safety and security with each other. Partners have each other’s backs and the folks around them see that they have each other’s backs. In PACT we refer to this as the couple bubble. We support couples in building a secure functioning relationship and in developing a couple bubble that supports secure functioning.
A couple’s mutual agreements, shared vision of relationship, and the way they navigate life together form the foundation of the couple bubble. Although the couple bubble evolves over time, in a healthy relationship the development begins early. Even in a budding romance partners create the genesis for their bubble when they quickly repair a hurt and take each other´s distress seriously.
The roles and expectations partners have for each other change as they move from a dating relationship to a more committed...
Creating Relational Safety Under Survival Conditions, Part I
PACT Level 3 Candidate, PACT Ambassador
Everything is the same, yet nothing is the same. The question of what constitutes acceptable exposure risk to COVID-19 is being debated around the globe. With new medical findings and recommendations emerging daily, how are couples to discern and agree on what constitutes acceptable risk for their families?
Much like our current circumstances, couples often grapple with reconciling differing opinions, which can feel very unsafe. Enter PACT couples counseling – a style of couples therapy designed to create relational safety, even under the most stressful conditions. Safety issues often originate from a lack of shared principles and people’s inability to successfully put those principles into operation.
In PACT, we believe relationships must be just, fair, kind, mutual, and sensitive for partners to feel safe. While we all want to feel safe in our relationships, we often struggle to provide the very...
Staying Connected Despite Your COVID-Cancelled Wedding
by Susan Stork, LCPC, NCC
PACT Level 2 Therapist, PACT Ambassador
www.spacebetweencounselingservices.com/
Many once soon-to-be-married couples have had their wedding plans altered due to the COVID-19 pandemic. You booked your venue, hotel, caterer, and entertainment – and likely spent countless hours and copious amounts of money in the process. Now you’re faced with making a decision with only unfavorable options: do you cancel or postpone the wedding, or do you potentially risk the health of your beloved guests?
Perhaps you’re one of countless couples who have had to reschedule or cancel your dream ceremony and reception. Travel for out-of-town guests and honeymoon have turned into a distant fantasy. Even the closing of some courthouses has made it seem impossible to legally tie the knot.
It’s only natural for couples stuck in limbo to feel disappointed or cheated that the celebration of your union has been indefinitely pushed back on an uncertain timeline....
Beyond the Valentine Chocolates and Roses: Creating a Long-Lasting Relationship
Clinton Power
PACT Level 2 Therapist, PACT Ambassador
clintonpower.com.au
Some people want chocolates and roses for Valentine's Day, but it's not the small (or big) romantic gestures on special occasions that lead to relationship success. To go from an initial date to a long-term relationship you need to look for qualities in a potential mate that make you feel safe and open with that other person. What you may not know is that these traits can lead you in the direction of developing a secure-functioning relationship.
What is a secure-functioning relationship?
A term coined by PACT co-founder Dr. Stan Tatkin, a secure-functioning relationship is an interpersonal system based on principles of true mutuality, collaboration, justice, fairness, and sensitivity. You and your partner are taking on the world together. You protect each other from the threats of the external, the outside world, and from the internal, each other. A secure functioning relationship acknowledges and celebrates...
Relationship Resolutions: A New Spark for the New Year
By Lisa Rabinowitz, LCPC
PACT Level 2 Therapist
https://www.baltimorecounselor.com
Every new year brings new and renewed resolutions and commitments to our work, school, family, and self. We are excited by the thought of what this year can bring. Frequently, we wonder about what new possibilities and opportunities will arise in 2020. As we reflect on our lives, we reflect on our relationships, too.
Some people begin the new year with a new attitude of hope: “Today’s a new day. I am not letting the past hold us back. This year we don’t need to keep repeating all of the old patterns. This year we don’t need to keep waiting for something to change; something can change.” The new year begins to reignite long-held hopes and dreams. When people talk about new resolutions and new beginnings, they start believing that this is the year when things can and will be different.
Other people have wishes to meet the “one” this year or a desire...
