Death Knell for Relationship

Treating your partner’s opinions, ideas, or values with distain or contempt is extremely toxic to your relationship. Comments like, “Are you ever going to get it?” “I don’t know why I bother talking to you,” “That is just stupid,” “You don’t know what you are talking about,” indicate a lack of respect for your partner.

It is also possible to convey the message that, “I am better than you are,” without verbalizing it at all. Attitude, actions, body language and tone of voice often speak louder than any words you could use.

A sense of superiority can be a death knell for a relationship. Whether it is you or your partner, you have to ask yourself either, “Why would I want to be involved with someone who is less than I am?” or “Why would I want to be with someone who thinks that I am less than he is?”

When you frequently take the position that you are superior to your partner--that you are smarter or more attractive--you have lost the sense of equality that is important to a healthy relationship. Looking down on your partner will cause them to either fight or withdraw. Either way, their self-image will be weakened and you will pay a heavy price for making your partner the loser in your relationship.

One component of a mature relationship is the ability to tolerate differences. Maturity means recognizing that when your partner disagrees with you they are not necessarily wrong, they are just different. Differences can add richness to your relationship, as long as respect is involved.

Part of setting healthy boundaries in your relationship involves understanding who owns feelings, thoughts and opinions. You are responsible for your own feelings, thoughts and opinions. Your partner is responsible for his own feelings, thoughts and opinions. Each of you is entitled to feel, think and decide for yourself. Each of you is entitled to have your thoughts, feelings and opinions respected.

If your partner is frequently treating you with contempt it is important that you look after yourself. Do not give in to the fight or withdraw reflex. Being aggressive or passive will not improve the situation. You want to assertively fortify your personal boundaries. When you stand up for yourself in a respectful way your partner will hopefully follow suit.

If you don’t stand up to your partner for fear that their reaction could be dangerous either physically or emotionally, then you might want to get help or get out.

Susan Derry
Professional Counselor & Life Coach

Co-author of Marriage Prep: Beginnings a downloadable marriage preparation course

Co-author of Intimate Sex: Manual for Lovemaking, a sex manual for couples

Offers a free Nurturing Marriage Ezine

Relationship Renewal

In our counseling practice we are often asked to help people repair broken marriages. Often one partner wants to “win back” the love of their partner, who is adamant that they have fallen out of love. Sometime both parties want to find their way back to love.

If you want to set your marriage back on track there are some things you will want to keep in mind. It can be very devastating to learn that your partner does not love you any more. Many people end up running in circles trying to discover the reason and find some way to convince their partner that they are still lovable.

We have been programmed to think that there must be a pill or a quick fix for everything. People think, ‘If I can just figure out and do what it is my partner says they want from me then everything will be fine.’ Unfortunately this often only increases the problems.

There is no quick fix. You have consistently neglected to do the little things that needed doing. That is how you ended up where you are today. There is no grand gesture that can erase the past. Instead, it will be the consistent doing of the little things that eventually may add up to a renewal of your marriage.

If you are a gardener you know that to enjoy a bountiful harvest, you must first plant the seeds, then weed and water and WAIT. Waiting is part of the process. Consistently tending your garden over time will result in a great harvest.

If you have not weeded or water your garden, rushing in at the last minute to pull the huge weeds and pour water on the garden will not get the same results. When you pull out the huge weeds the plants will be weak and vulnerable. If you pour on too much water you may drown them. If you don’t tenderly allow them to grow and strengthen, you will never get the results you desire.

William George Jordan said, “Into the hands of every individual is given a marvelous power for good or evil - the silent, unconscious, unseen influence of his life. This is simply the constant radiation of what a man really is, not what he pretends to be.”

If you want your partner to fall in love with you again, you must be your best self. It will not work to pretend to be who your partner thinks s/he wants you to be. But changing your behavior to begin nourishing your relationship rather than neglecting it could in time make all the difference.

If you say to yourself, I have always cared about our relationship and I have worked on nurturing it. Chances are you are only deceiving yourself. If you want to save your relationship you will need to be brutally honest with yourself. Ask: In what ways has my attitude and behavior contributed to our problems? Then do something about it.

If S/he Loved Me . . .

