Wanting to be Strong, Wanting a Strong Relationship

True or False? “Strong people have strong relationships.” On the surface this statement appears to be true. You shouldn’t have to sacrifice your personal strength to be in a relationship.  Insecurities interfere with having a close relationship.

But there are many times when individual strength conflicts with relationship strength. Imagine your partner has said or done something that is so insensitive that you feel hurt and angry. Now imagine your response. Are you more likely to express your hurt or your anger?

I find that many choose to express their anger because they feel stronger when they express anger. Even passive individuals will store up anger, then feel stronger when they explode.

Yet what is stronger for the individual isn’t what makes a relationship stronger. Anger creates distance in relationships. Anger triggers defensiveness from those who feel attacked. Anger does not attract change, in fact, it makes change less likely to occur.

Your partner is more likely to be motivated to change and meet your needs if you resist expressing anger and challenge him or her to care for you. This requires you to express your views, feelings and desires in a vulnerable tone of voice. You must replace anger with an expression of hurt feelings.

Notice how uncomfortable it is to express vulnerable feelings. Anger feels more comfortable because you feel stronger, yet vulnerable expression creates a stronger relationship. It’s your decision to make – a stronger you or a stronger relationship? 

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Cooperating or Competing to Get Your Needs Met?

Psychologists and economists have set up experiments in which two folks are challenged to play a game in which they share money. If they compete for the money, one will win more than the other. If they cooperate, they will share equally in the rewards.

The important issue is that when they compete, they lose money in the effort to win, but when they cooperate, they keep all of the money. Which do they choose? You guessed it. They compete because they want the bigger reward, not the most money to be distributed between them.

These experiments have huge implications for our world, but they make me think about how couples negotiate their differences. When you commit to a relationship, you believe you will be better off than if you remained single. You believe you are entering a cooperative relationship where you and your partner are making an equal effort to build each other up.

Yet all couples recognize early in their marriage that they have different views, feelings, and desires. In a healthy relationship, these differences must be negotiated so that each partner has an equal influence on the relationship. The type of relationship you have reflects equally on each partner’s views, feelings, and desires.

Do you compromise your desires for your partner or do you try to maximize what you want? Many folks would rather avoid tension than negotiate for their desires to be met. They often say they don’t have strong views, feelings or desires. However, they also become dissatisfied with the relationship over time because their needs go unmet.

Others would rather have their way than experience intimacy. These folks still marry, but are uncaring in their negotiation strategy. They often pair with a passive negotiator. The controlling spouse enjoys a short-term win, but over the long run, the relationship is not satisfying for their partner.

Controlling and passive approaches establish a win/lose model for the relationship. Neither approach will lead to a satisfying relationship. If you get your way, then your partner will ultimately be dissatisfied. If you give in, then you will fail to negotiate for what you want in the relationship.

Partnership requires giving as much as you receive and winning your partner’s trust that his or her views, feelings and desires will be responded to. If you find yourself feeling short-ended examine how you negotiate for your views, feelings, and desires to be attended to.

Do you communicate clearly? Do you communicate directly? Are there consequences for your partner not considering your input? You should be challenging your partner to care, not trying to muscle your way in the relationship. If your partner fails to care, then this should ultimately lead to increased distance in the relationship.

Together or Separate: Why I See Couples Together for Marriage Counseling

Many marriage counselors tell the couple that comes to them with marital problems that they each have issues that must be addressed individually in order for their relationship to improve. What does this mean?

It may mean that one partner’s mood or personality is judged to be so disturbed that marriage counseling is unlikely to be an effective strategy for change. Or it may simply mean that the therapist is more comfortable doing individual therapy than working with couples. I typically see couples together. Why?

After doing marriage counseling for more than 30 years, I believe that most couples seeking help for their marriage are bringing in a broken relationship, not two broken individuals. The broken relationship is reflected in how the couple relate to each other. Initially, I focus on how the couple interacts, not why they interact as they do.

Most couples will point to their partner’s faults during our initial sessions in the mistaken notion that I will be able to change their partner. They quickly learn that a blaming stance only creates a defensive posture from their partner. Only when couples examine their contribution to their relationship difficulties are they able to begin to rebuild a new, more intimate relationship.

Think for a moment, where did you learn to negotiate an intimate relationship? You probably had the same training for this important task that you did for parenting and a sexual relationship. You were expected to pick it up naturally without any direct instruction. You learned by observation of those close to you, yet those lessons are often a lesson in how not to behave, not how to attract your partner to cooperate in building the closeness that you each desire.

When couples learn that an intimate relationship can be built through changing their interaction, their defensive posture slowly fades while they take small steps to reach out to one another. But old patterns die slowly and couples often neglect to maintain changes in how they relate to each other, especially when under stress.

Take a minute to consider one thing you could do differently to change how you and your partner interact. Apply this today and see how it affects your interaction with your partner. You’ll be surprised how small changes can produce big results!

Five Reasons to Stop Avoiding Tough Issues

In my work as a marriage counselor, I find that I work harder to encourage couples to approach issues than I do to subdue arguments.

Are you avoiding a tough conversation? Do you tell yourself that you don’t want to rock the boat? Does it feel scary to approach the issue? Yet, you find the issue keeps eating at you. It is as though there is a battle going on inside where one side wants to get it out on the table and the other side says, “Run away (from the issue).”

Let me make a case for approaching those tough issues. Here are five reasons you should address the issue:

1. The tension of avoiding the issue will undermine your happiness. While addressing the issue will create tension, you will be happier in the long run by getting the issue out in the open.

