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Are you unhappy with the way your marriage has been? Maybe you feel trapped and you want to leave, but guilt keeps you together.
You may feel cheated that you were promised one thing and now you have something different.
You may feel you partner is selfish, or just focused on what they want.
You could feel insignificant or you could feel your partner is just lazy or uncaring. [Read more...]
I love my partner, but it’s just not working anymore! Is this you? If you and your partner love each other, but are just not getting on there is good news for you.
With the right focus and understanding a very fast shift can put you both back on track. You see most couples come for help far too late and so it just takes longer to build up the trust, respect and rebuild that intimate connection again.
So if they leave it too long they will feel so numb that leaving the relationship now feels far less painful and so an attractive option so please don’t ignore problems and never assume they have gone away. Many men have sat in my sessions very upset to have been asked for a divorce when they never knew there was a problem.
The reality was they thought the problems had gone away months or years before, but within her the problems were getting bigger, but she had stopped communicating because she saw no point.
So if you are still in love with each other, but are struggling NOW is the time to deal with this. These are the key signs to look out for… [Read more...]
As we grow from children into adults we are conditioned that if we work hard get a good education we’ll have the opportunity to create the lives we want.
So we put 1000’s of hours into developing our professional skills in our quest to get the lives we want.
So my question is this if education is so critical, why do we expect our relationships to happen naturally with no education?
How is it even possible for two people to meet have no relationship building skills and expect their relationship to last? [Read more...]
No matter if you’re dating, or you have been together for years being understood is one of her biggest needs. If she feels he doesn’t understand her, this can scare her, it can help her to feel lonely, unloved, uncertain and that she doesn’t matter to him.
If it goes on for long enough she can feel numb and detached from herself and him in the relationship.
She will know she has changed and will feel he has too. [Read more...]
Many men in my sessions are surprised to discover that their partners do not communicate a large percentage of what they really feel.
Many women hold back their true feelings to protect their relationship. They know that if they communicated how they really felt their partners would not cope. These women may have usually tried communicating in the past, but their partners used emotional responses such as anger, frustration, escape to rebalance the situation. [Read more...]
This is a basic skill without it your relationship will suffer. Anyone entering into a relationship or in a committed relationship today needs to ask this question quickly…. “how can I add value to my relationship”
In other words the question needs to be “what can I give?”
Anyone going into a relationship with the focus on “what am I going to get” will discover their relationships are problematic and their intimacy dies quickly as a result. [Read more...]
The most common symptom of a struggling relationship is when the passion/intimacy dies. Sex in a relationship is a powerful barometer of how the relationship is really doing.
Everyone expects the passion to be heightened when they first met, but unfortunately the view is that over time it dies and this view seems to be widely accepted.
The reality is this does not have to be the case, if it has died it has died for a reason and that reason is not time. You both have to consistantly do something for your sex life to stop.
So let’s look at the top ten reasons why your sex life could be on it’s way out…
To be fair husbands can feel the same, it can be really frustrating for couples when they are doing all they can to get through to their partners and keep failing. It can feel that their partner really doesn’t care and if this is true then the future and love comes into question.
Most husbands do really love their wives, but they are stuck because they feel whatever they do doesn’t work, he feels powerless in the relationship as she gets stronger to cope with his percieved lack of care.
Your husband doesn’t understand you because he is not female, he wired totally differently to you. In essence men and women are designed by nature for totally different jobs and so automatically experience the world differently. [Read more...]
For example: I remember a man complaining that his partner was not respectful in the way she treated him and spoke to him. For him to feel respected he had to feel loved. This means love was more important to him than respect.
We now know love is an important value to him, so unless he felt important he wouldn’t give his love to her as a punishment. He didn’t want to reward her behaviour.
Of course this scared her and so she became more anxious resulting in her communicating her fear which is translated by him as not being respectful and unloving. [Read more...]
