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Dating Marriage Separation Divorce Services

July 19, 2010 By Stephen Hedger 1 Comment

I was just having a spring clean of the typical relationship services I offer here in the UK.

If you are experiencing relationship problems Stephen Hedger has Relationship Clinics in Harley Street London, Aylesbury and Haddenham Buckinghamshire.

For an appointment or more information
call now on 0845 519 4808

He offers help, support, and advice on a full range of simple to complex relationship problems. Below is a list of common relationship problems you may have and the solutions that will be focused on during your sessions.

Break-ups

The problem: Dealing with break-ups can be a stressful and traumatic time. You may want to accelerate removing the pain of your break-up, or want to understand why it happened, or maybe you just want your ex-back.

The solution: Whatever you have experienced, the focus will be on helping you rebuild your life step-by-step specifically designed for your happiness. The focus will be on personal growth, confidence, self-esteem, and self-discovery to ensure this does not happen again and you have totally confidence in your future decisions.

Finding Mr or Mrs RIGHT

The problem: Are you struggling to find the right relationship for you? Do you find that you keep meeting the wrong people, or you find that your relationships keep ending and you don’t understand why.

The solution: You will discover how to attract the people who are the best fit for you, combined with understanding why past relationships have failed. This is a journey of self discovery when you learn how to connect with the real you. When someone becomes fearful of anything in their lives then they attract a totally different person than if they were confident and secure. The problem is fearful people are not aware of their fears and so feel fears as a normal way to live.

Relationship Problems

The problem: When persistent problems hit relationships and nothing you do seems to work, getting professional help fast is critical. As each day passes it’s another day of you both attaching insecure feelings to each other and that rocks the foundations of your trust. Without trust there is no relationship.

The solution: You will learn how to understand your problems and deal with them in a positive way with guidance on how to manage future problems, and what it takes to build passionate lasting relationships.

Igniting stale relationships

The Problem: Without realising your relationship can shift from magical passion to humdrum. You may love your partner, but you long for the days of passion, excitement and adventure. When real lives hit relationships the excitement that they felt with each other can fade and so they look for many other ways to fulfil their needs. This could be with friends, family, children, hobbies, work and even affairs.

The solution: You will discover what caused your initial excitement with each other and the steps to getting it back. We can be excited about new partner without knowing why and so when the passion goes we struggle to get it back. Because everyone agrees that over time the passion goes you then assume it’s normal. The reality is you have listened to more people who also don’t know how to keep the passion alive and more importantly what you’re doing to kill it.

One foot out of the door

The Problem: One of you may be feeling that ending the relationship is the only option. In some situations that could the right decision, however, 99% of the reasons the couple want to split, is because they don’t feel good around their partner and they have made their partner responsible for their feelings which they created without knowing.

The solution: If this is the case then the relationship can be saved and grown into the one the couple planned to have. You will discover where your relationship really is, because you’re likely to be seeing it as worse than it is.

Divorce Support

The problem: Divorce can be one of the most traumatic events in a person’s life. Coping with the break-up of a family combined with anger, resentment, lawyers and their cold approach. This can be a daunting and worrying time for anyone as your life seems to be out of your control.

The solution: You will receive support with coping with the divorce itself, and the steps needed to re-building your new life. You will discover how to build confidence, strength and self-esteem into your relationship with yourself so you can trust your decisions and understand with clarity what in your world will give you happiness.

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How To Know Who Is Right For You?

July 18, 2010 By Stephen Hedger 1 Comment

When I was considering this post I remember a young lady who came to me with this very problem. She told me that she really liked this man she was seeing, but she could not seem to get passed that fact he was from what she considered to be a lower social class.

He was also on a lower-income than she was used to, but she was torn because she said she had feeling of love for him, but was considering ending the relationship due to his financial potential.

This was an interesting dilemma, because she had the eyes and pressure of her family and social circle on her, combined with a confusion over her values for what created a successful relationship.

For her and her family money meant security and she knew she wanted security from the relationship. But what she missed was money would never buy her the security she really needed to have a successful relationship. What she needed was love, trust, adventure, passion, a common goal, someone who was committed to her happiness every day. Money couldn’t buy this ever, all money could do was buy things. So she began to understand that a true love was far more valuable than any amount of money.

I had to help her understand how her current understanding of values were stopping her achieving the relationship she really wanted. For example any relationship can come under financial pressure no matter how wealthy you are.

So if a person always has to have security before they will allow themselves permission to love, then the love will always be conditional. A conditional love will always be one that lacks passion, freedom and honesty.

