Archive for the ‘Relationship Advice’ Category

Whether we like to admit it or not, couples hurt each other from time to time and often, in emotionally significant ways. There is an element of truth to the cliché, “You always hurt the one you love.” But not all wounding that occurs in marriages or long-term relationships is alike. Some relationship upsets are transient and leave little to no lasting residue, while other types of emotional wounding reach deep, leaving psychological scars that continue to impact the course of the relationship long after the painful events have occurred.

It’s important for couples to understand the nature of relationship conflict and the emotional wounds that occur—to become more fully conscious of which misunderstandings and arguments have the potential to do irreparable relationship damage.  Let’s turn our attention to why certain misunderstandings and conflicts seem to easily roll off your back, while others are more likely to take up a long-term residence in your psyche.

5 Reasons You (Or Your Partner) Can’t Get Over an Argument

1. Unintentional Versus Deliberate Wounding

It’s common for people to attribute motivation to other people’s behavior—to ascribe “why” the other person did what s/he did. And one dimension where this occurs has to do with intentionality: Did your partner mean to be hurtful, or was the hurt s/he caused unintentional? Not surprisingly, deliberate actions of malice are more likely to shatter trust than accidental wounding. 

2. Episodic Versus Repetitive Wounding

We all argue occasionally with our loved ones (episodic arguments) and the research has shown that this isn’t necessarily a bad thing—in fact, trying to avoid conflict at all costs turns out to be detrimental to one’s marriage or relationship. But when periodic marital or relationship conflicts are replaced by repetitive arguing/wounding, couples have little chance to recover from the emotional fallout of previous fights. No mutual understanding and closure over what happened takes place. This cumulative impact of negativity can make couples feel beleaguered and, ultimately, disengage from one another.  

3. Acknowledged Versus Disavowed Wounding

When you acknowledge that you have hurt your partner (even if you do not fully “get” why your actions might have been experienced as hurtful by him/her), you’ve taken a big step toward ownership of your behavior. The message is sent: “I realize my actions caused you distress, and I’m sorry that you were upset.” Such a message can go a long way toward healing the inevitable relationship wounds that occur. Disavowing responsibility creates a relationship environment that is unpredictable and emotionally unsafe, and healing cannot take hold in such an unfriendly atmosphere.

4. Validated Versus Minimized Wounding

Validating your partner’s hurt goes one step further than acknowledging that you’ve caused him/her to be upset (as discussed in number 3). Whenever you validate, you send the potentially healing message that you understand why your partner is upset, that his/her reaction makes sense to you (the message being: “Of course you’re upset, why wouldn’t you be?”). The opposite position, of minimizing or ignoring your partner’s emotional pain, is likely to keep the flames of hurt smoldering indefinitely. When you invalidate your spouse’s/partner’s emotional wounds (wounds that you might have caused), you are adding layer of hurt on top of layer of hurt. Talk about a one-two punch to the emotional gut!

5. Superficial Versus Core Wounding

For a hurtful comment or action to cause wounding, it has to have a place to land—in other words, the more your partner believes and accepts your hurtful comment as truthful, the deeper the pain will be. The most lasting effects of wounding occur when your statements/actions trigger your partner’s core emotional wounds—wounds that were created in childhood.  We all have core wounds from our pasts, and these emotional wounds reflect our deepest sensitivities and vulnerabilities, and when these are awakened and agitated during conflict, the wounding that occurs is more likely to be more intense and lasting.

When couples struggle to make sense of and shake off the mutual hurts that have occurred over time (or that may occur), it’s important to understand why certain emotional wounds rock you at your core, while others seem relatively insignificant and easy to move past. If it turns out that you (or your partner) seem stuck in the quicksand of past misunderstandings and hurts, it may be that one or more of the above is at work and needs addressing.

Marriage And Relationship Workbooks

1) Healing emotional wounds and forgiveness go hand in hand. I’ve created a workbook for couples on how to make forgiveness a regular part of your relationship or marriage. Click love and forgiveness for more information about this forgiveness resource.

2) Special workbook offer: I’ve brought together my top 3 selling relationship workbooks into a special bonus offer (this offer includes my popular effective communications workbook). Click Marriage Enrichment for more information.

Until next time,

Dr. Rich Nicastro

To differing degrees, we all feel lonely from time to time. It’s an experience that is a natural part of our existence. And often, feelings of loneliness act as a signal that lead to some type of change in one’s life. This change might involve the decision to start dating (if you’re single), or reaching out more to others already in your life (your spouse/partner, a family member, friend, etc.), or getting involved in some community or social activity (joining a book club, volunteering).

