The patterns and rhythms of our lives make it easy to forget what day it is—for many it can feel like our days simply blend together. Mondays feel no different from Tuesdays which seem to blur into Wednesdays and so on.  Sometimes our days are distinguished solely by whether it’s a work-day or a day off.

To break up this existential monotony (the chronic repetitiveness of the ordinary), we identify certain days as more important than others, imbuing these days with elevated meaning and specialness (an anniversary, holiday, birthday). These “special” days have the power to renew and energize our spirits, demanding that we recognize the uniqueness of our lives, challenging us to look at ourselves and our relationship with new, appreciative eyes.

And as far as special days go, for many couples Valentine’s Day is at the top of the list.

The Power, Allure and Pitfalls of Valentine’s Day

Over the next couple of weeks there will be a glut of Internet and magazine articles suggesting how couples can take steps to acknowledge and celebrate their love.  The phrase “Valentine’s day ideas” receives over a half-million Internet searches a month—clearly there are a staggering number of spouses, partners and lovers seeking ways to celebrate their marriage/relationship.

Celebrating the love you and your spouse/partner share is a very good thing—relationships are nourished and emotional bounds fed and renewed when this occurs.

Valentine’s Day forces us to place our marriage/relationship at the center stage of our life; it’s the day where the typical excuses (about being too busy, too stressed, too [fill in the blank]) seem downright pathetic and just plain wrong. It’s the day where, despite the dents and dings that exist in your relationship, the love you and your spouse/partner share will have an opportunity to shine. Couples need this, relationships need this, we all need this.

If you’re in love, Valentine’s Day is one of those days that is set apart from the mundaneness of other days that can engulf a marriage/relationship.

However…

The commercialization of love (Valentine’s Day is big business) and the marketing designed to offer couples a means to express their deepest feelings, however, has the potential to create (like all mass marketing) a mass-sameness, where prepackaged, rote (and therefore meaningless) expressions of love replace self-reflective, self-expressive, heart-felt proclamations of love.

Nothing says “I really didn’t try” than a nondescript box of chocolates purchased—last minute—at the drugstore while you’re picking up a prescription (and you’re only reminded because the cashier and the person ahead of you in line are talking about what day it is).  

The danger for all of us is that it’s easy to become lazy about love, even on the day set apart to celebrate this magical experience—marketers and big business have made it convenient for us to mindlessly reach for one of the myriad of gifts that now have come to represent romantic love (a card we didn’t write, the number of carats in a diamond, expensive champagne). While we all search for ways to express the love we feel for our spouse/partner (which may include external objects that symbolize our love), the mass commercialization of romance can never do justice to the profound and mysterious nature of love.

Love promises us so much: transformation, deep connection, meaning, happiness, renewed aliveness….

Whether these promises are realized or not, we all yearn for love’s potential to make our lives better in some way. Valentine’s Day is a time to celebrate the gifts that your partner’s love have brought to your life; for some, it’s a time of awakening a relationship’s forgotten potential by acknowledging that the relationship has grown a little stale and is need of some attention.

• How will you and your spouse/partner celebrate the love you share this Valentine’s Day?
• Will the celebration mainly involve the typical commercialized trappings?
• Can you imagine something more for you and your spouse/partner?

What if…

Imagine for a moment, that the typical way in which millions of couples celebrate Valentine’s Day ceased to exist.

What if…

…there were no gifts that could be purchased for Valentine’s Day—no prepackaged, store-bought items that are designed to communicate your feelings about your partner.

What if…

…the goal of each Valentine’s Day were to create/find a novel way to express the love you each have for one another, and the only medium you could use was yourself: Your words (spoken or written), your touch (non-sexual or sexual), something you create, or some activity you feel captures the essence of your love for one another.

Let me clarify: choosing to go the commercial route and purchasing something for your partner on Valentine’s Day is not an inherently bad thing. The question is whether you stop there and let the item do all the talking about what your partner means to you, or whether you make a conscious effort to express what only you can.

Marriage/Relationship Resources

If you are looking for ways to build a stronger relationship foundation and  keep your relationship healthy for Valentine’s Day and beyond, check out my newest marital and relationship workbooks.

And don’t forget to claim your exclusive, free relationship reports when you sign up for my Relationship Help Newsletter.

Here’s to making every day Valentine’s Day!

