From the UCLA Newsroom:

One of our Advisory Board Members and professor at UCLA, Dr. Tom Bradbury, is now offering seminars for couples on relationship functioning, and what couples can do to keep their relationship strong. He and his colleague Dr. Benjamin Karney (also a professor at UCLA) have founded the Relationship Institute to present research-based findings in an engaging and accessible format, using case studies, self-examinations, videotaped examples and interactive exercises.

The institutes’ first seminar, called “Building Your Best Marriage,” will address how couples can establish and maintain strong relationships. The one-day program will be organized around a few key factors known to affect how relationships develop over time, including the role of communication, how people can disagree constructively, better and worse ways to support your partner, and how stress can divide partners or draw them closer together.

“The aim of these seminars is to answer questions that get beyond the conventional wisdom,” Karney said. “For example, we all know that communication is important in relationships, but what does good communication accomplish? Decades of research contain insights on questions like this that can give couples the perspective to keep their relationship healthy and strong.”

“Building Your Best Marriage” will be offered four times at UCLA in 2008, on weekend days, from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. The dates are April 20, May 11, June 8 and Aug. 23. Each seminar is limited to a maximum of 60 couples, and both members of a couple are encouraged to attend. The cost for the six-hour program is $200 per couple.

“Research on relationships has evolved now to the point where key principles about intimate bonds can be identified, and I think it would be very unfortunate if this knowledge was left on the shelves in academic libraries,” said Thomas Bradbury.

Bradbury and Karney are quick to emphasize that the seminars aim to educate couples rather than provide therapy.

“Our focus is on strengthening relationships that are already going pretty well — not necessarily perfect, but with a reasonably good foundation,” Bradbury said. “Couples who are struggling need individual attention uniquely tailored to them.”

The seminars offered at the Relationship Institute are based in part on decades of research conducted by the institute’s directors. Since 1985, Bradbury has studied hundreds of couples to determine why some newlyweds go on to have great relationships while others struggle. All this research has involved videotaping couples discussing problems with each other in his laboratory at UCLA.

For more information and to register for a seminar please see:

http://www.relationshipinstitute.ucla.edu/