Are You In a Healthy Relationship?

I am a couples counselor. I work with people in relationships to help them resolve their problems and difficulties. But I wonder if people ever really ask themselves if their relationship is okay.

And if they did question whether their relationship was working, what would let them know it was? I believe it’s easy to tell if your relationship is workable. To know if yours qualifies, just ask yourself how long it takes the two of you to mend after an upset, argument or fight.

There is pain in our world. There is pain among couples who carry hurt feelings and just can’t heal them. I see this often in my work as a relationship counselor. Another thing I see is a statement from some people that goes like this, “I don’t like to apologize.”

Some are even more emphatic with, “I don’t ever say I’m sorry.” This is not uncommon for some people to think this way. Many people believe that if you apologize, you are showing a sign of weakness. Weakness is something many people believe they have to avoid at all cost.

My Partner Criticizes Me — Video Help for Relationship Problems

Being criticized feels really, really awful. Anyone who’s been picked apart can tell you that.

Let’s talk about why people criticize—the feelings underlying it, what they hope to achieve, and how to keep things civil and constructive.

One More Day

You are invited to watch the debut of a new show: Feel Better Live. It’s being hosted by Linda Nusbaum, a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist who specializes in helping couples. The first show will air tomorrow, Thursday, February 21st at 6:00pm and continue every Thursday at 6:00 from then on. It’s free and you don’t have to sign anything to be a part. All you have to do is visit the Feel Better Live Stream Page (feelbetterlive.com/watch-now/) by clicking here.

*Note, if you press play before the scheduled show you will be able to watch a promotional video.

So why should you watch? The show is designed to help people in their relationships. We all have many relationships in our lives; with our mates, with family, with children, at work. Often we run into difficulties and sometimes these challenges leave us feeling terrible. Let me help you work through your worries. Send me your questions and I will answer them live during the show. Don’t worry about identifying yourself, you can remain anonymous if you choose. You can start now by sending in your thoughts to feelbetterlive@gmail.com

I can’t wait to hear from you and have you be part of our new show. Me and my team are thrilled to be hitting the air.

See you soon!

Something New

It’s not uncommon for people to walk in a creative way and try something new. Often this can be scary and yet exhilarating. As many of you know I used to be a broadcast journalist. I covered stories across the country and globally. For many years I loved this work. As with all jobs however, sometimes they just become too routine, or they don’t feel as good as they once did.

There were many reasons why I become a therapist ten years ago, and it was one of the best decisions I ever made. I am very happy here, and now I am bringing back my old skills in a new way with a live weekly broadcast. Only this time it will be on the web, and it is designed not for me, but for you.

As a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist who specializes in relationships I have a private practice in Long Beach, California where I work with couples and individuals. With this new live web show I can help many more people. I created this live broadcast to provide help and happiness to people in their relationships.

The format is designed to answer your questions about your issues. You will be able to email, tweet and call-in during the show. I also invite you to send me your thoughts and questions now so we can answer them when we begin taping.

I have put together a terrific team of people and we are all excited to begin.

FEEL BETTER LIVE will be coming to you in the next few weeks. Watch the link below to learn more.

What Went Wrong?

I often work with couples who impress upon me how they just don’t know what went wrong in their relationship. They started out so loving and happy and then they woke up somewhere down the road, years later and they just don’t have that happy feeling anymore and they don’t know why.

They tell me it’s because they may have fallen out of love for their partner. They also tell me they are not sure if they can get “it” back.

The “it” is the feeling couples experienced when they first got together, that loving, wonderful state that makes us believe we will always feel fantastic with our person.

We sign up for the relationship and believe that we will always feel this way with the person we have chosen. Only we don’t. We start to notice things about them that we don’t’ like. They start to nag us or complain, or ignore us and we don’t like that.

These are the normal patterns that set in when a couple moves beyond the first phase of bliss. It’s what we do about these differences that determine how the relationship survives.

If we have some experience in relationships we might have some communication skills to speak about our feelings with our beloved. If we are fairly young in the relationship world we might just be beginning to discover ourselves and what we want and need for happiness, so we may not know how to communicate those things yet.