Dr. Rich Nicastro

Effective couples communication is central to a healthy marriage/relationship—and often the biggest challenge to communicating lies in our ability to effectively share our inner world with another person, a world inhabited by our feelings, thoughts, perspectives, desires, goals, needs…

Whether we’re aware of it or not, we often use metaphors and analogies when communicating. We rely on them to describe the subtleties and nuances of our experiences. They add dynamic color and richness to what we’re trying to express, providing greater clarity and adding communication “oomph” when we’re trying to drive home a point or when we want to impact the listener in a particular way.

Analogies also have the power to enrich our understanding of ourselves—they force us to go deeper into ourselves, to connect more fully to the experience we are trying to share.  

Relationship Help: The Communicative Power of Analogy

Metaphor and analogies can also help couples communicate more effectively when used as a tool for self-expression. 

Examples of the expressive power of analogies and metaphors:

• We have a solid foundation that I find emotionally grounding;
• Our sex life is great…it’s often fiery and, at other times, it’s a slow burn. Both of these work for me;
• He reminds me of a calm lake that centers me emotionally;
• John and I are on the same page;
• We’ve achieved such a wonderful harmony and balance in our marriage, like a symphony;
• I feel like I’m flying when we’re together.  

• We’re always fighting. It’s like we are caught in a hurricane;
• When I think of the relationship, what do I feel? Unfortunately I feel ice-cold;
• When I talk to you I feel like I’m drowning–nothing I say seems to matter;
• I’m constantly walking on egg shells around you…;
• There’s such a wall between us. How can we lower it?;
• I can’t breathe when you question my every move; I feel like I’m sinking in emotional quick-sand.

The first thing you might notice when reading the above statements is how the use of analogies and metaphors create vivid images in our mind, as well as stirring feelings associated with those images. Metaphoric descriptions impact both the speaker (who must create the analogy/metaphor) and the listener (who receives it).

Note the difference in these statements:

“I don’t like the way you’ve been talking to me lately”  versus  “I feel run over when you speak to me like that.”

“I feel great when we’re together” versus “You make me feel brand new, like a million bucks.”

While both statements in the above examples communicate a similar message, the second message in each pairing is more likely to have a bigger emotional impact on the listener, which can be helpful when you’re trying to let your partner know the effect s/he is having on you (whether you’re describing a positive or negative impact). 

Relationship Help Action Step:

Which analogies and/or metaphors would you and your partner use to describe your marriage/relationship?

Can you both work on creating a series of positive analogies/metaphors that capture the type of relationship you’d like to work towards?

Can you start to use the richness of metaphor/analogy to describe your needs and feelings in your marriage/relationship?

Remember, when you struggle to find or create an analogy that represents your feelings and reactions, you are using the power of self-reflection and discernment to form a deeper relationship with yourself—and you are sending your partner powerful information that can help him/her understand you more fully. 

Communication Resources

I’ve created two “How to communicate with your partner/spouse” resources.

1. Check out my couples communication workbook (over 120-pages dedicated to teaching you easy-to-use couples communication skills and strategies);

I often teach workshops and tele-seminars on effective communication skills for couples–and now you have a front seat with my communication audio program:

2. For more information on my couples communication workbook plus over 4-hours of my communication boot-camp audio, click Communication workbook and Audio Program.

Wishing you and your relationship a life-time of effective communication!

Dr. Rich Nicastro

Relationship Help Quick Tip

Part of what the mind does is travel, and often those travels take us to imagining our hoped-for futures—how things ought to be.

This is especially true when it comes to our marriage or relationship. We often imagine having a particular type of relationship (let’s call this your relationship ideal): the positive feelings you’ll feel because of your relationship, the lifestyle you’ll live, the sense of connection and the activities you’ll enjoy together, the quality of life you will experience…

And we often envision a particular type of person that we want to share our lives with (let’s call this your spouse-partner ideal), someone you imagine will make your life emotionally fulfilling and meaningful, someone eager to share his/her kindness, love, support, compassion, sense of adventure, humor, passion…

What we often fail to imagine, however, is the kind of partner/spouse we’d like to be (let’s call this your self-as-partner ideal)—the specific spousal-partner attributes and behaviors you’d like to consistently manifest in the marriage/relationship, traits that reflect your deepest values and ideals, the best YOU possible. 

