Stage: Development phase with an exploratory pilot group in France
Closer Partner is a platform project that brings together partner search and (co-)personal development.
For those who are looking for a partner for a lasting relationship and who, at the same time, see the couple as a privileged space for work and growth toward a better version of themselves.
“The couple as a privileged space for work and growth toward a better version of oneself.”
The idea of this site is to allow people to meet a partner who shares their will for progress and personal growth. In a way, this brings a form of assurance about that intention to grow on the part of participants. We believe this platform will foster more fulfilling relationships.
We speak of co-personal development rather than personal development, because we consider that all growth is built through relationships.
Co-development will unfold through two major and parallel axes: the development of relational skills and preventive couples therapy.
Co-development across these two major dimensions will take various forms, such as coaching sessions, workshops and practices, to be carried out alone, as a couple, or in a group.
Closer Partner is a platform dedicated to partner search and personal co-development within the context of a couple. The site is not intended to address more acute mental health conditions or situations requiring specialized psychological care. For those needs, we encourage reaching out to qualified professionals and can, for information purposes, point toward suitable resources.
Our reference framework draws on several complementary dimensions: our model of relational skills, linked to needs and emotions; a psychological model that is increasingly widespread today, around past experiences and adaptation mechanisms; as well as our model of relational reactions, distinguishing reactions linked to the present from reactions linked to the past.
As with anything new (and complex), practice is needed to improve.
Our co-development practice will take place in two main areas: the development of relational skills (internal facilitators) and preventive couples therapy (optional, with qualified external facilitators).
In romantic encounters "by chance", it is often difficult to know in advance whether the person you are meeting is truly open to personal growth and self-questioning — which we nevertheless see as necessary to the success of the relationship.
Navigating a relationship feels particularly complex to us. And yet, there is training for many things, but not really for learning how to be in a couple.
Couples specialists are often consulted late, after difficulties have been settling in for a long time and the relationship is already close to breaking up.
The complexity of the couple relationship seems to us to be due mainly to two factors:
The couple is one of the places that most tests our level of relational skills, both with others and with ourselves: capacity to listen, empathy, respect, positivity, courage, etc.
A lack of these skills can trigger a multitude of reactions (reactions linked to the present) that express the fact that our essential needs have not been met.
The couple often brings out, in a unique and intense way, reactions linked to the past. Over time, these ways of reacting have become almost automatic, and their origin is, in a sense, buried. The couple can then become a privileged space to bring light to these reactions and their origin, and so allow growth.