Such a course change is often enough to satisfy the hunger that we know as loneliness.

But to satisfy the pangs of loneliness, you have to know that you are indeed craving connection with others. This might seem straightforward, but for some, the experience of loneliness isn’t that easy to identify; loneliness can have a shadowy, ill-defined quality that is obscured by our busy, externally-focused lives.

And while it may sound like a strange paradox to think that someone can actually be lonely yet not have full awareness of this painful experience, the truth is that many of the men I’ve worked with in therapy too often reside in a painful state of disconnection—a disconnection from others, and even more fundamentally, a disconnection from themselves.

Relationship Help for Men: You Just Might Be Struggling with Loneliness

“I’m a guy. Guys don’t get lonely…Do they?” ~Jim (At a men’s workshop)

Emile didn’t know he was lonely.

He knew he was “stressed”; he knew he was having trouble sleeping; he knew he was quick to anger; he knew his wife and son complained about him, about his emotional distance and impatience; he knew that even on a good day, he existed in a perpetual state of tenseness that bordered on agitation.  He knew what many men are able to acknowledge about themselves but, like many men, none of his emotional struggles suggested to Emile that he was lonely.

To understand loneliness, you have to acknowledge one of the most fundamental needs that people have: the need for emotional connection-closeness to important others. Psychologists talk about this need using different terms (relational needs, attachment, emotional intimacy or connection, interpersonal needs, dependency needs), all suggesting that others matter to our ongoing psychological, emotional and physical well-being, and in far-reaching and profound ways.

Of course,  people differ in the intensity of their need for connection, as well as in how they go about fulfilling these needs—for some, the need for connection may feel like a soft whisper that gives gentle reminders to reach out, while for others, this need may demand attention until attention is received. Either way, we must be attuned to the undercurrents of our need for connection, and when we fail to do so, it usually has far-reaching, negative consequences in our lives.

Men and Loneliness: Do Masculine Ideals Obscure Men’s Need For Connection?

Why was Emile struggling with underlying issues of loneliness? (A loneliness that manifested as agitation and “stress.”)

Like many men, Emile placed a high value on self-reliance, a sense of self-sufficiency that was handed down from his father and grandfather. And while this masculine ideal (the ideal of the independent, “strong” male) served Emile well in the world of business and supporting his family financially, it cut him off from his underlying need for emotional connection and his ability to be emotionally vulnerable with his wife in particular. To rely on others emotionally (even others he knew had his best interests in mind) violated a core aspect of his masculine identity.

Emile’s need for emotional intimacy-connection (which includes the need to be emotionally vulnerable at times) didn’t cease as a result of the masculine ideals he internalized. Instead (as is often the case), Emile’s attachment needs went underground, unseen and unacknowledged—stored in the cellar of his psyche where they continued to poke at him in an effort to be noticed. But rather than identify and ultimately integrate these needs into his masculine identity (where they might exist alongside the trait of self-reliance, offering balance depending on circumstance), Emile remained estranged from his own internal world, and as a result, estranged from others as well.

Although many men, like Emile, are committed to and love their spouses/partners, they remain lonely– a loneliness that arises from a disconnection with one’s most fundamental humanness, the need to share one’s deepest desire to feel understood and emotionally connected to a loving other. 

Male loneliness starts from within, and it’s here at its source where men must open themselves so that they can share themselves emotionally with the people they love.

Marriage and Relationship Resources

For information about how to make effective communication a regular part of your marriage/relationship, click communication workbook.

And to receive a 25% discount off my top 3 selling relationship workbooks (including my communication workbook), click Marriage Enrichment special offer.

Until next time,

Dr. Rich Nicastro

Trying to find specific relationship help tips that are relevant to your marriage/relationship is no easy task—sometimes it’s even difficult to find what you’re looking for on one website. And my website, strengthen your relationship, is no exception. With hundreds of marital and relationship advice articles to sort through, finding the one or two articles that seem to speak directly to the issues of your marriage or relationship can feel like looking for a needle in a haystack.

The “blog topics” and “recent posts” sections on the right side column of my website can help direct you to specific marital and relationship issues that may be of interest. In addition to these navigational tools, I’d like to point out three articles that many couples have told me they find particularly helpful.

