Always Mad at Your Mate

One tip off that you are perpetually mad at your partner is how you feel when you are about to see them. Does the thought of being with him or her excite you? If so, this is a sign that you are in a healthy relationship. But if the idea of spending time with your mate drives you up a wall, or even makes you tense up, you may want to take a closer look at your partnership.

If you get stressed out while driving home, or if you get stressed out when your loved one is about to return home, you may find yourself living in various stages of distress. This distress can cause chronic stress and anguish. Maybe you tense up, trying to gage what kind of mood your mate is in. Maybe you can’t relax until you hear them greet you so you’ll know how to react. These states cause anxiety, and that condition is hard on any body.

If you live like you walk on egg shells, maybe it’s time to examine your partnership. Most relationships start off in a good state, as if being there is the best place in the world. People can’t wait to see the other because they feel so good being around each other. It’s the best time in a relationship; everything is right with the world and the couple is happy.

So what happened to the happy couple? Now they hunker down in their respective positions, waiting to witness and react to the oncoming daily drama. This is a situation many couples find themselves immersed in. No one feels good when locked in this routine. When the situation gets bad enough, some couples seek professional help.

As a counselor I work with many couples in this predicament. They tell me their stories about how terrible the other person has been. Both feel empty and wronged by their partner. Sometimes there’s bitterness, sometimes resentment, in each case there’s loss; loss of what was, that perfect relationship where you both felt terrific.

Couples feel terrible in this state. As a therapist I am grateful for anything that would bring a couple in for counseling. I know that what ever feels like a break, is really an opportunity in disguise. A rupture in a relationship often leaves people feeling vulnerable and at risk. I see it as fertile ground for growing in new ways with each other. For me, it’s all about what comes after, helping the couple understand what needs healing and repairing. That’s when couples learn new bonding skills; how to listen, and how to ask for what each person needs from the other. Couples learn how to feel connected again. It’s a way back, a way back to what was good in the first place, a way to remember without all the heartache, another chance to get it right.

Send your comments to linda@lindanusbaum.com

Are You Angry at Your Mate?

A lot of couples I work with are angry at their partner. Sometimes this anger has been building for a long time. When the couple finally gets into therapy they are so ready to explode and sometimes they just unleash on each other.

When this happens while I watch the fight I already know a couple of things. The first is that both are in a lot of pain. The second is that neither is getting their needs met and the louder and longer the argument, the greater the chance each person is feeling isolated in the relationship. When couples spend their time in a back and forth disagreeing state, that tells me they are spending less time in a state of togetherness.

The irony is that couples who live with this difficulty are desperate for closeness with each other, yet the arguing between them prevents exactly what they both want.

When Couples Can’t Say What They Want To Say To Each Other

All the couples I work with have something in common. They want a better relationship with their partner. It’s universal. We as humans want to be loved. We want to feel safe, cared for, supported and nurtured. We want the best out of life and we want it from our mate.

This is true with all relationships. Who wants a relationship filled with hurt feelings, criticism, lack of support and silence? None of the couple I work with. In fact that’s usually what they talk about when I meet them. They tell me what’s in their relationship now; fighting, sadness, aloneness, and they tell me they want that gone so they can feel the love again.

Most people think counseling is a way to remove the barriers that have crept in overtime and kept the couple from feeling connected. The counselor is supposed to remove the barriers and then the couple is happy again.

One time a client walked into the room and stated, “So this is where the magic happens.” I laughed with him and responded, “Yes it is. In fact my magic wand is right over there.” We laughed again, but the truth behind that statement echoes what most people believe; therapy will fix the problem.

What I like to help people understand is that counseling helps couples understand themselves, their relationship and each other. I’m their guide to help them in the process. I know the real success lies in couples who can say everything to their partner without fear of hurting feelings or driving them away. I know that happy couples know how to listen to their partners without taking everything personally or feeling they have to argue to the death to win an argument.

There are very few rules for a good relationship. But these guidelines are important. They sound a lot like the good book, or the Ten Commandments or any other philosophy that treats others with compassion. They are simple because if you and your mate are conscious, you will not intentionally harm the other. If you accidently hurt the other, your mate can tell you about the hurt and you can make amends immediately. You recognize that holding on to hurt feelings harms you and your mate, it keeps you disconnected. You work hard to resolve difficulties because you know that if you don’t they will build and build and you will have walls between you that leads to all the stuff you don’t want.

