Making Marriage Work, Part 4

Posted on April 28, 2013 by admin

In Part 1 of this series, I described the fears of rejection and engulfment that underlie relationship problems.

In Part 2 of this 5-part series, I offered a simplified version of the Six Step healing process of Inner Bonding:

1. Willingness
2. Choose the intent to learn
3. Dialogue with the feelings
4. Dialogue with your Higher Power
5. Take loving action
6. Evaluate the action.

Part 2 described what it means to be in Step One ñ what it means to be willing to feel your feelings and take responsibility for them, rather than turn to protective, controlling behavior.

Part 3 described what it means to be in Step Two – choosing the intent to learn – using Joanís and Justinís marriage as an example.

Part 4 continues with Joan and Justin, describing how Joan uses Steps 3 and 4 of Inner Bonding to deal with the issues in her marriage.

In Step 3 of Inner Bonding, Joan investigates her beliefs and behavior that is causing her pain. From a place within of compassion and curiosity, Joan dialogues with her feelings of anger, aloneness, fear and resentment. Imagining that she is a loving parent speaking with a hurting child, Joan asks her Inner Child questions:

Loving Adult Joan: Little Joanie, what am I thinking or doing that is causing you so much pain?

Inner Child Joanie: You keep telling me that Justin doesnít love me anymore. You are scaring me so much. Whenever Justin works a lot, you tell me that he is working because he doesnít love me anymore – that if he loved me, he would spend more time with me. You just keep telling me that there must be something wrong with me because Justin works a lot.

Now Joan moves into Step 4 ñ Dialoguing with her Higher Power/Higher Self. Joan imagines her personal concept of Spirit ñ God, Goddess, her own Higher Self, an inner mentor or teacher, or a spiritual guide.

Joan asks her Guidance: What is the truth about the belief that if Justin works late, he doesnít love me?

Joan relaxes and opens, moving out of her thinking mind and allowing the information to come through her from her Guidance. This Guidance is always here for us and we can access the information when we are open to learning about the truth and about loving action toward ourselves. It takes some time, but eventually Joan receives the following information:

Higher Guidance: Sometimes Justin works late because he has a lot of work to do and it has nothing to do with you. Sometimes he works late because he is afraid of your blaming and nagging. He loves you, but he doesnít always feel loved by you, and his way of dealing with feeling unloved by you is to stay away.

One way we know what is true and what is a lie is how it makes us feel. When Joan tells herself that Justin doesnít love her, she feels alone and afraid. When she tells herself the above truth, she feels clear and peaceful.

Joan asks her Guidance: What are the loving actions toward myself? What actions would be in my highest good?

Higher Guidance: Instead of focusing on what Justin is doing and how much time he is spending with you, focus on what would be fun for you to do when he is late. His being late gives you a chance to catch up with your friends, to read, and to do the creative things you enjoy doing. You can also take the dance class you have wanted to take. You will feel much better when you just take care of yourself instead of making Justin responsible for you. He will want to spend more time with you when he sees you happy than when you are always unhappy and complaining.

In the final section of this series, we will see what happens with Joan as she moves through Steps 5 and 6 of Inner Bonding.

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5 Relationship Killers and How to Avoid Them

Posted on April 8, 2013 by admin

As a relationship counselor, I am constantly being asked why so many relationships fail. In the 37 years that I have worked with couples, I have discovered five major relationship killers:

CONTROLLING BEHAVIOR

Most people enter a relationship with a deep fear of rejection, and this fear motivates various forms of controlling behavior. Controlling behavior falls into two major categories ñ overt control and covert control.

Overt control includes many forms of attack, such as blaming anger, rage, violence, judgment, criticism and ridicule.

Covert control includes compliance, enabling, withdrawal, defending, explaining, lying and denying. Often a person at the other end of attack will respond with some form of covert control in an attempt to have control over not being attacked.

Controlling behavior always results in resentment and emotional distance, bringing about the very rejection that it is meant to avoid.