So if you have any doubts about what you need, or about your relationship discover if love is the top value in your relationship, because if it’s not then it needs to change before your relationship can be the one you really dreamed of.

For a relationship to be the right one for you, LOVE has to be the top value you both share.

What comes next is, how can that love grow and last, that question is very individual, but know this, if you don’t discover what you both need the relationship will die.

So feed your relationship the food it needs everyday, when you both commit to doing this, then you know you are in the right relationship.

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How To Get The Man You Want & Keep Him

July 17, 2010 By Stephen Hedger Leave a Comment

There is nothing worse than thinking you have found the man of your dreams only to lose him, and not really understand why.

Most women assume too early on that sleeping with her man is the route to his heart because she is giving him what he wants.

If you want him to respect you, then you have to respect you first. Make him see how valuable you are to him. He will never mind waiting if he really likes you, plus he will see excitement in the chase. When he knows that you only do

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The Chemistry Has Gone Will It Come Back

July 16, 2010 By Stephen Hedger 1 Comment

If you have discovered that the chemistry has gone in your relationship, discover what’s happening and what to do to change it.

People in new relationships experience a powerful natural high where the excitement of a new person they are attracted to drives their hormones so crazy they can‘t think straight.

They feel a massive magnetic pull that seems to be out of their control and so they can’t get enough of each other.

So what is really happening? Nature is very smart…There are explosions of feel good, mood changing chemicals are surging into the body from the  brain. The individuals both love the feelings these chemicals create and so they attach these feeling to each other.

What the couple don’t know is, it’s the feeling that their own chemicals give them is what they like. Their new partner is simply the trigger.

Fears stop the feel good chemicals flowing

This excitement about their new partner will change as soon as one person in the couple starts to create a fear, or insecurity about themselves, or they may fear getting emotionally hurt if they get too attached or can see a future they don’t like.

Their body in this fear state now starts to release a very different chemical, and this one does not feel good at all. They then attach this feeling to their partner and this creates a very different mood between them.

This changes their behaviour and so now what started at as an attachment of passion and excitement is now an attachment of fear that will drive them away from the relationship. This happens in established relationships too.

If they feel too fearful they will stop calling or become distant. This may result in the rejected party chasing to get them back to that fun place.

The more they chase the further and faster they will run. So if this has happened to you, careful communication is critical.

You need to show you care, but allow them space to get over their fears and come back to you when they are ready. If you try to force someone in a fear state to come back they will only attach more fears to being with you!

The great fun sexual chemistry will come back as soon as they are over the fears they have attached to you being with you.

Once they are over this stage and you have helped and respected their feelings and fears then when they come back your relationship will be much stronger than it was before.

So keep a cool head and give your new date or partner, space and time to want to be with you.

I remember in my early 20’s a girl finished with me and so I sent her flowers and thanked her for the time we had and left it there.

Four weeks later she told me she made a mistake and wanted me back.

She created a fear and then made me responsible for it. You can’t control what others do, but you can control how you conduct yourself and if you are always true to who you really are then you can’t go wrong.

Remember: You will only lose the ones that were never right for you.

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Men Are Killing Their Own Sex Lives Without Knowing!

July 15, 2010 By Stephen Hedger 1 Comment

I am calling on all men to stand-up and be a man fast!

If you don’t, you can kiss goodbye to your sex life today!

Why am I saying this? Because men all over the world are confused, and this confusion is destroying their relationships. Whilst the men are trying to workout what’s going on in their relationships the women feel they have no choice, but to take control.

Here’s the thing, your wife or girlfriend wants you to be the man in your relationship. She won’t tell you this directly, but if you do not prove to her you are strong enough to look after her emotional needs then she will have no choice, but to become the man in your relationship, and she will not be happy about that.

She wants you to be the man

Why? Because she wants to be the beautiful desirable woman not the man. She will struggle with being both, but survival always comes first for her, especially if she has children. So if she feels the man is weak, she will worry and so passion will always be the last thing on her mind.

In today’s society you can see women having to get tough everywhere and in all so-called social classes. Single mums for example have to get tough to survive and if they live too long in this masculine roll they get stuck there, afraid to let go.

Then what happens is her masculine persona is in need of balance, and so without knowing she automatically attracts a weaker man. What she really needs is a man stronger than her so she can revert back to being the woman she really wants to be.

But she will not do that unless she is 1000% sure she can trust him to be that man for her, and she may avoid stronger men fearful of losing the control that kept her safe.

Women who are in top jobs experience the same problem, because they have to survive in a masculine world and so they have to act like men that look like women. Tough women love the power they have, but secretly they also long for a strong man.

