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Ten pointers to building lasting relationships.

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Couples Counselors  state you need certain critical traits in place when it comes to creating successful relationships.

These traits exist in a real and genuine way because each partner wants to enact them – not because there is pressure from a partner. Once “give and take” becomes “take then give”, resentment and disconnection bubble to the surface and your relationship goes down the gurgler.

To create a successful relationship that truly lasts, many leading relationship counselors suggest you need:

1.Trust.

You cannot truly love someone you can’t trust. You can passionately desire them, you can admire them, you can have affection for them, you can be enchanted by them, you can like them enormously, you can even feel sorry for them but that’s not love. When you know you can really rely on another, you have confidence they will be there for you ,you have trust. Trust is an integral part of enduring love because trust provides repose for the heart – a sense of self haven.

2. Acceptance.

Many people talk about tolerance, however, successful couples don’t “tolerate” each other’s quirks and differences — they accept them. They celebrate their similarities AND their unique differences. They recognize that if you can find someone who addresses sixty percent of your wants and needs, you’re trulyfortunate. Acceptance makes you and your partner both feel safe to share your true selves. You don’t fear judgment, because you aren’t being judged.

3. Respect.

Many people confuse paying attention with showing respect. Attention is great, and it shows love, desire, connection, and passion. However, respect is a deeper level of connection, where you value the person at an intrinsic level, with no promise of reciprocation.

4. Affection and passion.

Everyone wants to feel loved, and sustaining physical connection is a big part of that. Whether couples have been together two months or 20 years, the little things like holding hands, shoulder touches, and sitting together make a very big difference. A healthy sex life is the extension of that affection, helping partners maintain a connection level that is simultaneously physical, mental, and emotional.

5. Humour.

Laughter makes everyone smile, feels great, and works like magic to build, maintain, or restore balance (and attraction) in your relationship. Whether it’s simply telling a joke, playfully teasing your partner, or enjoying a ridiculous conversation, humour builds a happy connection that transcends any individual or joint stress and keeps you enjoying each other’s company.

6. Effective disagreements.

Arguments in a relationship are normal. It’s how you handle them and repair communication that makes your relationship last. Talking through issues with active listening (meaning: not just waiting to explain your own views, but rather, really listening to their side/experience and then offering empathy — regardless if you agree or not), being patient, and not judging allows both of you to maintain your opinion/views on the matter and still connect with one another. People in long-term relationships often have a choice: Being happy or being right. Hint: Happy is better!

7. Privacy.

Today, there is an epidemic of over-sharing, and in relationships, this is often a death sentence. Bottom line: What happens in your relationship isn’t for public consumption. It’s none of anyone’s business. Keeping things between you and your partner and excluding others from your inner-workings — including kids, parents, friends, and strangers — is of paramount importance.

8. Maintaining your individuality.

A successful relationship is made up of two individuals. Your partner still has interest in things they like, whether you’re interested in them or not. Having your own lives outside the relationship not only contributes to each of you maintaining a sense of self-worth and self-esteem, but also gives you things, accomplishments, and interests to bring back to your relationship and share with your partner.

9. Support and sharing.

Paying attention to your partner’s activities — as well as sharing your own — keeps couples connected on a day-to-day basis. Lending opinion and insight, or just a compassionate ear when things get tough makes all the difference. When you care about and respect your partner, you want to know what they’re doing and how you can help them achieve their goals — even if that means you see them less. Being invested in their lives is what contributes to you both people feeling valued.

10. Consideration and gratitude.

The moment you’re no longer grateful for your partner is the moment you start disconnecting, becoming complacent, and/or building resentment. Show consideration to and appreciation for your partner — just for being who they are. They, in turn, will feel grateful as well, and that’s a great cycle to be in.

In reviewing these 10 principles of building and maintaining great relationships, one thing becomes obvious : It’s the little things that count most.

 

Trips and gifts are great, but it’s the everyday behaviours that count more. Additionally, couples need to realize that a family is not the same as a marriage. Families need time to grow and stay connected, and a marriage is no different — but the marriage is between the couple, not everyone in the family.
A couple that takes time to do the things that made them fall in love in the first place will find themselves connected and happy long after the newness of the relationship has passed. A couple that thinks marriage is automatic and takes things for granted will likely find themselves in the divorce court.

For a free 10 minute confidential discussion

phone Christina on 0435 438 899

Adapted from an article first in YourTango.

relationship therapy

Three BIG reasons to seek Relationship Therapy.