The PACT Institute: Growing with You in 2020 and Beyond
Dear PACT Community,
Happy 2020! Here at the PACT Institute we wanted to take this opportunity – as we enter a new decade – to share with you the vision we hold for the Institute in 2020 and beyond.
Our goal is to create a global and sustainable organization. In the last year, Stan, Tracey, the faculty, and our administrative team have worked hard to lay the foundation so that goal becomes a reality.
One of our biggest challenges at the Institute is meeting the increasing demand for training. As a businessperson – I admit – this is a problem I love having! We are meeting that challenge in a number of ways: a new website, new course offerings, and new ways to engage with the Institute.
At the heart of the Institute’s expansion efforts was updating to a new, more user-friendly website. The new site will be our gateway to even more training and educational opportunities in the future. Both the professional clinician and non-professional who is seeking...
Communication 101: Listen and Understand, Part 2
By Kara Hoppe, MA, LMFT
PACT Level 2 Therapist
Couples have a seemingly universal ask when they first reach out for therapy: each couple, no matter their specific struggle, is on the hunt for solid communication tools. This makes sense. Communication is a crucial part of how we connect with each other. We are wired for connection.
In my September blog post, I offered some deceptively simple tips on how partners can better communicate with each other by speaking clearly, kindly, and directly. I’m now back with part 2: effective tools to help us all tighten up our listening skills.
We long to be heard, seen, and understood by the people closest to our hearts, but finding connection through communication can get a bit tricky. Becoming a Jedi-level listener takes practice and intention. We need to learn to be present with our own discomfort.
Contrary to popular belief, being a good listener is a learned skill, not our natural tendency. We tend...
Thinking About Polyamory? Is Consensual Nonmonogamy Healthy for Your Relationship?
By Carolyn Sharp, LICSW
PACT Level 3 Therapist, PACT Ambassador
More and more couples who come into my office for therapy are interested in polyamory or consensual nonmonogamy. Some have been practicing it for years and believe it to be part of their values and their self-expression. Others believe it will bring sexual excitement and enhanced intimacy to their primary relationship. Regardless of where you are in your relationship, the decision to introduce other people into your committed relationship carries significant risk and challenge and should be done with a great deal of thought and care.
As a PACT therapist, my process is in helping couples build a secure-functioning relationship, and I have helped both monogamous and nonmonogamous couples build strength and health in their connection. However, it is only through a secure-functioning relationship where I have seen polyamory work well for the couple and each individual.
Why Is Polyamory...
The Big Win - What Divorcing Parents (and Their Kids) Want
By Aurisha Smolarski, MA, LMFT
PACT Level 2 Therapist
www.aurishasmolarski.com
The marriage and relationship have ended, and you wish you could just say goodbye to each other and move on. But . . . you have kids.
Relating to each other as divorced parents can be as much, or possibly even more, of a challenge than the marriage had been. Feelings of anger, hurt, sadness, longing, and relief may taint your perspective. But whether you experience an amicable or contentious separation, a continuing relationship as parents is necessary. You two are still responsible to each other for the care of your children.
“Wait, what? I still have to be in a relationship with this person?”
Just because you no longer share a bed or life goals, you are still operating inside a social contract that demands a commitment to the co-parenting partnership moving forward.
Fortunately, there is no reason why people who can’t be married can’t...
With Love from Big Sur: Building the Couple Bubble
On a rainy Sunday afternoon in May, we wrapped up the Wired for Love Couples Retreat at Esalen in Big Sur, California. I assisted Stan Tatkin and Tracey Boldemann-Tatkin with 30 couples who came to find out how PACT can strengthen their relationship. This scenario illustrates how couples learn to shift their focus from self-protecting to strengthening their couple bubble. The couple bubble is a mutually constructed and maintained eco-system that provides protection from an often challenging outside world.
Friday Evening: Shelter from the Storm
After taking the winding turns of Highway 1 that opened onto the expanse of the Pacific Ocean, Annie and Sam put down their bags and went to Esalen’s natural hot springs. This was their first couples retreat and, on the drive, both admitted to being more than a little nervous. The baths relaxed their bodies. Their minds still raced with the stresses at home...
