Stress is so normal that we actually come to depend on it to help us with the everyday activities of our lives. For example, if people didn’t feel some stress and anxiety about their grades, they would not be motivated to perform well in school. Likewise, without being a little anxious about paying bills, eating, and housing, people would not be concerned about getting employment or doing their jobs well.

Stress Damages Health & Relationships

Too much stress, however can be damaging to our health and relationships. Excessive worrying can cause a person’s body to produce chemicals that cause high blood pressure, lessen pain tolerance, and even delay healing.

People with high stress levels become ill more easily and get well more slowly. They aren’t able to perform their jobs as effectively or concentrate as intently on course work and exams.

Excessive stress can damage personal relationships as well as business relationships. People who are coping with high levels of anxiety are often irritable from lack of sleep, and have a lower tolerance for a family member’s little faults. Persons who are under high levels of stress may find it much more difficult to control their tempers or say things tactfully.

This often leads to harsh or unkind words. The person who is under high levels of stress may or may not realize just how much someone else might be affected by these words. If he or she does not recognize how much the words hurt, further misunderstandings can result, and the relationship can be permanently hurt by this situation.

How Dating Causes Stress

People who are dating are under high levels of stress as each is working to convince the other that he or she is attractive, interesting, and appealing. Usually, people who are irritable and cranky are not appealing to others.

If you are considering entering a dating relationship, but are at a stressful point in your life, it may be wise to think about waiting until your stress is resolved, or getting some help in relieving your anxiety.

If you are already in a relationship that you value, however, avoiding interacting with the person while you are feeling stressed is probably not a good choice. Finding relief from the stress is probably a more desirable choice than getting out of the relationship altogether. But where can you turn?

Where to Turn For Help

…

Related articles:

1. How To Talk Yourself Out Of A Depression – Before You Talk Yourself Out Of A Relationship
2. How Headaches and Migraines Can Destroy a Relationship
3. Sex: The Ultimate Stress-Buster
4. Can’t Get A Second Date – Could Smoking Be The Reason?
5. Feeling Needy? Have A Clingy Partner? Find Out How To Bring Balance To An Unbalanced Relationship

So what do I mean by emotional and/or sexual intimacy and how can one nurture such experiences?

Intimacy is not necessarily sex

Well, intimacy is often colloquially thought of as simply "having sex" by some. This is not what I mean here.

By intimacy I am referring to one’s ability to be open to one’s own inner feelings and then be able to share such experiences with one’s partner freely and without fear of any kind.

You see intimacy is about letting yourself be fully known to yourself and to your partner.

Unfortunately this is easier said than done for many individuals because most have been conditioned to suppress, hide, denigrate, or make unconscious much of one’s inner emotional life.

That is largely because the societal norms which continue to be perpetuated see feelings and emotions as dangerous, untrustworthy, illogical, painful, impulsive, etc.

Well, this is a sad state of affairs because emotions and feelings are what make you and me human beings.

What happens when we shut down

So by shutting down this part of one’s life experience one is essentially making one’s self less than a whole human being. That means that while in a relationship you are not fully present as your complete self.

Of course at some level your partner will eventually recognize this and feel like he/she is not fulfilled because he/she is not having a relationship with a whole human being.

It’s at times like this that individuals start feeling dissatisfied with their relationship and hence start looking elsewhere for happiness. No wonder so many relationships end for this reason.

The ability to nurture a bond of intimacy starts only when each individual starts to take personal responsibility for allowing their inner emotional life to emerge. First to themselves and then to their partner.

As I said earlier this self revelation can be a scary one for many because allowing this emotional life to emerge often means allowing unresolved emotional pain to come to the surface of one’s experience. This can make an individual feel inadequate, guilty, sad, depressed, anxious, angry, hurt, tired, etc.

The tendency might be to attempt to numb the emotional pain through drugs, alcohol, sex, work, and other distractions. Again this leads to individuals simply acting out a stale relationship with little depth and or awareness of self or other.