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  • Question: Do you think marriages naturally improve as you get further and further away from the honeymoon and have greater stress to contend with – particularly with ankle biters in the home?
  • Question: If your leg was infected, would you wait for gangrene to develop before seeking medical attention? And yet you might be putting off getting help with your relationship.
  • Question: How is your partner to know they need to shape up when in fact they think it is you who needs to learn how to do so? How is it that you are mature, smart and goal-oriented in other aspects of your life, yet when it comes to working to improve your own relationship, you are in denial? Would you treat your own diabetes? Fill your own tooth cavity?
  • Question: Why, then, would you hesitate before finding a couples therapist when you know in your heart that nothing is going to improve anytime soon without working on it?

The reality might be your relationship suffers some of the following ailments and they might just become terminal.

Relationship therapy can help with communication problems.

You are not talking or when you are its primarily negative.

Many even mature relationships have challenges which are simply challenges in communication. Relationship therapy can help facilitate new ways to communicate with each other. Negative communication can include anything that leaves one partner feeling judged, shamed, disregarded, insecure or wanting to withdraw from the conversation. Negative communication also includes the tone of conversation because it’s not always what you say, but how you say it.

When you’re afraid to talk.

It can be just too frightening to even bring issues up. This can be anything from sex to money, or even annoying little habits that are being blown out of proportion. Relationship therapy is designed to help a couple become clear about their issues and to help them understand what they are truly talking about.

You have nothing to talk about except the kids.

You go on a romantic night out and realise you don’t know about his work and don’t care. You don’t know what she talks about with her friends and don’t care. It’s so much effort to ask and pay attention that you might as well just talk about your child’s exposure to hand, foot and mouth disease at preschool. Might be time to make the call to a relationship therapist.

Relationship therapy can unravel some honesty issues.

When you keep secrets.

Each person in a relationship has a right to privacy, but when you keep secrets from each other, something isn’t right.

When you contemplate (or are having) an affair.

Fantasising about an affair is a signal that you desire something different from what you currently have. While it is possible for a relationship to survive after one partner had an affair, it’s prudent to get some help before that happens. If both of you are committed to the therapy process and are being honest, the relationship may be salvaged. At the very least, you may both come to realize that it is healthier for both of you to move on.

When you are financially unfaithful.

Financial infidelity can be just as -– if not more -– damaging to a relationship than a sexual affair. If one partner keeps his or her spouse in the dark about spending or needs to control everything related to money, then the other should bring up the topic of family finances. It’s not unreasonable to say, “I want to better understand our monthly bills and budget, our debt, how many savings/checking/retirement accounts we have, etc.” If your partner objects, consult a professional to help work out the conflict.

Relationship therapy can assist you with your true feelings toward your partner.

You don’t respect your partner’s opinion.

In response to most things that they say, you roll your eyes, internally or outright. You genuinely think you are a better, more intelligent or have a more common sense approach, and you don’t take their opinion into consideration, probably never have if you’re honest with yourself. Or perhaps they feel and act this way about you.

You don’t feel attracted to your spouse.

Your partner looks relatively similar to when you met, but you feel no physical excitement or even a pleasant desire to touch them when they are around. You wonder if this is due to age, hormones changing, or the acid in your stomach that churns when you remember your list of resentments. It is probably that last one.

You love your partner, but something is just missing.

This is THE most difficult one. You don’t hate anything about your partner, but you don’t feel connected or close. You turn to best friends or your mum to share funny stories. You think about old boyfriends or girlfriends sometimes, or a lot. You know intellectually that your partner is a good person, but you’re Just Not Feeling It (either anymore, or sometimes you wonder if you ever did).

Most relationship and sex therapists know this simple fact- the sooner you seek out treatment, the faster you’ll feel better. It sounds obvious, but far too many people let their problems overwhelm them before getting help.

So why not take a relationship that is just okay and make it even better?
And work on the one that is not okay.

For a free 10 minute consultation
phone Christina on 0435 438 899

3d Illustration of tough decision ahead traffic sign

The reality of relationship counseling.

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We experience the ‘urge to merge’ when we think we have found a date who will become OUR mate. We find ourselves in a state of euphoria, a head over heels adrenaline rush, driven in part by Mother Nature, wanting us to procreate and sending Hormones that hijack the Head and affect the Heart. This is the time we don our rose coloured spectacles, idealising the other, whilst concurrently projecting our best self – aiming to be both ‘interesting and interested’. If observed by some more wise persons they might assume we were riding along, head in the clouds AND on square wheels.

