I sometimes get couples in my office that have gone a long way down the road towards practicing the predictors of divorce. They are discouraged and maybe one person in the partnership has got their foot out the door. It can seem overwhelming to consider what would need to be done in order to put things back together so that they can connect and be a couple. I want to give you hope today. It is not over until it is over. Slow everything down. There is so much at stake for now and in the future riding on this decision. I like the illustration that John Gottman gives when asked whether these couples can really change and put things back on track. He likens it to sending a rocket to the moon. If you are off by just a minute amount in the trajectory, you will miss the moon. By correcting just a small amount, you will hit the moon. That is why he wrote, “The Seven Principles For Making Marriage Work” (if you have not read it – it would be a good place to start). You do not have to overhaul the whole relationship but just use some correction tools that are meaningful. Sue Johnson’s research shows that you do not have to be perfect in your relationship but you do have to connect enough to have a secure attachment. By this time, you likely have viewed not just the present but have revised the whole relationship history to be negative. You believe you have “tried” everything. You believe your problems are severe – you are a total mismatch. You may experience loneliness. At this point do not try to solve things on your own. Go and see a marriage counsellor. Find a way inside yourself to make this a total necessity in your life to make the changes needed. Anytime we have a circumstance in our lives, we need to see it as an opportunity to upgrade ourselves and make the necessary changes inside of us.
While you are waiting for professional help, you can get ready by:
1. Looking at memories that were positive in your relationship. Be willing to see the positive.
2. Talk together about what it has been like for each of you, focussing on yourself in the telling (not blaming) and focussing on the other in the listening (empathetic understanding). Share your heart. This is not for the feint – it takes courage. Find it within. It is there.
3. Apologize for what you are able to apologize for.
4. Commit to your partner to do what it takes to make things work between you. Not just for today but a new way of being together.
5. Read Chapman’s book, The 5 Love Languages, and start practicing this to bring the walls down.
6. Read Sue Johnson’s book, “Hold Me Tight” or “Love Sense”. This helps you to know what is at stake for you and helps to give you permission to want more from your relationship.
7. Read John Gottman’s book, “Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work”
Attend your marriage Counselling with an open heart and mind and do the changes necessary to course correct. Part of being a healthy human being is being able to pivot in life when necessary without ditching everything. Go forth and be wonderful today!
Healthier Marriages Posts
Letting Go
“I think of the trees and how simply they let go…” Hafiz
One of the challenges of relationships is the necessity of being quick to forgive. Some of us have more difficulty with this then others. It is sometimes helpful to notice what our beliefs are about others and ourselves in this regard. Do we believe that humans make mistakes, are sometimes thoughtless or do we believe that people should be more perfect? Do we believe that we deserve to always be treated as we want to be treated? These different beliefs will cause us to have different reactions inside. Other tendencies such as taking things personally when others are reacting can cause us to feel more offended then others. This means that a comment made in passing by someone is taken as meant for us and we feel hurt, offended and angered. Our pack sack begins to get bigger and we become more embittered and less free to respond with our best self.
Related to this, I often meet clients who are unable to trust people. It is often because of past hurts they feel unable to let go of. They feel a sense of betrayal by others. Their memories that they often rehearse are emotionally loaded. 
They They continue to suffer even though these events occurred many years ago. Again, a reminder that what we focus on gets amplified. When we focus on our negative experiences in order to confirm our negative beliefs about people it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. I like the book, “Don’t sweat the small stuff”. It challenges us to do as Hafiz suggests and to simply let go. We often do not think about the consequences of dwelling on slights and the suffering it causes us, not the other person. I am not talking about the “big stuff” here like traumatic events. I am talking about all the human experiences we go through that we could let go of, if we made that choice. Examine your beliefs- could they do with an update? Sometimes they come from our childhood of origin and are no longer useful to the way we want to live and be in the world today. Let go – make room for more joy! Journal your way through this.
