The Porsha
Principles
Instead of a lifelong honeymoon, too many couples find themselves in a lifelong struggle. It doesn’t have to be that way.
What These Principles Can Do
A Loving Relationship, Enriched by the Porsha Principles
The Porsha Principles give you proven and effective strategies for identifying and overcoming the unique challenges in your relationship. You will gain the wisdom and skills to reduce negativity and nurture love and connection with your partner.
Incorporating the Porsha Principles into your relationship leads to greater fulfillment and highly sustained enjoyment for both you and your partner. It creates a safe, joyful, and affirming environment where both of you can be honest, vulnerable, and truly loving with each other.
In short, the Porsha Principles will help you reclaim your honeymoon and sustain it for life.
What Is a Lifelong Honeymoon?
Remember what it felt like when you and your partner went on your honeymoon? The excitement and the sense of joy and connection? Remember wanting this feeling to last forever?
That’s what a lifelong honeymoon is.
A lifelong honeymoon is the experience of continual fulfillment and connection created by doing the things every day that lets you and your partner know that you are affirmed, appreciated, and loved.
It is all about living and relating with your partner in a way that continually recreates, reinforces, and restimulates those cherished emotions over and over again, every day, every week, every month. It is living and connecting in a way that breeds sustainable emotional safety and security.
Overview of the Porsha Principles
The Porsha Principles are the product of thousands of hours that I have spent with couples helping them overcome the negativity in their relationships and create lifelong happiness. These eight principles provide the roadmap, but you and your partner have to do the work. It’s through applying the principles that you will learn to overcome your unique challenges and create the joy and fulfillment that every relationship deserves.
Principle 1:
Let them know you…
not your representative.
- You know how when you first meet someone, and they don’t necessarily show you their real selves?
- This can happen for many reasons. We all like to think that it’s an attempt to put our best foot forward, to be liked or accepted. But often it is an attempt to hide the reality of ourselves, our feelings, or even our current life situations.
- This inauthentic representative of ourselves can show up, regardless of whether you are in a short-term or long-term relationship.
- In this principle we talk about why this happens, how to spot the representative, and how to peel back the layers, both yours and your partner’s, to reveal your authentic self.
Principle 2:
Cultivate intimacy…
at deeper levels.
- What do you think of when you think of intimacy?
- For some people, they think of spending time together. For others, intimacy is about communicating and sharing each other’s deepest feelings. For others, intimacy is all about the sexual relationship.
- Within this principle, we discuss what intimacy really is, and the importance of cultivating it at deeper levels.
Principle 3:
Lift your partner…
every day.
- Do you remember the first few months with your partner? The excitement you experienced, the way you felt every time you were with them, the way you spoke to them, the things you did for each other? It was so uplifting, wasn’t it?
- Then: Life happens. Whether it’s the work you do or the roles you play, other things may have gradually taken priority over lifting your partner up.
- If you want a lifelong honeymoon, this has to change. You can’t let the urgency of life take over the importance of creating magical moments every day with your partner.
- In this principle, we talk about how to create a habit of lifting your partner every day and what to do when you or your partner is not feeling lifted.
Principle 4:
Manage the differences…with care and communication.
- This is the first of four principles where our focus is on preventing the negative causes that break down otherwise strong relationships.
- While the statement “opposites attract” is often true when it comes to initial attraction, over time it’s typically those same opposites that can create conflict and stress in relationships.
- From my work with hundreds of couples, I have found that there are three major differences that can cause significant challenges for couples: communication styles, love languages, and personality traits.
- In this principle we provide specific strategies for dealing with these differences.
Principle 5:
Avoid the fire starters…they can ignite a blaze.
- If you were creating a bonfire, you would want to have the right kindling to get the fire started. Unfortunately, emotional fire starters are just that, the kindling that can lead to burning down your relationship house!
- We can think of these behaviors as ways couples often express their real, valid thoughts and feelings about themselves and their partner, but in such negative ways that it can be destructive.
- In this principle we identify specific behaviors (such as criticizing, blaming, shaming) that can be the start of serious breakdowns. If you want a lifelong honeymoon, you want to be diligent about avoiding these emotional fire starters.
Principle 6:
Address conflict…resolve disagreements.
- Most of the families we grew up in didn’t teach us how to address conflict in a healthy way. As a result, many couples are poorly equipped to handle disagreement and so respond with either fight (tooth and nail arguments that can cause significant attachment injuries) or flight (avoiding the disagreement completely until it becomes an overwhelming crisis).
- Surprisingly, there are only three reasons people disagree. And fortunately, there are specific strategies that can be applied to addressing each.
- In this principle, we help you understand disagreements and give you the pathways to cleanly resolve them.
Principle 7:
Repair the ruptures…they can ruin you.
- While managing the differences and avoiding the fire starters are proactive ways to create your livelong honeymoon, inevitably ruptures or hurts will occur in the relationship. How you respond to them will make all the difference in sustaining your lifelong honeymoon.
- Some ruptures will be scrapes or abrasions that occur as a result of two people who are different and those differences rubbing against each other at no fault of either partner.
- Other ruptures will be bruises; they hurt a little more and are a direct result of a partner’s action that causes a minor to moderate injury to the other.
- And still others are deep cuts; like bruises, deep cuts occur when one of the partners is at fault and a harm is caused to the other partner. However, the wound is deep and potentially fatal to the relationship.
- Regardless of the type of rupture, care must be taken to repair them. In this principle we talk about the types of ruptures and how to repair each of them.
Principle 8:
Profess, protect, and prioritize your relationship…with your thoughts, words, and actions.
- You can think of this final principle as being all about preventive maintenance: the things you are going to do and not do on an ongoing basis to keep your lifelong honeymoon going!
- Imagine your partner in a room filled with people they find highly attractive. What would you want your partner to do to protect your relationship?
- How would you want your partner to profess the relationship when talking about you and your relationship?
- And finally, what are the things you would want you and your partner to be doing on a regular basis to ensure that you are together prioritizing the relationship?
- Your preventive maintenance steps are a vital key to living your lifelong honeymoon.
Our Solutions
The universality of the Porsha Principles is designed to allow our solutions to be used effectively by couples of all ages, races, and orientations.
Porsha Principles eBook
Grab this definitive guide to rekindling the love, intimacy, and warmth that may be lacking in your relationship.
On-demand Video Series
The Porsha Principles are now available to you in nine illuminating and insightful videos. Access them all today!
Virtual Workshop
Attend our highly engaging and interactive virtual workshop filled with opportunities for you and your partner to practice.
Intimate Weekend Retreat
This close and intimate intensive is limited to just fifteen couples working up close with Porsha.