In successful marriages, couples are intimate, loving companions who truly understand and thoughtfully support each other. However, the busyness of daily life, parenting, work, and community responsibilities can sometimes unintentionally weaken your connection. This course provides married couples at all life stages with guidance from the Baha'i Faith's teachings, science-based information, and practical tools to create new patterns that strengthen friendship, love, and service in their relationship. Premarital couples are also welcome.
Note: This is not a course for couples in crisis or needing therapy; it is a learning experience in which you desire to grow, enhance, or refresh your relationship, and collaboratively apply spiritual and scientific information to stay together for the long term.
We invite you to engage in meaningful activities that help shape the culture of your marriage, enhancing unity and fostering mutual service to each other, your families, and other people. By deepening your friendship and commitment, you’ll sustain the strong bond you’ve built, keeping it alive through thoughtful words and actions. Together, you’ll communicate, share joy, and create lasting memories. Every day offers new opportunities to serve each other’s needs, dreams, and aspirations, keeping your marriage strong, joyful, and fulfilling.
The Learning Experience: You will complete your self-directed learning study of each Unit as best as you can before your weekly group meeting. In the group meetings, you'll discuss the Unit's content and how to apply it to your lives, accompanied by the married couple facilitators. You will draw on each other's wisdom and experience in a confidential environment, so that each couple feels accompanied as they grow and achieve their goals. (Couples will agree privately what their boundaries are for what they share or don't share in the group meetings.)
Strengthening Your Learning:
You are in charge of your own learning, and we are here to accompany you. We invite you to turn to your marriage (or relationship) partner to do the learning activities throughout this course.
Some couples set aside evening or weekend time to study the Units. Other couples find that spending 15 minutes a day working on their marriage yields excellent progress. Experiment, learn, and do what works best for you. You won’t lose access to the course at the end, so you can continue to study at the pace that works for you as needed.
Welcome to this exciting journey of learning!
Course Dates: June 7-June 28, 2026 (4 sessions)
The course runs on Sundays, 8-10 p.m. Melbourne, Australia time, with facilitated meetings occurring weekly at this time throughout the course. [Note: This timing will likely make the course most accessible to learners in Australasia, Europe, and Africa, but other areas may find it fits their schedule as well.]
Note: Time Zone conversions can be done using one of these tools:
“We appreciate the extent the course uses different sources and materials from all different leaders within the field of relationship and marriage, psychologists, religious backgrounds which makes it very inclusive for anyone with any background. This course helped and reminded us how to be intentional to the growth of our marriage and family and also, gave us the tools to action moving forward. ”
Alicia Zamorski and Mohsen Ashouri
“Just about everything we touched on has a place in helping our fortress for well-being flourish. In particular, the process of consultation is much more practicable with an understanding of how our love languages interact. It means that we can be courteous, and gentle as we tackle big and emotive issues in our lives without the debilitating fear that we would start a forest-fire in our relationship. Indeed, with these new understandings and tools, I am eager to tackle the biggest issues we face as a couple and instead of fearing the outcome, I am genuinely excited at the prospect that through consultation, the result will be positive in a way that neither of us could see before. This is truly LIBERATING!”
Akinkunmi Odulate
“This course has been incredibly meaningful as it gave us the opportunity to reflect on our two-year courtship and intentionally map out our love maps. The conversations and interactions with other long-married interracial couples were especially inspiring and encouraging. Hearing their stories offered both perspective and hope for our own journey. The experience has given me greater courage to face the everyday challenges and realities of life together. It reminded me that with faith, mutual support, and a heart to serve one another, we can navigate difficulties thoughtfully and work toward our shared goals as a team.”
Nan Chen
“It was a life changer for my husband and I along with couples counseling.”
Married Couple
“We are so grateful we took part in this course during the season leading up to our marriage. It ended up being such a meaningful and enriching experience for both of us — not only because of the content itself, but because of the incredible community we became a part of along the way. From the very beginning, we felt genuinely welcomed, supported, and understood. The course created space for thoughtful conversations, reflection, and connection in a way that felt very real and accessible. We appreciated how grounded and human everything felt. The writings, discussions, exercises, and perspectives gave us so much to think about and brought us into deeper conversations with each other that we know will stay with us well beyond the course itself. One of the things we loved most was the people we met. The other couples were truly wonderful — kind, open, thoughtful, and genuine. There was such a wide range of life experiences, relationship stages, personalities, and perspectives represented, and it made the conversations feel rich, honest, and deeply meaningful. We especially appreciated the openness around interracial and intercultural relationships and marriages. Hearing from couples navigating different cultural backgrounds and experiences made us feel even more seen, understood, and supported in our own journey. We learned so much not only from the facilitators, but from everyone who showed up with openness and vulnerability. We left feeling more connected to each other, more hopeful about the future, and deeply appreciative of the community that was created through this experience. We would absolutely recommend this course to other couples at any stage of their relationship. ”
Sahba Rohani and Teo Henry
Appreciate the quality of your friendship and see ways to expand the friendship you have between you.
Understand ways to express love and respect that increase a healthy unity between you.
Thoughtfully be of service to one another and balance service inside and outside your home.
This course contains quotations from many science-based and spiritual sources. It is not affiliated with any particular faith nor sponsored by any religious institution. Some quotations are from the Baha'i Faith (bahai.org). This course is part of an effort to fulfill quotations like this one: “A new conception of family begins with a new conception of marriage. Bahá’u’lláh observes that marriage is not only ‘the key to the perpetuation of life for the peoples of the world’, but ‘the inscrutable instrument for the fulfilment of their destiny.’ (Universal House of Justice, March 19, 2025, quoting Bahá’u’lláh in “To Set the World in Order: Building and Preserving Strong Marriages, #1)
Please Introduce Yourself!
Course Orientation
FREE PREVIEWA Guide to Course Communications
Course Schedule/Group Meeting Link
Frequently Asked Questions
Change Notes for the Course
Elements of the Course Opening Meeting
Unit 1: Goals, Learning Content, Activities, Questions
FREE PREVIEWUnit 1: Build Understanding - Love Map Activity (PDF)
Unit 1: Happiness, Joy, Laughter, and Humor Quotations (PDF)
Unit 1: Activity Ideas for Couples (PDF)
Unit 2: Goals, Learning Content, Activities, Questions
Unit 2: Love and Love in Marriage Quotations (PDF)
Unit 3: Goals, Learning Content, Activities, Questions
Encouragement in Relationships and Marriage (PDF)
Responses to Some Topics from a Previous Course
We welcome everyone to this course who wishes to participate. This course invites you to commit time, effort, and money. We hope you can afford the cost of the course, as that helps cover the cost of the course platform and a small amount to the facilitators for their service. However, we do not want financial difficulties to prevent registration. If you or your partner cannot afford part or all of the fee, there are coupon codes available for financial aid. Please contact Susanne Alexander, course administrator, at [email protected] with specifics of how much you can afford or the discount you need. We are happy to help and look forward to welcoming you to this relationship-enriching course! Note: Previous learners in a course can take it again for a 75% discount. Reach out to Susanne for a code before registering.