Creating We-ness
It is important to your partnership that you pay attention to the level of your we-ness. Some couples have difficulty with differentiation and others have difficulty with we-ness. If you have difficulty with we-ness, it is important to attend to this in your partnership. There are always transitions in relationships and when you are having a transition and you are distant with each other, your relationship can become troubled. So if you do not naturally have interests in common, what do you do? You create interests that you can both connect with. You may need to be sacrificial in this when your partner is into something that is very important to him or her and you are not interested in the least in that area. Couples who do not pay attention to this can find themselves separating and then the person who is not wanting the separation suddenly understands that they needed to attend to what was important to their partner. Many times it is too late for their relationship. Do whatever it takes to be interested in things together.
Remember that being known is akin to being loved. When a friend is interested in what we love, it makes us feel cared for. If you have been a parent, you may have watched many a baseball game or other game that you did not necessarily enjoy. I am a grandmother and I am on my second round of baseball, knowing that when I go, it is important to my grandson and my love for him, that I am there. There is a child in all of us that needs the validation of what we do and the knowledge that our interests are important to our partner just because they are important to us. Cheering us on, telling others how great we are at whatever it is, cements our partnership at any age.
Then if we are fortunate enough to genuinely love things together, we are blessed. Rather then looking at the circumstances that suggest that we are so opposite, look at all the things that you do enjoy together. For instance, a good roasted coffee, enjoying a sunset, having dinner out. Sometimes it will be necessary to compromise. For instance, when one person is an active outdoor bike person and the other is a walker, planning a holiday can be a challenge. One has to get creative. Perhaps a walking European holiday with bike rentals when you stop at a town or village you take time to ride around exploring on your bike. You can think of lots of possibilities if you never give up. The couples who have lost their we-ness have given up looking for possibilities. Remember I am not saying that you must convert to being your partner, just that you find ways to increase the we-ness in your relationship. Choose something today to move towards we-ness. Go forth and be wonderful!
Thanksgiving – An Opportunity to be Grateful for Your Partner
One of the hallmarks of those who are living fully and experiencing happiness is that they are able to be present to opportunities to be grateful. Thanksgiving is such a great reminder to look at the many blessings we all have and to be thankful to God for them. I remember reading Victor Frankl’s book about his time in a concentration camp in the war and the impact it had on me. He talked about having very little to eat except broth. Some people were able to be grateful for the little they had and others were fearful and not able to be grateful and what a big difference this meant regarding their very survival over time. We know now that the brain reacts to gratitude in a positive way towards happiness and our biology follows suit. We know that our sense of spirituality is affected by our ability to notice and be grateful. As we are present and noticing we become more connected to Love. 
Your relationships with your partner and your family is one of the greatest blessings that you have. Take this day to remember past good memories together – they often get lost in the challenges of life. Bring them to mind and be thankful for them. Look at the characteristics that your partner has that you appreciate. There are many. Look at their values, their good intentions, their care for you and your family. Be grateful that they are willing to share their life with you. Express your gratitude out loud. Notice that the child in this picture looks filled with joy in every part of him at his experience of a found pumpkin – we can learn from him. I hope you are able to find gratitude today amidst the wonderful traditions you may have (my turkey is beginning to smell great as I write this) as well as the challenges in your family that may bring sadness in your life. Our lives are not necessarily all easily felt blessings but sometimes take some work to find the blessings within the challenge. Sometimes families and health issues are a part of our lives that stretch us to find the places of gratitude but it is worth the effort to do so! My challenge to you today is to keep the gratitude expressions going for the next 2 weeks and see the difference that it makes for you and your relationship. Go forth and live fully!
