Discover what you can do to give your relationship a chance.
Lauren asks:
“I have been married for 12 years, our marriage has always been a struggle of various forms. I have gotten to feel so empty and resentful that I can hardly look at my husband in the eye let alone be loving to him. I feel my inner self tell me its time to be done. But my mind tells me differently because of our wonderful children. Trying to find out if there is hope for our relationship or if I can truly feel love/intimacy for him without sacrificing my own health?”
Lauren, I don’t know enough about your relationship to know whether or not there is hope for your marriage, but what I do know is that there is much inner work for you to do before deciding that it’s time to leave. Continue reading “Is There Hope For Our Relationship?”
Do you believe that you want a relationship but never seem to find the ‘right one?’
Most people say they want to be in a relationship, yet they consistently do things that keep them from achieving this. If you answer yes to some of the questions on the following list, you might be relationship avoidant . . . → Read More: Are You Relationship -Avoidant?
After reconciling with your partner, do you find yourself back in the same pattern?
Nancy wrote to me asking the following question:
“My husband and I were married for 15 years. Divorced. Reconciled after 9 months and re-married. I am having second thoughts about the reconciliation and I’ve become introverted with no desire to communicate or be close. I feel very protective of my personal affairs and feelings. The more he pushes the farther away I remove myself from the relationship. I feel the relationship is severely co-dependent. How do we break the co-dependency? What steps can I take to figure out why my need to protect is so extreme?”
Nancy, it sounds like the underlying issue is that your husband wants to have control over how you feel about him, and you are in resistance to being controlled. As long as controlling and not being controlled is the intent governing your relationship, your relationship cannot heal. Continue reading “Divorced and Reconciled – But It’s Not Working”
Should you leave a relationship that is stuck in a negative cycle? It is quite common for me to work with clients who are stuck in a dysfunctional relationship cycle. Sarah describes a common cycle that she wants to resolve:
Are you focusing on getting your partner to change to avoid a painful choice that you might need to make?
If you find yourself often focused on healing others or hoping you can get others to change, it is likely that you don’t think of this as an addiction. I define an addiction . . . → Read More: Addiction to Getting Others To Change
Discover what you may need to address before deciding whether you can be friends with an ex partner.
Elise writes:
“My partner and I separated a year ago. My partner now wants to finalize the relationship but work on being ‘friends’. I am having difficulty connecting as just ‘friends’, it seems to trigger all my old wounds of rejection and abandonment. Do you have any advice?”
Elise, the fact that your old rejection and abandonment wounds are getting triggered is a great opportunity for you to become aware of how you are rejecting and abandoning yourself. This is the real issue in the present. Old rejection and abandonment wounds get healed when we learn to give ourselves the love, compassion, gentleness, tenderness, caring and understanding that we didn’t receive as children.
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