Do a Relationship Check-Up Now: How and Why
Do you wait to see the dentist until something hurts?
Or do you go to the doctor for regular check-ups? As with other health-related issues, the sooner you catch relationship problems, the easier they are to fix.
What is a Relationship Check-Up?
A relationship check-up is not the same thing as relationship counseling. It’s a way to prevent relationship problems: a once-a-year consultation with a seasoned couples counselor. Think of it in the same way that you think of maintaining your physical health or your car.
Research on prevention of relationship or marital strife shows that couples who do a relationship check-up experience improvement in the quality of their relationships.
A relationship check-up may identify areas of potential problems before the problems develop or spiral out of control. Fixing problems is simpler and easier during a relationship check-up than if couples wait until they are very unhappy to consult with a couple’s counselor.
A yearly relationship consultation can take anywhere from one to four sessions. It is not a substitute for couples or marriage counseling. To gauge where you’re at in your relationship, you might want to try this relationship quiz and see how you do!
From Hierarchy to Equality in Relationships
When the relationship between men and women was hierarchical, the gender roles were defined. Everyone knew their place in the hierarchy. Men and women knew how to behave because each had a defined role.
Since the revolutionary changes that occurred in society in the last 50-75 years, men and women (and same-sex couples) try to have a more egalitarian relationship.
Questions arise about how to achieve equality in a couple relationship without resorting to anger, violence, or bullying methods.
- Here are some of the questions that couples wrestle with today:
- How do you influence another person without resorting to bullying or violence?
- How do you make decisions jointly?
- What does compromise mean and how does it work?
- Is equality possible in all areas of the life of the couple?
- How is equality different from symmetry?
Many relationships do succeed when members of each couple take the time to figure out the answers to these and related questions. When they don’t, anger, bullying, and violence are not uncommon.
A relationship check up can help you figure out how you are doing in the transition from a hierarchical relationship to an egalitarian relationship. If you have never been in relationship counseling or done a relationship check up, we can help you through the process.