Failure to envision your self-as-partner ideal often occurs because we tend to place the responsibility for our own spousal/partner behavior on our partner’s shoulders. In other words, you believe that your partner’s actions/behaviors are the ultimate factor in determining the type of partner you can be.  So as long as s/he lives up to your spouse-partner ideal, then the best you will emerge and everything will work out itself out in the relationship.

This position backfires because it places all the power and responsibility for your behavior onto your spouse/partner—making you a passive victim to his/her whims, moods, behaviors and decisions. Not a good idea.

Relationship Help Questions:

While the impact our spouse’s/partner’s behavior has on us is undeniable (and often profound), is it possible to try to live up to your own self-as-partner ideals even when your partner is acting in ways that don’t support these ideals? 

Can you be a change-agent for a better relationship/marriage by embracing and living your ideals, even when it might feel like your partner is undermining your efforts?

This is clearly a tall order and it’s easier said than done, but here’s a challenge I’d like you to consider  (and for all of us to consider!):

The next time your partner is having a bad day, or week, or has been overly defensive for what feels like an eternity, reflect upon the ideals you value most as a spouse/partner and let those ideals guide your behavior (rather than letting your partner’s behavior guide your behavior). Whether or not your new mindset is immediately noticed or appreciated by your partner, you will benefit from making a habit of using your own ideals as a relationship yardstick. And in the long run, the odds are that your relationship will, too.

Free Relationship Bonus Reports

To receive my monthly relationship tips, special workbook offers and exclusive bonus articles, don’t forget to sign up for my Relationship Help Newsletter.

Until next time,

Dr. Rich Nicastro

Don’t let the PERFECT be the enemy of the GOOD ~Voltaire

In a previous relationship help article (Relationship Perfection, Disappointments and Why Your Partner Will Fail You), I discussed the motivation and pitfalls of expecting to achieve emotional completeness with a loving-caring other, and why we’re often not fully conscious of our own desires to experience relationship perfection. 

In today’s article, I’d like to offer what I consider a healthy (and realistic) option to striving for relationship perfection:  Consciously creating the “good-enough” marriage/relationship. Let’s turn our attention to what a good-enough marriage/relationship might look like.

10 Features of the Good-Enough Marriage/Relationship

1.  Expect good-enough

Our expectations have a profound impact on how we experience others (as well as how we think, feel and behave). So it’s important to raise awareness of your relationship expectations in order to discern which expectations are reasonable, which cause you both to grow and keep the relationship moving forward, and which are a recipe for frustrations and failure. Set the relationship bar high, but not out of reach.

Expect and anticipate mutual effort toward your relationships goals, as well as missteps along the journey; celebrate the wonders of each other (whenever such gifts happen to show up in your relationship) and always work toward improving the bad.

2.   Acknowledgment of your own fallibility

When you acknowledge your fallibility, your inherent humanness, you are adopting a pro-relationship mindset that arises from the virtue of humility.  In the good-enough relationship, humility takes center stage:  In essence you are saying,

“We’re both going to make mistakes. This isn’t an excuse or a way to avoid taking responsibility, but   the fact is that relationships take a lot of work and we will both screw up at times. Let’s accept our imperfections, not deny our blind-spots, and be kind to one another whenever those imperfections get in the way.”

3.  Own your baggage

Creating and living a good-enough relationship is the result of heightened awareness of: How your current behaviors impact (positively or negatively) your spouse/partner; how his/her behavior impacts you; and how the shadows of your pasts (your unresolved family-of-origin emotional issues) continue to get in the way of creating a meaningful relationship.

4.  Keep it honest 

As part of your value system, it may seem like a no-brainer to make honesty a top priority in your relationship. Where couples get into trouble is when they allow emotional issues to go underground because they don’t want to hurt or upset one another—they start withholding from each other rather than respectfully and honestly speaking one’s truth (especially when one’s truth stirs strong reactions in each other).

When this type of honesty is lost, parts of your relationship go underground. And what goes underground at some point resurfaces with a vengeance—so keep it real and honest.

5.  Understand your relationship rhythms

In the good-enough relationship mindset, couples realize that the levels of connection (emotional, physical, spiritual) will fluctuate. To expect a constant level of emotional connection is to expect perfection. There are many factors which impact the intensity and quality of the intimacy that can be achieved. Feeling a deep sense of connection may change because of circumstances outside the relationship (stress at work, illness of a friend) or because of what is transpiring within the relationship (unresolved disagreements, not enough time together).

