Help Advice Support & Guidance
Reassuring her everything will be okay
Couples who judge each other, or belittle their partners’ emotions will usually find resentment in their relationship and this can be very damaging.
One of the golden keys to a successful marriage is to take away judgment of your partners’ behavior(s).
If he or she feels something, that something is very real to them and even if it makes no sense to you, showing you care about them is critical. [Read more...]
I just don't feel that you care about me?
Is it you?
If anyone in a relationship / marriage feels that someone or something is more important to their partner than they are – there will be trouble.
What’s important to understand it’s doesn’t have to be the attractive female in the office who is just “a friend” or the man down the gym “giving her advice” that can cause problems for relationships. [Read more...]
Couples with problems all suffer from the same basic challenge. You see if a marriage is to survive then the focus of the individuals has to change.
Take a moment and think about the type of relationship that equals the one that you really want, the one that will fill you up, the one that will help you to feel all those emotions you long for.
Now ask yourself another question, who do I have to be to attract that relationship into my life?
Many people are disappointed with the way their partner behaves. [Read more...]
In relationships many couples feel that they are qualified to judge each other. They feel comfortable in making their partner wrong.
This causes conflict…
Let’s be 100% clear, the only person that is qualified to judge you is you!
Any person making their partner wrong, is going to help their partner feel bad and they will attach those bad feelings to the relationship.
Judgments in this way don’t work and are destructive.
You can however judge how you feel and you can communicate that. As long as you don’t blame them for your emotional response.
I.E. When you did that what I experienced was this? This helps to avoid conflict.
It’s very likely your partner is not out to hurt you and will listen to you and respect your emotions.
Persistent judgements will kill the relationship… So don’t judge your partner, love your partner, especially if you want to keep the relationship!
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...]
Many couples hold back giving through resentment and loss of respect. Discover the top ten things that created those feelings for you and share them with your partner.
You partner may be totally unaware of how you really feel so help them understand you better and see what you can learn and that could help you grow..
My Husband and I had problems for over a year, so much so that my husband had moved out.
After 4 months of living separately, we decided to look for a marriage counselor. I did a lot of research on the internet and one day I got lucky and found Stephen Hedger’s website and i instantly liked the style of his coaching. [Read more...]
When couples experience problems in their relationship an automatic pattern usually appears. Couples find they have a need to withhold their love. They do it for two reasons firstly to protect themselves and secondly to punish their partner for the way they have been treated.
This pattern is automatic because we are conditioned growing up to move away from what causes us pain, plus society teaches us to punish a person when they have behaved badly.
The problem with pulling love away is it actually hurts the person who is pulling the love away and to make matters worse it actually hurts the relationship too. [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...]
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.
One of the biggest myths that couples tend to believe in is that the more time that passes the less passion they could expect. This is total RUBBISH and a myth created by those who don’t understand how to keep a relationship alive!
Maybe the myth was created to keep expectations low, just to keep people together happy with mediocre lives. Well the divorce rate proves people are not happy with mediocrity, they want more and I agree. I just disagree that affairs, splits and divorce is always the answer. Not every one can make it work, but knowing what to do makes a big difference.
Lets start with learning how not to do it…
So if your relationship is lacking passion and you have lost the playful side to your relationship there are going to be reasons, below are the top 3.
One of the reasons is going to be understanding, or a lack of it. When individuals in a relationship don’t feel that their partner understands them they feel hurt or pain. If they get too much proof that their partner doesn’t want to understand them, then they start to resent their partner.
Another core reason is needs. If your needs are not met you’re not going to be feeling very playful or sexy. If you feel that you partner is showing no desire to meet your needs then this also compounds the proof that you are not understood.
If the above is how you are feeling the big problem will now be the worry that your partner cannot be trusted to give you want you really need and this may help you to feel that they don’t respect you.
Trust and respect are critical because without it you can kiss your passion goodbye.
Well clearly if the above steps are in your relationship, maybe it’s time to make a change and understand what you are doing wrong and put it right. You need growth in your relationship. Relationships DO NOT stand still. Relationships are either growing or dying.
