Ancient Wedding Ceremonies

posted by on Dec 24

Good relationships don’t just happen. I’ve heard many of my clients state that, “If I have to work at it, then it’s not the right relationship.” This is not a true statement, any more than it’s true that you don’t have to work at good physical health through exercise, eating well, and stress reduction.

I’ve discovered, in the 35 years that I’ve been counseling couples, 7 choices you can make that will not only improve your relationship, but can turn a failing relationship into a successful one.

TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR YOURSELF

This is the most important choice you can make to improve your relationship. This means that you learn how to take responsibility for your own feelings and needs. This means that instead of trying to get your partner to make you feel happy and secure, you learn how to do this for yourself through your own thoughts and actions. This means learning to treat yourself with kindness, caring, compassion, and acceptance instead of self-judgment. Self-judgment will always make you feel unhappy and insecure, no matter how wonderfully your partner is treating you.

For example, instead of getting angry at your partner for your feelings of abandonment when he or she is late, preoccupied and not listening to you, not turned on sexually, and so on, you would explore your own feelings of abandonment and discover how you might be abandoning yourself.

When you learn how to take full, 100% responsibility for yourself, then you stop blaming your partner for your upsets. Since blaming one’s partner for one’s own unhappiness is the number one cause of relationship problems, learning how to take loving care of yourself is vital to a good relationship.

KINDNESS, COMPASSION, ACCEPTANCE

Treat others the way you want to be treated. This is the essence of a truly spiritual life. We all yearn to be treated lovingly – with kindness, compassion, understanding, and acceptance. We need to treat ourselves this way, and we need to treat our partner and others this way. Relationships flourish when both people treat each other with kindness. While there are no guarantees, often treating another with kindness brings kindness in return. If your partner is consistently angry, judgmental, uncaring and unkind, then you need to focus on what would be loving to yourself rather than reverting to anger, blame, judgment, withdrawal, resistance, or compliance. Kindness to others does not mean sacrificing yourself. Always remember that taking responsibility for yourself rather than blaming others is the most important thing you can do. If you are consistently kind to yourself and your partner, and your partner is consistently angry, blaming, withdrawn and unavailable, then you either have to accept a distant relationship, or you need to leave the relationship. You cannot make your partner change – you can only change yourself.

LEARNING INSTEAD OF CONTROLLING

When conflict occurs, you always have two choices regarding how to handle the conflict: you can open to learning about yourself and your partner and discover the deeper issues of the conflict, or you can try to win, or at least not lose, through some form of controlling behavior. We’ve all learning many overt and subtle ways of trying to control others into behaving the way we want: anger, blame, judgment, niceness, compliance, caretaking, resistance, withdrawal of love, explaining, teaching, defending, lying, denying, and so on. All the ways we try to control create even more conflict. Remembering to learn instead of control is a vital part of improving your relationship.

For example, most people have two major fears that become activated in relationships: the fear of abandonment – of losing the other – and the fear of engulfment – of losing oneself. When these fears get activated, most people immediately protect themselves against these fears with their controlling behavior. But if you chose to learn about your fears instead of attempt to control your partner, your fear would eventually heal. This is how we grow emotionally and spiritually – by learning instead of controlling.

CREATE DATE TIMES

When people first fall in love, they make time for each other. Then, especially after getting married, they get busy. Relationships need time to thrive. It is vitally important to set aside specific times to be together – to talk, play, make love. Intimacy cannot be maintained without time together.

GRATITUDE INSTEAD OF COMPLAINTS

Positive energy flows between two people when there is an “attitude of gratitude.” Constant complaints creates a heavy, negative energy, which is not fun to be around. Practice being grateful for what you have rather than focusing on what you don’t have. Complaints create stress, while gratitude creates inner peace, so gratitude creates not only emotional and relationship health, but physical health as well.

FUN AND PLAY

We all know that “work without play makes Jack a dull boy.” Work without play makes for dull relationships as well. Relationships flourish when people laugh together, play together, and when humor is a part of everyday life. Stop taking everything so seriously and learn to see the funny side of life. Intimacy flourishes when there is lightness of being, not when everything is heavy.

SERVICE

A wonderful way of creating intimacy is to do service projects together. Giving to others fills the heart and creates deep satisfaction in the soul. Doing service moves you out of yourself and your own problems and supports a broader, more spiritual view of life.

If you and your partner agree to these 7 choices, you will be amazed at the improvement in your relationship!

posted by on Dec 20

To break up a relationship is a harder decision when we talk about a long term one.