Each person brings their habits from their singlehood; how they took care of themselves, how they communicated with others, how they feed themselves and clean up after themselves. These are habits people bring into a relationship that were most likely formed in their childhood. Each person in a couple brings their own set of comforts around these issues.

When we are in a blissful state of loving our partner, no one thinks about the socks left on the floor. Such a little detail would be meaningless and laughable in this state of love. But just wait a few years after one of the partners has been picking up dirty socks for the other and is so tired of doing it they will scream if they have to pick up one more dirty sock from the floor.

Then the couple comes in to counseling and tells me they just fell out of love with their mate and they don’t know why.

It is my belief as a Marriage and Family Counselor that couples have more to become good at a lot of jobs in order to have a successful relationship.

In no particular order except that they are all equally important, each person in the relationship has to become aware of their own feelings and reactions to their mate. Each person must also become an expert in their partner’s feelings and learn how to attend them. Both people in a relationship have to be conscious of how they communicate with their beloved.

If you were talking to a hurt child you would be kind, caring and compassionate. Regardless of how mad you may get at your mate, you can not throw up your anger on them. Unless you are truly with a terrible person, it’s almost always the case that what ever the perceived hurt you may have felt, it was not done intentionally.

You picked a good person. You picked the right person. Your job is to learn how to be the best mate you can be and to take care of the person you are sharing your life with as your partner will do for you. Now that is a great relationship, where no one gets blindsided.

Taking Responsibility in the Relationship

One of the hardest things I see couples struggle with is the idea that each person in the relationship is responsible for his or her own part of the problems that surround them. It’s not uncommon for people to want to blame the other person for how they feel as if the partner did something to cause the upset. Something bad happens and people start pointing fingers at the other person.

Many couples actually live this way for a long time; looking at their partner as if he or she is the tormentor. When couples live with this pattern it keeps them feeling helpless to change anything in the relationship. Each person keeps waiting for the other person to do something different to make them feel better.

It’s as if both are waiting to feel more appreciated, valued, important to their partner and loved. But the longer they wait, the more tempting it is to blame the other person for not supplying those good feelings. Sometimes couples will even spend the next few years building cases against each other.

You know you’ve done this if you say these kinds of things to your mate, “You did this to me so I had to do this to you.” “You didn’t do this for me so I did this to you.” “If you had only done this than I wouldn’t have had to do that.” All these phrases hold the partner responsible for how you feel. They leave the person blamed feeling helpless and the accuser feeling empty, a sad place for both.

When the relationship has turned into two separate camps, I like to encourage couples to think about a couple of things. The first has to do with intent. What is the intent of your partner when he or she does something that makes you cross? Do you know? Sometimes people just assume they know what their partner intended and it’s usually not very good. I like to encourage people to find out if there is any ill will coming from the mate. To do this all a partner has to do is ask.

It could sound something like this, “Hey, when you left those dirty socks on the bed did you do that to make me mad?” I know this probably sounds silly, but chances are if you got mad because your mate left dirty socks on the bed you might want to find out if he or she did it on purpose just to piss you off. If they didn’t, don’t they deserve to forget, make a mistake or just be oblivious once in a while? Find out what they were trying to tell you, if anything, with the action before you explode.

The second thing is understand how you impact your partner. If you accuse him or her of doing something to harm you, you are blaming them for something. Ask yourself what it feels like when you get blamed. It feels terrible. Usually we get defensive and want to argue back. Try and put yourself in your partner’s shoes before you level the criticism.

If you say something you feel bad about, apologize. That’s what considerate people do. This does not make you weak. This makes you a good person. It also sends a message to your mate. It tells them, “I don’t want to stay mad at you. I want to get closer to you.”

And that’s what all couples want, closeness, connectedness, love.

Send your comments linda@lindanusbaum.com

www.lindanusbaum.com

But I Said I Was Sorry; Why Isn’t That Enough?

I can’t tell you how many times I have heard this from couples during a session. Something big happens between them, like one person cheated, the offending party apologizes but the difficulty continues and the person who said sorry wonders why. The person who got hurt wants to feel better. The person who has apologized becomes exasperated because he or she feels they have done everything they can. “I said I was sorry. What else do you want from me?”