The hen-pecked husband

Another victim is the hen-pecked husband. How does this happen? What men know and what many women won’t believe is this.

All men want to do is please her. If he discovers he cannot please her he will either leave or stay with her, but give up trying. So if women never show their partners they are pleased with what they do, or they are too controlling, negative, or overly critical, the man will start to compromise himself to try to please her.

She will then feel insecure with him and so she may cause massive rows that to a man make no sense. But her message to him is clear. You are putting this relationship at risk if you cannot even stand up to me, a woman, and prove to me everything will be OK.

She sees his behaviour as a lack of strength, and so her respect for him will start to diminish and so the beaten man gets weaker and weaker and she ends up loving him like a child. Telling him off and putting him down. It does not take a rocket scientist to know their sex life is going to be a dead one.

So men, the lesson is clear.

She needs the strength of a real man, one she can depend on no matter what happens. A man who will always be there for her, forever. When she feels this security from him only then will she let go and become the feminine woman, very happy to help him  become the man you both can enjoy.

Become who you are designed to be, and watch your relationship and passion come alive. Live in the wrong versions of yourself and expect pain misery, and that‘s right! Zero passion.

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Why Women Take So Long To Get Ready To Go Out

July 14, 2010 By Stephen Hedger Leave a Comment

Women take forever to get ready for everything and frustrated men spend hours of their lives pacing, waiting for them to emerge. Is there a possibility that the men fuel the wait? Relationship coach explains what happens and why.

Have you ever noticed that when your wife/girlfriend is getting ready to go out with you, she will change into many outfits trying to get the look just perfect.

You know that she always looks great, but every time she asks your opinion, no matter what you say she nearly always changes outfits and combinations and colours, bags and shoes, hair up or down. Too much flesh or not enough.

Whilst the combination to the perfect outfit is being deciphered you know you’re going to be late. You can feel yourself becoming agitated and even though she knows this, she still keeps changing more and more.

The changing becomes accelerated the more you say you like it and the later you become.

So! What starts off as a fun evening out is now a night filled with tension.

Here is the deal guys: It’s your behaviour that made her late and I’ll tell you why.

What she looks like is not the key to speeding things along. What’s important to her is how she feels about how she looks, that is the secret.

So if she asks you what looks better the red shoes, or the black ones? If you tell her the red ones are the best, you are slowing her down, or if you say the black ones are best you are still slowing her down.

Confused!? This is why… This is your lesson gentlemen!

By making a choice of just red or black, does not help her to feel anything. She has to feel some thing good before she can make a decision and so she starts to feel confused.

Confusion helps her to feel worse, combined with thoughts that you don‘t care about how she looks. This is proved by your lack of interest and anger at her for wanting to look beautiful for you. So maybe this could be an underlying  relationship problem. Now she’s really driven to look really amazing which is going to take much longer for her to achieve.

Do you see what you did…! You put the foundations of the relationship into question.

Here is what you should have said: But take your time and have a really good look, she will notice if your attention is not on her.

  • “The red ones are best because they make your legs look a lovely shape and that really shows off your figure.”

Or

  • “I love you in the red shoes because it reminds me of our second date in Oxford.”

Or

  • “I have always loved your legs and the red ones make them look amazing because they look so long and sexy!”

NOW She knows that she has your total attention, and now she trusts that you love her enough to want her to feel good about herself. You share in her priority which is to look and feel good. Now she can relax knowing that she has achieved what she wants and she has feeling of security with you too.

Remember she would rather turn up late looking amazing than on time feeling that she looks a wreck. In fact if she doesn’t feel good about herself, then she may not go out at all, because her evening would make her feel awful about herself and a whole evening of that is far too painful to entertain.

The word “because” is a powerful word for her here and the evening is likely to be now one that you’ll love too, because now she feels slim and sexy and she has attached those feeling to you.

This simple lesson is the secret key to your woman. Understand what she wants to feel and then help her to feel that.

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Negative Emotions Feelings & Behaviours

July 13, 2010 By Stephen Hedger Leave a Comment

When a person displays negativity in any situation it can be a destructive force that affects all around them.

Negative people are conditioned, either through their parents or through other life experiences to always focus of the bad side of life.

These people will seek out other negative people who are also lost and do not have the answers to their life problems to moan to. In fact their connection with each other is based on their love of talking about all that

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Affairs & Why They Happen

July 12, 2010 By Stephen Hedger 1 Comment

When either a man or a woman in a relationship embarks on an affair the reasons are because they believe or feel that their needs are not being met in the relationship.