These intimacy fluctuations mean that a process of closeness and greater distance is the norm; claiming and reclaiming intimacy is the relationship journey.  

6.  Fight the good fight

Some couples are conflict-phobic—they don’t like rocking the relationship boat, even when it’s obvious the boat is capsizing. Fighting for your marriage/relationship is a sign of commitment and love; fighting to prove your righteousness, however, is a form of relationship suicide. Fight the fight for a good-enough relationship, never fight to feel superior and better than your partner.

7.  Nurture the positive

Research on successful marriages and relationships show that there need to be more positive than negative interactions for the union to remain strong. Couples mired in cycles of negativity lose hope and burn out. A good-enough relationship balances facing the difficult issues that need to be addressed while also celebrating and highlighting the positive.  Build on activities that feed emotional intimacy.

8.  Do together

Being in a relationship means acting and behaving like a couple. And couples spend time and do things together. This might seem obvious to you, but it’s an oft-overlooked fact for the hordes of couples who realize that they’ve grown apart and now feel like roommates or strangers. In the good-enough relationship, couples make it a priority to engage in activities that they can enjoy together—this might take some mutual exploration, but it’s well worth the effort.

9.  Do apart

While it’s vital to prioritize and nurture your relationship, it’s just as important to nurture your individual pursuits and interests. A healthy marriage/relationship requires a balance between giving of yourself to your spouse/partner, receiving and accepting from him/her, but just as importantly, giving to yourself. Defining yourself only from the standpoint of the relationship can lead to self-atrophy and the painful sense that you’ve somehow lost your identity because of the relationship. 

10.  Surround the relationship with healthy relationships

You and your relationship do not and should not exist in isolation. For good or bad, what surrounds you  impacts you—and the same goes for your relationship. When striving for a good-enough relationship, it’s important to remember that no relationship is immune from influences and forces outside the relationship. To this end, it’s important to connect with other couples who hold similar values and healthy expectations about their marriage/relationship.

These ten features of a good-enough marriage/relationship can be incorporated into any relationship/marriage—to do so involves creating a plan and then committing to some ongoing elbow grease to keep the plan implemented.

Remember, good-enough relationships include great moments, but these elevated moments aren’t unrealistically set as the litmus test for the entire relationship. It’s the day-to-day connection and the strength of the relationship overall that are the true markers of a solid union.

 Marriage/Relationship Resources

To receive my free, monthly relationship tips, special workbook offers and exclusive bonus articles, don’t forget to sign up for my Relationship Help Newsletter.

And to find out more about my comprehensive marital/relationship workbooks, click Relationship Workbooks.

Here’s to creating a good-enough relationship!

Dr. Rich Nicastro

We all get defensive from time to time—those moments when our emotions seem to take over, controlling us like a marionette 

As you might imagine, chronic defensiveness communication can be a real problem for your marriage/relationship—it’s a recipe for an ongoing breakdown in communication, repeated frustrations and cycles of negativity. So it should be a top priority for couples to address this issue. One of the most important ways to reduce defensiveness is to identify the negative impact it is having on your relationship/marriage.

Relationship reality: The negative fallout of chronic defensiveness is considerable.

5 Pitfalls of Defensive Communication  

1) You cannot be defensive and at the same time listen to your spouse’s/partner’s perspective—the cardinal rule of effective couples communication is violated when defensiveness takes hold: No One Is Listening!;

2) Defensiveness begets defensiveness (and usually after a defensive interaction both parties come away feeling unappreciated, totally misunderstood or victimized by the other);

3) Over time, defensiveness feeds a negative energy of hostility, resentment and, at some point, apathy—relationships cannot exist in this kind of toxic environment;

4) The lack of openness, and increased frustration and anger associated with defensiveness, erode the trust and emotional safety that is vital for an intimate relationship;

5) Defensiveness can take a physical toll on everyone involved—defensive-reactivity places our bodies in an elevated stress-response that can inhibit rational-clear thinking, and tax us emotionally and physically.

As you can see from the above list, overcoming defensive communication should be a priority for couples wanting to experience the gifts of effective communication. And remember, you must be responsible for your own defensiveness. The mindset “But my spouse/partner is making me react defensively!” will only lead to communication stagnation.

Couples Communication Resources

For information about how to make effective communication a regular part of your 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.

All Best,

Dr. Rich Nicastro

Are you a “good enough” spouse/partner?