"Two men look out from the same prison bars. One sees mud and one the stars." Unknown

A young friend recently shared her thirtieth birthday experience with me:

To her turning thirty was a big deal and she wanted to celebrate. She knew that her husband was in the middle of mid-terms as well as a heavy assignment load and that he would not have the time to plan a party for her. Knowing that her husband loved her, but was too stressed to make her birthday what she wanted it to be, she decided that she was going to make this special for herself. She got her three small children involved and planned and decorated for her own party. She said that she had the greatest day as she decided to treat herself and have fun that day. Consequently she, her husband and her family have wonderful memories of her thirtieth birthday.

What a mature and self-empowering approach to life.

Contrast this with someone moodily brooding and worrying that they were not going to get the party that they wanted for their birthday—getting more miserable the closer the day came. When the day arrives they are sullen and angry. They tell themselves, “If my partner loved me s/he would know that I wanted a fuss made over my birthday—therefore s/he doesn’t really care and doesn’t really love me.” They choose to spend the day in the garden eating worms, creating yet another traumatic memory.

You have the option of making yourself perfectly miserable or the choice to be “happy with.” You can choose to be happy with yourself, with your partner, with your children, with life in general.

There is a tendency when people don’t really feel that they are loveable, to manufacture experiences to prove that they are unloved. They set themselves up to be repeatedly disappointed. Thus proving what they believed all along that they are unloved and unlovable.

Choosing to be loving to oneself is one of the quickest ways to begin to feel love from others. When people accept and love themselves they are able to release others from constantly having to prove that they are lovable. They are free to ask for what they want because they know that they are worth it. Sometimes people are afraid to ask because they are not sure that they are worth it and they want someone else to decide and show them that they are.

Susan Derry
Professional Counselor & Life Coach

Co-author of Marriage Prep: Beginnings a downloadable marriage preparation course

Co-author of Intimate Sex: Manual for Lovemaking, a sex manual for couples

Offers a free Nurturing Marriage Ezine

Don’t Procrastinate the Day of Maintaining Your Relationship

"The secret of happiness is to make others believe they are the cause of it." Al Batt

As a marriage counselor I’m often asked what to do when things aren’t quite the way they should be at home. I can and do offer some advice but often I wonder, “Why did you wait till now?” It seems that people will go to the doctor when they feel a flu coming on or take their child to the emergency because of the way their head feels and their eyes look, yet when it comes to a check up for their relationship they wait until it is almost time for the undertaker.

It really doesn’t take as much energy to maintain a relationship as it does to repair one. And if you wait until the only way you can communicate is by the smoke signals coming out of your ears then the damage is harder to repair and sometimes it is too late. People give up trying, saying that it’s just too hard and they are too tired to deal with it, fight about it or worry or care if it gets fixed.

So as a marriage counselor I want to give some advice, free, I won’t charge you for it. When things are going good in your marriage, when you are happy about your relationship and really in love with each other, take a good look at your relationship. This is the time to make adjustments as needed. When you both still like each other as well as love each other.

I would suggest that at least once a month, probably more, each of you should take a moment to ask yourself these questions. “How am I feeling in my marriage?” “Do I still feel in love with my spouse?” “Am I doing the best that I can to make my marriage work and to make my spouse happy?” “Is there any thing I can do better, different, more of, or less of that will improve the chances of this relationship lasting and being happy?”

As you ponder these questions you can begin to pinpoint areas where you can improve your relationship. It is important to realize that you can change things; you can make a difference, that you can make it work. Because in all reality the only one you can change is you. Your partner has to worry about themselves; you have too much to worry about yourself.

And once in a while, monthly perhaps, get together and ask each other if every thing is going good for each other. Is there something you can do to help your lover feel happier, more successful, more comfortable, more fulfilled? It is these questions when asked in a loving caring manner with the promise to action that makes a marriage work. When each of you is just as or more concerned for your partner’s well-being and happiness than your own your relationship will blossom and in all likelihood you will never have to come and pay me for advice and help.

“Human beings, by changing the inner attitudes of their minds, can change the outer aspects of their lives.” William James

Dallas Munkholm
Professional Counselor & Life Coach

Co-author of Marriage Prep: Beginnings a downloadable marriage preparation course

Co-author of Intimate Sex: Manual for Lovemaking, a sex manual for couples

Offers a free Nurturing Marriage Ezine