There is never a good reason for an affair, because if the relationship has problems then the couple needs to address their problems. The answers to their problems are never outside the relationship and the pain affair causes is never worth the perceived pleasure it brings.

The problem is, the emotions that drive affairs are never rational and so affairs will keep happening.

Most assume these needs are sex, but very often it runs far deeper than that, other critical factors to those individuals are driving them to act.

What causes an affair

To start with those that have affairs may not  feel good about themselves, or something, and have attached those feelings to their current relationship. So whatever they are missing they will start to search elsewhere to have those feelings met.

They might not feel significant to their partner and an affair will make that person feel important at that moment. They may not feel secure in their current relationship and so an affair helps them to forget their problems and gives them artificial pockets of security.

They may not feel loved or they could be missing excitement as their own relationship becomes boring.

Or maybe it is as simple as their relationship is lacking the type of passion they want, they either can’t get want they want from their partner or are afraid to ask for it.

If years of feeling this way is added to a relationship that has stopped growing then that relationship will struggle to compete with the excitement of an affair.

It’s true that men are more likely to stray than women because

  1. They are designed to impregnate many women through instinct.
  2. Their minds are built differently to women’s and so the connect between love and sex is not the same as for women.

This is why in affairs women are most likely to break off an affair because they cannot see an emotional future where the man will be happy with just sex.

She will ask

When a woman is a victim of an affair one of her big questions will be, “do you love her?” this is because from a woman’s perspective she is designed to see love and sex as, one of the same, or at least directly connected together.

The man will say about his affair “it meant nothing” when he says this he is telling the truth, because for him love and sex are separate.

In contrast if a woman has an affair and says “…it meant nothing” then because she is designed to see that connection as more than sex then she will not be telling the whole truth.

What’s important is, if you are thinking of having an affair or you are the victim, know that it’s the missing needs in your relationship is what’s driving the affair to happen.

Look after your relationships and do all you can to understand how they work and more than that what you have to do to ensure your relationship stays safe.

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How Can I Survive The Affair? -TRUE STORY

July 11, 2010 By Stephen Hedger Leave a Comment

I recently received a comment on a post I wrote about building trust. This lady writes about her worries about her partners affair. She now struggles to trust her partner and things are getting worse. I am not aware of the total story, however what this lady is going through is very common and so I wanted to share my thoughts based on her words.

She wrote…

I have been with my fiancé for 14 years now.  4 years ago he had an emotional affair.  We decided to try and rebuild our relationship as we both accepted that we had made little effort in the preceding months.  However since then I have found it almost impossible to trust him again.

He continues to keep secrets from me and these secrets always involve a text “friendship” with a younger woman.  I have frequently told him how this makes me feel (as this is how the affair started) but he is adamant that he has done nothing wrong; my view is that if there was nothing to these texts he wouldn’t feel the need to delete all evidence from his phone.

He regularly promises to stop texting these women but it rarely lasts and I have started obsessively checking his phone and phone bills again.  I know my behaviour doesn’t help but I was completely taken by surprise when he cheated on me and I can’t help but think that the only way to avoid that sucker punch again is to be vigilant.

Lately our relationship has started to deteriorate significantly, our sex-life is non-existent because the lack of trust and ever increasing frustration and anger I feel at these continuous lies gets in the way.  Recently things have come to a head, neither of us is happy although we love each other very much.  I just feel worn out and want to stop feeling the way

I do – even if that means ending the relationship.  I simply cannot contemplate feeling this way for the rest of my life. The thought of being without him makes me feel ill, I really don’t think I could love anyone else as much but I’m at the end of my tether and just don’t feel strong enough to really fight for our relationship.

Help.

This is my response

Of course I only have one side of the story and so my response maybe a little slanted.

My first impression  is the amount of fear that is driving you both. The fears you are both experiencing are so powerful, that they will not allow you both to be who you really are. You have both fallen in love with the real versions of each other, but your fears are creating behaviours that are destroying the relationship.

I know the affair is a painful and terrible experience, but it is a symptom of a deeper problem that needs to be solved if you want the relationship to survive.

You know the relationship is wrong as it is, but something is stopping you getting past a block you have both created. This is why you are still together living in this painful place.

This means the relationship becomes stuck and in your case for 14 years. Afraid to commit together and now too afraid to leave.

Something has to break the cycle of fear to remove your pain to give the relationship a chance. The fear is created because the needs of the individual(s) in the relationship were not being met. Or one or both of you believed that your needs in the future would not be met by this relationship.