1) Emotional Intimacy

Emotional intimacy (the emotional closeness that you and your spouse/partner feel toward each other) is often considered the sine qua non of a healthy relationship. But finding ways to feel that deep sense of connection isn’t always easy. For strategies to deepen intimacy, check out my article:

5 Pathways to Greater Intimacy

2) Core Relationship Skills

A healthy marriage and relationship takes effort and work, but also knowledge and skill. There are core skills, what I call relationship fundamentals, that can help couples keep their relationship moving in the right direction. Too many couples never learned (or they start to overlook) the core building blocks of a healthy union. For a list of the fundamentals of a successful relationship, check out my article:

Relationship Building Blocks

3) Protecting Your Marriage/Relationship

I often tell couples that all relationships are vulnerable to the dangers of infidelity and therefore, we should never become complacent and believe our relationship is immune to certain realities that need to be monitored. Understanding the relationship conditions that can lead to an affair (or potential affair) is one way to protect your marriage/relationship.  To learn more about how to protect your relationship from an affair, check out my article:

5 Danger Zones That Can Lead To An Affair

These three relationship advice articles are a great way to get started down the path of relationship wholeness—each article covers essential relationship issues that are important to couples. But reading about different ways to protect your relationship shouldn’t be just a purely intellectual exercise; incorporating the information into your marriage or relationship is the real gift to a lasting, loving union. To this end, I encourage you to share this information with your partner so you can both develop a  plan on how to keep your relationship in top form.

Other Marital Relationship Resources

Special workbook offer: I’ve brought together my top 3 selling workbooks into a special bonus offer. Click Marriage Enrichment for more information.

Couples get stuck. Marriages get stuck. Relationships get stuck.

I think it’s fair to say that at some point in the history of every relationship, some level of stuck-ness is to be expected. The possible reasons why a couple might get stuck vary, and it’s important to know that not all stuck-ness is alike. Sometimes all your relationship might need is a little push to get things moving in the right direction, while at other times, it might be a  more serious issue that is causing your marriage or relationship to falter.

In either case, it’s important for couples to identify that they are indeed stuck (whether one or both partners feel this way) and to identify what changes might be needed to shake the relationship out of its inertia.

2 Levels of Relationship Stuck-ness

1) Benign Stuck-ness

Couples get stuck in this way when their relationship routines become so ingrained and rigid that there is little room for spontaneity, playfulness and mutual exploration. Under these conditions, the danger is that familiarity and a lack of variation move the relationship from the plane of comfort to the plane of boredom.

And while boredom is a part of life (and a part of any marriage/relationship), couples need to make sure that their relationship doesn’t sink into a lifelessness that ultimately leads to  disconnection and a parallel existence.

What’s needed?

With benign stuck-ness, identifying that the relationship is indeed stuck is half the battle. This will allow you and your partner to develop some type of plan to create a slight change in the course of your relationship routines. This is often enough to resuscitate the relationship’s pulse.

2) Malignant Stuck-ness

Couples in this level of stuck-ness are distressed.

Couples in distress are usually mired in defensive, attack-counter-attack and emotionally closed-off interactions. They feel hurt, helpless and angry. And depending on the extent of the problem, there may be little neutral communication ground where these couples can come together and freely talk without the expectation of something going terribly wrong.

This level of stuck-ness has the power to pull apart couples who feel deep love for one another.  The problem is that negative interactions involving hurt and anger tend to grow like weeds that can overtake anything positive that might exist in your relationship garden.

What’s needed?

Changing and reversing the course of negative patterns into positive, relationship-affirming connections takes perspective-taking and a willingness to change your behavior (even when you feel justified in your defensiveness). The ability to identify how you are triggering each other’s hurt and anger without blame is a good starting point. If you find yourself unable to extricate the relationship from these dysfunctional patterns, consulting with a marriage or couples counselor can give your relationship the shot in the arm it needs.

Remember, feeling stuck isn’t a sign that major marital or relationship problems are inevitable. But the stuck-ness you and/or your partner might be feeling (even if it’s benign stuck-ness) shouldn’t be ignored or minimized at the expense of your relationship’s health. Stuck-ness is a source of information that can help you and your spouse/partner come together and work for the good of the relationship.

Marriage/Relationship Workbooks-Resources

Do you need help getting (or keeping) your relationship un-stuck?

Special workbook offer: I’ve brought together my top 3 selling workbooks into a special bonus offer. Click Marriage Enrichment for more information.

Every marriage or relationship includes two people with emotional baggage, people who will reveal the deepest, most vulnerable parts of themselves to each other…

…and when two people with emotional baggage let down their guard and feel vulnerable and emotionally exposed, there is a greater likelihood that emotional wounding and misunderstandings will occur—despite our most loving intentions, relationship missteps will occur along the way.     

