Archive for Building Long-Term Love
LOVE, The Magical Change Agent
Posted by: | CommentsYou may be very good at seeing the faults of your partner. I’m sure you wish that he or she would be different, and don’t understand why they cannot or will not change.
In fact, you have spent so much time contemplating this, that you have made yourself miserable. Not coincidentally, and possibly unknowingly, you have also contributed to your partner feeling miserable about themselves, not to mention you and your relationship.
Of course you wish to change some annoying or painful behavior about your partner that you imagine contributes to your unhappiness. This is normal. And most likely you are unsuccessful in getting them to change. Even if you are justified in your belief that your partner SHOULD change, they would probably find changing difficult. They might possibly, even secretly, wish they could change as well. They might even feel ashamed about it, even if they tell you differently.
You must ask yourself how your negative contemplation of their “faulty behavior” is affecting you. The more you think about it, the more outraged you feel, and the more disconnected from your loved one. Your chronic outrage is like a poison to your mind and emotions. You are left with an attitude that hurts them as well as yourself. As you can see, the chances of them changing that “faulty behavior” decreases with this approach. You also become more and more miserable, and the warmth and connection between you diminishes dramatically. Read More→
Letters, We Get Letters(about Relationships…)
Posted by: | CommentsHi Joel,
I was wondering if you could give me any advice on dealing with jealousy in a relationship? I love my partner and for a lot of the same reasons that I love him I tend to get insanely jealous over stupid things. I’m working with myself on a lot of things in particular that seem to come completely naturally to him, but I have a hard time not getting bitter about it. I know my bitterness 
is misplaced, so I try to repress it and then it ends up coming out some other time, causing some completely ridiculous argument. I know that I could sit down and list all my good traits or have him point out what he admires about me, but I wish I could just get my mind to stop comparing us all together.
Hiya Dear,
Thanks for writing so honestly on a topic we can all relate to. Here are some thoughts about your situation. Feel free to ask more if needed.
Most of us partner with someone who has different skills and qualities than we do. What they can naturally and easily do well, we may have to work really hard to accomplish, if we even want to put our energy into those endeavors. Even then we may not ever reach their skill level. Usually, we too, have areas of natural expertise that our partners may find difficult for themselves. Hopefully we don’t downplay those too much!
Sometimes, in a couple, one person is more of a “glass half empty” type (like me) and looks more at what’s missing. The other is often more a “glass half full” person, and seems to pay more attention to their wholeness. When our focus is more on “where we’re not” it’s easier to feel bad in comparison to another. “Glass half fullers” (like Kate) don’t tend to go there, at least not in the light of day. Read More→
Grow Your Love
Posted by: | CommentsWe wanted to give you a head’s up, in case you missed it in the magazine, on a real good article from Yoga Journal entitled Grow Your Love. Lots of wisdom from a solid handful of couples (yours truly included) who share the similarities and useful awarenesses between the practice of Yoga and the journey of Relationship.
Here is a little snippet to whet your appetite:
“It’s no secret that relationships require work, but, as in yoga, you can find a happy balance between effort and ease when you apply your awareness. “A lot of people feel like, ‘If you loved me, we wouldn’t have to work at this,’” Feldman says, but he thinks that’s an unrealistic attitude. The trick,when it feels like too much effort, is to find more ease. To help couples with this, Feldman and his wife help their clients discover “love rituals”—small gestures practiced up to three times a day for two to three minutes at a time—so they can reconnect with the partner as a source of pleasure rather than pain.”
Hope you enjoy!
YOUR LOVING RELATIONSHIP IS GIVING YOU LIFE! or The Neurobiology of Secure Love
Posted by: | CommentsWe humans need safe, loving relationships where we receive support, a deep sense of security and emotional nourishment. The research on attachment and bonding tells us that we feel braver, happier, more confident, and our immune systems are stronger, as a result of secure interdependent connections.
Hardwired into our brain throughout our evolution is the need for warmth, affection, and emotional responsiveness. In 
a word: LOVE. This loving between humans is an enormous key to our survival. We respond to abandonment and isolation as danger. In practical terms this translates into some very basic questions that we, in the western world especially, carry deep inside: “Are you there for me”, “Do I matter to you?” “Do you know how much I love and need you?” “Will you be able to respond to me?”