If you want to keep yours, maybe it’s time to learn how to put that spark back and keep it there forever.
Yesterday we looked at how anyone can reignite the passion in their relationship and can give themselves permission to drop the accepted assumption that Relationships + Time automatically equals a loss of passion.
Many couples I work with, and I see a lot every year all have one thing in common, they are not honest with each other and more importantly they are not honest with themselves. [Read more...]
When couples get into relationship struggles one of the things they do is go in search of more problems and it’s doesn’t take long for them to find them.
They then put meanings to their problems, because as humans we have to make sense of what we think. Because we trust ourselves we then believe the meanings we create, those meanings become unchallenged facts.
Those facts then allow us to become the judge of our partners.
This is one of the most dangerous practices individuals make in their relationships. NO ONE, and I mean no one is qualified to judge the behaviours of their partners.
By all means give feedback on what effect their behaviours are having on you, but never judge them.
Your judgement will be based on your assumption of the intention behind their actions, and viewing their behaviours based on your life experiences and core values. Their behaviours will be based on their life experiences and core values which will be different to yours.
To complicate things further, men and women are designed to experience the world differently due to their inbuilt survival instincts.
So becarefull that some of your judgement is not based on them being in their true gender. This can cause problems as the couple can start to distort themselves to fit into the relationships thus causing even more resentment as a polarity shift can happen and the individuals can then become unhappy or depressed as life is not how it should be.
The woman becomes masculine and the man becomes feminine. Neither happy in these roles, but ironically stuck not wanting to change through fear.
Judgements of others shows you and those you judge little to no respect, values such as respect are important to us, not some of the time, ALL THE TIME!
When you don’t live by what you say you value, trouble, unhappiness, depression, relationship break-ups are never far away.
So…turn your judgments into a cry for help from your partner, that for them something is wrong, and they are telling you because they believe you can help them.
If you knew what they really needed was your help, what would you want to give them now…?
Are you teaching your partner how to hurt you without knowing?
What do you want your partner to learn about you and what’s important to you? Understanding what you teach your partner is critical. Your behaviours to their actions creates the boundaries that are supposed to be keeping you safe secure and happy. So in your relationship you would expect to have basic values such as trust, respect, honesty.
The problem arises when individuals fail to give these basic values to themselves. Many people claim that certain things like “respect” are important then disrespect themselves in their own relationships. The result is potentially catastrophic for them and their relationship.
Many people who attend my sessions are initially confused about setting clear boundaries in their relationships.
If boundaries are not set then what happens you will teach your partners that they can do anything to you and it’s OK. You may complain, cry, scream, throw things, but at the end of the day if they do what they like and you accept it on some level, it’s likely they will do it again.
This can be from little things such as being taken for granted to full blown affairs.
I have seen the most angelic people men and women taking advantage of their partners lack of boundaries, to degrees you would not believe.
This happens because even the most outwardly honest, kind and gentle folk have the capability to go to a place of fear when life does not feel right for them. From this place all that is important to them becomes unimportant in the moment and they can do the most destructive things, they openly admit they are ashamed of.
This is why understanding your core values for life is critical, because when you know your values they will tell you why you feel so bad.
If you feel bad your values will tell you specifically what has happened and why. You are then armed to communicate that to your partner. This level of communication will create a secure, respectful and honest behaviours in both of you.
If more couples would communicate honestly to their partners as things do not feel good, then this would make creating boundaries easier and avoid accumulation of resentment and fears.
I cannot stress enough how important this is to your relationships and your life.
Without knowing you could be teaching your partner how to destroy your relationship because you fear them leaving you, so you’re afraid to be honest with them.
When you do not respect, trust and love YOU how can you expect your partner to.
Far too many people run their relationships from a place of fear. I have seen enough evidence that fear in relationships creates the very thing the individual fears. Plus even if they do manage to stay together, they will always feel that something is not right.
When this happens the passion suffers.
Tell your partner what is critical for you to have in your relationship. Critical means that if you don’t have it the relationship will suffer. For example “I need to be able to trust you” or “I need to feel respected and important to you” Tell your partner what you need, and how they can be successful at giving it to you. When you don’t feel you are getting what you need tell them why.
