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

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In the old days before cell phones (I realize one shows his age just by starting a sentence with, “In the old days…”), couples had to wait to share good news, or any news for that matter, with their spouse/partner. No surprise, this sharing usually took place at the end of the work day, when couples would finally see each other.  For those of you who remember these prehistoric times (of having to delay gratification and actually wait to tell your partner about so and so and such and such), the wait could sometimes feel unbearable, depending on how exciting or important the information was to you.

Obviously, cell phones and texting have made the “wait” obsolete. Within seconds of wanting to contact your spouse/partner, the contact literally happens. The speed and pervasiveness of sharing has become the new norm, and our expectations about communicating and giving/receiving information are changing as a result.

Is Waiting Bad for Your Relationship?

“Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet.”  ~ Aristotle

I recently observed the following conversation:

A young wife (probably in her mid-twenties) shared with her girlfriend, “I sent Steve [her husband] a text about 15 minutes ago, and he still hasn’t replied. He’s definitely mad at me about something…”  This woman spent the remainder of her time with her friend frantically checking her cell phone. It turned out that Steve was just busy at work.

In the above example, a fifteen-minute delay is considered too long—out of the norm for this couple’s pattern of sharing, and the only logical conclusion for the delayed reply is that something must be wrong, specifically, there must be trouble in paradise. 

As the experience of immediacy replaces the experience of delay and waiting, couples need to become mindful of a potential fallout of expecting instant gratification: impatience.

The idea that “good things come to those who wait” is quickly becoming a relic of a past that doesn’t apply to today’s fast-changing reality—these changes have important implications for our relationships, not all good.   

Unbeknownst to couples, the negative energy of impatience can creep into a relationship and create an atmosphere of frustration and tension—interactions that become tinged with impatience can slowly grow into more pervasive cycles of chronic frustration and hostility. 

Impatience is likely to arise whenever your expectations of how something “should be” doesn’t come to fruition. And the growing expectation that our spouses/partners should be available to offer us instant responsiveness places an undue burden of stress on a marriage/relationship.  When instant (or near instant) access and availability do not occur, we have no other choice but to conclude that something is wrong or broken—and our feelings of frustration and impatience are the evidence, convincing us that something is clearly off-kilter.

As more rapid forms of gratification become a reality, so do experiences of increased impatience, annoyance, intolerance and irritability—there is no way around this dilemma; you cannot expect  immediacy and then feel fine when you are left waiting. 

In my next article, we will examine the potential and often hidden gifts that come with waiting.

Marital/Relationship Workbooks

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.

All Best,

Dr. Rich Nicastro

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Over the years I’ve worked with a large number of men who struggle in their marriages/relationships, despite their desire to be more loving and emotionally available spouses/partners. These struggles were partly due to a lack of information about the different factors that go into making up a successful, long-term relationship. What follows is a brief synopsis of why these men struggled to meet their partner’s needs.

Relationship Help For Men: 3 Hurdles Men Must Overcome

1)  Minimizing the Significance of Sharing

There are many different types of sharing that go along with being in a committed relationship. And many of  the men I work with in therapy often feel stymied when their spouses/partners complain that “You don’t talk to me anymore!” Often, what is being asked for isn’t a profound type of existential sharing, but rather a simple sharing of the daily details (“What happened during your day?”).

When guys perceive this type of sharing as trivial or meaningless, they are missing out on a simple yet powerful way to connect to their partner.

2)  Failing to Understand the Centrality of Emotional Safety

At a workshop for men and intimacy, I asked the participants, “What do you do in order to make your partner feel emotionally safe with you?” This question seemed to perplex some of the guys, and what became apparent is that for some men, safety is only associated with physical safety—in other words, some of these men didn’t have the perspective that safety exists on an emotional plane in intimate relationships. 

Once emotional safety is compromised, emotional intimacy and the openness of sharing the deepest parts of yourself are lost. Asking your partner what makes her/him feel emotionally safe is a first step in making this important issue a central part of your marriage/relationship.

3) Seeing Sex As A Purely Erotic Act

Sexual/physical intimacy can have different layers of meaning for couples, and part of effective couples communication involves understanding and expressing your sexual needs with one another.  Understanding that sex may not always be viewed solely as an erotic (purely sexualized) experience for your partner is important information for men to have, especially when men are able to initiate sex without being mindful and sensitive to the emotional context that may be negatively impacting their partner’s sexual desire. 

