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You know the situation, your partner has assumed you have done something to hurt them. You try to explain that they are wrong and they have misunderstood you, but they won’t listen. Frustrated you end up losing your temper and now the problem is escalating out of control.
What started off as a simple disagreement is now a power struggle where hurt, resentment, disbelief and a loss of love starts to grow.
Both people end up feeling misunderstood and unloved. [Read more...]
Being attractive to your partner is critical, but being attractive is less about what you look like and more about how you behave and treat your partner. I have created over 40 relationship musts for couples that want a passionate relationship that lasts. Below is a sample 15 of those musts .
One of the most disempowering places to be in a relationship is thinking you have no control over what happens when things go wrong.
You know you are a good person, so why is your partner behaving so badly? Why can’t they change back to what it was like when you first met?
Why can’t they understand you, why do they want to hurt you so much?
Many people lose hope because they can’t see a way forward. The key to this problem is to understand what you can control, the one thing you can effectively control is you. [Read more...]
Today I’m going to share with you one of the most profound distinctions i discovered when learning about how to build a successful life. My question was how do we take control of what happen to our lives, what’s the foundation to building a successful relationship, becoming successful in our careers and discovering our true purpose in life.
The answer I discovered is we need to make it our mission to master our understanding of our own internal worlds.
We are conditioned to believe and accept that our outside world is the driver for what we become and what happens in our lives.
This is an illusion that keeps us stuck, because if we feel our outside world has the power to help us feel a certain way then we are powerless within it. I will explain why… [Read more...]
Fulfilling relationships are born from the knowledge of what has to happen for you to create your journey of success together. If that knowledge then forms your focus and your actions it will then become a part of who you are.
Your relationship then has a chance of growth through contribution of what really works.
The two individuals in the relationship are the foundations that support the relationship and so if the foundations are weak then the relationship either will suffer or cannot survive. [Read more...]
…so I went to Stephen for break up counselling.
“My divorce lawyers were worried about me, once I had met Stephen they were so impressed. It helped me to be stronger through the divorce process and more clearer in thought. More able to fight for myself.”
She tells the story of her personal horror, how she was controlled and mentally abused. How she took back control of her future and is rebuilding her identity her strength and her life. [Read more...]
Could we really be addicted to our emotions good and bad? Is it possible to be addicted to feelings that help us feel awful? Could we be behaving in a way that affects the quality of our life through an addiction we are unaware of? Could emotional responses like running away from problems actually give a person what they need at a chemical level with their body and that’s why they do it?
Then this might interest you… [Read more...]
I’m sure you will agree that if the foundations of the relationship are not strong then the relationship is going to suffer.
So what are the foundations?
Do you feel that you are in a constant power struggle with your partner? Is this wearing you out? Do you worry about what the future will look like if this continues?
Control takes many forms, not all control is bad. For example if a man is in control of his ability to passionately love his partner in the way she wants, then this is a form of control that benefits them both.
Control in the negative is usually based around a fear of some kind.
Control is a persons’ method of trying to rebalance their world so they feel ok, if this is based on fears such as losing love, or not feeling they are enough in some way, then emotions can run high and they will control to feel normal or get rid of their pain. [Read more...]
Too many people are trying to control their outside world so they can feel good and this is really hard work. They end up feeling empty and detached from their true authentic self, some confused end up looking for reasons to blame others for how they feel.
Inside they feel that something is wrong so they need to rebalance their world, over time a behaviour is born to cope, it becomes their thing to do when life feels wrong.
What’s interesting is someone in this place will become addicted to a behaviour, but will not make the connection that the behaviour has to be repeated constantly for it to work, so it actually doesn’t work. [Read more...]
She walked into my session with the biggest smile ready to learn more about herself, but this was a very different version of her that I had met just three weeks earlier, so I was naturally curious about what had changed for her.
Three weeks ago she came to a session with her husband and told me she was about to leave him. She didn’t want to go, but for her life with her new baby a 10 month old had become unbearable and this was because of his OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder) behaviour. [Read more...]
Have you ever wondered who you really are? Have you wondered what your life purpose is? Do you feel lost unsure of your direction in life? Maybe you feel your relationship never feels right? Do you notice you are focused on what’s wrong a lot of the time? Or maybe you are avoiding doing things because you are fearful you will get hurt? May be you feel you have to control your outside world so you can feel ok?
If this is you then this is important to know and could change your life…
If you wanted to discover the cure to many of your life problems starting at understanding the immense power of your own values would be a wonderful beginning to a successful life in control of your direction and what happens to you.
Values are the foundation of your emotional life, in other words how you focus and experience the world. If you are not aware of what they are and how they are set-up and working within you, you may find your emotions run you.
Most people are in this place, they live in reaction to their world always moving away from painful feelings, constantly focused internally, going round-and-round in their minds looking for solutions never finding answers. They end up living in smaller and smaller worlds in their quest to control their fears.