Opening your Mind to New Thoughts About Your Relationship
One of the interesting parts of our lives is the way we use our brain and how it effects how we live. In essence, we create our lives in how we think about things. When we have a very narrow criteria for something, we often make poor decisions. For instance, I find that the opinions of many people on the criteria for a good marriage is very poor. They look at their personal happiness as a criteria. They look at their challenges in the relationship as severe. They look at their differences together as insurmountable. They look at their negative feelings as proof. They “try” to talk things over and are unsuccessful and therefore they are doomed. When their partner tries to improve they say – they are only doing it for me. In fact, everything in the relationship has this double bind that in effect, their partner has no way to make the relationship better.
Think about your criteria for your partnership. How do you think about long term committed relationships? For instance, happiness is important to our health and well being as is being in a committed relationship. But happiness is a byproduct of what we are personally doing as well as what we are sharing with one another as a couple. You are responsible for your happiness. Gratitude leads to happiness. Are you grateful in your relationship? The meaning you find in your work leads to your happiness. Are you taking care of those things that are outside your relationship? Such as the balance of your life and your self care? Your challenges in your relationship are an opportunity to grow. This is the way the world of relationships works. You have parts of you that are underdeveloped and your relationship provides the opportunity to recognize those and to upgrade your life.
Be open. Walk through a new door of beliefs. Differences are rarely insurmountable. Love is not about your partner being a reflection of you but about your ability to appreciate your partner’s differences and honor them. Get real about negative feelings. Oh my goodness, somehow people don’t realize that their negative feelings are a reflection of their negative thoughts and where they are focussing. I am not saying disregard your negative feelings but use that information to know what is going on inside for you. Take them as a signal to make some changes on the outside. Your feelings and thoughts come from a past that is unexamined as well as from your present circumstances. Find out what the hurts and the fears represent and make positive changes in your life towards that. When talking things over with your partner and repair attempts do not work, do not assume it is about incompatibility but it is most likely about the state of the friendship in the relationship. How have you been working on that part of the foundation of the relationship? Have you been neglecting that for busyness of children or work or? Repairing and managing conflict depends on a solid friendship. And finally (there are so many more crazy beliefs but this is it for now), let your partner do things for you out of love. When you are doing this for your children, you see this as normal. You may visit your parent in a home out of love. Acceptance of your partner’s attempts at loving you and keeping the relationship alive is part of YOUR obligation in the commitment. When couples are in a bad place they will often further sabotage their relationship by not accepting loving gestures from their partner, believing they are just doing it because it is expected or some other reason that is not helpful. Be open to the positives in your relationship and create some yourself today. Go forth and be wonderful!
Maintaining Your Passion for Your Realtionship
“Passion is the thing that will help you to create and exhibit the highest expression of your best self in your relationship long term.” Lynda Chalmers
Without the continual renewal of your passion to your relationship, it is difficult for your best self to show up in your relationship. There is a consistent need to keep growing in your long term relationship and to take each negative experience as an opportunity for that growth. If you let your negativity outweigh your passion, you are on a downturn. Things like negative sentiment over ride, criticism, contempt, defensiveness and stonewalling begin to show up and effect your relationship negatively.
So how do people maintain passion for their relationship? It starts with their beliefs about marriage and its positive effects on them personally. Their beliefs extend to the modelling of a healthy relationship as important to their families, friendships and to the rest of the world. They have a strong belief in their personal efforts and their partner’s efforts towards the marriage as worth it, not only for the influence of others, but because it directly effects their health, happiness and longevity. These beliefs become a part of their compass point in life and determine their emotional investment and passion for their relationship. They believe in their power to change things for the better in the relationship. They believe that they have influence over the health of their relationship. They have a strong emotional drive to make the relationship succeed. Robert Greene in his book, Mastery, says that “our levels of desire, patience, persistence and confidence end up playing a much larger role in success then sheer reasoning powers. Feeling motivated and energized, we can overcome almost anything”. This set of people understand that motivation and energy are generated inside and are not 
dependent on our partner or our circumstances. The passion you generate for your relationship will lead you to mastery of your relationship if you allow it to.
