Relationships!

The Relationships workshop is part of a series of Peer Education Programs offered at the Victorian AIDS Council/Gay Men’s Health Centre.

The Relationships workshop is a free six-week workshop for gay men who want to learn and develop relationship skills. The workshop aims to equip participants with communication skills and relationship maintenance skills, to name a few.

The workshop provides a space where participants can reflect on their past relationships. The aim is to focus on positive aspects, learn from not so good experiences and, most importantly, how to use them to benefit the current or the next relationship.

The workshop gives participants space to put thoughts in order and gain greater clarity about their wants and needs in relationships, and also enables them to hear what other gay men think, feel and experience. This is what makes the workshop unique and powerful.

Participants will reflect on and explore what they want from a relationship, what they want from a partner, a type of relationship they want, and identify what would work for them in their relationship.

The next step is expressing what they want. Participants will learn how to communicate effectively and assertively when forming relationship agreements.

Relationship agreements are not rules. Rather, they are a set of shared understandings. Relationship agreements support each partner and allow the relationship to grow.

So you found a man, fell in love, you’re in a relationship. What’s next?

Relationship maintenance comes in at this point. Participants look at how to care for themselves, their partners and the relationships, things like rights and responsibilities as individuals and as a couple.

Sometimes relationships end. The workshop explores how individuals cope with grief and the loss of a relationship, how to let go and how to feel good and start again.

The next round of workshops starts: Young & Gay, September 7; Momentum, September 8; Relationships, September 9; • Gay Asian Proud, every second Saturday of each month.

info: For more information, contact Asvin on 9865 6700 at VAC/GMHC.