The transformation I see clients go through when they understand their values is remarkable, the more extreme their problem the bigger the change they feel. [Read more...]
Couples struggle to fix their problems because they try to fix the problems they are experiencing. They will go round in circles becoming confused, or resigned that their problems will never go away.
I can tell you now… If I focused the couple on these problems as part my solution they would never fix their problems ever!
Unless you know what the real problem is, the problem will remain.
One couple came to me delighted to tell me they never argued, but were confused why their sex life had ground to a halt. Their focus became their dead sex life they blamed each other, but did it by ignoring each other and so they focused on friends, children and work.
The reason their sex life was dead was because there was no energy, polarity, sexual tension or playfulness in the relationship and most of all she didn’t feel safe. We discovered they didn’t argue because both their parents didn’t so they copied without knowing. The arguments would have created energy and passion, but it was missing. So their way of punishing each other took even more energy out of the relationship and so they died as a couple.
So she just nagged him (she had to control something her relationship was dying) and he tried to please her apologising for everything. She slowly became the man in the relationship and he became one of the children. Now he is really unattractive and he feels he has lost his masculinity he just can’t please her, so he spends more time at work to feel good, she now resents him even more.
They ended up barely friends, so their sex life was the victim of many complex challenges they were totally unaware of, if they tried to have sex it would have been a disaster so they just gave up.
Both of them had great intentions, not arguing, pleasing, but these actions destroyed their relationship every day.
They were totally unaware and so they focused on their pain i.e. their dead sex life which of course just brought them more pain.
So you see if your try to fix your presenting problems it may just be as much use as putting a sticky plaster on a broken leg.
Do you know? Unless you know who you are, how will you create a “Life Purpose”? Do you know what your life purpose is? Does this suddenly feel important for you to know?
For most when this question is considered they can start to feel uneasy as they start to realise that the days are flicking by faster and faster. They will notice that they have no real direction and the days just happen to them, so they live in reaction to what the world throws at them.
Life is happening all around them, they are part of it, but they are not in control of a direction that has a meaning defined by them – in essence they are out of control.
Most people like to use label to define themselves, I.E. I’m a Doctor, or a Banker, or a House Wife. These are great, but do those labels really define who they are and is that their life purpose? [Read more...]
This story I am about to share is an amazing example of where we learn our life lessons and how we automatically react to others when they give us pain. What do our instincts tell us to do and what actually works.
My son had a significant life challenge, he had suddenly become the target of school bullies at 12 years old. Physically smaller than many of the other boys he felt vulnerable and powerless to do anything. This was terrifying time for him!
I knew for him he was about to learn an important lesson…
The school has a policy that all bullying has to be reported. So following these rules he reported them. The school instantly punished the bullies and called my wife and I to explain their plan.
The challenge now is that as the bullies were punished my son became more of a target. [Read more...]
This is important to know…
After years of working with couples some interesting behaviours emerge from the couples as certain understandings start to emerge for them.
When a couple are in crisis what happens is they turn up to sessions full of fear.
Some are fearful because their future has disappeared. Some are fearful because of what they have done. Some fear that there is something wrong with them and it will come out in the session.
What’s really interesting is how these fears start to fade as the sessions progress and they start to change their outlook and what they want.
You see the couple start to feel much happier as soon as they start to understand WHY!
Once the individuals understand WHY then they start to relax and feel better. What many people do is try to make their own thoughts fit what’s happened and it’s very easy to be wrong and make the wrong decision, hurting themselves and each other.
Even if they turned up to sessions passionately wanting the relationship to work and clearly discovering that not going to happen. As long as they know WHY they feel they can deal with anything.
What’s great about this new internal state of a calmer self is if the relationship can be saved it is far more likely with this new understanding.
The couple now know what’s happened and their part in the process of destruction. What’s great about this is the couple can clearly see what has to change and this time they are in control.
Understanding why and taking control has a huge impact on the individuals and the dynamics in the couple to move from destruction to growth.
This can happen fast, I have seen many couple shift really fast once they create this new understanding of…
This is why I believe that relationship education is a critical component in the process of helping couples rebuild their relationships. Most couple through no fault of their own are in terrible trouble, and they don’t know WHY!
This brings heightened emotions and fears what’s important to know is it doesn’t have to be this way.
Wouldn’t it be great, if we never had any problems again?
The reality is not all problems are bad, we need problems to motivate us to action, what’s bad is the way in which we view our problems that keep us stuck, for some they remain stuck for years sometimes for life. What’s needed is effective problem solving skills.
You see when individuals come to me for help usually what happened is they have been seeing their problems from only one perspective. That perspective is usually one which makes solving the problem impossible.
For example: Many people are trying to control their outside world so they can feel ok, but the more they try this, the more out of control they feel, because people either reject them, or move away from them. [Read more...]