This is in direct contrast to those whom I see who have not made things happen in their relationship for good but have passively stood by while their relationship with their partner has become disconnected. They will have a variety of reasons for this, such as having no time because of having young kids or building a business but the reality is that whatever situations we find ourselves in in our lives, we have not maintained passion for the relationship. Some will come to know when separating that they took the relationship for granted. That they did not bring their best self to the relationship.
So be inspired by these thoughts. Rate yourself. Does your passion to succeed in your relationship need an upgrade? Do you need an influx of desire, patience, persistence and motivation to do the work – do you need a personal upgrade? Do something about it – if necessary, see a professional for these skills and renewed hope. Go forth and be wonderful in your relationship today.
The Relationship Gift of an Upgrade
In the journey of our lives together, it is important to really understand that things don’t stay the same. For some of us change is more difficult. We need to be resilient to meet the challenges of change. You may know some people who spend a lot of time focussing on their negative circumstances and they get stuck there. Sometimes it is because they have limited thinking and possibilities. They focus on their personal sense of justice and fairness and believe that their partner or their partner’s children should change as the only avenue for change in the relationship. What I have learned over time is that when people focus on their circumstances they miss the upgrade that they need in their own lives. When you look at your journey in the big perspective, you can see that some circumstances get repeated. When that happens and we are focussing on our circumstances, we can become less hopeful, and feel embittered about life. We can even feel victimized. If we stay there, our partners can certainly find it difficult to be attracted to that. Let me give you an example that is simple. For instance, someone may have experienced a divorce that they were not planning for. 
When they continue to focus on that circumstance, the unfairness of it, the fact that it was not in their plan for life, the evils of their former partner, the years pass and they are stuck. When they look at the circumstances year in and year out, they are not able to get out of their stuckness. They need to ask the deep part of themselves, what is it that I need to change or learn that upgrades me as a person because of these circumstances? One thing may be to learn to let go. Another may be to trust in the future for their lives. Another may be to practice forgiveness. Another may be to develop the skills of resilience in their lives. This makes life positive, encouraging, and hopeful as they change themselves at the invitation of the circumstances of their lives. What circumstances are you currently in that has an invitation for an upgrade in you? Get unstuck by making a needed change in you. Go forth and be wonderful today!
Forgiveness and Letting Go
“I think of the trees and how simply they let go…” Hafiz
One of the challenges of relationships is the necessity of being quick to forgive. Some of us have more difficulty with this then others. It is sometimes helpful to notice what our beliefs are about others and ourselves in this regard. Do we believe that humans make mistakes, are sometimes thoughtless or do we believe that people should be more perfect? Do we believe that we deserve to always be treated as we want to be treated? Do we believe that others should behave by our code and share our values? These different beliefs will cause us to have different reactions inside. Other tendencies, such as taking things personally, can cause us to feel more offended then others. This means that a comment made in passing by someone is taken as meant for us and we feel hurt, offended and angered. Our pack sack begins to get bigger and we become more embittered and less free to respond with our best self.
Related to this, I often meet clients who are unable to trust people. It is often because of past hurts that they feel unable to let go of. They feel a sense of betrayal by others. Their memories that they often rehearse are emotionally loaded. They continue to suffer, even though these events occurred many years ago. Again a reminder that what we focus on gets amplified in our thoughts. When we focus on our negative experiences in order to confirm our negative beliefs about people it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy and we experience the negative in people in our lives. I like the book, “Don’t sweat the small stuff”. It challenges us to do as Hafiz suggests, and to simply let go of our in the moment stuff as well as our past stuff. We do not think about the consequences of dwelling on slights and the suffering it causes us, not the other person. I am not talking about the “big stuff” here like traumatic events. I am talking about all the human experiences we go through that we could let go of, if we made that choice. Examine your beliefs – could they do with an update? Sometimes they come from our childhood of origin and are no longer useful to the way we want to live and be in the world today. Change this and make room for joy! Journal your way through this.
