Archive for relationship
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!
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→
Tantra: The Spice of Life and Relationships
Posted by: | CommentsJust back home after an October colors trip to the Northeast to present a workshop at Kripalu entitled Sex, Pleasure and Intimacy. We had just a wonderful time exploring the “ins and outs” of the topic with honesty, sensitivity and humor. What an absolute treat to have such open discussions about this forbidden topic. So helpful and reassuring, our common humanity on display without shame. Beautiful, b
eautiful people.
I was left with a desire to live my life in an even more “Tantric” way. Tantra is a form of Yoga that emphasizes the transcendent possibilities of an increase in sensual awareness. Somehow, along the years, Tantra got placed in a box labeled Esoteric Sex and wound up with somewhat of a tarnished reputation. I believe that Tantra practice in our daily lives can be a great help in awakening our consciousness.
Here’s my simplistic take on the matter. Tantra is all about drawing the most satisfaction possible out of every moment. For most of us these days, that requires a great slowing down in order to become available to experience the fullness of the moment. A terrific support in slowing down is breath awareness. Sensitizing ourselves to the naturally calming flow of breath usually helps us relax, slow down and increase our ability to focus on anything. Read More→
The Business of Relationships (Make Love, Not War!)
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No Agreement
JOEL: Imagine for a moment that, as a couple, navigating the daily tasks of your life together was a new kind of business model. In this, you wouldn’t have any hated meetings, no strategic planning retreats, no 360 degree feedback sessions, no consultants or bosses……sounding pretty sweet, eh?
Well, yes….but, the ensuing chaos could become unsettling for some. Welcome to your life as a couple or family, where the stress of managing (there, I said it) your shared life could be the perfect laboratory for stress researchers, who seem to have multiplied lately. (What were they doing before the recession?) The daily, weekly and seasonal tasks of managing (there it is again) a household, boggle the mind. Who will do what, when, and how, test even the most advanced couples’ communication skills. And landing on “who makes the decision” about any one thing, can create the power struggle from hell.
So what about those “honey-do” lists? If one person is the designated “List Maker” and the other, a grateful and non-complaining “List Taker”, life could start looking pretty grand. Our List Taker dutifully attacks the list, in its proper stacking order and accomplishes said tasks in the declared time allotted. They clearly know their role and accept the List Makers supreme wisdom of “all things listy”. No feedback, no 360’s, no challenge to the LM’s authority. Life is good, right?
Wrong.
KATE: Here’s a story about us that might help. We have learned that we don’t have a right to an expectation of each other unless we have an agreement. That’s right. No agreement, no expectation, no right to get mad, sad or give feedback. We have cats; adorable, loveable, furry, independent pets. They go in and out of the house, they play with each other, they cuddle with us; they are even friendly with our Labrador Retriever, Maggie Mae. They also poop. Who, in our family, is in charge of scooping the kitty litter (or taking out the trash, or emptying the dishwasher, or making/cleaning up dinner, or paying the bills… you can add your own here)? Read More→
There Are No “Little Things” in Relationship!
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For better or for worse, the “little things” in relationships, both good and bad, matter more than we’d like to believe. We’ve spoken before on this blog about our belief that daily life IS foreplay for couples. We know that large, regular doses of kindness offered to our partner make for great connection and intimacy. Continuing to water and feed the garden of our relationship is critical.
But there is another grouping of “Little Things” that we all must pay attention to… the Weeds! In honor of Summer, it seems appropriate to look at what our love interests have in common with our gardens. Weeding our relationship garden is critical. Weeds not dealt with can wreak havoc on those wonderful plants we’ve been cultivating for a while. We have one in particular that attaches itself to other plants and gradually chokes the life out of them. Can you see where I’m going with this? I see it every day in my office; “small” problems or conflicts left unattended gradually suck the juice out of the relationship.
Believe me, I pull a lot of weeds out of our flower gardens. The problem is, many times I don’t get the whole root and they just grow back again. In our relationships, the weeds or frustrations we experience also have deeper roots. Without getting at these our conflicts simply return again and again in one form or another. They’ve been doing that our entire lives. There are no magic carpets we can sweep them under or weed killers that take care of the problem long term. “If we don’t deal, we can’t heal”. It’s an ongoing project. Read More→
Relationship Guessing Games
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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→
Take a Look in the (Relationship) Mirror.
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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!
