How will adding a child to your family change your relationship with your partner? The arrival of a child is so full of many emotions: love, excitement, fear, anxiety and self-doubt. Your relationship with your partner may be the last thing on your mind, but it shouldn’t be!
Read MoreA sense of safety in a relationship is the foundation that creates the ability to connect, to be intimate, to relax into the sense of oneness that a mutual affinity and healthy attachment can foster.
Read MoreWhat do you do if the root of every argument with your partner leads to one issue: you both fundamentally want different things? Having different life goals can lead to disagreements and may even leave you wondering if the relationship will work at all.
Read MoreLove puts no limits on topics for conversation—but if you’re constantly fighting over money, it’s not something you want to bring up. Money is the number one issue couples fight about, and it’s consistently a leading cause of split or divorce. Therefore, working through your money issues in a healthy way is more valuable than the money itself.
Read MoreMost couples have experienced this situation at one time or another—you think you should discipline your child a certain way, and your spouse or co-parent wants to handle it differently. You each become entrenched in your position. And what started as a problem between you and your child quickly evolves into a problem between you and your spouse. You are no longer parenting as a team.
Read MoreChronic loneliness occurs when feelings of loneliness and uncomfortable social isolation go on for a long period of time. It’s characterised by constant and unrelenting feelings of being alone, separated or divided from others, and an inability to connect on a deeper level. It can also be accompanied by deeply rooted feelings of inadequacy, poor self-esteem, and self-loathing.
Read MoreBreak-ups can be tough - some people feel as though their world has been turned upside down and that things will never be good again and wonder how others can feel relief and happiness. There’s no right or wrong way to feel after a break-up.
Read MoreSarcasm is an easy way for us to share our feelings without being confrontational. Buried within many sarcastic remarks is a nugget of truth for the person making the comment. What’s delivered as a joke can hold real feelings that end up causing real pain for the person on the receiving end of the sarcasm. Just because a comment is wrapped up in a joke doesn’t mean it cannot cut another person.
Read MoreEmpathy is the understanding of how others feel and being compassionate toward them. In other words, empathy is the awareness and acknowledgment of others’ feelings and emotions. Empathy means the ability to sense another person’s feelings and emotions even when they don’t talk.
Read MorePoor listening could lead to assumptions and misunderstandings. These lead to errors, ineffective decisions, and/or costly mistakes. On a personal level, poor listening leads to hurt feelings and a loss of team cohesion. This deteriorates trust and weakens communication even further.
Read MoreWhen you love someone, it's only natural that you feel an urge to take care of them, comfort them, and protect them – and you want them to do the same for you. You are expressing your love for them by providing them with the types of comfort you know or can reasonably expect that they'll appreciate.
Read MoreAn unhealthy phenomenon in many long-term intimate relationships is the tendency to keep score. It is not so much keeping score that is the problem, but that when partners do keep score, they tend to unfairly focus on the negative. Rarely in couple therapy, my line of work, do I hear couples delineate all the good, loving, or wonderful things that their partners did in a certain week. Most often, I hear a list of all the things a partner did not do or things he or she did that were insufficient or hurtful.
Read MoreThe blame games. It can make you feel tiny: like nothing you do is good enough or ever will be. It can break down your sense of trust in your partner and replace it with a growing sense of resentment and anger. And, if it persists for a very long time, constant blame in a relationship can be a symptom of emotional abuse.
Read MoreFeeling like your partner is guarded with their feelings can be really frustrating. People often worry that when their partner is not showing them emotional expression, it means something bad about them or the relationship itself. While there are situations where that might be the case, there are also times that your partner may not be demonstrating affection and they have nothing to do with you or the health of your relationship. Here are some reasons behind your partner’s lack of expressing feelings…
Read MoreUnrealistic expectations include things like wanting your partner to change their values, being the source of all your happiness or going against their natural masculine or feminine polarity. You want The Perfect Partner. Some people create this fictional person in their head before the relationship even starts. This perfect love, where everything is going to come together and work out in the end. Unfortunately, that is not how it works.
Read MoreHow to improve communication in a couple's relationship? It’s hard to listen to someone who is insulting you. The healthier way to communicate is to make sure you are not accusing your partner. Aggressive words make it difficult to hear the real meaning behind the message. There are a few ways that aggression words will manifest.
Read MoreCasual jealousy is another area where one of the partner/spouses is jealous about a text he/she received, and asks who that is from. Not answering and causally saying it was from my friend, and got busy and laughing when reading the following text, so this dragged for more minutes. When such behaviour occurs, it will not create a safe atmosphere for any of them.
Read MoreA lack of communication can ultimately lead to low morale. Because ineffective communication can create misunderstandings, dismissive, conflict, the dissemination of misinformation, and mistrust, couples feel overall defeated.
Read MoreNew Year’s resolutions are the perfect opportunity to reflect on what you want to achieve in the next few months of your life.
Read MoreIn this post I’ll share some insights which I’m hoping will help those of you that are perhaps struggling with addiction.
Read More
