You’re Not Meeting My Needs
June 19, 2009 | Leave a Comment
“Sandra wants to end our marriage,” Ted told me in our phone session. “She says that I am not meeting her needs.”
I often hear this in my counseling practice.
How did we get the idea that marriage is about the other person meeting our needs, or about our meeting the other person’s needs? How did we get so far away from personal responsibility for meeting our own needs that we expect others to do it for us? What are these “needs” that Ted was not meeting for Sandra?
“She said that I don’t make her feel good enough about herself, and that I don’t make her feel secure. She tells me that it’s my fault that she doesn’t feel special. She is not happy and blames me for her unhappiness. She’s angry that we don’t have sex very often, and that I’m not often affectionate. I agree that I’m not turned on to her and I don’t feel affection toward her, but I find it hard to feel that way toward her when she is so often angry at me and blaming me. But she believes that the problems are all my fault, and maybe they are.”
“Ted, the problem is that neither of you are taking responsibility for your own feelings. Sandra is making you responsible for her unhappiness, and you think you are responsible for her feelings rather than for your own. If you were to focus on meeting your needs to feel happy, peaceful, and secure, and Sandra were to take responsibility for learning how to make herself feel good about herself, then both of you could begin to meet each other’s need for emotional intimacy and connection. Affection and sexuality would come out of your emotional intimacy, rather than something you have to do to prove to Sandra that you love her.”
“But what if Sandra doesn’t want to take this responsibility for herself? What if she just wants to find someone else to meet her needs?”
“How often has Sandra threatened to leave the marriage?”
“Oh, at least every 6 months.”
“So the chances are it is a manipulation to get you to do what she wants you to do. Instead of giving yourself up to manipulate her, why not start to do your own Inner Bonding work and learn how to take responsibility for your own feelings of adequacy and worth? Since giving yourself up or withdrawing and resisting her control – which is what you have been doing – isn’t working, what do you have to lose by learning how to take responsibility for yourself? You never know – you might feel much more loving toward her even if she doesn’t change if you learn to take loving care of yourself! I know that you believe that your lack of affectionate and sexual feelings for her are because of her anger and blame, but it is really about you giving yourself up and withdrawing. You cannot feel turned on to her when you have given your power away to her and shut down. As you move into your personal power through your Inner Bonding practice, you will likely feel totally differently toward her, regardless of whether or not she changes.”
Ted was willing to do the work he needed to do to learn to stop taking responsibility for Sandra’s happiness and take responsibility for his own. As he stopped care taking Sandra and started to take care of himself, he began to feel much better toward her. He was surprised and delighted to feel warmth toward her that he hadn’t felt since first meeting her. It was challenging for him to let go of his caretaking addiction as his form of trying to have control over getting approval from Sandra, and it didn’t happen all at once. But over time, Ted could see great improvement in their relationship. He found it paradoxical that when he stopped trying to meet Sandra’s “needs,” things got much better!
About the Author: Margaret Paul, Ph.D. is the best-selling author and co-author of eight books, including “Do I Have To Give Up Me To Be Loved By You?” and “Healing Your Aloneness.” She is the co-creator of the powerful Inner Bonding® healing process. Learn Inner Bonding now! Visit her web site for a FREE Inner Bonding course: http://www.innerbonding.com or email her at margaret@innerbonding.com. Phone sessions available.
Counseling to Save a Marriage
January 24, 2009 | 1 Comment
Marriage counseling is a form of therapy applied for conflict resolution which is generally carried out by the trained psychotherapist. Save marriage counseling is helpful to resolve the conflicts, improve the relationship and reconstruct your marriage. The counselor may not solve the problems in your marriage, but will help you to solve them yourself. It helps to make your marriage bond strong and keep your relationships alive. It plays a significant role in preventing the divorce and to maintain healthy relationships.
The science of marriage counseling is studied in detail and shows long-lasting positive effects. A good marriage counselor helps the couples to avoid several emotional landmines and control the damage. A successful counselor has a balanced and mature state of mind and disposition.
If you are looking for a good marriage counselor, then you should have some information about the counselor such as whether the first assessment session is free, whether you have to pay after every session, whether the session is suitable for your work schedule as well as information about the duration of each session, qualification of the counselor.
