7 Ways To Improve Your Relationship

Good relationships don just happen. Ie heard many of my clients state that, f I have to work at it, then it not the right relationship.?This is not a true statement, any more than it true that you don have to work at good physical health through exercise, eating well, and stress reduction.

Ie discovered, in the 35 years that Ie been counseling couples, 7 choices you can make that will not only improve your relationship, but can turn a failing relationship into a successful one.

TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR YOURSELF

This is the most important choice you can make to improve your relationship. This means that you learn how to take responsibility for your own feelings and needs. This means that instead of trying to get your partner to make you feel happy and secure, you learn how to do this for yourself through your own thoughts and actions. This means learning to treat yourself with kindness, caring, compassion, and acceptance instead of self-judgment. Self-judgment will always make you feel unhappy and insecure, no matter how wonderfully your partner is treating you.

For example, instead of getting angry at your partner for your feelings of abandonment when he or she is late, preoccupied and not listening to you, not turned on sexually, and so on, you would explore your own feelings of abandonment and discover how you might be abandoning yourself.

When you learn how to take full, 100% responsibility for yourself, then you stop blaming your partner for your upsets. Since blaming one partner for one own unhappiness is the number one cause of relationship problems, learning how to take loving care of yourself is vital to a good relationship.

KINDNESS, COMPASSION, ACCEPTANCE

Treat others the way you want to be treated. This is the essence of a truly spiritual life. We all yearn to be treated lovingly ?with kindness, compassion, understanding, and acceptance. We need to treat ourselves this way, and we need to treat our partner and others this way. Relationships flourish when both people treat each other with kindness. While there are no guarantees, often treating another with kindness brings kindness in return. If your partner is consistently angry, judgmental, uncaring and unkind, then you need to focus on what would be loving to yourself rather than reverting to anger, blame, judgment, withdrawal, resistance, or compliance. Kindness to others does not mean sacrificing yourself. Always remember that taking responsibility for yourself rather than blaming others is the most important thing you can do. If you are consistently kind to yourself and your partner, and your partner is consistently angry, blaming, withdrawn and unavailable, then you either have to accept a distant relationship, or you need to leave the relationship. You cannot make your partner change ?you can only change yourself.

LEARNING INSTEAD OF CONTROLLING

When conflict occurs, you always have two choices regarding how to handle the conflict: you can open to learning about yourself and your partner and discover the deeper issues of the conflict, or you can try to win, or at least not lose, through some form of controlling behavior. Wee all learning many overt and subtle ways of trying to control others into behaving the way we want: anger, blame, judgment, niceness, compliance, caretaking, resistance, withdrawal of love, explaining, teaching, defending, lying, denying, and so on. All the ways we try to control create even more conflict. Remembering to learn instead of control is a vital part of improving your relationship.

For example, most people have two major fears that become activated in relationships: the fear of abandonment ?of losing the other - and the fear of engulfment ?of losing oneself. When these fears get activated, most people immediately protect themselves against these fears with their controlling behavior. But if you chose to learn about your fears instead of attempt to control your partner, your fear would eventually heal. This is how we grow emotionally and spiritually ?by learning instead of controlling.

CREATE DATE TIMES

When people first fall in love, they make time for each other. Then, especially after getting married, they get busy. Relationships need time to thrive. It is vitally important to set aside specific times to be together ?to talk, play, make love. Intimacy cannot be maintained without time together.

GRATITUDE INSTEAD OF COMPLAINTS

Positive energy flows between two people when there is an ttitude of gratitude.?Constant complaints creates a heavy, negative energy, which is not fun to be around. Practice being grateful for what you have rather than focusing on what you don have. Complaints create stress, while gratitude creates inner peace, so gratitude creates not only emotional and relationship health, but physical health as well.

FUN AND PLAY

We all know that ork without play makes Jack a dull boy.?Work without play makes for dull relationships as well. Relationships flourish when people laugh together, play together, and when humor is a part of everyday life. Stop taking everything so seriously and learn to see the funny side of life. Intimacy flourishes when there is lightness of being, not when everything is heavy.

SERVICE

A wonderful way of creating intimacy is to do service projects together. Giving to others fills the heart and creates deep satisfaction in the soul. Doing service moves you out of yourself and your own problems and supports a broader, more spiritual view of life.

If you and your partner agree to these 7 choices, you will be amazed at the improvement in your relationship!

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Can This Relationship Be Helped?

I have been counseling couples for 35 years. Quite often individuals come in for help wondering if it is really possible to save or improve their relationship. Perhaps their partner is totally uninterested in working on the relationship. Perhaps their partner is an alcoholic or drug addict. What are their chances of saving their relationship?

Since two people always get together at their common level of woundedness, here is what I say to the partner who has sought my help: s long as you choose to remain in this relationship, there are things for you to learn. Each partner contributes their 100% to the relationship. While it is often easy to see what your partner is doing that is harmful to the relationship, it is often difficult to see what you are doing. Yet until you learn about your part in this relationship system, you will take your own dysfunctional behavior with you into another relationship. It generally a waste of time - unless there is physical abuse - to leave a relationship before healing your own end of the system. The time to leave is when you have learned to make yourself happy regardless of what your mate is doing. When you learn to take 100% responsibility for your own feelings and needs, and if your partner is still behaving in ways that are unacceptable to you, then it time to leave. You need to discover how to respond to your partner in ways that are loving to yourself and that support your own joy and highest good.?
When the partner who is available to counseling does his or her inner work, one of two things happen. Either the other partner likes what is happening and becomes more open, or the relationship becomes more distant and difficult. I tell my clients that it is a 50-50 deal - half the time things get better and half the time they get worse. They need to be okay with either outcome. If fact, I encourage them to let go of the outcome and just be in the process of learning how to take loving care of themselves.

