Couple Support

Learn from Relationship Mistakes or Repeat Them

The penalty for not learning from history is repeating it. Our foreign policy certainly bears that out. But look closer to home: So does the way many of us conduct our marriages.

We have hurtful exchanges, we quarrel, we do battle. Then later on we do it all again: Different circumstances, different content – same misadventures – over and over, while, in the process, steadily depleting our hopefulness and ability to recover.

Each time we stumble, we need – as a couple – to process the event and learn enough from doing so that, eventually, we won’t make at least those mistakes again.

Processing a couple conflict can succeed, but only if we follow guidelines for how we go about the process. Here are some suggestions:

* Wait to process until the conflict has died down, meaning that the fire is completely out, and the embers are cold.

* If the conflict threatens to start up again, stop processing the event. Try again later.

* Process to understand (each other), to correct (the problem) – and not at all to blame each other or yourself

* Focus on what “we” need to do differently to avoid a repeat, not on what “you” need to do differently. Equally okay would be both you and your partner contributing – in equal measure – what “I” could do differently

* Strive, in your pursuit of understanding, to discover what the urgency and strong feeling was about for each of you, what you were each after, and what each of you thinks could be done differently next time

* For the sake of healing, you each want to restate, for your partner’s satisfaction, what his or her experience and perspective was.

Do all that without blaming each other. Your hurtful conflicts should  definitely decrease.

Want a Successful Marriage? Learn Relationship Skills

Want a Successful Marriage? Learn Relationship Skills

You have no doubt noticed: Serious relationships take a lot of skill. In marriage, or any committed couple relationship, you are dealing  close quarters with someone whose wants and needs can be  challengingly different from your own.

Quite possibly, you and your partner both bring powerful expectations  to the relationship that you will be loved and accepted, heard and  respected, and your needs and wants met – otherwise why get married.  Right?

Two adults with sometimes conflicting wants and needs living in close  quarters: Skills are obviously needed - skills of compromise,  negotiation, understanding, generosity, empathy, respect,  cooperation, plus others of equal weight: the sort they don’t teach  you in school. But you better get them somewhere, if you want the  relationship to succeed.

Unfortunately, several factors work against us paying sufficient  individual attention to the relationship skills that we clearly need.

The first factor is the assumption that many of us carry that the  weight falls on our partner to care for us, more than the other way  around. Unless this assumption is recognized and challenged, we may  not take seriously our own need for skills we plainly don’t have yet.

The second factor is the competitive nature of our couple  relationships. We get angry and resentful about the manner in which  our partner treats us. Seeing ourselves as victim, we see our  partner’s presumed bad intentions toward us as the problem, when what  we really need to do is drop the mutual accusations – and focus on  skills. What don’t we do well? And how can we learn?

Don’t Respond Often Enough, and Your Relationship Will Die

Looking for a conversation, one spouse speaks to the other. The other doesn’t respond. The first spouse tries again. Still no answer.  Do you know what usually happens next?

The first spouse continues, at least for a while. However, the friendly tone that accompanies “talking with” eventually become the harsh, scolding tone of “talking at.”

Then when still there is no response, and the possibility of a two-way conversation has completely died, one-way talk continues bitterly, inside the head of the one who originally just wanted a conversation.

Responding to each other feeds the relationship. (After all relationship is relating.) When there is seldom any response – except an occasional harsh, unfriendly one – the relationship starves and eventually dies.

Inventory your responsiveness to each other. How much do you really talk together? How much of what each of you says expects – and gets – a response?  How often is the response friendly, how often unfriendly? Does the way that each of you responds to the other promote open  communication? Or does it discourage open communication or even make it  impossible?

Consider that response is a measure of whether or not something is alive. How is your relationship doing?