For a more in-depth exploration of the different meanings of sexual intimacy in long-term relationships, see my post, Passionate Sex: Creating A Sexual Playground Together.

By becoming more mindful of the above issues, men can gain the relationship tools needed for creating and maintaining an enriching experience with their partner. Healthy marriages/relationships are co-created by both partners, and discussing this information and making it fit the uniqueness of your relationship is the challenge for all of us trying to navigate the complexities and challenges that come with long-term, committed relationships. 

Until next time,

Dr. Rich Nicastro

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Comfort is one of those relationship double-edged swords.

I think it’s fair to say that we all want to feel comfortable with our spouse/partner—that sense of security that allows you to let your hair down and be real with each other. No pretense or games. Often, feeling comfortable with one another equates to being able to speak your mind, letting your guard down, feeling free to be more “real” rather than adopting a disingenuous persona in order to win the other over (which frequently happens at the beginning of relationships).

As one husband described, “It was such a relief to finally settle into the relationship and be able to relax…I can now truly say to my wife that she’s seen the real me, for good or bad, better or worse.”

Comfort Versus Complacency

A potential problem arises when the desire for relationship comfort enters the slippery slope of relationship complacency.  What does this look like?

Complacency arises when you refuse to leave your comfort zone for the sake of your spouse/partner—some couples act as if it’s their unalienable right to always feel comfort and therefore refuse to meet their partner halfway. Usually, what comes out of a partner’s mouth when this occurs is, “No, I don’t feel like it…”

So when your partner initiates sex, you’re more likely to respond with, “I don’t feel like it,” or when you want to break the pattern of sitting home weekend after weekend and suggest a “date night,” your partner’s knee jerk reaction is, “I worked hard all week, I don’t feel like it.”

“I Don’t Feel Like It-itis” is one symptom of relationship complacency—the message here is that you (or your partner) are set on feeling and staying within your comfort zone, and any action that will lead to potential discomfort (like trying something new) is quickly rejected. Such complacency has the potential to do damage to any relationship.

Couples who periodically push themselves out of their comfort zone reap the benefits of mutual sharing, engaging in novel activities and breaking the mundane, unexamined habits that can lead to serious relationship ruts. 

Are you ready to enjoy the benefits of discomfort for the sake of your marriage/relationship?

Marital/Relationship Workbooks

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.

All Best,

Dr. Rich Nicastro

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Relationship Help Quick Tip

Couples are continuously (on a daily basis) making decisions that impact their marriage/relationship—whether we’re aware of these decisions or not. How you approach one another, the words you choose to use while sharing your feelings (or whether you choose to share your feelings at all), the kind of feedback you give each other, if and how you express  appreciation, all these, and much more, impact the overall quality and health of your relationship.

For simplicity’s sake, let’s place the kinds of decisions you and your spouse/partner make about the relationship into three categories:

1. Decisions/actions that improve your relationship (actions that improve communication, enhance emotional closeness, something that makes you each feel loved and cared for);
2. Decisions/actions that keep the status quo of the marriage/relationship (your decisions, actions or inaction do little to change the current homeostasis of how you and your partner are relating);
3. Decisions/actions that hurt or undermine the relationship (actions that increase resentment, lead to hurt feelings and ultimately create emotional distance between you both).

Did you realize that you have so much power (each and every day) to influence the course of how your relationship unfolds? Often we don’t, because we tend focus on the decisions/actions our spouse/partner makes and then base our own actions on their actions—in a sense, our actions are mostly re-actions to their actions. So if they are pleasant, we can easily decide to be pleasant; if they are generous emotionally, we feel more open to giving emotionally; if they are moody, our option for being in a good mood is severely is restricted, and so on.

While our loved ones clearly have an enormous emotional impact on us (this fact shouldn’t be denied), we have to be careful not to project responsibility for our own decisions/actions onto them. That perspective would turn us into a helpless victim, rather than a direct agent of our own decisions/actions.

So now that you have a better understanding of your own decision-power to shape the course of your marriage/relationship, will you act in ways to improve your marriage/relationship, keep the status quo, or hurt the relationship?

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.

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

Dr. Rich Nicastro

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