If you are in crisis and you want to make a change in your relationship then it’s critical that the process of making that change is understood if you are to be successful.
The most common scenario I see is when one person feels the relationship has died. They have lost their feelings for their partner and do not know how to get their feelings back. Some of course don’t even want to try.
One person is likely to be in a position where they are desperate to save the relationship and they can get very busy trying to stop them leaving.
Individuals panicking to save their relationship will usually notice they are making their fragile situation much worse through taking the wrong actions. The result is they are likely to see their partner become more detached the more they try to keep them in the relationship. Both people can now feel stuck.
What these people are not aware of is they are tying to force their partner to make the change that they want. All this creates is resistance and a deeper need to escape the relationship within their partner.
Fact: The only way a person will make any change is if the person is making the change that they want.
This fact is key to understand.
Imagine a person who feels the relationship is not right for them. If their partner communicates “…we have a good relationship!” or “we love each other..! , they are simply not going to agree.
If a person is going to make a change, that person has to agree in their own mind that the change they have to make is going to be the right one for them.
If a person is stuck in relationship and only sees one outcome, one of the keys to making any change is to really understand the problem from that persons perspective. In other words, what did the person have do to themselves to make wanting to leaving the relationship a possibility.
This is a key question because whatever the person has done to themselves has created very real feelings that are helping them to want to leave.
As you can now see this person is in reaction to their feelings, in other words their feelings are guiding their decision to leave.
So if the persons feelings are the source of making a change then that’s where we must start our work, BUT to do that work effectively we have to understand how that person creates their own feelings.
One client this week communicated that she started the process of working on their relationship with me fearful that it would work.
We did some work together and now she said she is fearful that it wouldn’t work. This is a change of this persons feelings that has the potential to motivate her differently in terms of her investment in the relationship.
Another client this week spoke of feeling that her love was gone forever. She told me at the start of the process she was stubborn and didn’t expect to feel any different. She is now talking about their future together, holidays and real possibilities of love and connection.
I asked both these clients how fast they experienced a change. They both had the same answer, their change of feeling was instant.
Once I really understood both these couples and the patterns they had created both in the relationship and within themselves then it was easy to help them connect to their feelings differently.
We all experience instant changes in our feelings, when we laugh, if we think the car is going to crash, when we cry, if we have good or bad news. People who experience a shock such as an affair change fast.
Our feelings have the ability to change us fast, so it’s key to understand how to connect and influence them so we have the feelings we want in our lives.
No one tells us growing up we have the power to change our feelings so we can believe that what we feel is either permanent, or just the way it is. This is simply not true, our feelings can feel very real in the moment, but they can change.
I have worked with couples who have been sexually dead for years who learnt how to connect to their feelings differently and this totally changed their relationship.
If you are in this situation and would like help please connect with us today.