The Relationship Check-In Method
The Relationship Check-In method helps you improve your relationship using cards, prompts, and fun games. Listen to this episode!
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Jocelyn Johnson, founder of the Happy Partners Project, created the Relationship Check-In method by drawing upon over 10 years of her own personal development practices, mindfulness, and her training in Cognitive Behavioral Coaching, Neuro-Linguistic Programming and Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy.
In this episode of Last First Date Radio:
- What Check-Ins are and why we need them in our relationships
- The five categories of Check-Ins
- Conscious relationship habits to help your relationship
- The types of agreements that strengthen our relationships
- What happens when only one partner wants to do the work
The Relationship Check-In Method
What are Check-Ins, and why did you create them?
They are a proactive process to be in dialogue about relationship issues with your partner before there’s a problem. These conversations help you avoid being reactive. The method is founded on mindfulness and psychology and helps build emotional intelligence. The cards integrate active listening and open-ended prompts to foster healthier relationships.
It’s hard for a lot of people to access their emotions, so these questions and prompts help.
What are the five categories of Check-Ins?
- Gratitude
- Re-friending
- Future gazing
- Sex and intimacy and connection
- Solving conflict
Can you share a few conscious relationship habits?
Behind every heightened emotion is a need and a request to meet that need.
You plus me vs the problem instead of you vs me. This is the anchor point for the method. The relationship is sacred.
What type of agreements strengthen our relationships?
- Stop character assassinating.
- No name-calling.
- Have open dialogue.
- Avoid hyperbolic language (always and never).
- Use ‘I’ statements.
- Practice radical transparency. (I recognize what I’m going to say could hurt your feelings. But it’s important for me to be honest in support of the relationship.)
What is masculine/feminine polarity in a relationship?
It’s like android and IOS, different operating systems. We all have different energies, and we have our unique balances of these energies. It’s important for us all to be accessible for both the feminine and masculine energies within us. The balance of these energies is what creates and maintains attraction and harmony in a relationship.
Can you share a story about a couple who used your Check-In method to improve their relationship?
I had a work colleague who wasn’t having sex with his wife anymore. He felt hopeless about the relationship, because he didn’t know how to make her happy. The Check-Ins helped bring issues to the forefront. It helped them build toward a brighter future, get back into curiosity, and diffuse conflict with gratitude for what WAS working. They were able to create romantic getaways and infuse excitement and a more holistic view of the relationship. Now, when they start to feel tension, she asks to do check-ins again.
What happens when only one partner wants to do the work?
I encourage the partner who wants to do the work to look at the prompts and envision how they’d like to be responded to and how they’d respond. When one person changes, the system gets disrupted. Also, encourage them to try it once. It only takes an hour.
Watch the video
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