Overview and History of the Program

Christian PREP (The Prevention and Relationship Enhancement Program) is the culmination of years of work by many colleagues on understanding what makes for great marriages and what causes marital failure and breakdown. The program is founded on a Christian model and teaching on marriage, with an integration of solid research on marriage and relationships. The model of integration we employ is described below after we present some history of the PREP program in general.

The Prevention and Relationship Enhancement Program (PREP®) is a research-based approach to teaching couples how to communicate effectively, work as a team to solve problems, manage conflicts without damaging closeness, and preserve and enhance love, commitment, and friendship. The PREP Approach is based on 25 years of research in the field of marital health and success, with much of the specific research conducted at the University of Denver over the past 20 years. Drs. Markman, Stanley, Blumberg, and a host of colleagues and research assistants, have been studying what happy couples do right and what unhappy couples do wrong. One focus of this work has been on how to take this information and teach couples skills and attitudes associated with marital success.

PREP was designed to teach couples communication and problem solving skills found to be linked to effective marital functioning. It employs techniques from behavioral marital therapy (e.g., Jacobson & Margolin, 1979) and ideas similar to some other communication-training marital programs (e.g., Guerney, 1977). The current version of PREP has been refined and based on up-to-date research, particularly in the areas of communication, conflict management, affect regulation, commitment, expectations, intimacy enhancement, and gender differences (Markman, et al., 1994; Stanley, et al., 1999). PREP attempts to help couples reduce or limit risk factors and raise protective factors, including the following topics: interactional danger signs of future problems, gender differences, using structure to promote safety, the Speaker/Listener Technique, problem solving, Ground Rules for handling conflict, strategies for dealing with issues versus events, clarifying core beliefs and expectations, forgiveness, commitment, and how to preserve and enhance fun, friendship, and sensuality (Stanley, et al., 1999).

Most people desire a satisfying marriage that lasts a lifetime. Yet couples marrying today have a fifty percent chance of getting divorced. Many couples who do not divorce wind up staying together, but remain unhappy for years. The developers of PREP and Christian PREP believe that marriage is the most risky undertaking routinely taken on by the greatest number of people in our society. What starts out as a relationship of great joy and promise can become the most frustrating and painful endeavor of a lifetime. The damaging effects of destructive marital conflict and divorce on spouses and children include economic problems, medical problems, and mental health problems.

Research has shed light not only on the greatest risk factors for marital failure, but also on the most promising avenues to help couples build and maintain great marriages. Can couples learn how to avoid the pitfalls, and learn to deepen and maintain love for a lifetime? Yes, if they work at it. The learning model employed in the PREP Approach is educational, with the focus on teaching couples the kinds of attitudes and actions that make for marital success. While the bad news is that marriage is risky business, and the costs of failure are staggering, the good news is that couples can learn powerful, proven strategies for beating the odds.

CPREP uses the typical PREP model to teach couples the PREP approach. This involves one group leader to provide lectures and one coach per couple. This model is "labor-intensive." A variation on this theme is to use one leader and one coach who, together, work with four couples. This essentially provides one or two people to deliver the lectures, and one coach per two couples. This model is being used, for example, with the version of PREP now being tested in Germany (described below). We have also given various CPREP and PREP workshops without any coaches, but allowing for time for the couples to practice skills, and the couples' satisfaction with such formats is also very high.