When the couple has focused their lives on parenting for many years, the transition to the empty nest (the children are no longer there) is sometimes difficult, even painful. We observe a significant increase in divorces at this time, these two parents having forgotten their conjugality, sometimes find it difficult to find themselves accomplices and in love.

The long-term couple who want to continue the road together, will bring as a reflection in conjugal consultation, the desire to improve the famous routine that wears the desire and pleasure of being together. Their healing path will be focused on communication paths and activities to reconnect. So as not to feel the weight of the aging of understanding, there is nothing like cultivating your child’s soul! The happiest couples maintain humour, play and complicity. Nothing like to be surprised again than to install for us two cheerful and innovative habits!

And why not the balance sheet of couples that the coachs therapists claim as an interesting mechanic’s interview so as not to get lost?

Stephen R.Covey offers us a book to help us in this reflection with an angle on 7 habits to build to meet. In this book, tips, recipes, ways to communicate, think together about the best way to be together. 

“A couple must learn the art and habit of giving, loving, offering, renting and continually keeping the box full.”

Translated from English (USA) by Anne Confuron and distributed by MARDAGA editions, available in bookshops on June 2, 2022, this book by Stephen R. Covey, “Les 7 habitudes des couples qui durent” is an excellent tool for couples who want to renew themselves.

Here is an overview:

Habit 1: Be proactive:
It is the search for one’s own responsibility to not feel the “victim” of the other. But also because taking action allows situations to evolve.

Habit 2: Start with the end in mind:
Always visulalize goals. At this time of your couple, what do you want to dream about? How will you put all this in music?

Habit 3: Prioritize:
As with any action plan, conjugal objectives must be given priority; this is where the new energy is to be found.

Habit 4: Think Win - Win:
Between us, we are stronger! Not against each other, but with each other.

Habit 5: First try to understand:
Let’s start from ignorance to understand each other. Do not believe that one thinks like another, each person his way of analyzing and for a good understanding, let us seek the truth rather than seek to be right.

Habit 6: Create synergy:
The concept of team is very important in the life of a couple. It is thanks to this precious alliance that you are still here together, do not forget, continue to vibrate this synergy.

Habit 7: Sharpen your gaze:
Continue to learn together, to refine things. You are in the period of your life when time will offer you a little more relational quantity, so take advantage of this moment and rejoice to you both!

Through these tools, you can probably create a dialogue between the two of you. Don’t forget that you don’t have to agree on everything, as couples therapists say, crises are vectors of change and it’s important to agree on disagreements.

Sophie Mercier, Marriage and Family Counsellor

Win one of Stephen R.Covey’s 5 books, “The 7 Habits of Enduring Couples,” offered by MARDAGA

Enter the draw for June 30, 2022 as one of your comments on the www.senior.life site below the book video.