How to Revitalize Your Relationship: Activities that Add Fun, Variety, and Learning to Your Couples Journey (The Couples Journey: Intimacy as a Path to Wholeness)

The activities described here are aimed at providing ways for couples to see and experience themselves in a new way.

Exercises aimed at highlighting Stage I (Romance) issues are grouped together; Stage II activities are likewise grouped together and so on. Although couples can benefit from the activities of any of the stages, it might be interesting to focus especially on the activities for the stage just beyond the one you seem to be operating at most of the time. In order to help you assess your present stage of development as a couple, you might begin with the following self-assessment activity: First individually and then together as a couple answer the following self-inventory questions:
a. When do I feel most fulfilled in this relationship?
b. When do I feel least fulfilled in this relationship?
c. What do I do and what does my partner do which contributes to such fulfillment and lack of fulfillment?
d. What would I need to change in my own and my partner's behavior to transform the least fulfilling situations into more fulfilling ones?
e. What am I learning from the relationship just as it is - even if nothing changes?

After you have answered these questions, review your answers together to discover which issues you seem most concerned with right now: Issues of romance: involving a mutual concern with discovering who we are together; articulating our vision; learning to see and hear each other free of "projections." Issues of power: Involving concern about roles and expectations; recognizing our differences, our feelings about these differences; and our tolerance for differences; access to resources (such as the other's time, space in our house); individual styles of negotiating and influencing. Issues of stability: involving concern with achieving self-responsibility; balancing power and love; balancing variety and familiarity; "re-owning projections.” Issues of commitment: Involving development of a "we consciousness"; developing our mutual will or ability to act as a unit; living with paradox and uncertainty. Issues of co-creation: involving concerns of mutually creating a shared life; manifesting our plans and visions through creative projects.