.: Making Marriage Work, Part 1
Category:Home / Relationships / Marriage
(This is part 1 of a 5-part series on making marriage work)
It was Joan’s first counseling session with me, but it didn’t take long before the tears began to stream down her cheeks. “I’m married to the man of my dreams, but I’m miserable,” she said, reaching a hand up to wipe away her tears. “We were so in love and now things are falling apart. We are fighting and distant much of the time. I love Justin and I don’t want to lose him, but I don’t know what to do. I don’t know why this is happening. I seem to be getting angrier and angrier and he is getting more and more distant.”
“What are you angry about?” I inquired.
“Justin keeps pulling away from me. He’s working longer and longer hours. But even on the weekends when he is home, he just seems to be distant. He’s either watching TV, playing computer games, or in the garage working in his workshop. When I try to talk with him about it, he shuts down even more. We can’t talk at all anymore.”
Like Joan and Justin, many couples are stuck in a dysfunctional relationship system, wondering what happened to the love and passion they had at the beginning of their relationship.
Two major fears may be undermining your relationship with your partner:
Fear of rejection: the loss of another’s love through anger, judgment, emotional withdrawal, physical withdrawal, or death.
Fear of engulfment: the loss of self through being controlled, consumed, invaded, suffocated, dominated, and swallowed up by another’s demands.
Until these fears are healed, you will likely react defensively whenever they are triggered. Joan reacted by getting angry when her fears of rejection were activated, while Justin withdrew when his fears of engulfment were triggered. You might react in different defensive ways, but the result will be the same - your reactive behavior coming from your fears of rejection or engulfment will trigger your partner’s fears of rejection or engulfment. Now both of you are acting out of fear. Together you have created an unsafe space where love and intimacy will gradually erode.
Most of us have not learned to stay open when our fears of being rejected, abandoned, engulfed, or controlled are triggered. If, when these fears are activated, you focus on who is at fault or who started it, you perpetuate the problems. Blaming your partner for your fears, as well as for your own reactive, unloving behavior, makes the relationship feel unsafe.
You both end up feeling badly, each believing that your pain is the result of your partner’s behavior. You feel victimized, helpless, stuck, and disconnected from your partner. You desperately want your partner to see what he or she is doing that (you think) is causing your pain. You think that if your partner only understands this, he or she will change - and you exhaust yourself trying to figure out how to MAKE your partner understand.
Over time, passion dries up. Superficiality, boredom, fighting, and apathy take its place.
The dual fears of LOSING THE OTHER through rejection and LOSING YOURSELF through being swallowed up by the other are the underlying cause of unloving, reactive behavior. These fears are deeply rooted. They cannot be healed or overcome by GETTING someone else’s love. On the contrary, you must heal these fears before you can SHARE love - give and receive love - with your partner.
The key to doing this is learning how to create a safe inner space where you can work with and overcome your fears of rejection and engulfment. In this series, I will show you a powerful six-step process you can use to create and maintain the inner safety you need to become strong enough to love.
Only when you have achieved inner safety and inner strength can you create a safe relationship space. Joan gradually learned to stop attacking Justin and take loving care of herself whenever her fears of rejection surfaced. She learned to create inner safety when she felt threatened rather than trying to get Justin to make her feel safe from her fears.
You can do this too. In fact, any two people who are willing to learn to create their own inner sense of safety can also learn to create a safe relationship space where their intimacy and passion will flourish and their love will endure. The rest of the articles in this series will lead you through this six-step healing process.
Article keywords: marriage, relationship, love, loving relationships, relationship help, relationship advice, love advice, conflict resolution
Article Source: http://www.articles32.com
Margaret Paul, Ph.D. is the best-selling author and co-author of eight books, including "Do I Have To Give Up Me To Be Loved By You?" and “Healing Your Aloneness.” She is the co-creator of the powerful Inner Bonding® healing process. Learn Inner Bonding now! Visit her web site for a FREE Inner Bonding course: www.innerbonding.com or email her at margaret@innerbonding.com. Phone sessions available.
.: New Marriage Articles
1). How to Create Romance When You Have a Chronic Illness
Can you be romantic even when you have a chronic illness? Yes, but you have to make an effort in the romance department. About 75 marriages end in divorce when illness is present. You can save yours by putting some simple romantic ideas into place.
2). What are the Clues That Your Partner is Having an Affair?
How can you tell if your partner is having an affair?
3). 3 Little Prayers That Strengthen Relationships
How do you strengthen your marriage? In an age when most marriages and relationships are falling apart? A simple secret in the Bible gives you a step-by-step process that will take all the guesswork out, and usher you into the waiting arms of your partner, without fail!
4). Military Marriages
This article tells you what you will have to deal with when it comes to a military marriage.
5). Boomers and the Valentines Day Gift of Discourse
This Valentines Day, are you shopping for the language of love that is bound to communicate the intensity of your feelings? Use the following five tips to help you improve the quality of your relationship.
6). Five Ways to Sneak Off & Celebrate Valentines Day
Living with kids or another family member can put quite a damper on your romantic life. Valentines Day is your day for a private celebration you and your lover can share. However, if you cannot get away for any private time, the whole day might be ruined in the process. This is why we have created a list of five different ways you can sneak off and get private time, even when the kids are in the house.
7). Decorating Your Valentines Love Nest
Tips and advice for decorating your Valentines Day Love Nest to prepare it for an evening that is filled with romantic festivities.
.: Top Marriage Articles
1). Lack of Communication in a Relationship
One of the most important aspects of a successful relationship is effective communication between both parties. Lack of communication in a relationship can result in hasty decisions that can even lead to separation. We need to understand the reasons behind communication breakdown and how they can be avoided to ensure a fulfilling relationship.
2). Why Most Marriages Fail
Roughly 50% of all marriages fail and many of those don’t even make it past the first year. Understanding why marriages fail can be key to ensuring that your own marriage does not.
3). Marriage Advice: What You Need to Build up a Good Relationship
Quirks are one among the major problems in marriage. This is very common in a relationship. Most of the time, it is the cause of broken relationship to some who are not able to handle it well.
4). Cheating Husband or Wife: 6 Keys to Know if You are Ready to Handle What You Might Find When You Spy
When you spy on your suspected cheating spouse, please make sure you consider all the possibilities you might encounter and whether you can handle them.
Have you considered the many situations that spying might uncover? Can you imagine the worst thing you might find? Predict what your response will be to the worst-case scenario. Are you ready? Here.
5). New Body Language secrets
If you've ever wondered about the validity of body language analysis, here is something new and exciting to ponder.
Though we may be aware of body language, and be able to fake different positions to fool onlookers, this is not possible when we are asleep.
At night, our body naturally and involuntarily adopts the position that feels the most natural.
6). Why Do Women Cheat? – An Update
I’ve received some relevant critique to my original article, “Why Do Women Cheat?” This critique falls into two categories: men’s experience with a single woman cheating with many others, or men’s experience with a number of relationships where it seems the women always cheat on them.
7). Emotional Infidelity: A KEY Tactic to Save the Marriage
Hearing that your cheating spouse is “in love” with someone else is devastating. I hear often, “I can handle her having sex with someone else. I think I can live with that. But, for her to give herself emotionally and “love” someone else…man, that is hard.” (Feel free to substitute the word he for she in this article.)
What can you specifically do to increase the odds of saving the marriage?
So often the offended spouse reacts with intense feelings and pulls out all stops to “win her back.