Decades ago, the renowned pediatrician and psychoanalyst Donald W. Winnicott introduced the important concept of the “good-enough” mother. He described how flexible parenting establishes the conditions (which he called the “holding environment”) for healthy child development—this idea offered a welcome counterpoint to the unrealistic notion of “perfect” mothering: That mythic, maternal sage who could always meet all of her child’s needs.

Child-care experts now agree that any attempts at parenting-perfection (whatever that might look like) is more likely to do harm than good (for all involved).  The same caveat holds true for the desire for marital/relationship perfection.

Seeking The Perfect Marriage/Relationship

Working toward a “good-enough” relationship-mindset can be very helpful for couples trying to create a fulfilling and lasting union. To adopt a “good-enough” marital/relationship-mindset, we must first understand its opposite: Our deepest yearnings for relationship perfection—an unconscious desire that shapes us in profound ways. 

Before we explore the idea of a “good-enough” marriage/relationship, let’s first look at the illusion of a “perfect” marriage/relationship.

In the fantasy-world of relationship perfection:

1. Your spouse/partner will be perpetually attuned to (and intuit) your needs and desires and s/he will take the appropriate steps (without much delay) required to fulfill your needs;
2. Your feelings of infatuation, elation, and mutual openness/acceptance that may have existed early in the relationship will never diminish—you will forever ride the high of new love;
3. Your partner will always be excited to see you, and want to spend time with you or, if  desired, s/he will give you just the right amount of space you need—in other words, you will never feel lonely or smothered;
4. Your spouse/partner will patiently and empathetically listen to and fully grasp your deepest longings, fears, and concerns whenever you need him/her to—you will exist in a perpetual state of feeling understood; 
5. Your partner’s interests will completely mesh with your own interests (so when you feel like staying home and doing nothing, s/he will be right next to you, wanting nothing more than to do nothing with you; and when you feel like engaging in some activity that you enjoy, s/he will mobilize and enthusiastically join in);
6. Your spouse/partner will be in the mood to have sex whenever you’re in the mood;
7. Your partner will fulfill all of your sexual needs (from the mundane to the highly erotic).

There is a theme in the above illusions of marital/relationship perfection:

A craving for complete merger and blending with another, a union where our needs and desires take center stage—in other words, the seeking of an omnipresent and omni-available partner who can fulfill the roles of caregiver, friend, lover…

Are we really susceptible to such unrealistic expectations?

And if so, how could this happen?  What is it that we really want from our spouses/partners?

Some experts speculate that a continued hope for total union and oneness resides in the depths of our unconscious mind—a powerful fantasy that stems from our earliest interactions with caregivers, shaped by developmental experiences when (as infants) we could not distinguish our own emotional world (our self-experiences) from the people who were caring for us. In essence, we experienced emotional harmony with others during this early and crucial phase of life (a sense of blissful oneness)—and, as adults (whether we’re aware of it or not), we are always re-seeking these experiences. 

According to this view, our adult relationships will always involve disappointment—never living up to the unrealistic expectations of complete emotional harmony. In this relationship-fall-from-grace, our spouses/partners will fail us at a fundamental level, never giving us the elusive completeness we once felt at the very beginning of life.

So what does this all mean for me and my relationship?

It’s not easy to determine just how much influence these unconscious fantasies/expectations may have for a particular individual or couple.

Some of us may be trying to recapture this experience of wholeness, chasing past shadows, blaming our partners for their shortcomings in an effort to give reason to our own dissatisfaction, all the while failing to recognize the source of this existential drama. Yet for many, marriage/relationship offers both fulfillment and frustration, with the realistic limitations of long-term love and domestic life existing side-by-side with never-ending hopes for greater connection and satisfaction.

So we may all be seeking a relationship Eden, and to this end place an enormous responsibility onto our partners that can never be realized—demanding a perfection that is, at best, an illusion. Understanding these complex, often unconscious dynamics is a powerful way to start the process of unraveling the threads of our longings for completion and the relationship frustrations that seem to be an inherent part of the human condition. 

Don’t forget to check out my article, Fighting For The Good-Enough Relationship, where I discuss the features of a “good-enough” relationship that couples should consciously work toward in an effort to counter our unconscious desires for the anticipated bliss associated with merger with another. 

Relationship Help Resources

To receive my free, monthly relationship tips, special workbook offers and exclusive bonus articles, don’t forget to sign up for my Relationship Help Newsletter.

