BY AJ TRAGER
FERNDALE — In order to help the LGBT and ally community better navigate their relationships whether they are good, bad or somewhere in between, The Michigan Network — which consists of Affirmations, HAVEN, Equality Michigan, Turning Point and Macomb Community Domestic Violence Council — will host a seven session relationship skills series starting April 6.
The seven week course will focus on how individuals can better understand themselves and those that they interact with. Topics will include: anti-oppression, exploring relationship values, healthy conflict resolution, establishing boundaries, accountability, building community connections and expectations and negotiations.
The skills class curriculum was developed by The Northwest Network of Bisexual, Trans, Lesbian and Gay Survivors of Abuse in Seattle and is designed to arm individuals with better skills in navigating their own relationships.
"Participants can expect a lot of interesting content and prose to help them reflect on who they are and who they want to be in relationships with other people. It's not academic but after the anti-oppression (session), it is very tangible. It is about getting skills that you need for the relationships that you want," said Director of Programs at Affirmations, Lydia Ahlum Hanson.
Sessions one and two — anti-oppression and relationship values — really create the foundation for the course over all, Hanson told BTL. The logical next step after discussing expectations and negotiations was accountability, she said. It's a skill and process that no one is born with and acts as a container in which relationships form and are maintained. Everyone must be accountable to themselves and to their partners.
The course will then move into boundaries and conflict. These two aspects of relationships play off one another. Most often than not, a conflict arises when a boundary is crossed and the course will help participants assess situations in their lives that led them to conflict and help them prevent those spaces in the future.
The last session will allow participants to take a step back and think about what they have learned throughout the other sessions, think about the different communities that participants are a part of and think about the various resources that are available within these communities to support healthy relationships.
"Relationships cannot take place in a vacuum. They really need to take place within a supportive, accountable community that is going to help individuals hold up a mirror to ourselves and think, 'Am I being accountable, am I aware of my boundaries and articulating those to other people and am I willing to negotiate with folks about expectations, or am I being a bully and exhibiting power and control and being an invasive partner?'" Hanson explained.
Who are the facilitators?
HAVEN will have a facilitator at every session and there will be other facilitators who will come in to co-facilitate with that anchor. Each session will have someone skilled and trained as an intimate partner service provider and is part of a sexual assault agency who has experience in prevention.
"So when we talk about different types of identities and perspectives, we'll have facilitators who are a part of the trans community, some who identify as gay or lesbian, some who identify as cisgender. And that is what I mean in terms of having different perspectives and having different people coming to the table," said Kole Wyckhuys, Director of Prevention Education at HAVEN.
Hanson has taken the course and found the material to be extremely beneficial and learned skills that she could directly apply to the relationships in her life. She returns to the Relationships Skills Course this year as one of the many facilitators that will assist participants as they discuss and navigate better skills to apply to relationships.
"You have an array of different facilitators who can offer some of their personal experiences and be a mirror for participants as we wade through the sometimes pretty heavy material. I really think about how I show up in relationships as a queer, cisgender, white woman. And how do I then support my femme partner? And what does our conflict look like? And how does gender and white privilege play out in that? In some places it's harder to have those rich conversations and provide rich examples and entry points into the content if we only have one or two facilitators for all seven questions," she said.
The registration for the series will end March 30. The seven part series costs $35 per person and will stretch from April 6 through May 18. Those interested in the course are asked to commit to as many sessions as possible to get the fullest experience from the course.
The class, which is polyamorous and BDSM inclusive, is open to anyone regardless of relationship status or history and will not claim to say there's one way to do a relationship.
To register for the class, go to https://secure.lglforms.com/form_engine/s/R8bVToyL6AR_4vKqI5ZSYA.