RESISTANCE

Many people enter a relationship with a deep fear of being engulfed and controlled ñ of losing themselves. The moment they experience their partner wanting control over them, they respond with resistance ñ withdrawal, unconsciousness, numbness, forgetfulness, and procrastination.

When one partner is controlling and the other is resistant ñ which is really an attempt to have control over not being controlled – the relationship becomes immobilized. Partners in this relationship system feel frustrated, stagnant, and resentful.

NEEDINESS

Many people enter a relationship believing that it is their partnerís job to fill their emptiness, take away their aloneness, and make them feel good about themselves. When people have not learned how to take responsibility for their own feelings and needs, and to define their own self-worth, they may pull on their partner and others to fill them with the love they need.

SUBSTANCE AND PROCESS ADDICTIONS

Most people who feel empty inside turn to substance and process addictions in an attempt to fill their emptiness and take away the pain of their aloneness and loneliness. Alcohol and drug abuse, food, spending, gambling, busyness, Internet sex and pornography, affairs, work, TV, accumulating things, beautifying, and so on, can all be used as ways to fill emptiness and avoid fears of failure, inadequacy, rejection and engulfment. And they are all ways of shutting out your partner.

EYES ON PARTNER’S PLATE

Many people are acutely aware of what their partner is doing that is causing relationship problems, but completely unaware of what they are doing. For example, you might be very aware of your partnerís resistance or withdrawal, but totally unaware of your own judgmental behavior. You might be very aware of your partnerís anger, but completely unaware of your own compliance. You might be very aware of your partnerís addictive behavior, but very unaware of your own enabling. As long as your eyes are on your partner instead of on yourself, you will continue to believe that if only your partner changed, everything would be okay.

RESOLVING RELATIONSHIP KILLERS

All relationship killers come from fear ñ of inadequacy, of failure, of rejection and of engulfment. As long as you are coming from any of these fears, you will be behaving in one or more of the above ways.

The way out is to develop a loving adult self who knows how to take full responsibility for your own feelings and needs. You will move beyond controlling, needy and addictive behavior only when you learn how to fill your self with love and define your own inner worth. When you are willing to take your eyes off your partnerís plate and turn your eyes fully on yourself, you can begin to do the inner healing work necessary to heal yourself and your relationship.

A good place to start is to download our free Inner Bonding course and begin to practice the Six Steps of Inner Bonding. The daily practice of these steps will move you out of your addictive and controlling behavior and into the personal responsibility necessary to heal your relationship.

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Making Marriage Work, Part 3

Posted on March 28, 2013 by admin

In Part 2 of this 5-part series, I offered a simplified version of the Six Step healing process of Inner Bonding:

1. Willingness
2. Choose the intent to learn
3. Dialogue with the feelings
4. Dialogue with your Higher Power
5. Take loving action
6. Evaluate the action.

Part 2 described what it means to be in Step One ñ what it means to be willing to feel your feelings and take responsibility for them, rather than turn to protective, controlling behavior.

We will now move on to Step Two: Choosing the intent to learn.

In Step Two, you open to learning about the your thoughts, beliefs and behavior that are causing your pain. You let go of believing that it is your partner who is causing your pain and you are willing to take full, 100% responsibility for your feelings of fear, anxiety, anger, hurt, rejection, abandonment, numbness, guilt, shame, aloneness or depression. In Step Two, you open to your Higher Self so that you can compassionately embrace your painful feelings and learn about what you may be doing to cause them.

For example, Joan feels angry, alone, rejected and abandoned because Justin spends a lot of time at work. Joan has been nagging Justin, judging him for his long hours and blaming him for her feelings. The result of this is that Justin has gotten even busier. He is obviously going into resistance, not wanting to be controlled by Joan.

Joan is using her anger and blame to avoid feeling her pain. She is addicted to having her eyes on Justin and making him responsible for her feelings. When he spends time with her, she feels happy and worthy, and when he doesnít she feels anxious and insecure.

If Joan were to practice the Six Steps of Inner Bonding, she would start with Step One – welcoming and compassionately embracing her anger, aloneness, fear and resentment. She would be with these feelings just as a loving parent would be with a hurting child ñ with deep kindness and compassion toward herself.