And to find out more about my comprehensive marital/relationship workbooks, click Relationship Workbooks.

Until next time!

Dr. Rich Nicastro

We all make mistakes, those relationship mishaps like forgetting to pick up milk on the way home from work as promised, or failing to acknowledge an anniversary, or not paying attention when our partner is sharing something important with us—these “oops” moments are pretty cut and dry: You messed up, you admit it, you apologize, and then you both move on.

But not every relationship mishap is so black and white.

Relationship Help: When Two Realities Clash

There are many instances where one of you may feel the other has erred in some way without mutual agreement about what has actually transpired (you might have very different versions about how and why something occurred).  In these instances, your partner may feel like you’ve messed up while you believe s/he is making a mountain out of a mole hill—clearly this level of disconnect is a recipe for insidious marital or relationship conflict.

When this occurs, couples often ask themselves some version of the following questions—questions  that may add fuel to the relationship fire:

• Who’s really “right”? (This implies someone has to be unquestionably wrong.)
• Is there an ultimate truth that must be identified when these type of disagreements happen?

As you might imagine, under most circumstances such questions create a greater divide because the only resolution is for one person to accept the truth-perspective of the other while ultimately rejecting his/her own.  When these questions are part of the relationship landscape, you or your partner are suggesting the following:

“Admit you’re wrong, abandon your perspective and embrace mine, and then we can move on to living happily ever after.”

This approach violates our basic human condition: The need to have our reality—a reality where our feelings take center-stage—acknowledged and understood. This is why this approach often fails miserably.

The Power of Emotions in Shaping Our Reality

Very often we “know” something is wrong in our relationship (or right, for that matter) because of the feelings we have about what has or is transpiring with our partner.

In other words, your emotional reactions color your reality; your feelings act as a signal that shapes your truth-perspective. So when you’ve done something wrong in your partner’s eyes, it’s not only the “facts” of what happened that are considered, but more importantly, your partner’s feelings about what happened (or what didn’t happen). 

Our feelings can be an important  source of information: They inform us about what is and isn’t working in our relationship. Positive emotions (such as feelings of security, closeness, contentment, happiness, playfulness, joy, etc.) let us know that our relationship is working well for us, whereas “negative” emotions (such as insecurity, loneliness, anger, distress, hurt, jealousy, etc.) inform us that something is amiss that may need to be addressed. 

And the intensity of your emotional reactions regarding a particular event (intense anger rather than mild annoyance) may signal that:

1)  An important, core value you hold has been violated in some way;

and/or,

2) Your sense of emotional security and safety in the relationship has been threatened.

So the more intense your feelings, the more important and serious the issue is for you (assuming, of course, that other factors aren’t impacting your feelings).

It’s usually the person having the stronger emotional reaction who has more at stake: Not only is s/he upset about something that has already happened, but now s/he is faced with the likelihood that his/her feelings may be minimized or totally discounted—the fallout from this emotional double-whammy is considerable and, if not properly addressed, a pattern of estrangement can take hold.

So what should couples do when one partner is emotionally reeling over something the other partner feels is insignificant?

3 Conversations Couples Should Be Having:

One way to approach this thorny issue is to come to an agreement that this is not a right-versus-wrong issue. Such a mindset will only lead to incessant disagreements and battles that make life miserable for all involved. Rather, couples should prepare for these challenging events by acknowledging that such events are inevitable and can, with effort and sensitivity, be worked through to the benefit of the marriage/relationship.

1) Acknowledge the Inevitable

This conversation might go something like:

“There will be times where one of us is really upset with the other and there will be disagreements about what exactly happened and who is responsible. One of us may feel that something really upsetting has happened between us while the other may feel like nothing significant has occurred. Let’s acknowledge that this is a common occurrence in long-term relationships and develop a communication plan for when this does occur.”

2) Abandon Any Thoughts of Right-Versus-Wrong

This conversation might go something like:

“When we disagree about something important, it’s common to fall back on the position that one of us is right and the other is wrong. We both need to understand that this position isn’t helpful and will usually lead to increased defensiveness and greater emotional wounding. Let’s agree to work on adopting the following mindset:

While I may feel totally justified in my position, I need to accept the fact that my partner’s perspective may be different than my own and that s/he may feel totally justified in his/her own position. True, it’s not easy, but we will each work on accepting the reality that we are different people who will perceive and react to events differently at times.”

