This is the month for relational circling, apparently! Independent from the last ICLC weekend about circling relationships, and the guide I’m writing, my partner Mark and I led a Couples’ Circling workshop last Sunday. We had 18 people show up – 9 partners, including everything from new parents to 23-year-married couples to a separated pair who were still raising kids together.
The workshop was fantastic. It’s definitely something that Mark and I would like to try again, in Austin and perhaps in other cities. Many of the couples that attended wanted to do it again.
So, what did we do?
I want to share the full workshop plan with you, but think that would be most fair to give to my Patrons. So, for those of you who support at patreon.com/sness, I’ll be attaching the plan in a subsequent private post. In here I’ll talk a bit about the planning process, what happened in the workshop, and give y’all some fun sentence stems that we came up with for you to play with!
The Process
This workshop had some weight to it. It wasn’t just an event – it was a test for me to see if Mark and I could work together. Bringing business into a relationship can create a lot of tension. Mark and I are both relational facilitators, we both work in a similar fashion, and we both prefer to be the leader on projects. So it was an open question as to whether or not we were going to be able to synergize.
The idea came from us being bored at a coffeeshop, and brainstorming any workshop plan that caught our fancy just for the joy of doing it. Couples Circling interested us both the most. So, we threw a bunch of ideas on paper and put the event on the calendar. The day before the event, on a bus returning from Houston to Austin (which broke down without AC just outside of Austin – adding extra tension to our planning), and for the rest of that night and the next morning, we finished the plan.
Mark and I ended up being able to work together pretty well. We definitely pushed each others’ edges, but took our own medicine and stopped to delve deeper whenever issues arose. It was fun to use the fuel of circling each other to influence our planning, and to use our planning to learn more about each other. I realized that creating workshops is, for both of us, a creative process. Trying to plan with someone else is like trying to co-produce a painting. The best moment was when we stopped and looked back to why we were even choosing to do the workshop, why we were doing it with each other, and what individual strengths we each brought to it. After that it felt more like we could take turns making sketches and coloring in the lines.
The Workshop
The workshop itself was a blast. We started with a strong opening sentence stem (“Why would my partner say that we’re here?”), moved into exercises one-on-one (with peoples’ original partners and with others) and in coupled quads, and after lunch, dropped into split-group and full-group circles, ending with the partners circling each other.
Before lunch, the room felt amazing. It seemed like everyone was getting more insight and depth into their dynamics from the feedback of others. At the end of the workshop, the room was an explosion. Couples that had been doing well with each other seemed clear and deeply in love – couples that had seemed to come in with unspoken resentments or differences looked like they had been hit by a bus. For better or worse, authenticity had occurred.
My personal favorite part of the workshop was getting to walk around and sit in with different couples during the one-on-one work. It was magical (and personally reaffirming) to listen silently for 5-10 minutes, and then begin interjecting slightly – getting the partners to listen deeper and react more consciously to each other – and then, before moving on, with their permission, speak to the dynamics I’d witnessed between the partners and how I thought they could bring their relationship into a greater harmony. I felt like a symphony conductor, hearing the music beneath the words and reading the dynamics of relationship – watching my own impulse to say everything I saw, and loving when I could stop and have the couples do that reflection themselves. I definitely want to do more of this.
Sentence Stems
A little take-home gift for y’all. Mark and I brainstormed a ton of these, but didn’t get to use most of them. Try these with a partner!
“My love language is…”
“What blocks me from expressing my love for you is”
“When I’m [emotion/situation]….I’m wanting you to…[act/expression]”
“A part of me that I’m afraid to share with you is…”
“A part of me that I’m excited to share with you is…”
“The adventure I’d like to go on with you is…”
“My ideal Sunday afternoon together looks like…”
“A way I imagine I could love you more, that I feel scared to do is…”
“One of the reasons I’m dating you is…”
“I think our sex life is…”
“I think you think our sex life is…”
“An unexplored sexual fantasy I have (with you) is…”
“My favorite thing you wear is…”
“One of our differing beliefs/interests/goals that I appreciate you for is…because…”
“I choose you every day because…”