Then, instead of going into her usual protective, controlling behavior of blaming Justin for her feelings with her anger, nagging and complaining, she would move to Step Two, opening her heart to learning about what she might be telling herself and how she might be treating herself that is actually causing her own pain. She would open to her older, wiser inner self, her Higher Self, to help her stay open to learning. She would choose to be curious about her own beliefs and behavior, rather than judgmental toward Justin or herself.

When Joan moves into Step Two, she is moving out of being a victim and into personal responsibility. This intent shift will immediately begin to change the interactions between Joan and Justin. When Joan shifts her intention from trying to control Justin with her anger, blame and complaints to learning about herself, her energy will completely shift. Justin will actually feel this energy shift, even if he is not in the same room as Joan. Energy is not local. We all unconsciously pick up when others are angry with us and when they are accepting and loving.

This intention shift is vital for healing a troubled relationship. As long as your eyes are on your partner and you are trying to get your partner to change to make you feel better, you will continue to have a dysfunctional relationship. At those times when you are willing to feeling your feelings and open to learning about how you are causing them, you will notice that your relationship quickly improves.

The shift out of trying to control your partner and into learning about loving yourself is one of the most major shifts you can make in your relationship.

In Parts 4 and 5, I will continue through the Six Steps of Inner Bonding, showing you how Joan uses these powerful Steps to heal her relationship with Justin.

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Common Marriage Problems – Jealousy

Posted on February 18, 2013 by admin

Jealousy in marriage is destructive, a real relationship killer and one of those common marriage problems that needs to be resolved.

In you let feelings of jealousy develop and escalate the mind will run wild, imagine the enemy around every corner, question everything your partner thinks, says and does. In worst case scenarioís unresolved and unchecked jealousy has developed beyond the end of a relationship, into a long-term vendetta and in extreme cases extended to the loss of life.

As much as we would like to deny it, most people struggle with jealous emotions at some point in their lives and, in marriage, it is a one of those common marriage problems that can develop from feelings of insecurity or neglect.

We now live in a society where marriages are often as a result of a second, a fifth or any number of relationships and are, in many cases, second or subsequent marriages. This is just society as we now know it but it can leave spouses insecure, especially when a previous partner is still around, and particularly in the case when children are involved.

People can enter into marriages with so much previous baggage that it often hard to settle into a secure, trusting environment full of self worth and self-belief.

Marital jealousy develops from numerous situations and no matter how much you try and tell yourself there is no need for concern your mind just doesnít listen and all the while your partner continues with the behaviour that is instilling the feeling of insecurity throughout your very soul.

ï Some people are natural flirts who draw the opposite sex like magnets, which, once the ring is on the finger, leaves partners totally insecure and just waiting for the moment when they are dumped for the next person that comes along. The partner who flirts often has no idea what impact their actions have on their relationship. They donít actually believe that they are doing anything wrongs but perceive their actions to be friendly and not harmful.

ï No one could ever be accused of being unnecessarily jealous in the case of infidelity beyond which, if the marriage survives (and in many instances they do), strong measures need to be put in place to enable the cheated partner come to trust their partner again and control the feeling of jealousy.

ï Following the break up of a marriage children need to feel that the split isnít as a result of anything that they have done. This leaves parents over protective, desperate to make amends for one parent environment and often at the expense of new relationships.

ï Another of the common marriage problems is that husbands feel neglected when a new baby arrives no matter how much they wanted the child in the first place. A babyís mere existence is totally life changing with more attention towards the child and a complete ënose diveí in marital relations. With the bond between mother and child being that much closer it can leave fathers feeling neglected, unwanted and a total spare part.

With friends of mine the jealousy actually worked the other way with the wife feeling totally trapped after the birth of their first child and her husband spending all his time looking after the baby. She just yearned for the life they had prior to children when they enjoyed a good social life and spent all their free time together.

ï Too much time at work can leave your partner feeling very insecure, especially when your hours at work increase and you spend less and less time at home for the sake of your family but if we think about it is it really for the sake of the familyÖ..