Unfortunately this is frustrating for both people. Each person wants to feel better, yet both feel like something is unfinished. The person who hurt the other wants to make their partner whole, but the words “I am sorry,” are just not enough. Why not? Why aren’t they enough? Why isn’t just saying I am sorry for what I have done to you enough?

If it were enough we wouldn’t be talking about what isn’t finished. And what’s not finished is the healing that the wounded feels and continues to experience. The person who got wounded is usually in some deep pain. When the person who caused the hurt says “I am sorry”, that usually lifts the guilt of the person who offended, but it doesn’t begin to heal the deep pain the offense caused. That’s why just saying “I am sorry” is not enough.

So what would be enough? What can couples do to really fix a gaping whole that exists between them? The first thing I like to help couples do is understand what happened. It’s much deeper than explaining what a person did to the other. Often couples feel that if they talk about the problem one time, it’s all done. Unfortunately many couples will delve into a difficult topic, talk about it once, and then both will feel the issue is settled. But it’s not. I know that the first conversation is crucial, but it is only a very first baby step. That’s all, just one little tiny baby step.

Think about it. You are wounded by your partner’s infidelity. You are devastated and you don’t know if you can forgive and forget at this moment. Your world is rocked and you aren’t sure if you will even be able to go on living with this person. Now your mate sees your condition and says to you, “I am so sorry for what I have done. I love you. Will you forgive me?”

In a moment of feeling lost and alone you hear those words and they feel like medicine on a very hurt heart. Your partner says he or she is sorry, that they love you, and that they want you to forgive them. They promise they will not leave you and they deeply emphasize how truly sorry they are for hurting you. You feel so sad and lost you just want to make everything better, like it was before you were wounded. You want this so much you say with all the hope in the world, “Yes. I forgive you. I love you too.”

And for the moment you really believe you will be OK. In that one magical moment you hope you will be able to go back to the way you were and make everything the way it was before the affair, before you knew any of this.

And everything is OK for that moment. But that moment doesn’t last very long because in your mind the next image you have is of your partner with the other person. You start to wonder when he or she stopped being faithful to you and became interested in another. You start to think about times when he or she might have lied to you. You begin to wonder about the moments you might have suspected something but you brushed it aside because you believed they would never do anything like that to you. You knew in your heart they could never do anything like that to you.

You live afraid that everything you know is crumbling and you don’t know what to do. You can’t move. You live in disbelief that the one who you committed yourself to has been unfaithful. You try and bring up some of these feelings because they are eating you alive. You try and talk to your mate but when you bring up the subject he or she gets angry and says, “I already said I was sorry. What else can I do?”

Healing after a breach like infidelity takes time and work. An apology is a place to start, but that is all it does; it open the door to the next process. And that next step includes understanding what happened, for both people, and asking all the hard questions like, “Do you still want me?”

Send your comments to linda@lindanusbaum.com

www.lindanusbaum.com

Relationships 101

As a couples specialist I know that every couple I counsel has a unique set of issues. Even so, I can say with confidence that every couple has at least one thing in common: they want to feel better in the relationship. So if two people love each other, why do they have such difficulty?

To put it simply, we don’t learn how to be in relationships when we couple, we just hope that things will work out.Couples want to be happy. They want to feel supported, understood, admired and loved. So why do the couples I counsel all say they don’t feel that? The reason has nothing to do with intent. I believe people who get together in relationships want to build something special together.

The problem is that people haven’t learned what qualities make a good relationship. Without knowing how to listen to each other, ask for what you need, or resolve disagreements without a fight, most couples knock into each other on a regular basis and get pretty bruised in the process. They end up angry and resentful, and/or disappointed and sad. It’s a terrible state to live in with someone you love.

So why does this happen? We learn a lot in our life. We learn how to be a student in school. We learn as a child how to relate to our parents. We learn how to follow rules. We learn how to exist in our world. We understand that we are entitled to a good life. We are also taught that when we meet the right person we will be happy, and everyone wants to be happy.