Sooner or later this will declare itself as unsatisfying and each partner will be on the look out for something else.

Nurturing intimacy

…

Related articles:

1. How to Achieve Healing, Intimacy, and Ultimate Union With Tantra
2. How to Get Rid Of Your Emotional Baggage Before Your Next Relationship
3. Emotional Competency Builds Healthy Passionate Relationships
4. How to Recover From an Emotional Hangover and Create a Healthy Relationship (Video)
5. Five Tips for Creating Soulful Intimacy In Your Relationship

Whether they’re relationship problems, sex problems or even behavioral problems and problems from our pasts, we don’t have the resources or the knowledge we need to right ourselves, no matter how hard we try!

Therapy can work wonders, but where do you start? There are hundreds and hundreds of different types of therapy available to you. How do you know which one is right for you?

What is the difference between the various types of couples counseling that’s available? (traditional counselor, hypnotherapy, alternative treatments, etc)

Wait! Give this Video 5 Stars and Subscribe Today so you don’t miss a single video.

Treating the problem chemically.

…

Related articles:

1. Is Stress Damaging Your Relationship?
2. How to Recover From an Emotional Hangover and Create a Healthy Relationship (Video)
3. Relationship Secrets… Should I Have Told Her?
4. Do You Feel Responsible For Other People’s Feelings? You Have to Read This…
5. Long Distance Relationship – What Do I Do? (Video)

The more power these people believe they have, the more risk they are willing to take. However, this behavior can set up an incredibly damaging dynamic. Consider, for instance, the number of scandals that regularly arise involving high-powered executives, wealthy stock-market investors, or political figures.

How power affects relationships 

I’m quite sure that former president Bill Clinton never believed he would get caught when he embarked on an affair with a White House intern. Another psychological effect of constant risk taking is the impact the adrenaline rush that such behavior can provide. These thrill seekers “self-medicate,” and I see in my practice their self-destruction. Individuals who are prone to addictive behavior are in danger of falling into a damaging cycle where the rush of taking the risk becomes all the reward they need.

Whether or not their risky behavior is beneficial becomes secondary. And the more risks they take, the more powerful they may feel. This type of power dynamic in a relationship can have a significant impact on a couple’s shared finances. When faced with a crisis, risk takers, who generally take a “don’t worry, don’t plan” approach to money management, may make rash decisions that result in emotional and financial catastrophes for them and/or their partners.

The brain’s reaction to powerful emotional even 

According to Bret t N. Steenbarger, clinical psychologist and author of Enhancing Trader Performance, “When humans experience a powerful emotional event (and a big gain or loss in our wealth, even if it is on paper, is one) our brains don’t work the way they do when we’re calm. During times like these the analytical part of the brain shuts down….” You need a plan to limit risk, especially at these times when your brain fails you.

Assess your risk 

…

Related articles:

1. Power is the Ultimate Drug – The Relationship Between Power, Money and Your Relationship
2. The Balance Of Power: How Sex And Money Affect Your Relationships
3. Struggling With Power And Money In Your Relationship?
4. Don’t Let A Financial Downturn Cause Financial Infidelity in Your Relationship
5. Avoid Power Struggles In Your Relationship And Learn To Fight Fair

When she met Don she felt relieved to be with someone who listened to her feelings, cared about what she thought and wanted.  Together they forged an attempt at a marriage.  Within six months Don had begun verbally putting her down and nagging at her for minor infractions.  Karen had been “through this before” and she withdrew from him emotionally, mentally making her plans for divorce before they were through their first year. 

The Underlying Issues 

Before the year was out she had divorced him and was convinced that no man could be what she needed.  When I spoke with her a few months after the divorce she told me about the failure of their marriage.  She said he had never been able to perform sexually, but that she was not upset about it; she was just happy to have someone who cared about her. But as his own since of inadequacy around his sexual performance grew, he became angrier and angrier toward her, ultimately pushing her to divorce. 