People get fixated on their goals and have no concept on how this is perceived or how it impacts on their relationship and their family life.

Without the 100% backing of both parties, long hours and continuous travel can prove to be a real relationship killer and, if left unchecked, one of those common marriage problems from which there is no return.

The list is endless and jealousy in and of itself is not a bad thing, itís strong indication that you really care. The main thing we need to remember is not to let the jealousy consume, arouse fury and become destructive.

If you are suffering from feelings of jealousy look at the cause, question your feelings and determine whether they have any foundation. Is your partner actually doing anything wrong, have they really done anything to drive your jealous emotions or have you just let your emotions spiral out of control.

If the fault is on your side, learning to recognise the fact is the first step towards controlling such an emotional and destructive thought process. It allows you to discuss your fears with your partner, explain how you feel and seek there help in enabling you to over come your jealous emotions, strengthen your marriage and build a more solid foundation for the future.

Communication is the foundation to marital success. If you can learn to communicate then you can express your emotions in a non-confrontational, non-accusatory, understanding and supportive environment.

Donít just blurt your fears out such as ëI think you are having an affairí it might not be true and it will just add fuel to the fire. Explain that something seems to have changed in your relationship, explain what has changed and what makes you think your marriage is different, donít blame, donít get emotional just explain to your spouse what is going through your head and seek their help in trying to sort it out.

One of the most common marriage problems is expecting our partners to always know what we want and how we feel. But even with a ring on our finger we arenít always mind readers, if we havenít communicated our feelings and our partner doesnít know they have, in our eyes, done something wrong, how do we expect them to do anything about it!

Tell them now, save your marriage before its too late. You have everything to gain and nothing to lose. Even if the answer isnít what you want to hear knowledge is power and with knowledge comes the ability to turn your life around.

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Making Marriage Work, Part 1

Posted on January 28, 2013 by admin

(This is part 1 of a 5-part series on making marriage work)

It was Joanís first counseling session with me, but it didnít take long before the tears began to stream down her cheeks. ìIím married to the man of my dreams, but Iím miserable,î she said, reaching a hand up to wipe away her tears. ìWe were so in love and now things are falling apart. We are fighting and distant much of the time. I love Justin and I donít want to lose him, but I donít know what to do. I donít know why this is happening. I seem to be getting angrier and angrier and he is getting more and more distant.î

ìWhat are you angry about?î I inquired.

ìJustin keeps pulling away from me. Heís working longer and longer hours. But even on the weekends when he is home, he just seems to be distant. Heís either watching TV, playing computer games, or in the garage working in his workshop. When I try to talk with him about it, he shuts down even more. We canít talk at all anymore.î

Like Joan and Justin, many couples are stuck in a dysfunctional relationship system, wondering what happened to the love and passion they had at the beginning of their relationship.

Two major fears may be undermining your relationship with your partner:

Fear of rejection: the loss of anotherís love through anger, judgment, emotional withdrawal, physical withdrawal, or death.

Fear of engulfment: the loss of self through being controlled, consumed, invaded, suffocated, dominated, and swallowed up by anotherís demands.

Until these fears are healed, you will likely react defensively whenever they are triggered. Joan reacted by getting angry when her fears of rejection were activated, while Justin withdrew when his fears of engulfment were triggered. You might react in different defensive ways, but the result will be the same – your reactive behavior coming from your fears of rejection or engulfment will trigger your partnerís fears of rejection or engulfment. Now both of you are acting out of fear. Together you have created an unsafe space where love and intimacy will gradually erode.

Most of us have not learned to stay open when our fears of being rejected, abandoned, engulfed, or controlled are triggered. If, when these fears are activated, you focus on who is at fault or who started it, you perpetuate the problems. Blaming your partner for your fears, as well as for your own reactive, unloving behavior, makes the relationship feel unsafe.

You both end up feeling badly, each believing that your pain is the result of your partnerís behavior. You feel victimized, helpless, stuck, and disconnected from your partner. You desperately want your partner to see what he or she is doing that (you think) is causing your pain. You think that if your partner only understands this, he or she will change – and you exhaust yourself trying to figure out how to MAKE your partner understand.