The recipe for a good relationship is simple. The roadmap to getting there may not be. Each person brings to a relationship his and her experiences from a lifetime of living without the partner. Included in this history is an unconscious collection of rights and wrongs. This collection is a template that people fit their lives on to. The rights and wrongs keep us safe in our world. When people find their mate there is an unconscious expectation that the mate will automatically understand the partner’s right-and-wrong template. A person might think, if he or she really loved me, they would automatically know what I needed.

Unfortunately each person brings his and her own template, and they differ. Most people don’t talk about what they need in the relationship to keep them feeling safe and loved because most people don’t even think about it. It’s unconscious. You only are aware of it when it’s not working. Something happens and you feel misunderstood. Your perfect person doesn’t know that one important thing about you. They must be heartless, or even, the wrong person. The perfect person would know, automatically, because isn’t that what love is?

These are the issues you get to explore in counseling. You become conscious of when you expect something from your partner without asking for it. You gain the confidence in yourself to be able to ask for what you need. You stop blaming your mate for not giving you what you needed when you haven’t let them know what it is. It’s simple and it can be challenging. Even so, it’s worth it.

Send your comments to linda@lindanusbaum.com

Learn more about Linda at www.lindanusbaum.com

Research shows it’s not the fight that hurts the relationship…It’s how you fight that determines lasting effects

According to The New York Times Magazine, April 18, 2010, in an article that ponders the question, “Is marriage good for your health?” surprising studies show that people who fight are not in danger. The research shows it’s not the fight that determines whether the marriage is good for you and your partner. It doesn’t matter how difficult the argument or how angry the fight, what matters is whether the people fighting stay connected. That’s right, you have to tell you partner right in the middle of a fight that you still love them. You have to find a way to grab their hand or call him or her a pet name, and you have to do this right in the middle of the argument or fight.

If you can do this you will have a happy heart and not suffer from stress. When we argue without connection to our partner we put stress on our hearts and other parts of our body. We get all keyed up and mad, sometimes we even get hateful. The key, according to research, is to find a way to make a connection with the person we are fighting with, during the argument.

Usually couples will have it out with each other and then they’ll have to wait until all the energy inside them dies down so they can talk to each other again, talk about what happened and start some sort of repair process to reconnect. Research shows us that if you can find a way to get out of the anger for just a second and make an overture to your partner, a small gesture or a couple of loving words are all that’s needed, you will keep yourself from getting into that mad zone that takes so long to come back from.

Going there, the mad place, and staying there, is one of the most harmful things you can do to your body. Your body is now dealing with enormous amounts of energy. It’s all stored up inside each of you and it has to go somewhere. Maybe some of it get’s released through loud words said to each other, but chances are if you are yelling at the other person you are pretty amped up and those feelings are going to take some time to dissipate. It’s this period that has the most negative impact on your body; elevated stress hormones, elevated risk of diabetes, elevated risk of heart disease, immune system weakens, increased risk of depression, nasty stuff to keep inside yourself.

Why not think of this now, before the next blow up. Talk with your partner, spouse, boyfriend or girlfriend and discuss the damage you each are doing to yourselves when you get in prolonged arguments. Gain an understanding of the toxicity that fighting without connecting can produce.

Maybe you can come up with your special way of connecting before the argument begins. Why not create a safe word or a funny phrase, a physical gesture or make a silly face. Anything will work, as long as it brings the two of you close. The idea isn’t to end the argument or fight. The technique is designed to give the two of you a place away from the war zone. It doesn’t even have to last a long time. It just has to last a moment. If you can do this the research says you will be served by your relationship, instead of it feeling like a weight.

Send your comments to Linda at linda@lindanusbaum.com

Learn more about Linda at www.lindanusbaum.com

How to Stay Focused on the Good in a Relationship

When couples try and work out problems often they get derailed with the pain that sits between them and doesn’t seem to go away. It’s not that couples don’t want to get closer; it’s just that they are stymied as to how to get around the hurt. If one or both are carrying around some deep pain, how can the couple get together?