It is considered as every marriage goes through times of contention and times of stress. Any of these reasons may need to seek marriage counseling. Some other reasons that require save marriage counseling are problems with substance or alcohol abuse, difficulty with children, financial problems, a situation when both the partners are unfaithful, major life changes and problems with fertility.
The marital relationships may be affected by broken trust, boredom, infidelity, poor communication, lack of appreciation, addictive behavior, emotional abuse, absence of sex and no affection. When the marriage is in trouble, the couples first try to solve the problem among them or seek advice from the friends or family. If it does not work, then they go for save marriage counseling.
Both the partners should be willing to attend the counseling which offers a tool to improve their relationships. The couples should openly discuss about their marriage problems to get an appropriate solution. They can resolve the conflicts with kindness and sympathy. Save marriage counseling can help the couples to improve their communication skills.
One of the most significant activities including in the marriage counseling is open, honest and blunt communication. In the office of marriage counselor, the couples can reveal their feelings.
Save marriage counseling may help to uncover some other problems or issues and understand the troubles of couple. The wife may be depressed or husband may have the problems with anxiety. Since counseling does not attempt to resolve the issues like depression or anxiety, it can uncover these issues and helps to seek the treatment for them.
It can also help to identify the differences between the couples and manage with them. It offers a good opportunity to the couples to share their feelings and helps to clear all misunderstandings.
The effects of save marriage counseling are found to be wonderful. After seeking this counseling, many couples have been successful in resolving conflicts in their married life and have got back to a happy married life.
If you want to get the best out of marriage counseling so that you can build a stronger marriage, you can get the guide from: http://savemarriagehowto.com/go/savemarriage1.html.
Marriage Counseling Can Help To Improve Relationships
December 26, 2008 | Leave a Comment
At the foundation of any marriage and family is a core relationship. Relationships can be difficult for many people – particularly when they are not comfortable communicating their feelings, when they feel unsettled when others are upset with them and when there are kids involved. For them, when there are challenges in the marriage, marriage counseling is often the most effective way of recognizing and working through the difficulties.
With marriage counseling, both spouses are able to sit down, to talk and to have the chance to be heard. Therapists who specialize in marriage counseling will be there to facilitate the conversation, to ask questions, to encourage active listening and to help both spouses to more comfortably express the hurt, anger or frustration that they are experiencing.
Unfortunately, the emotional toll of a conversation or an event can be particularly high. Within relationships, the emotional strain is something that can build over time – especially when both parties involved have trouble discussing the way that they feel or the event that prompted the response.
In marriage counseling, however, many couples find that they are in a better position to open up and – more importantly – to feel heard by their spouse. While it can be uncomfortable to start talking, while hearing the details of what hurt a husband or a wife and while it can be difficult to talk about emotions or situations that are painful, having those conversations in the setting of marriage counseling can ease some of the strain.
Marriage counseling, while it can dramatically improve relationships, is not just a matter of meeting with someone who will “fix” the problem; marriage counseling is a process of improving communication and ultimately of uncovering past hurts so that they can be worked through. Despite the fact that these hurts have often been buried, despite the fact that sometimes the event that has caused the hurt may be long in the past, marriage counseling can serve to uncover the underlying issues and to work on rebuilding communication and trust as well as a strong foundation for moving the relationship forward.
In part, the reason that marriage counseling works in many relationships is simple: marriage counseling works because it helps couples to acknowledge the hurts and frustrations, to work through the anger and to communicate with one another. In part, marriage counseling works simply because it enables both parties to express themselves and to feel heard by one another.
Communication is often difficult – especially when both parties either believe that they are in the right or there is a sense of not wanting to hurt the other person in any way. In marriages, a lack of communication can have a number of negative effects on the relationship; marriage counseling can serve to repair the damage and to reopen the lines of communication.
With marriage counseling, what many couples discover is that the biggest problem that they have faced is a lack of communication that has led to a lack of trust. What they learn during marriage counseling is the ability to communicate – something that, over time, allows them to improve the relationship on the whole.
About the Author: For more information on counseling for couples, individuals, marriage and relationships, or live phone counseling, visit The Family & Marriage Counseling Directory.