Although Valentine’s Day serves as a celebration of love, there is more to building strong foundational relationships than flowers and heart-shaped chocolates.
Fostering healthy relationships — both romantic and platonic — is something that counselor education doctoral student Shazia Mirza teaches in the online Couples, Families and Intimate Relationships course. Offered in the fall, spring and summer as part of the human services undergraduate minor in the Department of Counselor Education and School Psychology, the course provides foundational knowledge of the dynamics of families, dating and marriage, how to establish stable and satisfying couples and families, the impact of divorce and couples’ education. Notably, the course challenges students to consider their own relational experiences within the academic content.
“This class is about couples, families and intimate relationships, so the name itself is very attractive — after all, we all have relationships, so why not learn about them in a professional way?,” Mirza says. The class includes assignments to help students get to know themselves, assess where they’re at in their relationships, and asks them to look at whether they’re building positive relationships and connections.”
Despite being a mental health services course, it’s a good elective open to any student, Mirza says. No matter a student’s career aspirations, they still have relationships with family, clients and peers that can grow from the deeper introspection and foundational knowledge the class provides.
“This class helps students gain awareness of where they are in life and how they can be successful personally, professionally and academically,” she says. “When we are not fully connected with our relationships, whether it is family, friends or partners, we are not satisfied. It can also help students realize if their relationships are negative and how they can change them.”
Some of the other important skills the course teaches are the primary issues that arise in dating and marital relationships, like decision-making, power and control issues, and how to problem-solve through conflict resolution and effective communication.
One interactive assignment students enjoy is creating a relationship genogram — a family tree specifically about relationships. The fun part, Mirza says, is that they can base it on a fictional family from a television show of their choice.
“Their job is to find a popular show, identify those characters, put those characters in the genogram, and describe their relationships and connections with each other,” Mirza says. “For example, Modern Family is a very popular show with many interesting relationships.”
Although students will have to take the class to learn all the ins and outs of maintaining healthy relationships, Mirza offers one key piece of relationship advice that applies to everyone: be flexible.
“In any relationship — it doesn’t matter if it’s with our parents or romantic partners — flexibility is key,” she says. “Don’t have rigid expectations for how your relationship must be. It’s not compromising because you should still establish boundaries, but being flexible is one important thing we can do to maintain possible connections.”
