ABOUT PRACTICAL APPLICATION OF INTIMATE RELATIONSHIP SKILLS

Practical Application of Intimate Relationship Skills (PAIRS) is a curriculum

for intimate relationship skills training. PAIRS grew from the ashes

of marital disaster. The creator and developer of PAIRS (co-author

Lori Gordon), on the demise of her own 17-year marriage, set out to find

missing answers. PAIRS is drawn from many emerging humanizing interpersonal

therapies of the second half of the twentieth century (Satir,

Casriel, Bach, Sager, Brandon, Framo, Bowen, Wynne, Perls, Guerney,

Brandon, Zilbergeld, etc.). PAIRS has evolved over 30 years. Gordon has

refined the keys to intimacy and shaped and polished the training exercises

needed to create deep personal transformative learning by relationship

partners.

PAIRS has been experienced by tens of thousands of couples, many

who were on the brink of divorce (DeMaria, 1998); and by tens of thousands

of individuals, wanting to develop skills to prevent a repeat of the

devastation of relationship breakup. Gordon’s self-help book for couples

and individuals, Passage to Intimacy (1993), presents the main ideas and exercises

of PAIRS that can be learned at home and practiced outside the

classroom. Incisive descriptions and thoughtful discussions by PAIRS

Master Teachers, a review of research about PAIRS, and critical issues

such as the PAIRS Ethics Code for teachers are brought together in Building

Intimate Relationships: Bridging Treatment, Education and Enrichment

through the PAIRS Program (DeMaria & Hannah, 2003). The PAIRS experience

significantly increases relationship satisfaction, sustainable love,

and commitment.

A central tenet of PAIRS is that sustained intimacy is required to maintain a

lasting marriage. When intimacy, the deep emotional experience of loving

connection, is lost, the ground the marriage is built on becomes shaky.

Good will is then lost and the desire (and ability) to solve problems, overcome

obstacles, and persist in the face of fear and uncertainty, quickly

erodes. With its emphasis on intimacy, PAIRS goes to the heart and the

heat of the matter. Once couples learn to create, re-create, and sustain

intimacy, many premarital and marital issues, such as commitment, cooperation,

fidelity, and creative management of differences, are much more

quickly resolved.

PAIRS is designed to (1) realign attitudes and beliefs about love and relationships

and about marriage and family life; (2) train and evolve each

partner’s self-knowledge, emotional literacy, and emotional efficacy; and

(3) change ineffective behaviors that diminish intimacy by teaching those

behaviors and skills that increase intimacy and relationship enhancement.

The PAIRS curriculum is a theory-based, cohesive, orchestrated

body of concepts and practical activities that is a powerful technology

for change. PAIRS has, thus far, proven effective in every population, including disadvantaged youth, middle and high schools, foreign cultures,

entire families, business groups, faith-based adult education, separated

and divorcing couples, premarital couples, and devitalized couples

in marital doldrums.