Most of all, be consistent. If one day you accept behaviours you don’t like, and other days you don’t, you are creating confusion.
Remember your boundaries are there to protect you and to help you grow harmony in your relationships from a place of respect and honesty both for them and you.
With the right boundaries you will feel safer, not only in your relationship, but safer that you can trust you, to respect you and give you what you need to be happy.
I’m sure that when the word truth is spoken we can all agree that truth and honesty is something we all value and respect highly.
Many people come to coaching with a set of beliefs that they think are true, only to discover that their truth is actually a mask, and their real truth is very different and hiding behind their deepest fears.
In fact they believe their made-up truth so much they will live in a mask for many years. Deep down they know something is wrong, but to focus on the reality is far too painful and so they put it off… until something snaps and just living each day becomes painful.
So they avoid the focus on their real feelings and to be happy they distort and delete parts of their lives in a quest to rebalance some level of normality.
The problem is, from this state of fear people are only able to limit their true self. So the quest to rebalance their lives is an illusion they give themselves, that ends up being a fact in their own minds.
The illusion is not their truth and so individuals become unhappy and depressed and don’t know why. Their values are screaming a message, unhappiness and depression is the message that you have to change or this will get worse.
Listen to the messages because they are there for a reason. If your body gets hurt and you feel pain you stop what you are doing and you go to fix it.
Being unhappy emotionally is no different, but because there is no physical damage we assume we cannot fix these emotional problems and this puts us into a state of learnt helplessness.
In fact you can feel so unsettled by a conflict of values that it will wake you at 3am to tell you something is wrong. Many of my clients experience this exact message from their own minds, and it’s a well known problem for those who are depressed on some level.
There will be a good reason why you would hide, but at some point you will have to deal with this. So create courage and face your truth today to free yourself to live the life you were designed to live.
Beware because you might be a victim of mind tricks in your relationship created by YOU.
Yes your mind can play tricks on you and this can be destructive to your relationship. I’ll give you an example…
…when we experience something in our lives we convert that event into a meaning. The meaning we give that event is based on our unique and personal life experiences up to that moment, our values, our state at that moment in time and many other filters.
So when an event happens, the meaning we give to any situation is 100% unique to us. No one else will ever have the same experience. This means that an experience and the meaning we give it is purely a perception from one perspective.
The meaning we give an event is therefore not a fact, it is not true, it is not real, it’s simply a perspective. The problem is what we believe in the moment feels very real and so we react to an experience as if the meaning we give the experience is 100% real and true and therefore a fact.
Lets say you have a value such as RESPECT. If you get respect from others then you feel good, if you don’t you’ll feel bad.
The problem happens when you don’t show yourself RESPECT and you don’t give respect to others. We have to give ourselves what we value before we can give to to others if happiness is our goal. When we give ourselves our core values and we then give those things we value to others then we feel great inside, about ourselves.
A couple in conflict will have their internal filters set to always look for problems. So what happens is they are in states that will not allow them to make decisions and create behaviours that support themselves, or their relationship.
Now imagine if both people in a relationship are practising doing this and with critical foundation values such as TRUST, HONESTY, SECURITY and many, many more.
The longer the individuals in the relationship have this distorted view of their relationship, the more stuck they both feel so they can conclude the relationship is over.
If the couple can be shifted to a new state of mind and given a fresh perspective on their experiences then this challenges their belief system and so the relationship no longer feels so desperate.
The truth is no one makes us feel anything, we create our own emotions. If we believe others have power over us to control us this alone can create a state of fear. So knowing you are in control, actually puts you back in control of YOU.
The goal is then to understand you and how you work so you can always be happy no matter what.
Dear Stephen
A guy that I have known for awhile has made an advance to want to kiss me. I don’t know where I stand with him. We have a platonic friendship – no committed relationship. His past relationships have been shaky – non committal – he has never been married – 50 years old which makes me feel emotionally unsafe with him.