Many couples wonder if coming to relationship coaching sessions will work and is it worth the effort?
With so much certainty that breaking up was their only option, this couple decided to see if relationship coaching could save their family…
Subject: Thank You
Stephen
I wanted to write to say thank you. There has been a huge turning point in our relationship. We have both worked really hard at following your advice and I have started to allow myself to get close to D physically. We are taking that side of things really slowly as I have many years’ anxiety to overcome but I finally feel that not only can we have a marriage free of the destructive fighting and power struggles we’ve endured for the past few years but we can also have a marriage with physical as well as emotional intimacy.
We both know that to sustain this will require continued efforts on both our parts but you have given us the tools to work with and that is more than half the battle. From where we were a few months ago – with the house on the market and divorce lawyers consulted – to where we are now feels nothing short of a miracle. We both realise that there is still so much love and so much worth saving. It was just all disguised under fear, anger, resentment, loneliness and feelings of disconnect and hopelessness.
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.
With very best wishes
Grace – London
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…
She walked through the door, smiled walked over to me and shook my hand. I thought she had come alone. She turned to face the door, in slowly in walked her husband, he looked in that moment like he was about to be tried for some terrible crime. Wide eyed, almost in shock, eyes dancing around the room looking for danger, he stood paused holding the door handle ready for his escape.
This was one entrance I will never forget and the more I spoke to him I could see why he was so fearful. He had been handed divorce papers two days before, he knew there was a problem, but had no idea how to fix it, he wanted to make her happy, but to him it seemed impossible so his solution was to keep his head down it might make it’s self better. Of course it didn’t and never would.
The reason they were in my session was at the moment she handed him the divorce papers he went into melt down, totally panicked. She was so shocked by his reaction and deep love for her, because she thought and was 100% convinced he didn’t care about her at all and so now she was confused.
You see he thought that because she had given up complaining she must be alright now. Even though deep down he probably knew she wasn’t. He had decided it was to dangerous to rock the boat, as he didn’t want her to spend hours crying and shouting at him. This irrational behaviour in her only frustrated him to the point of anger which meant he would scream at her and storm off for the night to his office or into the bottom of a bottle. She hated the arguments and saw it was getting them no where so she became internally focused and alone. Over time resentment, loss of respect and mild depression took over her.
So the end result was she was totally convinced he didn’t care and so went to her parents and friends for support. This became a source of more problems as he started to feel he was not important and 6th inline for her love and affections.
She withdrew over time her love and intimacy and he controlled whatever he could and they stayed stuck in this place for years.
In some ways many couples I see mirror this couple.
He ended up seeing her as tough and unloving and she saw him as weak and incapable of being the man she had always dreamed of. In fact for her he was like having another child in the house.
Couples today and over the past 40/50 years know how to attract each other, but have very little idea how to grow a relationship so it not only lasts, but the passion stays and get better every year.
They seem to accept that intimacy goes over time and relationships get stale and that’s ok. This is a myth told by those who are lost.
Growing up most couples only relationship education is their parents and movies and maybe books.
In other words the education is poor, with no education what results would you expect? Yes of course poor ones. You see nature is great at creating the chemical reaction to attract us to our mates, but that initial reaction that is automatic within us all goes and so what happen next is critical.
If you know what to do you can keep those feelings going, unfortunately most don’t, most get out of relationships, those that are left make do with passionless relationships, and a small percentage have got lucky and know the secret.
You see men today have become weaker, they have no idea how to use their masculine energy to bring out the feminine energy in her. Even the toughest business women that enter my session want to be feminine with their partners. BUT if a female is with a partner she perceives as weak she has no choice but to become strong almost masculine inside.
This process disconnects her to the point she feels different and sees the man she once loved as whet and child like.
You must have seen that many comedies are based around the beaten up husband and the masculine wife ordering him around.