I was saddened that she had not discussed her marital problems with me prior to their divorce because I knew what had happened could have been prevented had she been aware of the dynamic underlying his behaviors.  Don’s insecurity put him in a position of feeling trapped and hopeless, despairing of being the partner for his wife in the way he wanted.  His instinct was to move into a self-protective mode, pushing her away so that she would not want to be sexual with him.  Karen then reacted back in her own self-protective mode and retreated behind first emotional barriers, then legal ones. 

Both in tremendous pain and feeling like a failure, the marriage dissolved without so much as a look back. 

Failure Out of Fear 

Don and Karen’s dramatic example of how a marriage can fail out of a fear that is not addressed highlights the pain that results from a lack of compassion in marriage.  Do I think Karen should have continued to put up with his verbal abuse? No, I don’t. But I do think that if she had been able to see through the rage into the pain that was underneath, she may have been able to save her marriage. 

Don continued to be the same loving, gentle, wounded soul she had married, but she lost sight of that because of how his hurt and fear played out.  No one can blame her for that considering the abuse she had endured for nearly 20 years.  Yet all in all, it was such a shame for both of them. 

Had Karen recognized that he was pushing her away because he was so fearful of rejection by her because of his inadequacy in the bedroom, she could have responded to him with empathy instead of self-protective anger.  Had Don recognized and been able to own his true fear to her instead of pushing her away, things might have turned out very differently…

Related articles:

1. Why Your Partner Lashes Out at You When They’re Angry
2. Who Are You And What Have You Done With My Partner?
3. 3 Common Signs Your Partner May Be Cheating On You
4. How To Break The Communication Gridlock And Save Your Marriage
5. The Little Known Secret to Getting What You Want From Your Partner

Empathy in a relationship continues to fuel the stuff of really long lasting relationships because, I believe, most people desire to feel like their partner not only “gets” them but cares about how they’re feeling on a deeper level. 

As far as long term relationships go, this level of attunement trumps massages, romantic gestures and sex as all of these wonderful elements have natural ends to them. 

The benefit of being empathetic towards your mate is that it constantly reinforces your relationship foundation – and the payoff is enduring.  

“So what is empathy?” 

According to the Webster dictionary, empathy is, “The action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another.”  Empathy may be a ‘given’ in your relationship and if it is, consider yourself lucky. 

Many people are keenly aware of the lack of empathy from their partners.  I know this because I have worked with many couples who report low levels of empathy in their relationships – which has usually morphed into high levels of resentment.

I’ve found that the more successful couples have figured out that being tuned into each other on this level can only bring them closer.  They check in with each other more (emotionally), are good listeners and tune in well to the one another’s needs.  Partners who are empathetic to each other tend to notice more readily when something is bothering the other and be open for discussion about whatever is the matter.  This creates an environment where they both feel cared for. 

I think we all can agree that we all want to feel cared for by the people that matter the most to us.

“What are some ways to show my partner empathy?”

An easy way is to be a good listener.  Then you take that up a notch and see if you can put yourself in their shoes in how they might be feeling about whatever situation they’re talking about. 

For example, your partner says, “I felt really hurt when you didn’t call me back like you said you would.”  An empathetic response would be something like, “I’m so sorry – I totally forgot.  I can completely understand why you’d be disappointed.”  An example of a response lacking empathy would look this way, “Why are you always so sensitive?  It’s no big deal.”  Ouch. 

I think most people are empathetic by nature but I suspect we simply forget.  If you find yourself hitting a speed bump with your partner, remember these words about the power of empathy.  It’s a wise investment in the future of a long lasting, healthy and loving relationship.

To learn more about Lisa Brookes Kift, visit The Therapy and Counseling Blog.