This lady was very stuck, so stuck her own fears were stopping her fighting to see her own children. Now years had passed and her fear had grown.
To help her I knew I had to help her see her problem differently, in a way which would dissolve her fears and put her back in control of what she could control – her own actions!
After years she has now made contact with her daughter, a wonderful gift at the start of 2012
These are her words….
How do I express the extent and depth of Stephen’s capabilities in assisting with the reversal of destroyed relationships?
I’m not talking about marriage in this case. I’m talking about myself as a mother agonizing for years over the estrangement of my young-adult children. Fear had me paralyzed. Lack of insight and wisdom had me continually groping while remaining hopeless and buried in on-going anguish.
When Stephen started working with me recently, he began by asking simple yet telling questions that, answered thoroughly and honestly, would probe the depths of my pain and shame. I decided to answer thoroughly and honestly.
Stephen went right to work. He delved into letting me know what life has been like for my children, what goes on in their minds, what is at stake and how I need to respond. I have wondered more than once if he’s psychic. Uncanny.
This relationship work is hard. It takes so much courage. But it is no longer impossible and hopeless. There is ground being gained and the first signs of hope and relief have appeared. I still walk in fear, yet it is being steadily replaced with determination and empowerment and positive, effective thinking and action.
For the first time I believe strongly that I will get my children back, that they will eventually be healed and whole.
Thank you, Stephen, for going through the fire with me and holding my hand throughout. It takes so much fortitude, courage, vision and generosity of spirit to do what you do. You are saving lives by diving in where it is most dark and dreary and then somehow bringing forth light, strength and belief.
You bring smokescreens to the surface and expose them for what they are. You get to the heart of the pain and provide a platform from which to work. I now have the attitude that I will get my children back or die trying.
All our lives depend on it.
Fears change people, fears help people behave in ways that contradict how they would behave if the fear was not present. In fact fears help people act in ways which are the total opposite of who they really are at core. A kind loving gentle person can act the total opposite when a fear gets triggered.
It’s like they have totally changed, almost like they are not the same person.
When couples are going through relationship problems what they both experience is the fear version of their partner at play. It can feel like their partner has totally changed from the person you know and love. If the fear happening to you and is strong enough, it can feel like you feel different, almost disconnected in some way. [Read more...]
When couples experience challenges in their relationship one of the first things to die is their intimacy and with it goes the fun and the playful passionate side of their relationship.
Is this where you are? If it is, then you will have a strong feeling that life is not how it is meant to be. You know things have to change, but maybe you’re stuck not knowing what to change.
In my session I see couples in trouble every day and what I consistently see is their spark has gone, there is little fun or joy in the relationship. Life has become very serious and the only place to get any kind of joy or fun is now outside of the relationship with friends family or at work.
Intimacy is the difference between being just good friends or lovers. If you are in a relationship then being just good friends is not going to be enough. So the goal has to be to get the intimacy back and for that to happen the playful passion has to be there.
There are two key things that have to happen if you are going to get you relationship back on track.
When the individuals in the relationship don’t feel understood then they start to feel fear in the relationship. Both men and women can feel this, but for totally different reasons.
Fundamentally men and women communicate differently and so the translation of each others words can be totally different to what was intended.
Men and women also experience the world differently too, we are designed for totally different things so our perspectives are different.
So with so many differences in gender combined with totally different histories is not difficult to understand why couple fail to understand each other.
So the goal is to understand each other and to do it without judgement, a lot of couple have the misconception they are qualified to judged each other, of course they are not.
In every session I have with couples when the needs are not being met in the relationship the relationship will have stopped growing and will be dying on some level.
Of course if the couple don’t understand each other (the first step) then the desire to meet each others needs st0ps being important. If the desire to meet each other needs goes, now the individuals stop seeing each other as a source of pleasure and are in the process of seeing each other as a source of pain.
This puts a serious spin on the relationship and fear is now the focus, a far cry from the playful passion we are all after.
Without the understanding the couple needs to feel safe with each other, combined with the lack of desire the couple now feels to meet each others needs, resentment is now sat in the relationship.
If that resentment stays for too long it will turn into a lack of respect and from here the relationship is vulnerable to many destructive paths.
Now you understand the path to success and the importance of getting this right, what are you going to do? Wait for your relationship to die or are you going to take control?
Remember when you act understand what you are trying to achieve and what feelings are you wanting your partner to attach to you?
Punishing and making your partner wrong will help them to move further away from you.
Just maybe they are as fearful as you, maybe they too have good intentions, but are just lost with how to make this work just like you.
If you need my help you know what to do…
STEPHEN HEDGER:
Marriage Adviser & Divorce Prevention Specialist
10 Harley Street London W1G 9PF
"Your skill as a coach is very special. Anyone who has tried traditional counselling and failed (as we had) should definitely try you before throwing in the towel." Read their story
10 Harley Street
London
W1G 9PF
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