When vulnerable, you are more sensitive and reactive to any response by your partner that isn’t in sync with what you need (or what you think you need). And to make matters even more complicated, your emotional blind-spots may be preventing you from giving your partner what s/he needs.

Self-protection Versus Mutual Openness

Meaningful intimacy (emotional and physical intimacy) arises out of our ability and willingness to be emotionally vulnerable with others.

Mutual trust and emotional openness and validation of each other’s core vulnerabilities have the potential to heal the old wounds we carry from our pasts into our marriage/relationship. And, unfortunately, the potential for debilitating misunderstandings and conflict may also become part of the relationship landscape, furthering our disillusionment about relationships. So many people who find their way into individual and couples counseling complain about feeling painfully misunderstood and invalidated by their spouse/partner (or worse, attacked and shamed).

When painful misunderstandings occur, it’s not uncommon to close yourself off emotionally and, at some point, withdraw as a way to protect yourself—the emotional disconnection seen in some marriages/relationships often arises out of a self-protective need because these couples feel too emotionally battered to risk further emotional vulnerability. As one wife shared, “If I don’t let my guard down, he can’t hurt me again.”

Depending on the level of pain couples inflict on one other (whether intentional or not), over time, couples might start to expect the worst from one another. And with these negative expectations come the need for continued self-protection and distance-making maneuvers (avoiding each other, finding things to argue about, focusing on the negative while overlooking neutral or positive experiences).

As our negative expectations begin to shape our perceptions and behaviors, the danger exists that our defensive reactions and behaviors will become so ingrained and unyielding that they blind us to any positive attempts our spouse/partner is trying to make. Chronic defensiveness (which includes a lack of openness) can defeat even the most motivated and determined partner. As a result, these couples remain immune to any reparative and loving gestures offered, blinded by past hurts and mistakes.  

Couples are often unaware of the pervasiveness and rigidity of their own and their partner’s self-protective behaviors, and therefore remain stuck in an uncoordinated relationship dance that continues to pull the couple apart.

The goal for couples is to become mindful of how they inadvertently trigger one another’s deepest emotional wounds and vulnerabilities (which means you both have to take responsibility for the misunderstandings that may exist). However, it’s much easier for couples to get caught up in the blame game, pointing fingers at each other for the problems that have infiltrated the relationship. When all you see is how unreasonable and uncaring the other person is, rather than seeing how wounded and emotionally lost you both feel (a mutual wounding that lies just underneath the frustration and anger) the relationship is likely to remain frozen in the muck of negativity.

The Power of Understanding and Forgiveness

When couples make a concerted effort to work to acknowledge and understand the emotional wounding that has occurred between them (without finger-pointing), an important shift can occur in the relationship dance—a shift toward enhanced emotional safety, trust and intimacy. For this to occur, you must truly “see” and “get” the impact you’ve had on each other. In other words, any efforts at understanding must be thoughtful and authentic for meaningful change to take place. Pat phrases, half-hearted/resentful attempts, or a tendency to focus solely on your own pain without genuine attempts to see and understand your spouse’s/partner’s pain will only further a lack of mistrust and forestall the reconnection process.

And just as important as mutual understanding is the ability for couples to stop holding onto past hurts—central to any healing that needs to occur is the ability to learn from the past, then let go of the past. This is the process of forgiveness that all couples will face at some point.  

Because of the potential hazards that come with any intimate relationship, forgiveness (for both small and large issues) is a necessary part of maintaining a healthy relationship. But forgiveness (like mutual understanding) will not just magically occur when needed: You and your partner will have to make the decision to bring forgiveness into the relationship (not always an easy task; you have to work toward forgiveness). 

And you might find that your ability to make forgiveness a regular part of your relationship occurs more naturally when efforts toward mutual understanding and responsibility are part of the relationship landscape.  Forgiveness and understanding feed off of each other.

There is an inherent paradox in all this: Every marriage/relationship has the potential to help each person grow beyond their individual limitations; and every marriage/relationship is a potential minefield dotted with old emotional wounds that can keep couples mired in negative patterns. Making mutual understanding and forgiveness a regular part of your relationship will help tip the scales toward growth and healing.

Marriage and Relationship Workbooks

1) I’ve created a workbook for couples on how to make forgiveness a regular part of your relationship or marriage.  Click love and forgiveness for more information about this forgiveness resource. 

2) Special workbook offer: I’ve brought together my top 3 selling workbooks into a special bonus offer.  Click Marriage Enrichment for more information.

Until next time,

Dr. Rich Nicastro