Related articles:

1. Healthy Relationships: Assessing the Emotional Safety
2. The Balance Of Power: How Sex And Money Affect Your Relationships
3. Avoid Power Struggles In Your Relationship And Learn To Fight Fair
4. Are You Sabotaging Your Relationships Without Even Knowing It?
5. How Standing On Your Head Can Improve Your Love Life

The truth is that sometimes a fight is about much more than not picking up dirty laundry or taking out the garbage.

Jeanie was so upset with her husband. He had always been difficult to feel physically connected to. He had always had a subtle pulling back when she would reach out to touch him, but it had gotten worse in the past few months. She brought him into therapy fearing that they were on the brink of a divorce if not an affair.  Jeanie’s husband, Frank was a sweet, mild mannered man with some anger issues that had been a problem in a previous marriage and were still somewhat an issue with Jeanie. 

Why he was pulling away 

The bigger problem was that she felt him pulling away from her touch and she was certain this meant he didn’t love her any more.  After a few sessions, it became clear what the problem really was about.  Frank was terrified of losing her to death.  He had witnessed his mother’s death at the age of four; she died mid-sentence while she was talking on the telephone on her bed in front of him.  Then, at 15 he held a girl in his arms as she died from a drug overdose. 

When he tapped into this in session the fear and pain he felt was palpable.  Recently he had lost his father to a lingering cancer that left his father comatose for months.  The little boy inside of Frank felt that if he just didn’t allow himself close, then death could be avoided.  Thus, he found himself pulling further and further away from Jeanie.  The pain and shock of his early losses still dictated his emotional and intimate life.

Frank is not any different than the rest of us.  We behave in unconscious ways that dictate how we interact with each other, what we feel and what upsets us.  We go about our lives as if it were a logical, rational process and the choices and actions we take made some kind of sense. 

Our brains can trick us into believe one thing when another is true 

That’s where “rationalization” comes in to play.  Frank had convinced himself that Jeanie’s return to smoking cigarettes had caused him to withdraw from her.  But actually, her smoking had started in response to his pulling away.  But that’s how our brains work to trick us into thinking that what we do makes sense. 

Emotions make no obvious, logical sense.  Emotions are always laden with the memories of times when we felt similar things at some time in the past and are linked together through a complex network of memories that links them to the earliest memories we have.  When Frank connected to his sense of pain about his father’s death it took him directly to the death of his mother, which he had experienced so traumatically, at four.

And, the time of his father’s death, he went back into the emotional state of the four year old.  He was no longer the 30 something man that seemed to be sitting before me, he was emotionally and mentally four.

This is what happens all the time in our conflicts with our partners.  We get angry with them for something they did or didn’t do and we think it’s all about what they did or didn’t do.  As irrational as it seems, our upset it NEVER about what they did or didn’t do! Now, it certainly triggered our upset, but our upset it not really about that.

How childhood can affect our adult relationships 

…

Related articles:

1. What Are You Really Fighting About? It May Not Be What You Think…
2. Do You Know Why Your Partner is Pushing You Away?
3. Relationship Problem – Fighting Like Wild Animals?
4. Arguing And Fighting: How Can You Fix Someone Else? (Video)
5. Do You Know The #1 Secret To A Truly Happy Relationship? (Video)

Women especially are vulnerable to emotional hangovers and can let bad experiences affect them continually, even in new relationships. 

Unfortunately, until you get a grip on your emotions, you’re slowly going to poison any relationship that you have. 

You need to break the patterns in order to move on.

Dear Dan and Jennifer,

 

Hello, I read your article on the free library and it connected with me. I am very insecure to the extent I am destroying my relationship with my boyfriend. We have been dating now for almost 3 yrs. He has been sincere but I somehow still manage to not having any faith in him. My ex’s cheated on me and my boyfriend says I am carrying it over into our relationship.

 

I hate the fact that I am becoming such a monster, that I can’t control my thoughts and that I am loosing the man I want as a husband. We want to start 2008 fresh.  

