Improve your communication and listening skills, learn that conflict can be healthy to a relationship and how to meet your partner's needs by first learning how to meet your own. I also help couples understand how their past can influence their interaction with each other and how to correct for it.

There are no degrees and programs in romance and love; there are no schools for learning how to live and commit to each other, or simply how to date, to talk, to work through conflict, to listen under stress, to be in a relation- ship. For example, when couples first marry, they have no experience being married or understanding of the meaning of marriage. As kids teach parents how to parent, couples have to teach each other about their needs and desires in their relationship, and how to talk about issues and problems that generate stress and anxiety, over time.

Couples need to know that avoidance between themselves and their issues does not work and only makes problems intensify. Denial of a problem never solves it. Thus problems in a relationship are an invitation to change and grow and adopt a different problem solving strategy; issues require that couples work and listen together as one unit. But when couples and parents avoid issues, they show themselves and teach their children in powerful but subtle ways to do the same. Ultimately, when people avoid issues, they just avoid themselves.

When younger, our lives are more about the future, about an idea or wish for that future with a potential partner. But when married with kids, one's life becomes real; there is no turning back, thus the widespread fear around commitment. For the improvement and quality of their relationships and family, people have to become better people, they have to grow and change.