Appreciating the Journey of Your Relationship
Appreciating your partnership journey is an important part of being a great partner. Focussing on the good times helps us to remain grateful for our relationship over time. Remembering the truth that whatever we focus on gets amplified. We have a part in our brain that easily focuses on the negative in our lives and it sticks like Velcro and goes deep. The positive is like egg in a teflon pan and slips right on by. We need to work to change this in our brain for our relationship. When we focus on the positive in our partnership and hold it for 20 seconds and let it go deep, over time the Velcro becomes available to the positive and the negative becomes like an egg in a teflon pan and zips by. 
How can you best change this? Put a positive trigger for yourself in your environment or on your phone that will remind you to think of a positive memory of your partnership daily. Look at your journey milestones that you have created together. Having kids and bringing them up. Growing together as a couple. What are you most proud of that you have accomplished together. What do you do well now that you did not do well at before? How have you successfully managed your challenges and differences? How have you influenced each other for change towards the good? Before I used to… Now I … As a couple, how have you balanced each other out? If your negative filter keeps getting in the way when you are asking yourself these questions, take that seriously. You could undermine your entire connection. Develop a new mindset that sees the positive in your relationship journey. Find ways to develop new memories on your journey. Make plans on your calendar for novel events that you can do together. Focus on appreciating the values and the character traits that you share together. Develop gratitude for those and all that is good in your relationship. Gratitude leads to joy and joy to strength. If you are still finding difficulty, connect with a therapist to help you along your way. Go forth and be wonderful today!
Overwhelmed by the Challenges in Your Relationship?
I sometimes get couples in my office that have gone a long way down the road towards practicing the predictors of divorce. They are discouraged and maybe one person in the partnership has got their foot out the door. It can seem overwhelming to consider what would need to be done in order to put things back together so that they can connect and be a couple. I want to give you hope today. It is not over until it is over. Slow everything down. There is so much at stake for now and in the future riding on this decision. I like the illustration that John Gottman gives when asked whether these couples can really change and put things back on track. He likens it to sending a rocket to the moon. If you are off by just a minute amount in the trajectory, you will miss the moon. By correcting just a small amount, you will hit the moon.
That is why he wrote, “The Seven Principles For Making Marriage Work” (if you have not read it – it would be a good place to start). You do not have to overhaul the whole relationship but just use some correction tools that are meaningful. Sue Johnson’s research shows that you do not have to be perfect in your relationship but you do have to connect enough to have a secure attachment. By this time, you likely have viewed not just the present but have revised the whole relationship history to be negative. You believe you have “tried” everything. You believe your problems are severe – you are a total mismatch. You may experience loneliness. At this point do not try to solve things on your own. Go and see a marriage counsellor. Find a way inside yourself to make this a total necessity in your life to make the changes needed. Anytime we have a circumstance in our lives, we need to see it as an opportunity to upgrade ourselves and make the necessary changes inside of us. While you are waiting for professional help, you can get ready by:
1. Looking at memories that were positive in your relationship. Be willing to see the positive.
2. Talk together about what it has been like for each of you, focussing on yourself (not blaming) in the telling and focussing on the other in the listening (empathetic understanding). Share your heart. This is not for the feint – it takes courage. Find it within. It is there.
3. Apologize for what you are able to apologize for.
4. Commit to your partner to do what it takes to make things work between you. Not just for today but a new way of being together.
5. Read Chapman’s book, The 5 Love Languages, and start practicing this to bring the walls down.
6. Read Sue Johnson’s book, “Hold Me Tight” or “Love Sense”. This helps you to know what is at stake for you and helps to give you permission to want more from your relationship.
7. Read John Gottman’s book, “Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work”
Attend your marriage Counselling with an open heart and mind and do the changes necessary to course correct. Part of being a healthy human being is being able to pivot in life when necessary without ditching everything. Go forth and be wonderful today!
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