2. The relationship will be better if you address the issue. Relationships don’t improve by avoiding tension; they only improve if issues are addressed, then dealt with in a way that is satisfying to both partners.

3. Your value will increase if you address the issue. By forcing your partner to address issues important to you, you are saying, “My views, feelings, and desires are important. I expect you to address them and be willing to compromise your views, feelings, and desires in order for the relationship to be mutually satisfying.”

4. You cannot get what you want in the relationship unless you learn to negotiate with your partner. It may seem as though you are behaving in a loving manner by being passive, but you are actually being a poor negotiator for what you want. Your partner will not see you as loving, but as giving (and ultimately as weak). Making expectations increases the “cost” of being with you, but also increases your value. Value increases as we pay more!

5. Ask a couple whom have been married for many years and are close what has been the major factors in building closeness and they won’t tell you about their enjoyable vacations or the bigger home they purchased. Instead, they will tell you about the tough times they survived by pulling together. If you do not address issues, then you are not providing the opportunity to draw closer to your partner. The goal is not to avoid tension, but to build an increasingly intimate relationship with your partner.

“I’m no longer attracted to you – you’re too fat”

 

I’ve been thinking about guys that say they aren’t  attracted to their partners because their partner’s appearance has changed for the worse. I have always been uncomfortable with such a message, but why? Doesn’t such a statement reflect on the fact that men are more visual than women? Don’t women participate when they spend much time and energy on appearance?

I think such a statement makes me uncomfortable because it is the opposite of what I expect someone in a committed relationship to say. A committed partner should be motivated by caring. A caring partner wouldn’t simply not make such a statement because it would hurt their partner’s feelings although that also works for me.

Instead, I expect appearance to be something that fades in importance as a couples bond grows. When a partner focuses on appearance, then I suspect that there really is not much of a bond and caring has always been limited – even before the change in appearance happened.

So if your partner complains about your appearance, ask yourself whether he or she is concerned about your health, your pride in your appearance, or is the message really, “We’ve lost a connection we once had.” If it is the latter, then respond, “I’m wondering how you feel about our relationship in general?” rather than going on the defensive about your appearance. You may find that working on your connection improves your appearance – at least to your partner.

Loss of Sexual Desire in Marriage

How many times have you heard men complain that the  frequency and enthusiasm their partner exhibited for sex changed with marriage. Then, the women counter with how romance has drained from the relationship since marriage. If each is true, then the question is why would the relationship change simply by getting married.

You might reason that romance and sex would improve with the security and commitment that comes with marriage vows, that is if sex before marriage and after meant the same thing. The fact is that sex before marriage is part of a message that says, “I desire you, I want to spend time with you, and most importantly, I want a future with you.” Both men and women respond strongly to such a message.

After marriage, the message of sex changes. In one study, 35% of women and just 13% of men cited love and emotional intimacy as goals of sexual desire. Seventy percent of the men and 43% of the women said that sex was the goal of sexual desire. Research has clearly demonstrated that men think about sex more, pursue sex more, place more importance on sex, and masturbate more.

The general availability of sex and the routine that forms in the sexual relationship (and in the relationship in general) after marriage apparently leads to a decline in sexual desire for the woman more than it does for the man. When the woman’s desire declines this is typically more detrimental to the relationship than if the man’s desire recedes.

I have often heard married women suggest that sex has become unimportant to them, except as a means of pleasing their husband. Yet, when they become involved in an affair, their sexual desire is rekindled. Why is this? Women having an affair seem to respond to the novelty of being pursued by a man who finds them interesting, attractive and sexually desirable.

Marriage may undermine the woman’s sexual desire if she comes to feel she is nurturing her husband rather than attracting his desire. Husbands must show their wives that they desire them, find them attractive in many ways and that they are interested in creating an improved relationship in the future. The most common complaint I hear is for that the woman (or man for that matter) to say she feels taken for granted. This suggests that she does not feel valued.

Fortunately, sexual desire can be rekindled if each partner accepts responsibility for improving the relationship…not just the sexual relationship.

More Thinking Does Not Mean a Better Decision

Image by purpleslog via Flickr

An experimenter tested the decision-making ability of two groups by measuring their ability to choose the best car to buy (for the experiment, one choice was better). The groups’ decision-making differed by the number of variables they had to take into account before making the decision. You would think that the group given more variables would make a better decision, but you would be wrong. The experimenter found that our decision-making ability improves up to a point, but too many variables overwhelm the brain’s ability to process the information and the quality of decisions declines.

Those who had an overload of variables to consider when choosing the best car to buy made better decisions when they were distracted by a word puzzle, thus leaving them time to only rely on their intuition. Research suggests that you can get so bogged down in processing variables that your decisions become worse, not better. Business refers to this as paralysis by analysis. Deciding to commit or recommit to a marriage can be overwhelming when you try to examine all of the positives and negatives associated with the decision. On top of that, the decision looms large because it affects many people over a long period of time.

When you find yourself overwhelmed with a relationship decision you can minimize the variables by focusing on just a few issues or you can overwhelm yourself by trying to take into account all the variables, particularly everything that can go wrong with the decision. The result can be that you are unable to make a decision or make a poor decision.

This is why it is important to take care of yourself while you are trying to make difficult decisions. In order to make a good decision, you must trust your decision-making ability even though you cannot control the outcome of your decision.

Self-care means focusing on healthy behaviors that build personal strength. Look for relationships with those that value you and want the best for you, rather than polling others for their opinion. Avoid escaping stress through use of alcohol or testing your feelings through an inappropriate relationship. Instead, eat well, rest, and exercise. Give yourself permission to just be in the moment, even if that moment is filled with doubt and questions.