What Healthy Couples Know That You Don't

Tiredness is often a triangle of trouble that includes guilt & fears. Wading through those feelings is no small task. They stick to your soul like gum on the bottom of your shoe & contaminate your belief in yourself. It helps to remember that your feelings are not facts. Thoughtfully consider what is the evidence for your feelings & don’t put so much weight on them as accurate.

What motivates you to have a better relationship or even a better life? Because it will take work. Do you do the work of loving someone? It’s work to accept the parts you find annoying or tedious - it’s work to make yourself understood - it’s work to listen to disagreement - it’s work to respect the differences. It’s work to to survive important values collisions. It’s work in a frantic/busy life to find one-on-one time to deepen your relationship instead of avoiding difficult conversations. 

Dating is really hard work because there is so much uncertainty. Dating is a dance of two people not knowing each other & trying to figure out is it worth spending more of your precious time with this person. It takes time to really know someone. Dating can be both exhausting & discouraging if your interest is not reciprocated. Today's interview is with the Head of Global Communications for OKCUPID.

Often men keep from being vulnerable by being vague, especially about feelings. Feelings are avoided because they are confusing or hard to identify. Men often aren't encouraged to talk about their feelings. In fact, they're sometimes discouraged from doing so. Additionally, men often tend to shy away from vulnerable conversations. This cultural expectation can easily make things more difficult for men in relationships.

This is an ordinary relationship pattern and it offers a real opportunity for both people to grow & improve who they are. People-pleasers of course go along to get along, they are helpful & kind & often neglect their own needs. A Top Dog goes after their own wants with clarity & drive, and they can neglect others before they will neglect themselves. Opposites attract is exactly why this is a pattern that can be observed in so many relationships.

Sexuality is a complex, crucial activity. Only on television where couples reach maximum orgasm easily. Our interest in sex naturally ebbs and flows over the course of a long- term relationship as we age or deal with life changes— It’s important to keep in mind that researchers have reliably found that individuals who accept these fluctuations as normal and natural are more sexually satisfied when they hit a bump.

People-pleasing is all about being heavily lopsided in pleasing others as a way of gaining their approval & maintaining relationships. People-pleasing is of course on a continuum, at work in a subordinate role & to fit in socially it is very useful. Less useful are those people-pleasers who end up erasing their authentic self in relationships. People-pleasers have to learn to make conflict & disagreement bearable because this is normal. Stop & consider that conflict increases intimacy & your relationships will be less superficial.

Everybody manipulates to get what they want, even 3 year olds. Manipulation is part of our defense system. Manipulation are ways to win, to have power & control. There are caring & acceptable ways in trying to win games or a politician trying to win votes. Negative manipulations are all about avoiding vulnerablity & having power over others to win. There is always a choice to manipulate with caring or fighting dirty.

Great relationships start with your relationship to yourself. You will be harsh with others if you are harsh with yourself. There are three parts to every relationship. There is you, your partner & the US. Learning to sacrifice in order to take care of the US is something that is not talked about enough in relationships. Individualism needs to be balanced by recognizing what's good for the US.

Three out of four couples experience significant conflict with their in-laws. In-laws can help young couples or derail them on the path to relationship success. The biggest reasons for tension include in-laws giving unwanted opinions, partners taking their parents' side, and disagreements over how to discipline grandchildren.

Dating is a lot of work! It is all too easy to end up discouraged & want to give up because someone else has once again not followed through & just disappeared. Family & friends often don’t appreciate how painful & difficult the process of dating can be. There is so much pressure to find the right relationship that it can be hard to look for signs the relationship is a healthy one.

What we want to focus on is, do I have too much anger? Do I get angry too easily? When I get angry, do I stay angry too long? Do I do destructive things when I get angry? So, rather than the anger itself, what we tend to focus on, is my anger making me unhappy? Is it making other people unhappy? Am I doing destructive or hurtful things when I get angry?

A collection of wisdom on making relationships work over the decades. You’ve heard me say often “Love is wanting to be a better person for your partner.” So partnerships grow us into better versions of ourselves. There is purpose to being in relationships & it’s not about having an audience to applaud you. It’s about having faith that you need to listen to hard truths about yourself from someone you love. It’s not about taking the easy way out to stay comfortable. To be uncomfortable is the only path to growing up.

Everybody deals with insecurity & it has a huge negative impact on relationships. The focus for those who are insecure is what’s wrong with my partner? Secure attachment, is not about playing games, you’re not trying to win or have power over the other person. It’s not a perfect situation. Secure attachment means you’re able to navigate emotionally. It can’t be about relying on the other person to do this for you. 

In intercultural & in interracial relationships as well, you don't always know what you're getting yourself into. Often, it takes several years, several challenges, a lot of conflict within couples to really figure out what it is that seems to be the issue or why it even is an issue... Both individuals can maintain their cultural identities through negotiation, & also own their awareness of what their own cultural identities mean to them.

Divorce often happens in year 6 to 10. research finds year 8 to be ordinary. In the 50s, it was called “The Seven Year Itch’. If your relationship is struggling in these years, it is an ordinary development. The essence of real love is wanting to be a better person. When someone turns their back on doing the work of change and growth, that's what repair of a relationship requires, then they are unwilling to do the work of real love.

Life is chock full of choices. There are choices that are self defeating or even self destructive. Then there are choices that are life generating. It’s our choices that make up our life. It’s our choices that make the difference in having success in our relationships. Some choices don’t feel like choices because they are entrenched bad habits that usually comfort us in some way. Even when we feel we don’t have a choice, we do.

Many relationships begin because one person is grabbing onto someone else to feel ok. Everybody wants to be loved, but the solution to this, is the age old wisdom that you have to love yourself first. Taking responsibility for our own choices & learning to accept both the good & the bad within all of us is key to self-esteem.

So often in relationships we are quick to focus our unhappiness on our partner. It’s their fault things don’t get better, right? It’s way too easy to blame others & not look at ourselves. This episode takes a look at what YOU can do, whether or not your partner is interested in improvements.

Dig down underneath the resentments to communicate or begin the dead-end path to bitterness. Everybody has a choice about which direction to go in. We avoid the “risk” of asking real questions, so we can stay in the safe zone of not dealing with someone else. We have our imaginary conversations, we decide we know how it will turn out & we bail. Authentic conversation requires real effort in real life.