 

How does one ‘let go and let things be?’  How can I solve my problems? How can I clear my head and heart out and move forward? Where do I start and what should I do? Please help.

 

- Ulrika, South Africa

Wait! Give this Video 5 Stars and Subscribe Today so you don’t miss a single video.

Recognition

…

Related articles:

1. Healthy Relationships: Assessing the Emotional Safety
2. How Men Can Create Healthy And Happy Relationships
3. Emotional Competency Builds Healthy Passionate Relationships
4. Relationship Suck? Need Counseling? Read this first! (Video)
5. How To Achieve Emotional And Sexual Intimacy In Your Relationship

Honestly, I have been one of those fortunate women who have always enjoyed good sex. That doesn’t mean I have always said “Yes!” to it when my first husbands wanted me to do so.

Sex happens, not so much in our bodies, as in our minds. Before we can find someone sexy there are a number of things that have to happen in our brain. First of all, the prospect has to fit the patterns our unconscious set into place before we were six years old. Those patterns are based on our experiences as a young person with our caregivers. For some of us, that is a good thing and we meet up with really wonderful partners.

But for most of us this unconscious pattern locked into our brain is not necessarily in our best interest in the long run.

How It Works

My first husband was really smart, something I consciously found very appealing. But he also had some wounds of his own that resulted in his attempting to overpower me with his yelling and demands. This, it turns out (after much therapy), is how my grandmother acted toward most everyone in her household. I happened to be in her household much of my life prior to the age of six. Yelling and demanding behavior have an unwanted side effect on a persons sex life. It didn’t take long for this behavior to become a major turn off for me.

What transpired is that my survival instincts kicked in (this is a brain function, by the way) and I would freeze up in his presence after a while. My whole body went into shut down and the last thing I wanted was to jump into the sack with him. My brain made the decision for me.

My second husband appealed to me consciously because he was handsome and an entrepreneur like my Dad. The unconscious appeal turned out to be that, because of his wounds, he would totally neglect me and ignore my needs the way my father did. My resentment built up over time and there is no way I would choose to have sex him. My brain kicked into survival with him simply because it seemed to me that he was not someone safe in that he did not have my best interests at heart: only his.

It’s All in Your Head

Our brains dictate our behavior much more than we consciously realize. We can feel an unconscious pull toward someone and think this means we want to be sexual with them; this is why we will be so attracted to “bad girls” or “bad boys”. They appeal to the part of us that was hurt and neglected as a kid and it matches up like a lock and key with our unconscious memories of before we were six. We are wired to want the kind of relationship we had with our caregivers. I don’t know about you, but this was not a good thing for me!

So what if you find yourself already hooked up with someone whom your brain is now telling you to retreat from rather than gravitate toward sex with? Well, you have to make some choices with the more rational part of your brain. Is this someone with whom you want to make a life with? If so then you have to figure out how to change the dynamic that is making you not want to have sex with them.

Talk, talk, talk

First of all you need to open a discussion with this person about the things making you feel threatened or shut down. This, of course, is not an easy discussion to have with them because they will immediately feel threatened just by bringing up the idea of your having a problem with them.

So, you have to start with telling them how much you love them and want to work things out. Secondly, begin to talk about your feelings as being about you and your history, not about them being “bad” or “wrong” for behaving the way they do. After all, they act the way they do because of their history and family culture.

When you can open a discussion about how their behavior outside the bedroom is affecting your desire for good sex, then there is hope for things to change. Most of the time, if you want more sex, chances are, they do, too.

If your partner doesn’t want more sex, then you can be certain there is something in your behavior that has triggered an unwanted fear or shutting down response from them. The solution to the problem is to talk about what it is your partner needs to feel safe with you again. Find out what you are doing and see if it is something you can consciously choose to change. Get help and support if you need to, to change those behaviors. A relationship coach or therapist could be the key.

To learn more about Melody Brooke, visit OhWowThisChangesEverything.com.