3) Focus On Understanding Each Other’s Perspective 

This conversation might go something like:

“Rather than making it a habit that we simply defend our own positions whenever we disagree, we will work toward the goal of understanding each other’s perspectives and feelings. Since the person who is upset/hurt has more at stake emotionally, the immediate goal may be to address and understand the emotionally injured partner’s perspective/feelings first, before examining the other person’s perspective.

The goal of understanding one another does not necessarily mean agreeing with each other’s viewpoint; rather, the goal is to make sense of it, understanding the “how and why” of each other’s unique reactions. We will commit to doing our best to embrace the goal of making mutual understanding a regular part of our relationship.”

I encourage couples to have some variation of the above three conversations as a way of preparing for the inevitable relationship misfires that are part of all marriages/relationships (no matter how healthy a marriage or relationship is). The issues addressed in this article are a challenge for many of us (myself  included), and these conversations may need to occur throughout the life of your relationship.

Relationship Workbooks

For information about how to make effective communication a regular part of your 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.

Let’s make effective communication a regular part of your marriage/relationship!

Dr. Rich Nicastro

Couple Spotlight: Relationship Help from Couples Just Like You

Today’s Topic: Learning from your relationship mistakes.

To say that Lenora is a giving person is an understatement.  She is the first person her friends and family call when they’re in need. “I’ve always been this way, and while I feel good about this part of myself, it’s gotten me in trouble with men in the past.” What Lenora is referring to is a history of relationships with men who have taken advantage of her emotional generosity.

“I couldn’t see this pattern at first, but with the help of my best friend, as well as my therapist, I started to realize that I had a really strong need to please others as a way of feeling good about myself…I thought that I must be valuable if someone totally needed me.” So to feel worthy, Lenora often found herself in relationships with men who weren’t emotionally whole—she was drawn to emotionally troubled men because she found some modicum of self-esteem in trying to fix them.

But, as you might imagine, this pattern never served her. 

The men she ended up with (the “walking wounded” as she now calls them) only took from her without ever giving back emotionally. And the more she gave, the more they hungrily consumed. This, of course, took an emotional toll on Lenora. And she never found the elusive self-worth and peace she hoped for in her relationships—in fact, she often felt worse (taken advantage of).

Over time, understanding this pattern helped free Lenora from its unrelenting grip. She became  increasingly aware of her emotional Achilles heel. So whenever she felt emotionally drawn to a particular man, she needed to slow down, hit the pause button on her feelings that “this is the one!” and take stock of what was behind her attraction and feelings. And just as important, she began to claim her own self-worth without needing to be in a relationship with someone who needed her.

And now Lenora happily reports that several years ago she met and married an “emotionally giving” man and she couldn’t be happier. But for this to happen, she first needed to become aware of the relationship patterns that weren’t serving her, and that’s the lesson she would like to share—that there are always important growth-lessons to be cultivated from our relationship mishaps.

Thanks, Lenora, for sharing your story with us!

What are the relationship patterns from your past that you can use to better understand yourself?

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Dr. Rich Nicastro

While it might be easy to accept the big abstract philosophies and universal truths our partners spout from time to time, it can be irritatingly difficult to accept the little mannerisms and personality quirks that pop up day-in and day-out in our relationships.

You know, all the things that can push our buttons, even something as simple as leaving the cap off the toothpaste. Before long, irritations can explode into a litany of “Why don’t you do this . . . How hard can it be to do that?”which quickly becomes the daily mantra.

Nobody is perfect, especially our partners, right? And, oh how good it can feel to point this out!

Accepting others, especially the person we love so much, can be difficult to do. To practice acceptance, it’s necessary to shed our coats of self-righteousness and self-centeredness. We must be willing to overlook, if not fully accept, the shortcomings, differences, quirks, and limitations we think our partner has.

Acceptance doesn’t happen overnight; it is a process, especially if the relationship has become a battle of wills. Yes, you can do it alone and you will see a definite improvement in your relationship, but wouldn’t it be wonderful if you both tried to be more accepting of each other?

Here are some steps you can take right now to perfect your skills of acceptance:

• Learn not to criticize. Ridiculing your partner for behavior you do not accept will not make the other change. Instead, focus on your partner’s strengths.
• Be a good listener. Your partner wants to know you respect his or her words.
• Plan constructive things to do together to build your similarities and “togetherness” strengths.
• Humor helps. Laughing about an issue sometimes makes it vanish. Making fun of yourself in a lighthearted way is a good form of self-acceptance, which will transfer to your feelings about your partner.
• Have realistic expectations of your partner and your relationship. It is what it is! You can work to make it better, but, remember, we’re still all human!

