ABSTRACT
This exercise is based on family of origin theory and helps dyads/couples get in touch with patterns of behavior learned from their parents. The exercise is in sentence completion form, with the sentence stems focusing upon one's parents and family of origin. The exercise focuses on the negatives from the family of origin; it can be varied to focus on the positives or healthy aspects of parent's marriages. The exercise completes it while thinking of the same-sex parent, and then redo it thinking of the opposite-sex parent. This activity leads couples in an examination and discussion of how they may be repeating their parent's relationships. Couples who are less differentiated from their parents are most likely to repeat their parent's relationships, and are most likely to experience relationship problems. For married couples, identifying destructive patterns of repetition may help them begin the process of creating their own marriages and differentiating from their parent's marriages.
