New years can be exciting – I know they are for me. It is like I have a whole book of blank pages that I get to fill in new and interesting ways. I get to decide some chapter titles that I would like to focus on and I get to fill in some blanks on the calendar to reflect those chapter titles. I can even write the story ending for the year leaving room for some wonderful surprises. How fun is that?? I find that couples really need to take the time to have a shared vision of their year ahead and yet few do this. They each have some unspoken and yet hardly formed ideas for what they would like for the year and yet they remain unspoken and undefined and therefore do not get realized. I recommend that couples find a night to go away (better yet a weekend) and make a vision for their year. Make sure you take the facts of your finances with you. Take a calendar with big squares (I know – pretty old fashioned – an actual paper calendar). Talk together about your individual dreams for yourselves, as well as how you would like to spend your year as a couple. Perhaps make titles for each of the parts of your lives individually and together. Then look at your dreams for your family and each individual child. While you are going through this process, endeavour to use this time to support each other in your wishes and dreams. Understand the layer beneath the words to your partners longings. Look at your time together and apart. Look at relationship time and family time and individual time. How would you like to balance those? How do you want to be together? How do you want to spend your money this year? What kind of experiences do you want your family to have? What kind of vacations do you want together? How do you want to reach out to your social circle? What would you like to contribute to your community or world as a couple or family? How will you develop the spiritual part of who you are as an individual and as a family? You get the picture. So many challenges could be avoided and so much more meaning could be realized if you knew that you and your partner were on the same page, creating your year as a team, supporting each other in your individual goals and dreams as well as those you share. Write the story ending of the year now. In the year 2012, we were like this together, we did this etc etc. Many blessings to all the couples who read this blog this year!
Healthier Marriages – Lynda Chalmers
Challenges with being Romantic?
In my private practice, I get both males and females who have difficulty with the concept of being romantic. What is the definition of romantic? It is like a language of love. If we think of our partnership relationship as a garden, it helps to water and sustain the garden. Romance is really about the little things in life, more then the extravagances. Sending funny little emails, home made cards, funny greeting cards, planning get-aways from the kids, booking a massage for 2, love letters, your creativity is the only limit. And if you feel your lack of creativity is the challenge, keep tuned to this blog as we will come back to romance often as a way to strengthen your relationship before the stressors of the holidays. Why be romantic? It softens the harsher parts of life, it improves the quality of your life, your ability to play, your ability to give to another, enhances your attachment together and tweeks your ability to sustain some cognitive room for your relationship amid the many competing forces for head space in your life.
This week, make a romantic dinner and have your favourite oldies taped and the candles on the table. Cooking not your best thing? Get great take-out and bring out the china. Begin some drafts of romantic emails that you might send. Hard for you to do? Take some phrases from your favourite songs to get you started. You can do this!
Maintaining Your Relationship
Many couples find it difficult to continuously maintain their relationship in the face of a negative interaction where they were hurt. The pattern that they learned in their childhood or from hurtful experiences in their adulthood have made it difficult for them to keep connected in the relationship when hurt and many days or even weeks will pass when there is little or no connection. This is something that must be overcome in the relationship if there is going to be hope for the relationship future. Finding a way to resolve your issues quickly is so important to the quality of the relationship. You will need to choose to nurse and amplify your hurt or give it up and concentrate how to repair the relationship again. Maturity says that your partner will disappoint you and hurt you. For those issues that cannot be resolved or where hurt continues, a process of communication where the wounded person is able to communicate the meaning of the event for them and the listener is able to communicate their understanding of that meaning is important. Then the wounded person needs to forgive and accept and give repair attempts while the listener needs to find ways to repair. Just think what your pattern of withdrawal costs you and the relationship. I have not known anyone who, when considering this question, does not realize the importance of change in their pattern of relating when hurt in order to have a loving relationship on a daily basis.
Respect as part of Love
I think most people would agree that respect is an important part of love. Yet within marriage in our culture, it is so easy to fall into disrespect in so many ways. Some ways for you to watch out for are the marriage jokes that demean the value of your relationship. Or when you make a decision on your own without consultation that was really a “we” decision. Or not supporting and encouraging each other in your professions (making light of the trials that your partner experiences at the office).Or comparing your partner with other men or women or flirting with others within or outside of your partner’s presence. Disrespecting your common space by leaving things around for your partner to clean up after you. Using sarcasm as a legitimate putdown instead of communicating your complaint, interrupting each other – there are many more that you can think of. We become committed to each other in relationships to feel loved, chosen, validated for who we are, and to feel a sense of secure attachment. Respect is an important part of making that happen; disrespect breaks these down. Have a conversation with your spouse and make a recommitment to making respect a higher priority in your relationship today.
