Finding Our Rainbow: A Great Relationship
We can connect with the blessings of our lives and make our lives and relationships even more beautiful.
We can connect with the blessings of our lives and make our lives and relationships even more beautiful.
Courage over comfort. That is the key. The primary vehicle for change in a relationship really is developing a better relationship with our own feelings and unpacking why we feel what we feel when we are having that feeling.
Read a story about a couple as they communicate and see how they miscommunicate. This will help you with your own communication in your relationship.
It had started like a regular day weekend day. John and Patti were taking a walk. The sun was shining. Life was good. But then, John sheepishly told Patti that he would not be working on a project they had told Patti he was going to do, and that had been planned for that weekend.
Over the years of working both as a therapist and a couples’ therapist I have come to believe that something more is needed to help all of us with our relationships. Many of us just don’t have the skills we need. Therapy has limitations due to its cost, and many therapists, though effective with individuals, don’t have the specialized training needed to be effective when working with couples. The time constraints of people’s busy lives, and the stigma that therapy has for some also inhibit people seeking help.
Emotions are intense. They rock us. We have to deal with them. Someone says something the wrong way, or we are in a difficult situation and all of a sudden we might find ourselves in a fury, or in deep grief, or perhaps an awful sense of embarrassment and shame as if we are ‘bad’.
When we are in these feeling places we usually don’t have any perspective or not much.
When wounds collide, we suffer and we don’t feel safe. Our partner becomes somebody we no longer trust. It is one of the most painful aspects of a relationship. When we are scared, we act in ways that do not help our relationships. When we feel safe, our relationships can blossom.
“The more quickly either person goes from disappointment or hurt to anger, defensiveness, or emotional withdrawal and remains stuck there, the less that person is capable of having a relationship and the more the other person will have to walk on eggshells.” – Mark Goulston
How do we change the direction of our lives? Despite our histories, why do some people create fulfilling lives for themselves while others do not? As a therapist, and as a person who has made her life about self-transformation and then later, the transformation of others, this is easy to see. But for many people, especially those who do not know much about “therapy,” and the process it entails, this is more of a mystery.
How many times have we begun a relationship, full of hope, only to have it crash and burn, or one party flee?