Over time, passion dries up. Superficiality, boredom, fighting, and apathy take its place.

The dual fears of LOSING THE OTHER through rejection and LOSING YOURSELF through being swallowed up by the other are the underlying cause of unloving, reactive behavior. These fears are deeply rooted. They cannot be healed or overcome by GETTING someone elseís love. On the contrary, you must heal these fears before you can SHARE love – give and receive love – with your partner.

The key to doing this is learning how to create a safe inner space where you can work with and overcome your fears of rejection and engulfment. In this series, I will show you a powerful six-step process you can use to create and maintain the inner safety you need to become strong enough to love.

Only when you have achieved inner safety and inner strength can you create a safe relationship space. Joan gradually learned to stop attacking Justin and take loving care of herself whenever her fears of rejection surfaced. She learned to create inner safety when she felt threatened rather than trying to get Justin to make her feel safe from her fears.

You can do this too. In fact, any two people who are willing to learn to create their own inner sense of safety can also learn to create a safe relationship space where their intimacy and passion will flourish and their love will endure. The rest of the articles in this series will lead you through this six-step healing process.

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Bonding With Your Partner ñ Without Candles, Wine Or Lingerie!

Posted on December 18, 2011 by admin

Summary: Many partners attempt to bond with candles, wine or lingerie, only to find their time together feeling flat, empty and passionless. In this article, discover what really creates bonding, intimacy and passion with your partner.

A journalist interviewed me regarding intimacy in relationships. One of her questions was, What are some of the easy ways in which husband and wife can bond – without a flower delivery, wine, candles, and expensive lingerie?

Easy ways? Well, it depends on what you mean by easy!

Bonding has nothing to do with candles, wine and expensive lingerie. It has to do with INTENT. In any given moment we are in one of two possible intents:

The intent to have control over getting love and avoiding pain

The intent to learn about being loving to ourselves and to others

Virtually all of us have learned many ways of trying to have control over getting love and avoiding pain. We learned these protective behaviors when we were children, and as adults we unconsciously continue these learned controlling behaviors, such as anger, criticism, withdrawal, resistance, or compliance. For most people, these protective, controlling behaviors have become automatic and habitual. As soon as any fear is triggered, we automatically protect against the fear by arguing, blaming, attacking, judging, shutting down, resisting, or giving in. In relationships, the fears of rejection and engulfment ñ of losing the other or losing ourselves ñ generally underlie our protective behavior.

In a relationship, if one or both partners are closed, protected, controlling, then they cannot emotionally connect with each other. No matter how much time they spend together with candles, wine or expensive lingerie, the connection will not be there when one or both are closed and protected. Ironically, when the intent is to get love or avoid pain, what we create is a lack of love and much pain. Our intent to control brings about the very things we are trying to avoid with our controlling behavior.

Our own intent is the one thing we do have control over. We do not have control over anotherís intent to be open and loving, but we do have control over our own intent to be open to learning about what it means to be loving ourselves and to others. However, it takes both people being in the intent to learn for partners to emotionally bond.

If both are open to learning, then they will be emotionally available to each other and can bond with a touch, a smile, or a kind word. Bonding has to do with the energy between them, not with anything external like candles, and the energy comes from their intent. A controlling intent creates a heavy, dark, hard, closed-hearted energy, while the open-to-learning intent creates a light, soft, open-hearted energy.

The big challenge in relationships is to stay open to learning about loving. Because we automatically and unconsciously revert to our protective, controlling behavior in the face of fear, being open to learning needs to be a conscious choice. Developing the ability to make a conscious choice regarding your intent is a learning process. The hallmark of higher consciousness is being able to choose your intent each and every moment, even in the face of fear.

When relationship partners are both able to reliably choose to be open to learning about loving themselves and each other, they create a sweet and safe environment for their love to flourish. Then candles, vacations, and lingerie can enhance their experience with each other and the icing on the cake.