Related articles:

1. When Preoccupation With The Stuff Of Life Interferes With Your Love Life
2. Break Up and Divorce – Should You Condemn Yourself to a Bad Relationship for Life Because of Religion and Guilt?
3. How To Break The Communication Gridlock And Save Your Marriage
4. 5 Ways to Turn Your Bedroom Into a Sex Magnet
5. Satisfaction or Frustration – How Would You Describe Your Sex Life?

Does your partner’s behavior sometimes impact you on such a visceral level that you’re left vibrating for long periods of time?

I hate to be the bearer of news that might inflict deep psychic horror and disbelief – but you might have married one of your parents.

Did You Marry One Of Your Parents? 

Okay, slowly peel yourself off of the floor now. Obviously, I don’t mean this in a literal sense – and not everyone will report this to be true.

Just consider the possibility that your partner shares some traits with one of your previous primary caregivers – the good, the bad, or both.

This is the topic of jokes to many, and there are still others who had never considered this until they found themselves on the couch at a therapist’s office, read a self-help book, or watched an episode on the subject on Oprah.

I can’t tell you how many people in my practice are filled with shock and awe by this realization.

For some, it’s a kind of funny moment – but for others, this realization can be quite upsetting, depending on what kind of experience they had with one or both of their parents.

Others struggle to wrap their brains around it at all. As light as a topic this might seem, it can be painful and stir up a lot of trouble for people in their current relationships. People can get caught up in destructive cycles that go round and round endlessly.

Why Did This Happen In The First Place?

According to Harville Hendrix, Ph.D., a co-creator of Imago Relationship Therapy and author of numerous books including, “Getting the Love You Want,” there are very good reasons why people unconsciously select partners with qualities – good and bad – of one or both of their parents.

He says, “We either overcompensate for what we didn’t get from our parents or blindly re-create the same painful situations.”

For example, are you deeply angered or hurt by your partner’s criticism? Does it cause more emotional reactivity than you would expect to have with friends, co-workers or acquaintances? Why would he/she have the power to rattle you in that way?

I believe our intimate partnerships and parental relationships are actually incredibly similar in the way we seek out “attachment” with these people. (I encourage a further look at “attachment theory” which is another very intricate subject on its own).

Parental relationships and intimate partnerships will typically be the most intense relationships we ever have – and have the ability to cause us the most pain – far more than friends, co-workers or acquaintances.

The similarity between these relationships is part of the key to understanding why we might be so emotionally triggered by things our partners do – particularly if they were also done to us when we were growing up and developing our sense of selves – and how we relate to others.

Hendrix talks about the idea of mate selection based on an unconscious pull to someone who causes us pain in a similar way to our parents – in order to “do over” the earlier wounding and make it right….

Related articles:

1. Dating Tips for a Single Father
2. First Serious Relationship… Should We Date Other People?
3. The People You Love – Giving The Benefit Of The Doubt Even When It Feels Like The Last Thing You Want To Do
4. 3 Reasons Why Married People Have Better Sex
5. A Mama’s Boy, His Mother, And His Lover

Wow! I’m so Glad I Married You!

The main thing I remember about being with my ex-husband is how angry I felt all the time.

I was always unhappy with him about something.

He didn’t care if the living room was covered with screws from the many computer parts he was constantly putting together.

He didn’t care that I was alone almost every night in a small town miles away from my family while he was working late at night. He disregarded my feelings about most things and pretty much did as he liked with no regard for me.

I had a long list of gripes, serious complaints and general dissatisfaction with him that ate me up every day. When I left him I felt such relief, just to not be carrying all that resentment any more.

Being Single for 10 Years Gave Me a New Perspective 

After being single for nearly 10 years I finally met and married my current husband. And, I have to say, I did a lot of work on myself in the interim. The gripes that that I had regarding my ex-husband, I am chagrined to disclose, were mostly kept to myself.

That is, between my girlfriends and myself, they all knew; my husband didn’t.

