Marriage Guidance: Summary Notes
Marriage Guidance – Summary
MGG201W
MGG201W – Marriage Guidance – facilitative couples counselling
Theme ONE – Understanding couples
Intimacy involves: love, affection and caring, deep attachment to another person.
The TRIPOD of couple relationships
An intimate relationship consists of three factors that form a tripod on which the relationship rests.
1. Passionate attraction (PA)
2. Mutual expectations (ME)
3. Personal intentions (PI)
Passionate attractions (PA)
→ Individual experiences intensely pleasurable sensations when thinking about or being with a new partner.
→ Blushing, trembling, breathlessness, high sexual desire
→ Referred to as infatuation = passing love “a foolish and unreasoning love’
→ Infatuation is not a realistic / accurate appraisal of the relationship / idealisation
→ Negative / flaws in the idealised beloved may be intellectually recognised, but disregarded as endearingly special. Person chooses to ignore the negatives
→ Normal phase in the process of relationships
→ Infatuation can lead to a lasting relationship – but it mostly fades away and relationship based on infatuation alone will fail.
Love
→ Involves physical attraction - deeper
→ Love encompasses PA, ME and PI
→ People rely mostly on life experiences to guide them to their own unique way of demonstrating love. → Eric Fromm “love is active concern for the life and growth of the person we love”
→ Love is deep, unselfish, caring, deep respect
Hauck’s basic principles about love
• It is not just the person you love, but rather what he/she does for you - actions speak louder than verbal promises of love and devotion.
• Just like any business relationship, you have to invest in the relationship so as to benefit from its rewards - love requires a reciprocal investment from both parties
• Love is like a business partnership – it needs management - rules to ensure it remains mutually satisfying • The goal in the relationship is to be reasonably content.
MGG201W
MGG201W – Marriage Guidance – facilitative couples counselling
Theme ONE – Understanding couples
Intimacy involves: love, affection and caring, deep attachment to another person.
The TRIPOD of couple relationships
An intimate relationship consists of three factors that form a tripod on which the relationship rests.
1. Passionate attraction (PA)
2. Mutual expectations (ME)
3. Personal intentions (PI)
Passionate attractions (PA)
→ Individual experiences intensely pleasurable sensations when thinking about or being with a new partner.
→ Blushing, trembling, breathlessness, high sexual desire
→ Referred to as infatuation = passing love “a foolish and unreasoning love’
→ Infatuation is not a realistic / accurate appraisal of the relationship / idealisation
→ Negative / flaws in the idealised beloved may be intellectually recognised, but disregarded as endearingly special. Person chooses to ignore the negatives
→ Normal phase in the process of relationships
→ Infatuation can lead to a lasting relationship – but it mostly fades away and relationship based on infatuation alone will fail.
Love
→ Involves physical attraction - deeper
→ Love encompasses PA, ME and PI
→ People rely mostly on life experiences to guide them to their own unique way of demonstrating love. → Eric Fromm “love is active concern for the life and growth of the person we love”
→ Love is deep, unselfish, caring, deep respect
Hauck’s basic principles about love
• It is not just the person you love, but rather what he/she does for you - actions speak louder than verbal promises of love and devotion.
• Just like any business relationship, you have to invest in the relationship so as to benefit from its rewards - love requires a reciprocal investment from both parties
• Love is like a business partnership – it needs management - rules to ensure it remains mutually satisfying • The goal in the relationship is to be reasonably content.