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You are here: Home / Archives for Love & Relationships

Lying and Dishonesty: Are You in a Toxic Relationship?

By loveandsex

Have you ever been in a relationship you knew wasn’t GOOD for you, but for some reason you stayed in it anyway – much longer than you should have?

Maybe you put up with lies and indiscretions. Maybe you even put up with verbal and physical abuse but for some reason just couldn’t bring yourself to end the relationship.

For many of us, when we do get the courage to break it of, we often look back through rose colored glasses and wonder if we made a mistake. Maybe it was me? Maybe I should have stayed, tried harder? There really were a lot of ‘good times’ mixed in with the bad…

But now, looking back, you know deep down that it should have lasted as long as it did.

So what’s the attraction behind these magical intoxicating relationships?

At first it feels like it must be love. But is it really?

Maybe it’s just really amazing sex… Or maybe the attraction is because the other person seems very exotic and different from anyone you’ve ever met. Whatever the reason, you find yourself in a destructive and toxic relationship that’s obviously going no where fast, and yet you just can’t seem to leave.

There are lots of reasons and excuses for staying like “The sex is so great”, “I feel alive when we’re together”, or “I just can’t explain it”. And to a person trapped in this type of relationship, it is hard to explain.

But at some point, the infatuation and mystery starts to wear off just a bit, enough for you to open your eyes and start asking questions. Is this person really good for me? Are they honest with me? Do they really care about me?

If any of this sounds familiar to you now, it’s time to trust your instincts and take off those rose colored glasses. Be honest with yourself about the reality of the relationship. If it feels toxic, then it probably is. End it now and move on with your life. Find a partner who treats you with the love and respect that you deserve.

Here’s a question from Kim in South Carolina who’s suspects that she may have just left one of these toxic relationships and is now having doubts about doing the right thing…

Dear Dan and Jennifer,

I have been seeing a guy that I have known for many years. He is 12 years younger than I am, and we have been seeing each other for about 10 months. I called it off because this relationship feels toxic to me!

He lies about things that I know aren’t the truth, but I love him! Did i do the right thing?

Signed Kim, missing him so much!!!

— Kim (South Carolina)

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KbguUwjQi1s[/youtube]

Filed Under: Relationship Advice Tagged With: Relationship Advice

How to STOP Arguments and Fights from Killing Your Relationship

By loveandsex

Endless fights, arguments, and snipes late into the night…

You’ve seen it time and time again. Everything is going great, you and your partner love each other dearly, and your relationship couldn’t be better. Then, it strikes without warning. Someone says something, the other responds, and it’s on!

What appears to be a simple misunderstanding escalates into an argument, a fight, and someone ends up sleeping on the couch. Worse yet, one of you starts throwing things, then storms out of the house. Remember the frustration, the anger, the resentment?

Remember how puffed up your ego got? “Yeah, so there!” OK, clearly that didn’t go as planned. And you can bet nobody gained anything from that exchange.

What happened? How did a simple question turn into a screaming match?

In your mind, the other person “just doesn’t get it”. But here’s the problem – in their mind, YOU “just don’t get it”.

And what’s even WORSE is having ANY kind of emotional discussion (read: argument) by phone or email. NEVER do that if you can avoid it.

So how can this possibly be resolved without endless fighting and eventually maybe even breaking up?

When a “discussion” escalates into an argument, all sense and reason seems to leave the building. At that point, it’s all EGO, and going downhill hard. Everybody is getting puffed up trying to one-up the other person by saying something just a little more hurtful in response to what they just heard last. A guaranteed path to achieving nothing useful.

Could you agree to disagree?

Imagine… What if you don’t have to win?

Really, think about that for a moment. Do you really NEED to win? So what if you disagree? What if you like something, your partner doesn’t, and that could just be OK?

Could you agree that on this particular topic, you like red, she likes yellow, and you’re “both right” when it comes to your own life choices. And as partners and friends, you agree to respect each other’s decisions. You “agree to disagree”.

Suddenly, you don’t have to fight. You can be happy together again, and face new days in joy and harmony.

How can you achieve this peace?

So here’s a question from a gentleman wondering if it’s normal to have fights and arguments with his partner.

Dear Dan and Jennifer,

“No relationships are without arguments and quarrels” – Is this true?

– Edmund (Singapore)

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uiOKTNUn9cA[/youtube]

Filed Under: Relationship Advice Tagged With: fighting, marriage counseling

Intimacy – I Give Up!

By melody

At 40 when I was divorced and dating I met guys who had given up intimacy. These guys had decided that since they are “no good” at intimacy, they might as well just have a good time and focus only on finding women willing to be sex partners with no entanglements.  They didn’t care if the woman was married or not, just that she was ready to hop into bed without any “strings”.  Lately I have been meeting women who have also given up, but because they don’t want promiscuous sex, they resign themselves to a life without men.

