In this chapter, we discuss how minding might be used in therapy and counseling activities aimed at enhancing close relationships. The quotes that begin this chapter speak to the deep experiential base that we believe is at the heart of minding. We believe that minding can be achieved mainly after people have encountered the pain of serious relationship difficulty, whether or not dissolution occurred. Minding is an adaptive response to the pain that is so frequently found in “closeness.”

Minding is like a “bird singing in the dawn light” – the singing being an act of hope and faith that the dawn will come. Such is the synergy of a well-minded close relationship. Minding contributes greatly to the ability to make distinctions between that which can and should be changed and that which cannot and to the courage needed to make such distinctions – Niebuhr's The Serenity Prayer. As we argue in this chapter, the couple in a well-minded relationship is engaging, in the final analysis, in a coordinated act of hope and faith.