Let take some examples. Craig is unhappy in his marriage because his wife, Gloria, is often angry and judgmental toward him. Craig sees himself as the victim of Gloria unloving behavior, blaming her for his unhappiness. However, Craig is a equal part of the relationship system. He generally reacts to Gloria anger with compliance, giving himself up in his covert attempt to control Gloria anger. He believes that being a ice guy?will control her feelings and behavior. So, while Gloria is attempting to overtly control Craig, Craig is attempting to covertly control Gloria. Until Craig starts to speak his truth rather than give himself up as his form of control, he will feel resentful and distant with Gloria. If he has the courage to take loving care of himself by speaking his total truth without blame or judgment, and take loving action for himself based on his truth, then either things will get better or they will get worse. The only way Craig will be able to be honest and take care of himself is if he is willing to lose Gloria rather than continue to lose himself.

Marilyn is married to Martin, a non-abusive functioning alcoholic. The problem for Marilyn is that when Martin drinks, which is every night, he completely disconnects from her and she feel very lonely with him. She tried in many ways to get Martin to connect to her, but nothing has worked. Most nights, Marilyn just watches TV, feeling sad and alone.

Until Marilyn decides to do whatever she needs to do to make herself happy, nothing will change. If she decides to take classes, get together with friends, join a support group or go to Alanon, she will no longer be a victim of Martin decision to withdraw through alcohol. If Marilyn continues to take care of herself over a time - six months to a year - and nothing changes, then she can decide to leave. Or, she can decide to stay and just continue making herself happy. The possibility also exist that when Marilyn stops pulling on Martin to make her happy, he may decide to deal with himself rather than be left alone most of the time.

Can this relationship be helped? Maybe. Do your own inner work and find out!

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Trust Starts with You

 have a hard time trusting people.?
 never feel like I can trust my husband (or wife).?
It is very common for me, in my work as a counselor, to hear the above statements. Trust issues abound in relationships. However, resolving trust issues is not about getting another person to be trustworthy. It about you become a trustworthy person with yourself and learning to trust yourself.

BECOMING TRUSTWORTHY WITH YOURSELF

How often do you promise yourself you are going to do something and then don do it? For example, we often promise ourselves to:

* Get the taxes done on time.

* Catch up on email, phone calls, and other correspondence.

* Eat better.

* Drink less alcohol.

* Stop reckless spending, gambling, or whatever puts us in financial distress.

* Stop getting angry.

* Stop giving ourselves up.

* Lose weight.

* Get more exercise.

* Get more sleep (or sleep less).

* Get together with friends.

* Clean up the house, or clean up the clutter.

* Be on time.

* Watch less TV or spend less time on the computer.

* Meditate or pray.

* Take time for ourselves.

* Finish a project.

* And so on?.

If you promise yourself you will do something and then you don do it, you are not being trustworthy with yourself. This would be like promising a child something and then not doing it. Eventually the child would learn not to trust you. The same applies with your Child within. If you promise yourself ?your Inner Child ?that you will take care of yourself in some way and then you don do it, the Inner Child learns that there is no inner adult to trust. Since many of us project onto others our own inner issues, it is likely that if you are not trustworthy with yourself, you will project untrustworthiness onto others. You will continue to distrust others as long as you are not behaving in a trustworthy way with yourself and with others.

TRUSTING YOURSELF

Many of us grew up with parents who did not trust our feelings and perceptions. We might have been told that what we felt and what we experienced was wrong.

Mother: Put on a sweater. It cold outside.


Child: I not cold.


Mother: Youe just a child. What do you know? Put on a sweater.

Mother: Go give your Uncle Sam a kiss.


Child: No, I don like Uncle Sam. He creepy.


Mother: Of course you like Uncle Sam. Now go give him a kiss.

Child: My teacher is really mean to me.


Father: I sure your teacher is very nice. If your teacher is mean to you, it must be your fault.

Child: Daddy, why are you angry at me?


Father: I not angry.

After a while, we learn to discount and mistrust our feelings and perceptions. We learn to give our authority away to our parents and other adults, deciding that others must know more about what we feel, want and perceive than we do. We abandon our inner knowing and stop trusting ourselves.

I have worked with many people who felt deeply betrayed by someone, only to discover in the course of our work together than they had betrayed themselves by not listening to themselves. I often hear statements such as:

 knew when we first met that Frank was lying to me about his money situation, but I didn listen to myself. I believed him instead of believing myself, and now I stuck with all this debt.?
 had a feeling that Katherine was having affairs even before we got married but I didn listen to myself. The last thing I ever wanted was to be divorced with children.?
We can often feel in our bodies what is true and what is untrue, yet many of us don listen to these inner messages. Instead, we put our trust in others and then feel betrayed when others let us down. When we choose to listen to and trust our own inner voice rather than give our power away to others, we will no longer put ourselves in positions to be used and betrayed.

How often have you ignored yourself when something didn feel right, only to later discover that you really did know that something wasn right? How often have you heard the voice of your inner or Higher Self and discounted it, only to regret it later?

Your trust issues with others will be resolved when you become a trustworthy adult with yourself ?following through on what you say you will do, and when you learn to trust your inner knowing. It will be harder for others to get away with unloving acts toward you when you learn to trust yourself.

Copyright: ?2004 by Margaret Paul

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