It seems that when we reach a certain age and we have not been able establish a long-term intimate connection we tend to give up. Now, obviously this is not true for everyone as some people divorce and remarry many times trying to make it work.   But many people do give up.  I think its sad.  Some of the men and women I have met are marvelous people, intelligent, creative, hard working and attractive.  They are lonely, though often they try to convince themselves that single life is fine and they are happy. Maybe some of them are, certainly many of them have full, meaningful lives.  But usually when I hear them talk about relationships it’s with a sad, wistful look on their faces.

So what are they to do? One woman I spoke with said about her ex-husband, “You know, he was a really great guy, but when we were together it brought out the crazy in both of us.”  Without knowing what it is that makes us “crazy” when we are together we are left in a hopeless tangle of feelings and confusion.

Going to therapy is one obvious choice, but what if you have gone to therapy already, but you still don’t understand what when wrong?  I went to therapy and learned the reasons for some of my bad choices and some really important things about myself (even becoming a counselor myself). I learned to be more assertive with my friends. I learned to feel better about myself as a person. I processed through a lot of old pain from my childhood.  And yes, it did help me make a better choice in partners, but it didn’t fix the problems I had relating. Only after discovering what I now call “The Cycles of the Heart” did I begin to understand what was making me… and my partner, “Crazy”.

You see, something we humans don’t like to admit about ourselves is that we are animals.  We have animal instincts. We have hard-wired brain reactivity that forces us to react in certain ways under certain circumstances.  The emotions that drive the behaviors that result are compelling and overwhelming.  We think that we have to do the things that our brain is telling us is required of us.

What triggers our brain into these survival mechanisms is a sense of threat. For animals, that sense of threat comes in pretty simplistic forms.  They observe signals of a physical nature coming from another animal that compels them to react defensively.  A growl, a stare, ruffled fur, bared teeth, stiffening of a spine all trigger a defensive reaction in animals.  But human beings are a bit more complicated.  Our brains store more data than most animals and it gets us confused about what is an actual threat and what just feels like a threat.  It doesn’t matter to our brains whether the threat is real; it only knows to respond.

Our partners are important to us so we are really sensitive to threat from them.  This is why we may have no problems getting along with our friends but a terrible time making a partnership work. What happens then is that our partners unwittingly say or do something that creates a sense of threat in us, we get frightened in some primitive way, and react defensively. Then, or defensiveness triggers a defensive response in our partner and the cycle begins; never to end.

We both end up acting like crazy people because we are reacting to something that feels way bigger than the situation, that the other person doesn’t understand, and neither of us knows how to end.

Does any of this sound familiar?

Well it should.

It is unlikely that any of us have gone through life without being involved in a situation like this.  The funny thing is, it doesn’t matter how “grown up” or “mature” you are, or how much “work” you have done on yourself.  All of us will, in the wrong situation, find ourselves acting like, well, madmen.  We are embarrassed about it later and have no clue why that situation brought us to such depths of reactivity.

But that is how the brain works.  The feelings are intense because our survival mechanisms are our most primary drive.

When we learn what makes up these cycles of behaviors and how to choose differently we can learn to make different choices.  It’s not easy, but its possible and it can make a huge difference in your ability to relate to those closest to you.

Learning to see each other’s reactivity for what it is: survival reactivity, allows us to see the other person as a whole person and not just their behavior al reactivity.  It allows us to have the same empathy for ourselves and teaches us to be compassionate with all people.

We no longer have to hide behind protective barriers to prevent further wounding. because we understand what is happening inside the relationship and in our heads.  There is hope for those of us who think relationships are “not for them”. The way out involves deepening our understanding of others and ourselves and learning to develop the skills of respect, ownership and empathy.  While the concepts are simple, the process is anything but simple.

Filed Under: Relationship Advice Tagged With: intimacy, marriage counseling, Relationship Advice

Break Up Despair – Why You Should NEVER Argue by Phone or Email

By loveandsex

Break ups are never fun for either partner. Actually, they tend to be a horrible emotional experience for at least one, if not both people involved.

This is also made worse by the fact that people break up over some really silly things, like misunderstandings, lies, or even just disapproval and non-acceptance from their family members or friends.

But finding out that you’re now single through an email or by phone is even worse. It’s so cold, so impersonal, so clinical. Would YOU want to hear that you’re now single by phone or email?

Unfortunately, many people go through a long process of deciding whether to stay in a relationship or break up. And when they finally come to that decision to be alone, they don’t want to confront the other person. In a way, many don’t want to deal with the pain they’re afraid their partner will experience.

But is it right to just make that final phone call, or send that final email, and just end it? Not to say that you OWE anyone anything, whether it is to commit to be with that person forever or to break up with them in a certain way or another. You have the right and the option to be with whomever you choose, and to live your life in the way that you choose.

But in your heart, you know that YOU would prefer to hear it in person, don’t you? Would you want to agonize ALONE over the possible reasons why your relationship just ended? When would you truly get closure?

Today’s question is from a man in Maine dealing with this very issue – his girlfriend broke up with him by email and he just can’t seem to find peace.

