San Diego, CA (special) -- Rabbi Sheldon Moss, former spiritual leader of Temple Adat Shalom, and his wife Barbara are bringing back to San Diego County from their home in Boulder, Colo., one of their PAIRS seminars to help couples have more successful relationships.

The Mosses are master teachers in PAIRS, which is an acronym for "Practical Application of Intimate Relationship Skills." Rabbi Moss recently completed a term as international president of the group which counts 20,000 members in 17 countries. 

Previously the rabbi had worked in the international peace arena, helping to facilitate encounters between members of rival international groups.

Created by Dr. Lori Gordon, a psychologist, and her husband, Rabbi Morris Gordon, PAIRS draws upon a variety of techniques and therapies to help couples work through their differences so that they can develop more trust.

"It is a skills set on how to get intimate and how to sustain intimacy in long-term relationships," Moss said in an interview arranged to alert HERITAGE to a $275-per-person PAIRS seminar planned for a maximum of 12 couples Aug. 28-29 in San Diego. 

To give the flavor of such seminars, Moss told of a technique in relationships called the "doghouse release," in which a person who is "in the doghouse" for something he or she may have done or said to his or her partner is permitted to earn a way out.

"We had a situation in one class where one of our couples had something very soon after their wedding that really chilled their relationship down," the rabbi said. Although they had been married 11 years, "she apparently could never forgive him for what he did and she could never trust him or open up her heart to him. And so it was stopping the joy of their marriage and probably threatening the longevity of the marriage.

"So we said to her 'you have to come up with some doghouse release. There has to be something that he can do to atone for what happened 11 years and thereby get you onto a level playing field. Usually doghouse relief is very expensive. It is not just a 'I am sorry; I won't do it again.' It is a serious, serious commitment to heal the relationship and renew it. 

"She said 'please get down on your knees and beg my forgiveness ten times,' and the guy gets down on his knees and says 'I am so stupid, and so sorry for what I did. I was such a jerk!' And she said, 'okay that is one!' And he kept doing it. It sounded ridiculous, but he kept doing it over and over again. And about the eighth time, she just broke down crying and in a profound way showed how hurt she had been by what he did and he comforted her."

Not able to contain my curiosity any longer, I asked, "what did he do?"

The rabbi said that while newlyweds the couple had attended a seminar "of some eastern guru who told them it was critically important for people under his tutelage to always tell the 'truth of truth' -- the absolute truth to themselves and the people they love."

The guru urged the couples to reveal some deep inner secret about themselves to each other, and the husband confessed to his new bride that he lusted for her sister, although he had never acted upon these feelings. "You can imagine how that could set back a relationship big time," Moss said, "especially because there were such jealousy issues with her sister who was prettier and younger."

After the man made his extended apology, and then comforted his wife who released all her pain, "they came out of that situation so moved, and so renewed as a couple, that I actually opened up my rabbi's manual and re-married them on the spot," Moss said. 

Another technique utilized during the seminar is to have the couples engage in a "fair fight for change," Moss said.

"This is a full-bodied fight, with lots of emotion in it, but it is contained and ritualized so that the anger and the upset don't toxify the relationship," he added. "It just allows you to blow off the anger so you can get underneath it and expose the fear and the hurt and get the comforting you need and fortify intimacy between the couples."

He told of another couple about to get married. "He is not Jewish; she is Jewish," the rabbi said. "He has won awards at his apartment building for decorating his apartment and his patio for Christmas--he does such a good job. He is the type of guy who knocks himself out -- starts in early November.

"She says 'I cannot abide a Christmas tree or any kind of Christmas decorations around my house,'" Moss said.

"In a fair fight, what happens is that there are coaches. The male has a female coach and the female has a male coach, so we don't gender-gang up on each other. The two people invite each other into the fight and they try to specify exactly what they are fighting about, what their problem is, what their complaint is."

As they establish the nature of their dispute, each person takes a turn speaking with the other person required not to answer back but to listen to what the person says and then to paraphrase it. Moss calls this technique "doing a shared meaning."

Once the couple has established what they are arguing about, each person suggests a specific solution, Moss said, with the coaches all the while advocating not for the people, but for the relationship.

So how did this couple resolve the Christmas decorations argument?

"It was very strange," said the rabbi. "She agreed that in a downstairs basement room, where people didn't have to go in their new house, he could do whatever he wanted in that room. It doesn't face the outside."

Moss said the man made it clear that religion really wasn't the issue. He was willing to raise any children they had Jewish, but decorating for Christmas "is so important to him -- it's a hobby of his actually to make something really beautiful. He was an orphan and he has a whole lot of reasons to perk up his life and he does it quite well. But that is what they worked out as a very loving compromise in that he still got what he wanted and she isn't offended by it. She would prefer one day that he not do it, but until that time he can do it down in the basement."

The rabbi added that "it isn't just the solution. It is the building of good will and the fortifying of successful negotiations that seem fair for both to live with that fortify the trust and the bonding to the couple."

After dealing with issues that have caused the couples pain, the couples discuss in the seminar what gives them pleasure. "One thing that we do that is kind of fun: women go off with the women and the men go off with the men, and annonymously make a list of turn ons and turn offs," Moss said.

Sometimes members of the gender groups will learn that what what turns some of them on will turn others of them off. So they list that particular thing or activity as both positives and negatives.

"Then we come back and read the list," Moss said. "It is really a big eye opener for men and for women about what people really like and what they really don't quite like. It helps train especially the men...to be slower, more romantic and to understand that wheras they may be like gas ovens their wives may be like electric ovens, which take longer to warm up but hich can get equally as hot.

"People enjoy this activity--they are having a great time hearing this--but they are also learning a lot."

Moss said many other kinds of exercises and techniques are utilized in the two-day seminar, in which he and his wife will be joined as teachers by Jonathan and Carol Smith, a Jewish couple who are respectively an anaesthesiologist and a psychologist. Theys recently moved from Oregon to California.

"We made a decision in PAIRS International to let non-mental health professionals teach the short (two-day) course," Moss said. 

Additional information about the seminar may be obtained from the Smiths at 619-689-0743.