This is a situation people find themselves in, even when they are in counseling. It’s one thing to understand the pain, resolve the hurt and move on, but sometimes it’s hard to even get to that first step. So how do you keep two people, who believe they have something special between them, focused on the big picture?

I like to help couples see what’s good in their relationship; find five things that work, five things that make you feel alive, five things that you know to be true, five things that keep you in the relationship because they are good. If you can find five things that are meaningful to you chances are you are willing to continue to work on the union and you will be able to see a big picture.

So what is the big picture?

It’s the vision of what your relationship looks like when you are gazing at it through hopeful eyes. Make sure
you add your senses too. What does it feel like? Are you safe and full of love? What does it smell like? Is it full of fresh air and forest, or salt and sand from a beach? Where are you and your mate? What age are you and your partner? Maybe you want to write about this image. Perhaps you want to paint it or draw with pencils. How ever you may want to solidify your vision you should do so. This is your relationship. It can be any color you want. And your partner’s may be totally different.

Maybe that would be a good exercise too. Both of you create your image of your partnership and then share the visions with each other. You are both right. You are both creators of your happiness. See if there is agreement. See if there is connection. See if you like hers better, or his. Be open to the other’s ideas. Be grateful for their vision. Be appreciative that they see themselves with you.

Agree to work toward your collective visions. Make a pact to walk the journey together. These steps are not designed to remove all barriers. Sometimes old hurts and resentments take focused effort to remove them. Even so, in my experience, when a couple has a goal, some place to travel to together, they grow a sense of “us”; us on the road together, us building something together, us against the world together.

A sense of “us”, not two people in conflict, not two people separated by resentment, but two people undivided and together.

Send your comments to linda@lindanusbaum.com

Learn more about Linda at www.lindanusbaum.com

When It Feels Like It Will Never Work

Sometimes in a relationship a fight may bring out such deep feelings of being torn apart there might be an accompanying fear that the union is broken.

Sometimes the fights are so painful that it feels useless to even think about trying to work things out.

Isn’t this evidence that the relationship just doesn’t work? How much more proof do we need to know that we can not get along and we are making each other miserable.

Of course you would think this. Of course you would feel as if your relationship was on the rocks. Who wouldn’t? What crystal ball do you have to tell you things could be different?

As a couples counselor I am familiar with people believing that their partnership is in shambles. I have heard from all types of couples about the terrible things that sit between them, and I have been a witness to some pretty difficult times in a therapy session.

I know it feels terrible to be involved in something that just feels wrong. I know it weighs heavy on both people when they get mixed up in it.

I also know that every time there is big emotion, it’s a sign that people are becoming vulnerable and dropping deeper into what could become a rich connection with each other.

The emotion tells us of pain. Pain in a relationship is usually present when one or both people are desperate for something. They are seeking something from the other. It could be understanding, closeness, connection, tenderness, intimacy, love.

It’s usually something from deep inside the soul that desires this. And it’s probably been a deep longing for awhile. Unfortunately all attempts to fill the desires and longings have fallen flat. The partner hasn’t delivered. The partner isn’t available. He/she doesn’t understand, connect, have time for, need, want, and desire me.

This is the message the person receives when their attempts at connecting fall short. If we receive the message that our mate can’t fill our deepest longings, we might get pretty angry, and we might even get really mad at them.

So of course there will be big arguments. Of course there will be people raising their voices and saying things that they might not say in other circumstances. That’s what we as humans do when we have a lot of energy stored up inside us. We have to let it out, and we do, at our partners, especially when things are not going well.

So do fights mean the relationship is on the brink? No, it just means there is stuff to work on. It means there is an opportunity to understand what each person needs. It means there’s hope; hope that when we understand each other we can give our partner what they want. And that’s what everyone is looking for, to be understood by their mate, to be listened to when they need an ear, to be treated tender because the world is a lot better knowing we’re loved.

Don’t let a big fight tell you something else, that if we loved each other you wouldn’t do this to each other. This would be true in a fairy tale, not in real life. Fighting doesn’t mean you are wrong for each other. Fighting means you are desperate for understanding.

Send your comments to linda@lindanusbaum.com

Learn more about Linda at www.lindanusbaum.com