Focus on the Good for a Stronger Relationship

Happy Couple Putting Their Relationship First

Couples trying to work out problems often feel stuck. They get derailed by the pain sitting between them, and that pain just doesn’t seem to go away. It’s not they don’t want to get closer; the pain stymies them. If one or both carry around deep pain, how can the couple get around it and get together?

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Think of Their Good Qualities

Focus on your partner's good qualities.

When we are in a relationship and we get our feelings hurt we often forget that the person who hurt us is one we love. We might even see them as the enemy because they did something to us and it made us feel bad.

But what if we had the ability to remember all of the good qualities in the person that we fell in love with? Wouldn’t that make it a lot easier for us to return to our connection with them instead of hating them for what they did?

Yes, I know this is a big stretch for many people, but here is the thing. Most of the time when our feelings get hurt it is not intentional. We might make it into a war, but the beginning misunderstanding is usually just something that didn’t feel good.

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Painful Relationships Come from Loving Deeply

Painful Relationships Come from Loving Deeply

Many of us, when we find our special person, go all in. I know I have done this, maybe you have done this too. Going all in means that we love with our entire being. We have found the “right” one and we are blissfully happy.

This is how all relationships start. However, as anyone who has been with their mate for a while knows, that blissfully happy place doesn’t last. No, it doesn’t.

But if we are determined to build a life with the one we love, then we must learn new skills of how to love and be loved better. And these skills include understanding how we get hurt and how we heal.

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Help Yourself by Looking Inside

Help Yourself by Looking Inside

When we are in a relationship, some of us often look at our partners and wonder how could they treat us they way they do. We might even try and get them to change their actions by complaining about what it is that makes us uncomfortable.

Many of us do this. I know I have done this in the past. But now I try and do something different. I wonder what it is inside myself that gets me so riled. I look inside myself for clues to help me understand me.

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What a Successful Couple Looks Like

What does a successful couple look like?

It’s not often that we get a chance to observe a successful couple in action. And when we do see one, we might not even notice it. I had the chance to be in the presence of such a couple and this is what I witnessed.

I was at a conference led by two people who have been a couple for many years. What struck me is that they clearly love each other. It was so soft and tender in certain moments, I was really amazed by it.

I started to think about what we all want in our relationships. We want to feel safe, and happy, and taken care of. I think that’s about it. But often we go about trying to get these things by telling our partner what is wrong.

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How Wants Can Derail Your Relationship

How Wants Can Derail Your Relationship

All of us want things to go a certain way. That is the way humans are hardwired. We like this, we don’t like that. We want more of this so we can feel good and we want less of that because it makes us feel bad.

These are our wants and dislikes, or in another way to express it, the stuff we want more of are our desires. We might desire our mate to listen to us more. We might desire out partner to make more time for us. Any time we are wishing for more of something with our beloved, we are trapped in desire.

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Change Your Habits, Change Your Thoughts, Change Your Life

Change Your Habits, Change Your Thoughts, Change Your Life

Many of us try to get rid of some thoughts and focus on others—perhaps more positive ones. And if you have tried this then you know how very hard this can be. All of us have wished our minds would just let go of some of the things it thinks about.

But how many of us are truly successful at it? We can’t do it by force. But lately I have noticed something quite remarkable. Here is how it happened. My husband has been cutting carbs to reduce weight. He has become very devoted to this new way of eating.

I have seen him withhold foods before, but there is something different about this time. He is very focused and dedicated. So when my workout trainer who also knows my husband said to me, “Your husband is really talking more.” The following memory arrived.

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Can Being a Better Husband or Wife Be Taught?

Being a Better Husband or Wife: Can We Learn How?

How do we learn to be in a relationship? This is a question people have been grappling with for centuries. Some people come to earth just knowing what is the right way to treat another human. Some of us are taught, and then there are others who just struggle.

I used to struggle in my relationship with my husband-to-be. In the early days (20 years ago, before I was a therapist) I was pretty unhappy. And he was unhappy too. We didn’t know what to do to get better, so we went to a counselor.

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Kindness in Relationships: How Little Things Keep Us Together

Kindness in Relationships

Most of us in a relationship often focus on what we are not getting. We might remember the early days with our partner when everything felt so perfect, but now things are not the same.

This is very common with couples. All of us stay intoxicated with our new mate in the beginning. And as time moves on we start to feel that all-over love feeling slipping away. Then we might even question if we are with the right person.

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Why We Bleed: What Loss Can Teach Us

Why We Bleed: What Loss Can Teach Us

When sorrow hits us it often feels like a ton of bricks raining down upon us. The bricks wipe out everything we thought we knew and not only that, but the ground also shifts, and we can’t find where to put our feet. Our earth, that solid foundation we have stood on forever has vanished in an instant.

When grief rips us apart we have nowhere to turn. There is no safe passage back to where we once lived. There is nothing before us, behind us, to the side of us, underneath us, there is nothing left. We are alone with our deep pain and nothing, absolutely nothing we can think of can change that. We are living with a hell inside us that will not budge.

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