However this period usually lasts no longer than 12-18 months. It is for this reason that the last and very important chapter in my book ‘The Really Useful Grown-Ups Guide to Dating & Mating’ is titled Deciding. Whether it has been seven months or seven years you might one day wonder what you are doing with This Person In This Relationship.

There is a rhythm to the ending of a marriage just like the rhythm of a courtship – only backward. You try to start again but get into blaming over and over. Finally you are both worn out, exhausted, hopeless. Then lawyers are called in to pick clean the corpses. The death has occurred much earlier.

                                                                                                    Erica Jong  How To Save Your Own Life

Different tracks

Some of us Drift along in relationships that are not really fulfilling, but they kind of work. Some of us Tolerate circumstances, possibly hoping things will change. Others Resent for a period of time, hoping it will get better, however, there is an old saying that you never stub your foot on a mountain, but, believe me, even small repeated resentments will become the Himalayas over time. Frequently couples wait to visit a therapist when they are at the Raging stage. Some want to discuss with the therapist whether the other’s intractability is at fault – and sometimes it might be. (There are Narcissists and Passive Aggressive personalities, to name but a couple, who can testing put it mildly,to cohabit with. The decision might then be do you resign yourself to living with the behaviour or do you leave?)

Whoops – we are off the rails

When the rose coloured spectacles do slip, and they almost always do, there can be the potential for disappointment on either-or both- sides. This can be the time couples, married or not, reassess their desire to cohabit. Once you Heart changes and you lose the desire to be in the relationship, its demise is almost inevitable, although your Head may well delay accepting that fact. Everything your partner now does may make you less happy, with insecurity, betrayal and anger creeping into your interactions.

This is often the time couples have a first visit to a relationship therapist or marriage guidance counsellor. Sadly though, much like a doctor cannot cure an incurable disease, a therapist cannot save a relationship when your heart has quit. While a therapist can help you examine your feelings only you can know your own emotions.

What do YOU really, really want?

In the book ‘Sacred Cows- ‘The Truth about Marriage and Divorce’ the authors suggest distressed couples examine their basic desires BEFORE seeking counselling. Imagine a Relationship Fairy appearing, complete with wand, able to fulfil your greatest desire about your current relationship. (Note – no wishes about money or eternal life – she is the Relationship Fairy after all!) No-one will know what you ask for so you can be totally honest.

Do you want your partner to agree regarding raising the kids, how to spend money, or whether your mother is a reasonable person. Or do you want the Relationship Fairy to cast amorous dust in your partner’s eyes, so they make passionate love when you walk through the door? Do you want your heart filled with love for your partner – or do you want them to run off with the tennis pro to Brazil??

Armed with your personal honest evaluation of your desires, you are better equipped to select the advice that best suits you. Or indeed to recognise that no self-help book, therapist or counsellor is going to save the current relationship.

Proviso Even when couples therapy might not bring resolution, don’t ignore therapy altogether – it can be beneficial in working through separation issues and ensure that patterns of relating are not being blindly followed with your next choice of partner.

Counselors, Therapists and Self-Help Books.

Therapists, and the millions of self-help books out theretend to fit into various camps. There are those who wish to reduce conflict and/or rekindle romance, those who suggest you fake it till you make it, that you are selfish if you consider separating and so on and so on ad nauseum.. However, all the conflict resolution in the world, the empathic listening and sharing, the sensate exercises dutifully carried out won’t help if your partner doesn’t love you, has an incompatible sexual orientation, or a personality disorder that you cannot live with. You can waste much time and money and heighten your frustration.

There are counselors who believe in saving marriages at any cost. Is this what you want and if not it might be wise to ask up-front

‘Do you believe your role is to assist Robin and I to become happier people, or to save our relationship?’”

A good counselor will assist you to repair a damaged relationship if that is what both individuals desire. They will also help you to decide whether being in this partnership is the right thing, right now and into the future, for you both. And if you want your relationship to flourish – and not flounder because of sexual glitches – seek guidance from a professional sex therapist. Google “sex therapist + (my town) and you’ll get a list of qualified professionals working under a strict Code of Ethics. You don’t need a referral from a GP.

I wish you what you wish for yourself