Hi, this is Linda Nusbaum. It's been amazing being able to help everyone for so long, but it's time for me to retire. The site is up for archival purposes, but I've closed my practice.
Thank you.
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.
Often when couples fight there is a whole swirl of emotions from each partner. And if it is a big argument then there might be a lot of distance between the two as each person soothes their hurt feelings.
It sometimes takes days or weeks for some couples to come back together again, and when they do it’s likely they don’t talk about what happened that tore them apart in the first place.
As a couple’s therapist I find it so reassuring that almost each couple I help has two different types of people in the relationship. One person is expressive and forthcoming and the other one is silent and isolates.
In the beginning of any relationship these traits are not seen. We are all so busy just finding our person that we are entranced with them and they are for the moment, perfect.
But after a several months we all start to see that what we thought about them is not exactly who they are. You see what we do is put them into our minds as the perfect person. We fit them into what we have been wishing and waiting for.
All of us have the capacity to love our partners. And there are times when we do and feel so close to them. There are also times when we can’t feel any further away because we got our feelings hurt.
Many of us in relationships vacillate between loving our mate and wishing they were different because the part that we don’t like keeps grating on us.
This is pretty common. Many of us wish we could design our partner to be just what we want so we can be completely comfortable. Some of us don’t even want to hear what they have to say because our needs are not getting met.
Sometimes when I work with couples, I see something that is hard to see. Two people who love each other who can’t hear each other. This often happens when there are two strong willed people in the relationship.
I know I am very strong willed. When I met my husband-to-be, I had been working on myself in my own personal counseling and I was pretty sure I was ready to meet my soulmate. And I did.
“What do couples fight about?” It’s not uncommon for couples to fight and argue with each other, so it’s natural to wonder why. As a couples counselor, I most often help people with communication issues.
People in relationships commonly argue about the same things. Although the way couples argue belongs to the two people who are in the relationship, the content of what they are arguing about is often the same.
Sometimes when we get our feelings hurt, we want to lash out at the one who caused us to feel bad. This is pretty common for some of us. I know it was for me.
I grew up in a household where my mother was overwhelmed and released her frustration by yelling at her children. I know she loved us, but as a child I learned that this is what you do when you don’t like something: you yell.
Oftentimes in our relationships our partners will speak and act in ways that seem very strange to us. We will wonder why they are doing what they are doing or saying what they are saying, and our brain will immediately figure out what is wrong with them.
After they finish, we might even tell them that the reason they are talking the way they are talking is because of how they grew up and how they now sound like their parent and how this is something that isn’t resolved.
It is not uncommon for two people in a relationship to argue or disagree with each other. In fact it should be expected. We do not live in our partner’s head and we can’t always know when we step on a sensitive area.
These sensitive areas can release a big reaction and that can create a problem between two people who care about each other.
As a counselor I try and help people understand what happens during these instances. First we look at what happened but I always try and identify what the feelings were that prompted the reaction.
We all start out loving our mates. This is just how all relationships begin. Everything is perfect for a time and then things start to get more difficult.
This happens to all relationships. When the difficulty begins, that’s a signal that each person has to do some adjusting to make the relationship work. Only most of us have been single before we got into our relationship and we know how to be single a lot better than we know how to be a couple.
So, when we start to get our feelings hurt, some of us build a safety wall around ourselves so we don’t get hurt anymore…