Dear Dan and Jennifer,

My girlfriend and I have been going together for 2 years and we were engaged. But she broke up with me almost a month ago by e-mail.

I haven’t seen her since then because I am almost 200 miles away from her working. 3 days before she had sent me the break up e-mail we had spent a week together and everything was great, or so I thought. The only reason she gave me in the e-mail was that she has been relying on other people for 8 years and she wants to be able to be independent on her own and prove to herself that she can. I had tried many times to call her and talk but she won’t answer the phone. I have texted her here and then and she does text back, but only if it’s nothing to do about us.

She also has 2 kids that I love to death. Their fathers aren’t in there lives so they had been calling me daddy the hole time we were together. I don’t want to lose her or the kids.

I just don’t understand why she would want to throw away a 2 great year relationship over something like this. I texted her today and told her I might be up this weekend or next to get my stuff and asked if she would talk to me when I was there. She said sure but she wasn’t going to talk about things that will make this break up more difficult. What does she think I’m going to want to talk about? To me I think I deserve to be able to talk to her face to face about all this. The way she broke it off with me just wasn’t right. Anyone got any advice to how I should approach this when I get there.

— Jason (Maine)

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKfCNyhd5A8[/youtube]

Filed Under: Break Up & Divorce Tagged With: breaking up, divorce, Relationship Advice

Relationship Problem – Fighting Like Wild Animals?

By melody

Standing in Quick Sand

How many times have you found yourself in a discussion with your partner that suddenly turned sour and you don’t really know how you got there? You’ve said or done something that set them off and you are not sure how it happened, it’s just that suddenly you are standing in quick sand and sinking deeper by the second.  Now, of course, you want to dig yourself out, but everything you try just pulls you in deeper.  At this point your heart is racing, you are sweating and unsure of what to say or do.   Your partner is behaving like a wounded animal and you don’t have a clue how to fix it.  Sound familiar?

Well, it should sound familiar because we all do it.  We all have times when our communications do go as we intend and we find ourselves battling a battle that we don’t understand.  We don’t know what started it and we sure as heck don’t know how to stop it.  Sometimes divorces result from just such interactions!

All of us have our moments. All of us have certain things that set us into a survival mode that leaves us feeling isolated, terrified, angry, hurt, or just plain depressed.  This survival mode feels personal, as if our partners deliberately intend to wound us in our most sensitive places. Momentarily our partners may lose sight of who we are and, yes, say or do something to deliberately hurt us, but unless our partner is a psychopath, they don’t go into the conversation with the intention of hurting us. So why is it we so often find ourselves in the quick sand?

Human beings are animals.  We have an old part of our brain (old in the evolutionary sense) that reacts in a primitive manner to any hint of perceived threat. We can’t really help it; our reactions are part of our brain function.  The more insecure we feel in a relationship, and the more important that relationship is to us, the more likely we are to be triggered into this primitive reactivity.  The set of behaviors triggered by our brain chemistry are pre-programmed into us from our ancestry to increase our chances of survival in the wild.

Lauren and Stan had been married for over 20 years, yet they had never established trust. Their “old brain” was still behaving as if their partner were a threat to them.  Lauren’s mother was depressed and her father was an angry, frustrated man who raged at and physically abused his children.  As a result, any time Stan expressed his frustration with anything that Lauren did, she accused him of being abusive.  She shamed him and withheld sex from him. She believed herself to be protecting her children. Her old brain kicked in and she went into what I now call “Self-Protector” mode.

Her attacks threw Stan into his own “Self-Protector” mode.  She would snap at him… He would be forced to withdraw into a protective angry shell.

I couldn’t understand how their marriage had lasted so long.  Once Lauren was able to understand how she had thrown Stan into the role of her father, and that she was in an old brain reactive mode because of her abuse history and not because of Stan, she was able to relax her angry stance.  Stan was fearful of expressing any feelings to her because of her past rages, but when he saw her pain as she talked about her father’s abuse, he softened to her.  He was then able to let her see how her raging at him had affected him, and she could actually let herself have empathy for him.  It still took some time before she could trust him enough to let him discipline their children, but she did.  He was able to have empathy for her fear and distrust instead of seeing it as being about him.

Our old brain is particularly active if we have abuse in our childhood history.  Our survival instincts had to take over in that event when we were little.  Then when anything reminds us of what happened before (i.e. disciplining children) we are emotionally triggered back into our old brain survival instincts.

Lauren and Stan were lucky enough to learn this before Lauren died of cancer two years later.  She was able to let him care for her and take over as primary parent. He was able to let her see his pain and vulnerability.

Establishing a deeper level of understanding of our partners’ reasons for blasting into the old brain reactivity helps us get closer and enriches our connection.  The next time we find ourselves in reactive place with our partner, asking ourselves “What is this really about?” can help us move through the current conflict and into a deep abiding love.

Filed Under: Relationship Advice Tagged With: fighting

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