Barbara J. Peters is a Licensed Professional Counselor and relationship counselor with extensive experience working with couples. For more information about Barbara and her relationship books, visit her website: www.thegiftofalifetime.net

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Rich Nicastro, Ph.D. is a psychologist specializing in marital/relationship issues and creator of www.StrengthenYourRelationship.com. If you’d like to become a guest expert on his website, please feel free to contact  Dr. Nicastro.

For a moment, think about your reflexes: No matter how hard you try to remain still when your doctor taps below your knee, your leg is going to involuntarily kick—in these moments it’s as if your body has a life of its own, acting on its own set of rules that exist independent of your intention. And like our body’s reflexes, there are certain events that seem to reflexively trigger certain emotions in us, feelings that rush over us at times, whether we welcome them or not.

If you’re in a long-term relationship, you probably know about being emotionally triggered—those maddening moments when your spouse/partner seems to get under your skin: A word, comment, look, or behavior that shoots your emotional thermometer upward. We may not be proud of them, but we’ve all had those moments—moments when we don’t feel in control of our own emotional destiny.

When your spouse/partner upsets you in some way, it’s easy (and all too common) to place the responsibility for your upset state entirely onto him/her—you are having your reaction because your partner made you feel angry or hurt or embarrassed or…  And the reality is that there are certain events that would upset most of us (e.g., being disrespected, invalidated, ignored, or mocked).

Relationship Help: What occurs when you’re emotionally triggered?

While the argument can be made that there are relationship experiences that would upset nine out of ten people, the other reality is that we each have unique emotional fault-lines, sensitivities created in our childhoods that make us more vulnerable to reacting a certain way emotionally. What sends you into an emotional frenzy might have little emotional impact on your spouse/partner (and, of course, the reverse is true). When you have a reaction to something your partner does (especially when you later—in a cool, reflective moment—decide the event wouldn’t have bothered most people the way it did you), it can be helpful to consider whether a particular emotional sensitivity from your past is being activated.

5 Emotional Trigger Warning Signs

When we’re emotionally triggered, our emotional reaction may take on one or more of the following features:

1) You may experience a quick, knee-jerk reaction (your feelings rapidly escalate);
2) Your emotional reaction seems automatic (beyond your control);
3) The feelings are intense (and may seem disproportionate to the triggering circumstance);
4) It’s difficult to shake yourself from the feelings once they’ve occurred (the feelings have a lasting quality to them);
5) You may ruminate about the triggering event (you focus for an extended period of time on what happened, thereby adding fuel to your emotional fire).

Think of the above as possible cues that a particular emotional sensitivity is being stirred in you—when this occurs, your feelings are controlling you, rather than you controlling your feelings.

It’s important to understand that being triggered does not mean your reaction isn’t justified or valid. It very well may be your partner’s inappropriate behavior that is triggering you and that his or her behavior needs to be changed. The goal of understanding your emotional triggers isn’t to minimize troubling relationship events or to let your partner off the hook when s/he should be taking responsibility for certain actions, but rather is to help you feel more in control of your emotional world—to  allow you to exist within your emotional world without feeling like a prisoner to that world.   

Strengthen Your Marriage/Relationship Action Step

Once you have suspicions that you are being emotionally triggered, you can ask yourself the following  questions to help you better understand your emotional experience:

• Why is this particular event troubling me so much—what meaning does this event hold for me?
• Are my reactions something I felt in other, past relationships?
• Is this something I also felt as a child?

Our emotional sensitives are often rooted in our childhood experiences—so it can be helpful to make a connection between your current reactions that are being triggered and the important emotional events that impacted you throughout your childhood. Doing this is easier said than done, but it is well worth the time and effort to find out. It can be helpful to work with a therapist or counselor to help you better understand how your past is impacting your current reactions and relationships.

Relationship Workbook Resource

If you’d like to explore further how your past experiences continue to impact the way you relate to your spouse/partner, check out my workbook:

Take Control of Your Relationship: Don’t Let Your Past Dictate Your Future

Wishing you and your relationship a bright future,

Dr. Rich Nicastro