My job in the session is to help the men understand how to reclaim not only their masculine energy back, but how to claim the relationship back. You see the biggest problem is not that men don’t want to support their partners in the way they want, they just don’t know how. Many women don’t know how to communicate to men their really needs in a way which makes sence to him, and so the breakdown in communication frustrates them both to separation and divorce.
The reality is it’s really not difficult to help and correct these problems and I have had many one session successes.
If you have connected to today’s post please feel free to comment below or better still come and see me, you learn how to help each other to get back the relationship and the passion you once shared.
Loss of passion, loss of desire, loss of attraction. Relationships do not work well when intimacy goes. The relationship becomes vulnerable because sexual attraction is one of the key elements in a loving relationship.
If your relationship is suffering and your intimacy has died this cannot be ignored because this can cause real problems.
Without the sexual intimacy the couple becomes friends at best, so this really has to change if there is a desire to get the relationship back on track.
The sexual problems that most couples face are not medical, they are based on fears and control. Both men and women can choose to withhold sexual intimacy in their quest to control the power in the relationship.
Of course this never works whilst they might win the sexual battle, the war against the fears is being lost, because the fear that drove them to control is likely to come true.
Withholding love of any kind to control gain power, or punish your partner never works and will lead to relationship disaster separation or divorce.
Some people will lose interest in sex with their partner due to a lack of their core needs not being met.
It’s very common for a female to lose desire, or attraction for her partner if she feels uncertain when she looks at what her future will look like with him. It’s very common for men to lose interest if they feel they can never please their partners.
Yes of course, once the reasons behind the fears, or the withholding are understood they can then form part of the solution for that couple.
If you want to ensure you keep your relationship alive, this is important to know. 100% of couples that come to me share this problem and many of them believe that their only option is to split-up, or divorce.
I totally agree that not all couples are designed to be together, but I also know, because I see it everyday that many relationships can be saved once they know how to do this one critical thing.
Before I share this I want you to cast your mind back to when you first met and what lead you to decide that your partner was right for you. You see this one critical thing was present when you first met each other. What happens with most couples is not their fault, because they don’t know what is really working and so they stop doing it as time passes, and life takes over. Work pressure, money, children, friends, parents, hobbies everything starts to take over and the relationship takes a back seat.
So what you both did that worked has now stopped dead. The relationship stopped growing months, or even years before and even though you noticed a shift, it didn’t worry you until you started to feel that something was very wrong.
Some people have physical symptoms that join in to make the worry seem worse, churning stomach, numbness, empty feeling, face hurting, neck hurting, back problems etc…
For those that experience these types of feelings your body is giving you a clear message to make a change in your life, because it is picking up that you may not be safe where you are.
At this point most people go to destruction of the relationship as they assume that is the change that’s needed.
What’s needed and what most couple stop doing is this critical but simple action: They stopped meeting each others NEEDS.
If your partner feels that you no longer want to meet their needs in the way they want them met, it does not take long for the relationship to grind to a halt. This is dangerous because when couples enter this place, they will through fear start to trade for what they need. This builds resentment and can result in a loss of passion. Loss of passion then leads to lack of respect, and the end is never far away at this point.
You might read that loss of passion/sexual intimacy is the top reason why couples split. Whilst that ended up being the focus of the problem this is not the core issue.
Loss of intimacy in a relationship is just one of the many symptoms that couples experience when their needs are not met. Arguments, power struggles, jealousy, affairs, porn, gambling, holding love back, punishing, controlling, controlling mothers and fathers, the list is endless.
It really boils down to this one key area: NEEDS: If your partners needs are not met they will have to get them met elsewhere. Needs are not nice to haves they are critical.
If the sexual intimacy in your relationship has disappeared what does that make your relationship? The answer is not great, at best, you are good friends!
BUT… does it have to be this way? Of course not…
With the right attention your relationship has every chance of making a full recovery sexually.
The question is this, has what you’ve done so far worked to improve your relationship and sexual intimacy?
If the answer is “NO” now you know what to never try again.