I am interested in a long term relationship and eventually want to marry. I consider kissing very erotic which could lead to becoming sexual which I do not want to do before I am married. I don’t want to compromise my faith in God. I also consider kissing to be a part of a committed, monogamous relationship.
How do I explain all of this to him without being demanding – and thinking that I’m needy for him to want a relationship with me? I want to tell him all of the above and also that he needs to look at himself as to why he has been in and out of relationships all of his life. He needs to do this for himself not for a relationship. I need help in explaining this to him in love and not seeming judgemental. Also, I want to tell him that the relationship that I want is that both partners have the same beliefs and values.
Thank you.
—————————————————————————————-
Thank you for your request for help.
I would firstly like to honour and respect your strong sense of yourself displayed through your beliefs, needs and your values.
You have set these up so well, that they will not allow you to compromises your long-term wishes for yourself and a happy future. This strength within you will allow you to be at one with yourself and all your life choices so this is a brilliant start.
You are also aware that through your feelings of wanting the best for you, you don’t want to be judgemental of him because you are probably aware that you may not understand fully, why he has behaved the way he has through his past relationships.
None of us are qualified to be anyone’s judge, so what we are left with is some questions, that for you, clearly need to be answered before you could ever be happy with this man.
The first question is what has generated a life without commitment for him? Is there a weakness in his values, or has is he also been living by his values, but they are just different to yours? Maybe he has never met someone right for him and he has been true to himself, or maybe he also lives in fear of being hurt, just like you.
Many, many possibilities and this is why a judgement of him is not possible or fair. However you are right to be concerned, because you see he has lived a life which is not like the one you want, and you know that to be happy you would have to share the same vision and values.
You also mention that you don’t want to be demanding. You’re never demanding if all you do is set a boundary of what you will accept. A boundary is a solid and inactive place that protects you, the word demanding is only relevant when someone who is aware of your boundary selfishly takes action and steps over it, again and again. Was he aware of your boundary?
You are in a position of strength here through your beliefs and values so you will never be hurt if you live by them as you are.
An honest conversation with this man outlining your critical needs, will help him understand what he has to do if he wishes to have a relationship with you, this is simply you being “honest†and I know you value that.
As you know he is not qualified to judge you so no matter what his opinion of you after your conversation this could never be respected or trusted.
I have one question for you? He has shown sexual attraction, but does that mean he wants more? Be sure you understand his intention behind his advance, because you maybe rejected through confusion of meaning, is this where your fear sits with him?
Your other option is to wait to see if he makes another advance towards you, if he does then that’s your chance to let him know what is important to you and if he is serious about you what you would like to happen so you can be safe.
If he is an honest, respectful man and he really wants you he will do anything to help you to feel secure with him by giving you what you really need.
Please let us know how you get on.
Stephen Hedger
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
If your relationship has gone bad then something has changed.
To grow your relationship you have to have exciting compelling goals together. When you first met you and your partner had goals to see each other, goals to learn more about each other, goals to get them to like you. Goals to have passionate weekends away, goals to live together, goals buy a house, goals to get married goals to have children.
In the early days with a life so full of goals you both felt so close and alive and so you wanted the next adventure together.
What happens in most relationships is the goals die. Life takes over work, friends, hobbies, children and money become the new goals and the relationship gets left out.
When the goals die the relationship dies, the couple struggle to see the point of being together although they may stay together longer if they have better financial security together than apart.
If this happen then on top of a dead relationship come resentment and a lack of respect for each other.
Here
Are you in a trading relationship? Does your partner have to do something for you before you will do something for them, or is it the other way around?
Maybe you are doing this because your parents did, think back, were your parents loving to each other when they were like this or was the atmosphere hard and lacking softness and love.
If you and your partner live in this life then the passion love and respect will have gone or be on its way out.
The only way to get the passion back into your life is to give, give and give some more, and ask for nothing in return.
Then watch as if by magic your relationship takes on a whole new meaning. Try it let me know how you get on.
STEPHEN HEDGER:
Marriage Adviser & Divorce Prevention Specialist
10 Harley Street London W1G 9PF