Easy ways to bond? Staying conscious and open to learning is not easy! The concept is simple, but doing it is far from easy. Yet devoting yourself to learning to stay open to learning in the face of fear may be the most fulfilling and rewarding experience in your life!

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Women! Get More Love By Giving Less.

Posted on May 8, 2011 by admin

Any woman can attract a better quality man or inspire the man she has to give her more love, affection and romance, by learning the truth about Overnurturing.

What is Overnurturing? It’s doing too much in a relationship. Giving too much. It’s the reverse of how a relationship works best for a woman.Giving is what men are supposed to do. Women are supposed to receive the love, affection and gifts that men give, and then give love and affection back to them. Though many of us have caught onto this, itís challenging to stop doing what weíve always done, what weíve been told is the way to do things, and to fly in the face of the fallout we fear. So Iím going to tackle one little issue ñ Nurturing.

Nurturing is masculine. If you want to get what he wants to give, stop nurturing your man.

Radical as this sounds, try it. Stop doing. Stop giving. Stop massaging your husbandís feelings. Stop helping your date do the relationship thing and let him flounder until he figures it out. He will.

This whole concept of nurturing is a dilemma for most of us. We think of mothering, nurturing, caring for our young as a feminine aspect of ourselves.

It isnít.

Nurturing and caring for others may be a female trait ñ Motherhood is female ñ but itís still about action! Nurturing is about doing. Giving. Your energy goes out of you and toward or into someone else. When you give, you are acting from a masculine energy place.

We are so accustomed to the idea of nurturing being feminine, we get confused. We think being loving to our men is nurturing them. Massaging their bodies, minds and spirits. There is nothing wrong with the idea of nurturing ñ itís the form our nurturing takes that causes so much difficulty. We are all composed of masculine and feminine (yin and yang) energies. We move through them fluidly at our best, and are stuck in one or the other at our worst.

But most of us are stuck at one extreme or the other. We either give too much all the time and then find ourselves resentful all the time, or we go the other way and make ourselves emotionally unavailable to our dates, our husbands, our boyfriends, and every man we meet.

Too often, our nurturing energies are perceived by men as mothering. Our actions seem intrusive. We seem to be judging them and finding them coming up short ñ otherwise why would they need taking care of? On the other hand, they love attention. Donít we all?

To strike some sort of balance when we are all so mightily out of balance, Iím asking you to pull back to zero. To at least imagine pulling back to zero. The baby steps you actually take may seem huge. When you stop doing for your man what he doesnít need you to do, yet has grown accustomed to your doing, may resent your not doing, and will certainly find himself relieved that youíve stopped doing, things may get messy before they get better. But they will get better.

This is all about Overfunctioning.

What does Overfunctioning and Overnurturing look like?

You come to the door the moment he gets home and ask him how his day went. You offer to massage his neck, his feet, his back because he looks so tired (even though youíre just as tired.) Or you give your date directions to your house before he asks. And you invite him in and offer him something to eat or drink without even knowing what he has in mind for the evening. You offer to cook him a meal when heís barely taken you out to a decent restaurant. You offer sex to your husband, without being asked, and even if youíre not in the mood, because you figure you should. You ask him how he feels, and demonstrate concern for his feelings and moods.

This sounds nurturing, but itís not. Itís mothering. Nurturing a grown-up is giving him what he wants, not what you think he needs. Nurturing a grown-up is not tolerating what you donít want. Not tolerating him treating himself badly or carelessly if itís damaging to you or his relationship with you ñ this means smoking, eating badly, not working, never leaving the house.

And you do it not by telling him what he needs to do and helping him do it, but by telling him how angry it makes you feel when itís happening. Or telling him how good it feels when he does something that makes you happy. Let him figure out how to take responsibility for making you and the relationship happy ñ on his end of it.

This is feminine energy ñ the expression of honest-to-goodness feelings. All the caretaking and fixing and doing and massaging and concern is masculine energy in action, and it will get you nowhere near what you want.

Try it the feminine way. Stop nurturing a grown-up man, and start expressing your feelings moment by moment. The first time is scary ñ but then, youíll see ñ youíll wonder how you ever loved any other way.