So now what? If you want to ignite the spark of sexual energy back into your relationship you have to help your partner get connected to the right polarity with themselves.
If a woman doesn’t feel like a woman with her partner the chances of sex are slim. The same goes for men.
You will probably notice that many relationships you know have couples living in the wrong polarity. i.e. The woman is more like the man, and the man is weaker and more like the female.
Getting the polarity right in your relationship is sexually volcanic, this is why it works when we first meet, but then we stop doing what works, we wonder where the sex has gone and fear that maybe we are in the wrong relationship?
So if you have been fed the illusion that time equals loss of passion, then you are missing one of the fundamental laws of nature and that is polarity.
Opposites attract: It’s the differences that attract each other, nature has designed us to be different for good reason, but our fears help us to switch roles. Females get stronger when they become fearful and men become weaker in their quest to please their partners.
Once the man discovers his true masculine power, only then will he break through with her, helping her to feel safe to feel feminine again.
If you are a man wanting to know how to break through and claim back your true role in your relationship get in touch with Stephen Hedger Relationship Coach and Marriage expert today!
Or
Maybe you are female and you want your man to learn how to break through with you and keep you safe, so you can release the passion in you again?
Many couples who decide to marry don’t consider looking for guidance with their relationship. After all “…what could possibiley go wrong?…” My job is to help all couples of all ages that have yet to experience what’s to come with their new relationship, avoid the pitfalls. I help couples discover how relationships really last long-term and I don’t mean just last, I mean last with passion.
So here is the a typical myth that exists and is widely accepted. Sex, passion and intimacy dies as times passes… This is totally untrue, and should not be accepted.
Of course if the relationship suffers in any way the first thing to go is the sex. Men discover that as soon as their partner becomes upset any sexual activity grinds to a surprising halt.
Just imagine if you don’t know what to do to keep your relationship growing and alive, your sex life will disappear and you’re now legally tied to the same person possibly with children. [Read more...]
Many relationships are suffering today because as the individuals in the relationship start to feel something is not right for them they use certain behaviours to help them feel safe again.
The behaviours are the tools that individuals have learnt that keeps the relationship together, but in a way that makes them both unhappy.
The couple maybe experiencing a conflict of not knowing what to do. If they stay in the relationship they are in pain, miserable, if they leave the relationship they cannot imagine life without their partner.
The weapons that people use can range from humor to threats to leave, from withholding intimacy to running away.
They use these tools as leverage to get what they want from their relationships. The problems is the weapons or tools are being used to re-balance the relationship from a place of fear.
A fear of life not being the way the individual wants it to be. So the actions and result all come from and create a distortion of the truth in the relationship.
The key to helping relationships is to help the couple feel safe enough and incentivised enough that there is a better way to achieve the security they both desire whilst creating harmony.
Is this happening in your relationship?
One of the questions I get asked as a relationship coach is what makes the difference between an normal or failing relationship and an extra-ordinary relationship or what makes relationships successful?
Apply these simple 3 steps to your relationship every day
When you live in a relationship that is full of two people who understand each others needs to this degree and they are using their energy to make sure their partner is meeting their daily needs, this is a relationship that has no choice but to grow on every possible level.
Both people in the relationship will feel so loved and important to each other, and this will create a security and freedom between them that will enable unconditional love to flourish.
…because they don’t practice those three rules.
If you are in a relationship that just ok, or you seem to be fighting alot and you’re scared for the future, or you would like a partner, but have yet to find one.
The reverse of the above is divorce, separation, affairs, lack of intimacy, lack of trust, lack of respect and plenty of pain…
How to discover your needs
Coaching with Stephen Hedger will help both you and your partner understand what those critical needs are. If you are single then we will discover your needs so you can communicate them to your new partners when you get them.
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
When seeking relationship advice it is important to understand what is going to happen in your sessions. Find out more about how we will help you now by dialing...