Here’s the problem, and it usually starts when we are young. Some of us see dysfunction in the families we grew up in and we make a vow to ourselves that we will not repeat the mistakes of our parents. We have good intentions to live better, more peacefully. But all the intentions in the world can not teach us how to be in a relationship. These are not skills you can learn in one class. No one learns new behaviors in a day. It takes time to understand how to be a good partner and it takes practice to become one.

A good place to start is by answering the following questions. How do you speak to your partner? Are you kind and loving? Are you curt and angry? Do you resent your mate and show it by rolling your eyes and shrugging your shoulders? This is the first thing to notice. This is step one in Relationship 101. Be nice to your partner, period. You may be mad about something and want something resolved with him or her. This is a different matter. The first step to being in a good relationship is treating your partner with love, and that means speaking with kindness, all the time.

Step two involves learning how to resolve difficulties before they become fights. Maybe your parents modeled good resolution skills and you do this automatically. When issues arise you speak about them with your mate. You tell your side, you listen to your partner, you discuss the matter and you come to an understanding. Unless you learned how to do this as a child growing up, you probably exhibit very different behaviors when you get upset. Maybe you yell. Maybe you get quiet and sulk. Maybe you leave the room. If you do any of these, you could benefit from learning how to resolve issues more effectively.

Step three is about asking for what you need. Something happens to us when we fall in love. There’s this little, secret place where we feel really vulnerable and we believe our partner knows us so well that they will take care of all our needs, wants and desires that are kept hidden there. Of course they will, we tell ourselves; they know us intimately, they love us, they would never do anything to hurt us. This is a wonderful belief. Many people feel this way without being aware of it. Most people don’t talk about this with their partner. But that doesn’t prevent them from believing it and expecting their mate to solve all their problems and make life wonderful.

But this is a fantasy. People, even people who love us, don’t automatically know what we need deep down inside our soul. No one will ever know this unless you tell them. This may be one of the most difficult parts of learning how to be happy in a relationship. You must learn what you need, want and desire, and you must be able to ask your partner for it. No one can read your mind, even someone who loves you.

In couples counseling I help people understand the state of their relationship. Then we begin to implement new behaviors, paving the way for something better. This is one way to improve a relationship, and isn’t that what you want, too?

Send your comments to linda@lindanusbaum.com

What To Do When It Feels Like Things Are Broken

Sometimes when people call to find out about couples counseling I can hear panic in their voice. I can sense a feeling of worry and fear. Something is broken and the person on the phone doesn’t know how to fix it and that’s why they are calling.

This is a terrible place to find yourself, not knowing if you can make it in your relationship, wondering if it’s broken, and daring to hope it can ever be better. All this is pressing on the individual who is making the call. It’s a helpless kind of feeling. As if all the things the person knew doesn’t amount to anything and they have to do something absolutely radically different to survive the current difficulty.

It’s a scary call to even consider. It’s an even harder call to make. And yet hundreds of people make these calls to therapists and counselors every day. They call because they are looking for help. Often they call because they fear everything they know will go away and they have one last effort to make before that happens.

What ever the reason, it’s always a good sign. People turn to others when what they know doesn’t work anymore. It’s O.K. to do this when our car breaks down, or if we need a medical check up and to get our taxes done. But when it comes to our relationships we are not taught to turn to outsiders to help get the relationships back on track. We are taught to take care of it ourselves. Maybe we are from the thinking that it’s not that bad, it could always be worse or, it will get better, eventually.

Most people feel their relationship is their business, not the business of an outsider, even a therapist. I get this. I understand this. It’s so hard to uncover all the parts that have been hidden from us, from our partner and lay them out in front of a stranger. I know. I also know it works. The process works. People get a chance, maybe for the first time in their lives to tell their entire story without someone telling them their vision is off or wrong.

That’s the beauty of counseling. It comes without judgment. Therapists are trained to help you say what will be helpful to you, understand what it is you feel and help you ask for what you need to be happy.

It’s so scary to move into this when you have relied on yourself or your partner for everything else. It’s so hard to even think that someone who doesn’t know you can actually help you make your life and relationship better.

And that’s exactly our training. That’s what therapists and counselors do. We help people feel better. It’s what I do and I love it.

I'm retired.

Tag Archives: relationships