So now, going into this marriage I was determined to speak my truths and not pretend that everything was okay when I was deeply or even shallowly perturbed with him. Needless to say my first year of marriage was tough.

After years of not speaking my truths I began to realize that my truths were not THE truth. The fact that there were other ways of looking at things, and other perspectives was a shock to me, in spite of my training and knowledge.

This left me with a new way to look at my life, and what was happening in my marriage. Maybe there were other ways to look at what was happening, and had happened in my previous marriages (yes, marriages, plural).

You see the funny thing is that both my most recent ex-husband and my current one are in the same line of work. They even share the same name, and initials, first, middle and last. Both are hardheaded and extremely bright. Both work very hard and care a lot about their family.

Yet the quality of my relationship with my current husband is light years from my previous one.

Honestly, while some of this has to do with their differences (they are not exactly alike, even with all the similarities) – I really don’t believe that explains it fully.

The Gift of Gratitude

The difference that counts is that I am different. I am so very different in many ways, but the one that hit me tonight is that I am now able to be grateful for my husband.

Understand, my husband is not perfect. He has, like all spouses, his quirks and…

…

Related articles:

1. The Little Known Secret to Getting What You Want From Your Partner
2. The Relationship Secret – How to Use the Law of Attraction in Your Relationships (Video)
3. Happy Relationships: How To Replace Fear And Doubt With Gratitude, Love and Trust
4. The Secret Cure For A Dwindling Sex Life
5. The Secret to Lasting Romance: How Subtlety Could Save Your Relationship

He leaves his things on the floor and then gripes about the house being a mess.  He doesn’t seem to get it that I want him to listen to my feelings. He is so distant and in his head all the time. Why doesn’t he act like he cares about me?

That woman! She always acts like she knows the best way to do everything, and she is never listens to what I have to say and get irritated with me over the most stupid things. Why doesn’t she pay more attention to the important things? I hate it when she makes such a mess with her stuff in the bathroom and leaves those bottles everywhere.

Nagging At and About Our Mates is Almost a Way of Life

We build up a case against the person that we love the most and then wonder why they are unhappy with us.  When couples come in for therapy they inevitably have a long list of complaints about their spouse. They have been unhappy with their spouse for years for one reason or another. They don’t like this. They don’t like that.  By the time the come into see me they are convinced that their partner has been doing everything wrong and what they really want (though they won’t always admit this) is for me to tell their partner what is wrong with them and to help them fix their partners problems. 

It is a rare event to have someone come in for therapy who understands that they, as a couple, have a problem and that it’s not one or the other’s fault. 

The first few sessions are generally spent with both partners laying out their case against their partner and looking to me for validation. Then I begin explaining to them that they are each responsible for what has become a laundry list.  Rather than spending all of their resources and energy pointing out each other’s flaws, they need to focus instead on what the other is doing right.  I don’t know what it is about our culture that makes us focus on the problems rather than the blessings in our lives, but we do. 

Is Your Partner Really That Terrible 

Letting ourselves focus on the blessings our mates bring to us helps us to encourage the very traits we most want to build upon.  We want our partners to listen to us, to support us, to care about what we care about. We want them to show us they love us through the things they say and do.  How do we get that when our partners seem so far from being able to provide it?  We start with “catching them being good”.  We notice aloud the things they do that we appreciate and value. We refrain from nagging about the things we don’t like and we praise and celebrate the things that we appreciate about our partners.  The more we share our positive feelings with them about what we like, the more likely it is those behaviors will be repeated.  They will feel loved and appreciated and we get what we want.

Why is that so hard for us?

For one…

Related articles:

1. Do You Know The #1 Secret To A Truly Happy Relationship? (Video)
2. Do You Know The Secret To Marital Bliss?
3. Do You Know Why Your Partner is Pushing You Away?
4. How Do I Know if My Partner Has an Alcohol Problem?
5. 3 Common Signs Your Partner May Be Cheating On You