When the answers to these questions are mostly “I am here; I love you” or “We are in this together” or “I want to hear your needs, and will be here with you”, we respond with a sense of emotional safety. We feel as if we “belong”, we are connected. Our flight and fight response relaxes, and we open our hearts. When we consistently receive a negative or threatening response to our vulnerable questions, we shut down and feel endangered.
Danger and safety are primitive mammalian responses. They are not logical and they are not optional. We can, however, understand them logically and learn to behave in ways that engender more safety and connection in our relationships.
The research on attachment between mothers and infants has a correlation with how lovers behave. When we love someone, and are loved in return, we emotionally tune into one another. When this attunement is satisfying, we help regulate each others’ emotional and physiological lives. We help each other balance, and this supports each of us to function happily and confidently in the world. Read More→
What to Do When You’re Upset With Me ?
Posted by: | CommentsKate and I highly value a skill we call “Self Soothing” because we know that our partners, family members and friends are virtually guaranteed to trigger age-old reactions in us. Of this we can be certain. In order to create a safe space for our closest relations to let us know what happened, we must be willing to listen carefully to “their world” or their perspective on what happened. This is one of what we call the “willful practices” on the path of relationship. When we can’t hold onto ourselves, we are bound to interrupt our partner and usually kick-off another round of defensive behavior that often devolves into the blame game, you know how it goes, “I’m right, you’re wrong, here’s why”.
I was feeling poetic and penned this little self reminder this morning. Hope it’s helpful.
You’re upset…I can breathe and relax…
And let you be upset…And breathe some more….
And try to feel your pain, even if it’s me you’re upset with…
I can relax….And hear about what’s upsetting you…
I don’t need to defend myself…I don’t need to justify my behavior…
I can breathe and just be with you…In your upset….
I may have defensive thoughts from time to time…But you still are not wrong… Read More→
Relationship Guessing Games
Posted by: | Comments
You should’ve known”
“How could you not know…after all this time”
“What did you assume I meant?”
Trouble, trouble and more trouble. Expectations and assumptions….place them in the cupboard labeled Recipes for Disaster, or, to be more precise….. Love Killers. Shoulds (the S word) are like weeds that commonly thrive in even the best of relationship gardens. Dig one up, two more arrive the next day. “I mean, if I can’t expect you to come through for me, who can I?” And the answer is (drumrollllllllllll) “fagetaboutit”. No cheese down that tunnel! Read More→
Love=Rejoicing in the Otherwise
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Alright, I can wrap my head around the understanding part; we were raised differently, schooled differently, believed differently and all that. I can understand that we’re different. But rejoicing in those differences? That’s another subject altogether! You (Nietzshe) can afford to be philosophical about all that. I mean, after all, you get paid to theorize about such things. I wonder though how you feel when your partner takes your carefully squeezed and rolled tube of toothpaste and utterly destroys all your meticulous work? Read More→
Take a Look in the (Relationship) Mirror.
Posted by: | Comments
To be successful in a committed relationship will always require us to look at ourselves. To deeply check out my motives for acting as I did, to consider the deeper feelings that were stimulated in me and to see if I acted in the way I would have wanted to. There is no doubt that my partner acted in a way I didn’t like. It may have hurt me. It certainly didn’t meet my expectations. I can blame her all day and all night, but what will that help me learn about myself? In the end, we will both need to choose to hold the mirror up to ourselves and see what role we each played. Sometimes those roles get a bit subtle and require a good, long look. My behavior may have been unconscious but nonetheless real. Sometimes my inability to decide quickly will cause Kate to move into “fix it” mode. I may have a complaint about why she did that, but she will also say that I had a role in it as well. I then get to choose whether to go on trying to prove that I am “right” or letting her know both how I felt and what I did to provoke her behavior. Usually, if I am upset, I have to calm myself down before it’s possible to really look inside. There’s is usually something I can own. Whenever I can do that AND communicate it skillfully we both get to learn something and come back into Connection much more quickly.
Will you let go of being right and own your part? Tell us, tell your partner, tell the world!
