For half a century, close to half of all American marriages crash and burn. Of those couples who stay together, how many do so happily and passionately? Why do so many men and women start off in love and end up in misery? Why is it that the field of couple's therapy has done far too little to alter these grim statistics? In this presentation, Terry Real will introduce a radical new couple's therapy approach that aims to empower the woman, and reconnect the man with a startling and liberating therapeutic truthfulness.
This workshop discusses the brain circuitry of the three primary mating emotions: lust, attraction and attachment. It traces the evolution of these emotion systems and illustrates how their neural circuitry contributes to contemporary patterns of marital harmony and discord including adultery; divorce; stalking behavior; clinical depression due to rejection in love; and other issues brought to contemporary couples therapy.
The traditional marriage of our parents, grandparents and before was the companionable marriage. This lecture introduces a new 21st Century skill-set, relationship empowerment, which enables women to stand up for increased closeness in their relationships, while helping men understand new demands and how to meet them successfully.
This lecture will posit that marriage is alive and well and evolving into a new form, replacing a personal, psychological marriage focused on the satisfaction of individual need with a partnership marriage that produces healing and evokes psychological and spiritual growth. This transition is an instance of a shift from the "individual paradigm "to the "relational paradigm."
This presentation explores the biology and developmental psychology of love, sex, sexual orientation, commitment and marriage. Focus is on research and clinical applications.
No other aspect in the lives of couples, today as well as yesterday, generates more fascination, gossip and fear as infidelity. In our society, sexual infidelity is mostly seen as a symptom of a relationship gone awry. The revelation of an affair can trigger a crisis that shakes the very foundation of trust and connection in the couple. The purpose of this workshop is to present a multi-cultural, non-judgmental perspective to probe the meanings of affairs, rethink fidelity, and address the complexities of marriage, sex, intimacy, and monogamy. We will look at the value and the price of honesty and truth telling, and explore the circuitous ways affairs aim to stabilize a marriage and prevent the dissolution of the family.
Several new studies have uncovered a seismatic shift that has taken place regarding the purpose and practice of marriage. These research findings explain many of the difficulties we face behind the therapy door. Come get a research update and clinical applications for couple's therapy. Lecture, video, handouts, discussion, demonstration will be utilized.
There are multiple reasons for affairs. We will examine the benefits of affairs and why affairs can actually stabilize a marriage. In particular, we will focus on how couples can turn the crisis into an opportunity. This is a multicultural therapeutic approach for working with extramarital relations.
Infidelity generally points out flaws in a relationship, and the revelation of an affair often triggers a crisis of trust and connection. We’ll examine the benefits and the costs of truth-telling and transparency, how couples can rebuild trust and intimacy, and how affairs can actually stabilize a marriage and prevent its dissolution. In particular, we will focus on how couples can turn the crisis into an opportunity. Combining didactic material, case studies and video vignettes, we will lay out a nuanced and multicultural therapeutic approach for working with extramarital relations, fantasized or real, disclosed or shrouded in secrecy.
Remarried couples are often poorly served by therapists who treat them without enough appreciation for the unique complexity and multiple loyalties of stepfamily life. This workshop will combine clinical assessment and treatment issues with a special focus on values issues such as commitment and fairness that often dominate conflict in stepfamilies.