Loving Well
Love and relationship give real meaning to our lives. We find our fulfillment in giving and receiving love. As we have talked about before, it takes time to understand how to love our partners well. It can sometimes be equally difficult to receive love from others, to actually believe that we are worthy of love. There have been many messages from childhood from those we have loved as well as cultural messages both to men and to women that make it difficult to accept love and to let it nourish us. These same messages make it challenging to genuinely love and respect ourselves. Loving ourselves is a prerequisite for loving others well. For the next week, look at love as presenting us with a never ending prospect for self transformation and as the core spiritual issue of our humanity. Enjoy the view and ask yourself what change you are being nudged to make today.
The Deeper Aspects of a Loving Partnership
When you think of couples in a deeply committed, loving partnership, there is something very profound about being in their presence. Respect is something that is at the core of their coupleship. They seem to draw from one another in a wonderful seemless way. In many ways, they unite together and you see them as a kind of ‘two shall be one’ way. When in their company, you notice their acts of kindness and giving to one another. You notice their automatic gratitude to one another. I love to be in the presence of these couples – it gives me hope for people and for families. If this is not where you are and you are attracted to this depth of love in relationships – consider some growth counselling to help yourself to get there!
God can only be fully revealed as these two halves respect, draw from, unite, and give to one another. The two being one are “it”!
Love and Relationships
Love and relationships give real meaning to our lives. We find our fulfilment both in giving and receiving love. It can be seen as the core spiritual issue of humanity. As we have talked about before, it takes time and effort to understand how to love our partners well. It can sometimes be equally difficult to receive love from our partner and others, to actually believe that we ourselves are worthy of love. There have been many messages from childhood as well as cultural messages both to men and to women that make it difficult to accept love and to let it nourish us. We get these same messages from ourselves and that critical voice inside today. Additionally, these messages make it challenging to genuinely love and respect ourselves. As loving ourselves is a prerequisite for loving others well, this is a cycle we want to be continuously growing out of. For the next week, look at love as presenting you with a never ending prospect for self transformation. Enjoy the view and ask yourself what change in the area of love are you are being nudged to make today.
Unfinished Business and Remarriage
Some evidence of remarriage couples shows that unfinished business of the past (financial debt and settlements, fear of failure once again in relationship and unresolved hurts from the past) is part of the top problematic concerns of couples (research on 50,000 couples who took part in PREPARE-MC – marriage with children-stepfamilies). Being aware of and sharing these obstacles is not the same as finding ways to resolve them. The fear itself can cause some couples to avoid the unfinished business or feel hopeless about finding any resolution. If you have these issues as part of your relationship, a professional can help you on your way before you dig in and experience a rift in your newly formed attachment.
“The block of granite, which is an obstacle on the path of the weak, becomes a stepping-stone on the path of the strong.” Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881)
How does your personality add to your relationship or get in the way of it?
In the past week I was privileged to go away and do some soul care for a week. It was very renewing for me! During the week we spent a little time looking at our personality preferences and I was reminded of my training and fascination with this when I first began my career. Understanding and self acceptance is one of the most important aspects of being a good partner in relationship. If you would like to understand what I am talking about in more detail, you can use this link to give you the basics of the Meyers Briggs Personality Preferences which is based on Jungian theory. I think this test is the easiest to see where you are and where your spouse might be. This is a good link to send you to other information on personality as well. The link is www.developandgrow.com/lifecoach/blog/free-on-line-myers-briggs-personality-tests. If you would like to go straight to the test itself, use this link www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/JTypes2.asp.
How is this helpful to couples? Once you understand your own preference type, you can begin to see the gifts and the challenges that you bring to your relationship. For instance, how you want to style your life and how that might be different then the way your partner’s personality preferences would choose. You might notice how your preference type will tend to orphan a part of you when you are stressed or fearful in your relationship and life. These awarenesses keep the focus on what you need to be doing differently in the relationship and provide an avenue for you to share what it is like to be you with your partner.
How positively you use your personality variables has been linked to success in marriage in many studies. The likeability factor of each partner is critical to intimacy. If you have become withdrawn, critical, controlling and contemptuous, you are obviously not very high on the likability factor in your marriage (Deal and Olson, The Re-marriage Checkup, 2010). Imagine yourself as being your own ideal partner for the next 2 weeks and then practice those ideals as we celebrate love in February.
Where Would You Be?
One of the most difficult things to overcome is negativity in relationships when it has become a set pattern. It hurts the relationship to have negativity as the overriding theme for the relationship, but it also hurts the person who is using negativity to frame their relationship. It hurts them on all levels, their biological self, psychological self, social self and spiritual self. One questions that I have found helpful to ask my clients is, If I didn’t have that negative belief, Who would I be and What resources would I have that I do not have when I can only see the negativity in the other? Think about it. Hope this helps you too. Go forth and be wonderful in your relationships today.
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