If you want a relationship for life then what you are about to read is going to be critical to understand. If you are in marital crisis it’s so important to understand how you got there. In fact what you are about to read is for anyone who values relationships and wants to keep them, or save them.
The challenge all couples face is one or both people can develop a need to feel safe and secure in the relationship. They want to feel certain their partner will always love them, be there for them. All sounds reasonable so far…
To be clear, the challenge isn’t in the needing to feel safe and secure, the challenge is the way nearly everyone does it.
Remember the divorce rate is really high for a reason, the biggest reason is the people in the marriages are crippling their own relationships to the point they feel so bad they actually blame their relationship for how they feel and then want out because of what they created.
Examples of dynamics that can’t work and have to change:
1. A woman became so controlling to her husband that he gave-up his masculine power and effectively turned into a little boy to please her. She then complained she was living with a child.
2. The man who constantly shouted at his wife because he couldn’t cope with her erratic emotions, made her quiet and emotionless to the point she lost her emotions for him.
3. How about the woman that came to see me about her husbands affair. She told me from the day she marriage him she knew he would have an affair. She sat upset in our meeting, but happy she was right about him. What she didn’t know was she created the possibility of the affair through holding back her love for her husband. Her husband lived for years without her love.
4. One woman wanted her relationship so much she was totally disconnected with his need to emotionally abuse her. In this case her need to be in the relationship had become more important than her value of herself. She met with me to tell me they were both unhappy, but didn’t know why.
What all these people above have in common is they are wanting to protect themselves from being hurt, but the way they do it actually creates the very thing they fear most.
This message is so important to learn, but very difficult for so many to grasp…
In relationships if we have a fear, our instinctual behaviour is to protect ourselves from realising that fear. The way we protect ourselves is through a combination of assumptions, judging, holding back and then punishing/resenting our partner.
Practiced over years this is the perfect way to collapse a relationship.
What I’m saying is without realising a person can keep their fears alive within them and that fear can become that persons “goal” without them knowing.
Yes fears can and do become a persons goal(s) and they literally destroy relationships.
The key to helping a couple come back from he brink of divorce, or create a relationship for life is in their ability to learn what will really protect them.
So we need a process that will collapse their fears and move them towards a process that will reconnect them not just with each other, but with themselves within the relationship.
By helping a couple build a new relationship and a brand new dynamic they can keep their fears at bay and become safer and free to be themselves with each other.
I run private 1-on-1 courses for couples in all stages so if your relationship is struggling, or your simply want to avoid the pitfalls so many couple fall into then please book a consultation to explore what’s possible for you.