Either way there is a belief in your relationship that fears it would not make one or both of you happy.

Understanding each other needs and beliefs is critical to you both at this point because…

These constant fears have driven you both to start to resent each other and so the relationship starts to suffer. You admit you both put little effort into the relationship and so it started to die. Any relationship that stop growing will start dieing and so the result in this case has been an affair.

For him his needs have not been met in the relationship and so too afraid to leave, he looks to have his needs met outside of the relationship. If the needs of any relationship are not met then some kind of trouble is likely, an affair is just one behaviour that can result.

You will also have deeper needs which will be met in other ways other than through the relationship. You may be connecting or looking for love from family, friends or children.

How ever you are both getting your needs met if they are not with each other then the trust will be going or gone between you.

When the affair was discovered you were too afraid to end the relationship and so you have no choice, but to accept the affair and are very likely to search for what you did wrong to make the affair possible.

Because none of the fears and worries have been removed from the relationship he has started to resort back to his old pattern of seeking the good feelings he gets when he is with other women.

He knows this hurts his you, but he won’t stop because he wants to feel good, and he has learnt to show you  a lack of respect over time and now this is acceptable to him. Fearing a split you will not give him an ultimatum and so you are left with complaining and you know this drives him further away from you.

By accepting his new behaviours and keeping him in your relationship, you are teaching him that his behaviours are OK, so he has no reason to change what he is doing. At the moment his feeling are the opposite, it is more painful to him to stop seeing these women so he will defend his right by saying that nothing is going on.

So on one level you feel that you should trust him, but your fears of his affair have driven you to check up on him. Your life is becoming consumed with all that’s wrong and you are becoming understandably exhausted.

This is clearly no life for you both.

And as soon as the pain for either one of you becomes greater than the fear of leaving, then one of you will leave the relationship.

My question is this: I wonder what this relationship would look like without the fears. This you say you love each other and I believe you.

You have just not found away to meet each other needs and this is what’s driving your fears for the future.

When you can find away to meet each others needs on all levels, he will no longer want to be near other women and you will discover how to rebuild your trust and get you passion back.

So the answer is, understand the drivers behind your fears. Understand both your critical needs and make meeting them your life’s mission.

Then you will gain respect back for yourself and live a future that is happy and fear free.

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Relationship Test – 6 Questions

July 8, 2010 By Stephen Hedger Leave a Comment

Complete the relationship test below to discover why your relationship may not be as good as it could be.

If you have any questions about this test then please contact Stephen Hedger Relationship Coach click here

How does your relationship measure up?

Take a few moments to score your relationship below now!

Score yourself from 1-10
1 = never fulfilled  -  10 = totally fulfilled

These questions are about how you feel about what you receive from your partner and if your core needs are being met. If you are unhappy this will start to explain why and in what areas.

Print this page out if that helps

Question 1

How secure does your partner help you to feel in your relationship?

(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9) (10)

Question 2

Does you partner help you to feel excited about your relationship and future together?

(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9) (10)

Question 3

Do you feel that you are the most important part of your partners life?

(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9) (10)

Question 4

How much love do you feel you receive from your partner?

(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9) (10)

Question 5

Do you feel that your partner is helping to grow your relationship to keep it alive?

(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9) (10)

Question 6

Does your partner give to you and asks for nothing in return?

(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9) (10)

Your scores

Remember these scores are from your own perspective and are therefore up for discussion with your partner, but what you feel is important and can fuel decisions. So find out where you really are in your relationship before you start pressing destruct buttons.

***The scores below are meant to be a guide only, so if you are unsure seek professional help.***

If your scores were 48-60 – Then you are in great shape. Keep an eye on those scores that were lower and ensure that you keep doing more of what is clearly working and do your best to get 10′s all round.

If your scores were 30 – 47 – Then your critical relationship needs are not being met and so this may be causing you to have problems. Look at the areas that are the lowest and see if together you can start to change the behaviours that are causing these problems.

If your scores were below 30 – Then you might be thinking about the chances of you both surviving. You are probably spending more and more time apart. If you are in this place all is never lost and with the right help you can discover the passion you once had for each other.

What did you discover?

Successful relationships can only happen when the core needs of both people in the relationship are being met. The most successful relationships work when the scores to all these questions are high.

This will give you a good snap shot of where your relationship is today and the areas which need help.

If you have scored your partner low, find out why you feel this way and how you can work together to fix this problem you are now both aware of .

There’s more

You can do the test again yourself and mark how you think your partner would score you. Then let them take the test and see how your answers compare.

Please feel free share what have discovered below.

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