In most cases when woman is no longer interested in a relationship she doesn’t want to be the one to end it. But even when she is already made the decision to break it up, she will take some time to give you some signs to prepare you, before she tells you.

If you feel that something is going wrong it is time to take a closer look at your relationship. Here are seven warning signs she is no longer interested:

1. This is probably the most classic subtle signal of all: her life become too hectic. She hasn’t picked up the phone for a few days and when she does, she is busy and pretending that she doesn’t have time to met you. This isn’t necessarily a sign that it is over, but if you are used to meet her frequently then there is something wrong.

2. Eventually, when she decided to spend some time with you she keeps looking around to find something to do or someone else to talk to. However, when a woman is interested, she puts in the effort by giving you her full attention.

3. She’s secretive and no longer wants to tell you where she has been or who was on the phone.

4. Don’t forget that women love to talk. If she doesn’t ask you questions and shows no interest in what you have to say and when you ask her questions she limits her answers to “yes” and “no” she has a problem. Can it be the relationship
with you?

5. Is she causing arguments over stupid little things? If nothing you do or say isn’t right anymore and all that goes wrong is your fault you can start to worry.

6. She refuses the presents you make. Women love to get presents, so if she turns yours down, she can feel guilty because she is thinking to break up with you, especially if you know she was about to buy that thing for herself.

7. She talks about divorce or break up of other people relationship, as a positive thing. Maybe a friend of her just has braked up with her boyfriend and now she is doing much better.

In the game of romance, few things are black and white. Most of the points above are assumptions based on commonly used techniques. There is room
for interpretations and misunderstandings but all this can make you wonder if everything is ok and discuss the problems you might have.

posted by on Oct 5

Cheating is the worst form of destruction to your relationship or marriage; it is already considered a betrayal of the vows they took when they got married. The discovery of the act of cheating by the other half can either break the marriage or make it stronger depending on the strength of their love for one another.

Cheating generally means that you are not fully satisfied with your current partner or you feel that something is missing in the relationship. If you were completely in love and happy within your relationship, why it might happen that your partner have an affair?

Trust is a big reason, not of your partner, but yourself. Probably for some time you have sensed something is different or questioned the change of behavior in your partner.

Nobody deserves to be cheated on, no matter what state your marriage is in and if you believe your partner is having an affair now is the time to check it out and do a little investigation just to be sure.

Start by looking for the obvious things such as a change in the way your partner dresses, a sudden desire to look good, a change in work patterns,
an unusual interest in the gym, secrecy over phone calls or emails, a loss of intimacy in your marriage, lack of sexual interest or distance between you that never used to exist. In the worst case you may spy her.

A cheating wife can cause much emotional trauma, not to mention the harm it could cause a family.

Here are some important clues that might help you to find out if your partner is having an affair.

1.Changes in appearance and attitude. She has a sudden preoccupation with her appearance. She is more interested on how she dresses; go often to a
hair salon and even to gym, even if this wasn’t her main priority before.

2.Lessened intimacy. If in the past you used to share everything with your wife and then suddenly she seems distanced and clams up when you try to
discuss intimate things, it could mean that she has already distanced herself emotionally and mentally from you. She is suddenly frigid and loses any interest in doing anything with her husband.

3.She’s being secretive. She’s no longer sharing her daily events with you. She might avoid you because she feels guilty. Don’t get paranoid and suspicious, ask her if everything is ok and tell her she’s been acting differently lately.

4.Disinterest in family. If your wife is no longer excited to meet you at the door from work there must be a problem here. Or when your partner feels the sudden need to go out try to find a reason to accompany her. If she comes up with a reason that she had to go on her own push the issue, not too much but just enough to see if she becomes more uncomfortable.

5.Less arguing and fighting. She used to get angry if you didn’t want to come out with her and her friends, but now everything you do is all right by her. Once upon a time, your every move had to be premeditated, but now all the small things you used to mess up aren’t enraging her. This could be a good thing, but you wonder why she no longer cares.

6.More phone and internet. In the last time she speaks a lot at the telephone using a low voice or whisper on the phone and hangs up quickly. Maybe she set up a new e-mail account and doesn’t tell you about it. Watch out because she might buy a cell phone and doesn’t let you know. Ask her if she is being true with you and if she becomes accusatory then it is obvious that she is
cheating you.

7.She’s always late. In the past she never came home late but now this happens more and more. Her explanation is that she had to stay more at the
office because she has a lot of work to do. Or she goes to the store and comes home four hours later. This is really a reason to worry.

Cheating spouses often look and act guilty, give a general feeling that something isn’t right. They try and avoid meaningful conversations, keep
everything at a general and non intimate level.