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CHARISMA

What is CHARISMA?

  • CHARISMA is the acronym for The Characteristics of Marriage Inventory.
  • The CHARISMA Inventory can be administered to your clients by hand or on-line, in your office or in the privacy of their own home. Once client-data has been entered, a personalized analysis of their results is forwarded to you by e-mail, fax, or U.S. Mail for use in your counseling sessions.
  • The CHARISMA model helps identify each partner’s areas of satisfaction or dissatisfaction along the three key pathways to marital satisfaction: (1) Satisfaction with Love, (2) Loyalty, and (3) Shared Family Values.
  • The CHARISMA Inventory provides personalized reports which reflect both individual scores and comparative scores between partners.
  • The CHARISMA model provides concrete suggestions for specific behaviors and skills which help couples strengthen the 3 pathways to marital satisfaction.
  • The CHARISMA Report provides a personalized analysis, with suggested exercises and discussion topics. By repeating the CHARISMA Inventory, you can measure your clients’ progress over time.
  • The CHARISMA Approach helps partners to better understand each other, teaches practical relationship skills, and offers a long-term, approach to keeping their love alive and well!
  • Used in conjunction with couples counseling, the CHARISMA can help to organize and prioritize the goals of the couple, helps to focus on specific relationship issues, and identifies areas of the relationship which require attention.
  • CHARISMA is a versatile tool which can empower clients to keep their relationship on track; and which provides recovery skills when relationships get off track.
  • CHARISMA is based on the principle that couples have a better chance of achieving and maintaining satisfaction when they employ a common theoretical model for “how to run a successful relationship”! When couples agree to use a shared model for their relationship, they can improve their communication just by employing a common set of terms and meanings.

CHARISMA is helpful as an adjunct to relationship therapy. In a matter of minutes, Counselors and Therapists can quickly assess marital satisfaction in a particular couple. When used as an adjunct to therapy, CHARISMA

  • identifies areas of satisfaction and dissatisfaction, suggests behaviors which are most in need of attention, and provides the counselor with an effective approach by which to help the couple.
  • CHARISMA is an educational program which can teach couples how to achieve a more satisfying relationship.
  • CHARISMA suggests a therapeutic agenda, which is tailor-made ot each couple because it is based upon each individual’s responses to the CHARISMA Inventory.

In a study of marital satisfaction at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, researchers developed the Characteristics of Marriage Inventory (CHARISMA) in order to find pathways to marital satisfaction. As a result, the CHARISMA model can now be employed to teach couples about marriage, help spouses understand each other better, and learn how to solve problems as they arise.

Underlying Assumptions here include:

  1. There’s a lot to learn about marriage. Couples can actively learn how to have a great marital relationship, or they can allow their marriages to develop by chance.
  2. Marriages change over time. Like other aspects of life, marriages grow and evolve over time. As such, spouses should prepare for change and take an active role in designing their marriage.
  3. People change on a daily basis, so their relationship is bound to change on a daily basis. The trick is to remain flexible and share your growth as a couple. This requires that individual spouses take an interest in each other’s personal evolution and be respectful of their mate’s growth.
  4. Couples need marital skills. The CHARISMA Model of Marital Satisfaction is designed to provide you and your spouse with a set of tools with which you can use to develop a mutually satisfying and loving relationship.
  5. Individual differences are attractive. The CHARISMA approach is founded upon the belief that satisfying marriages are the result of appreciating our individual differences and developing the necessary relationship tools by which to achieve and maintain a strong and healthy partnership.