Linda's Relationship Counseling Blog


When a Couple Buys a Bed

I had been working with this couple for a while. The two people love each other, but when they get into a disagreement it is hard for them to connect back with each other after.

Does this sound familiar? This is what happens with all couples. There is a misunderstanding or miscommunication and two people who love each other get their feelings hurt and then they don’t know how to make it better.

This is common among couples. So, learning what to do when you get your feelings hurt is paramount to solving this issue. Each person has to figure out what they do and how to calm themselves in order to talk with their partner and get them to understand what happened to them.

Read More

When People Get Exhausted Trying to Be Better

All of us in a relationship want to have a great life with the one we love. This is why we couple. It makes sense. We fall in love and believe this is the best feeling in the world. We attach to that feeling, but at some point, we are a little less thrilled with the relationship and our partner.

As a couple’s counselor and someone who is in a relationship, I know this first hand and I help people with this as well. It happens. That wonderful partner we have finally found is not as perfect as we had imagined them.

Read More

How Remembering Your Goodness Helps You and Your Partner

Remembering your goodness can help you and your partner reconnect when things go wrong.

Sometimes when we fight with the person we love we might feel bad about ourselves. On other occasions we might feel angry at them. It just depends on the way we are wired.

Some of us believe others hurt us and therefore we have to react. That’s how I grew up. Others believe they are at fault for the difficulty and blame themselves or just hold things inside. This is how the other half live.

But as I explain this to you, maybe you can see that both people are trying to make sense of something that went wrong: a problem, an argument, a disagreement, or a misunderstanding. It doesn’t matter what gets in the way, we all know when it’s something that keeps us apart it feels terrible.

Read More

When One Partner Stays Quiet

Woman quietly ruminating instead of talking to her partner.

We all come to our relationships with the way we navigated our life before we met our beloveds. Every one of us has a habit of how we handle difficulties, problems or our need for change.

This is just how humans work. So, when we meet the one we love and they love us and we are mad about them, it is very hard to believe in that moment that they will not understand everything about us.

Read More

When One Partner Blames and the Other Shuts Down

Often in relationships there are two different kinds of people. I have noticed this in the many years I have been counseling couples. One is very clear about how they got their feelings hurt, and the other is likely to keep everything inside.

I see this play out in every couple I have ever counseled. It is very common. The one who emotes, (that’s me), often feels alone in the relationship because their partner doesn’t communicate with them on a deep level.

Read More

Come Back to Your Best Qualities

Take a look at yourself and focus on what you love about yourself, like this happy woman looking in the mirror.

Learning how to manage anger in a relationship can be challenging, but the rewards are well worth it. Learn where anger comes from and what you and your partner can do in response to the other’s anger.

Many of us get mad when our feelings get hurt. This is a very common human feature. A lot of us are wired to express our pain by getting upset, and that’s what we do.

Read More

Changing Our Harmful Relationship Habits

Changing harmful habits can help your relationship thrive, leaving you less concerned than the woman pictured worrying about her relationship.

All of us have habits we bring into our relationships. Some of them are very good, but some of them can bring about pain and hardship to our partners. And if we have those bad habits, what can we do about them?

Plenty! But the first thing we have to do is understand what it is we are doing.

Read More

How Our Habits Crush Our Connections

How our developmental habits get in the way of our romantic connection, depicted by a couple closed off from one another.

All of us in a relationship savor when we get along with our mates. We love the times when we are connected and when nothing pulls us away from that connection.

But when our feelings get hurt… well, that is usually another story altogether. We often just stew in our own discomfort and stay isolated from the one we love. This is very common with couples. I have even experienced it in my own relationship.

Read More

How Our Interpretations Get Us in Trouble

Do you ever find yourself seething as a result of a story you tell yourself about what happened, like the furious woman pictured here?

We all make interpretations about our lives. Something happens to us and then our mind tells us a story about what happened. And if you are in a relationship with someone you love, you may be constantly interpreting what your partner does to you and why.

This is just something to look at. And if this article helps, great. But when I learned about my own interpretations, I thought it was very useful, and maybe these thoughts will be useful to you as well.

I often do this, where my husband will do or say something, I will feel something and then I will wonder why he said or did what he did. Maybe when I explain it this way you can understand it too.

Read More

Try Starting Over

Make a new beginning for yourself like nature making a new beginning via this plant sprouting in a concrete crack.

All of us are good people. We all intend to do well with people we love. Sometimes we are not our best and that is when difficulty can arise.

Here is a way to remember your goodness and it is a practice that might work for you. Let’s say you got into an argument with your partner. You might start to tell yourself something about your behavior, or their behavior and stay angry for a time.

This is suffering. Yes, an argument did happen. That’s what occurred. But the difficulty is inside your mind where you might be rehashing what happened, why it happened, and how you could do better or how your partner could do better.

Read More