couples counseling

October 6, 2014 | BY Denise O'Doherty

The Truth About Love – The Good The Bad, & The Ugly

In Pat Love’s book, “The Truth About Love“, she shares various misconceptions truth-about-love-book about relationships. I have turned these into the following TRUTHS about relationships as a guide for evaluating yours.

Relationships are never perfect. Problems don’t mean it wasn’t meant to be. It just means you have to work them through.
Once love dies, you can get it back with noticing, giving each other attention and celebrating the love and life you have. Happiness is wanting what you have.
Relationships are more than just chemistry.
It takes more than love to have a good relationship. Particularly trust, respect and good communication.
You can be in love and still be attracted to other people. Being in a committed relationship means that you still find others attractive and enjoy others being attracted to you, but you don’t act out on it.
It’s not about meeting the right person as much as it is about becoming the right person. If you work on being the best you can be, it is likely you will attract someone who appreciates you and whose values are more likely to be like yours.

The Four predictors of divorce are: Criticism, Defensiveness, Withdrawal and Contempt.

Therefore……

1) Instead of criticizing, ask for what you want. And when your partner criticizes, ask “What do you need?” and “How can I help?”

2) When you find yourself getting defensive: Stop. Start over. Call tome out. Apologize. Ask for more information. Take a deep breath.

3) When your partner withdraws, give him/ her more time and space. Find a way to manage your anxiety until the mood shifts. Entertain yourself. Do something fun. When you withdraw, let your partner know you need some time alone and about how long you need. If your withdrawal has nothing to do with the relationship, let this fact be known. If you have a problem, speak up.

4) When there is contempt between the tow of you, note this as a sign that the relationship could be in serious distress. Take time out to restore the good feelings between you. Do those activities that always work to bring you closer together.

These ideas and suggestions are often used in couples therapy and marriage counseling.

Good relationships give incredible rewards and unlimited opportunity for love and living a fuller life. Keep this in mind for your special relationship.

September 16, 2014 | BY Denise O'Doherty

Defensiveness in Relationships and Marriage

In John Gottman’s book, “Why Marriages Succeed or Fail“, he talks about defensiveness as one of the problems in marriage. Defensiveness is often comes up in marriage counseling and couples counseling. It is a block to good communication. Without a non-defensive attitude, people feel unloved, unappreciated and lonely in their relationships.

In essence, defensiveness is self-protection, a natural response to ward off a perceived attack. For example:

” It wasn’t my fault”

defensive response:

“It was your fault”

“You always get tense around my mom”

defensive response:

“I do not”. “If you’d stand up for me when she criticizes me, I wouldn’t get so tense.”

“You don’t listen to me”

defensive response:

“Well, you don’t listen to me”

Of course, the major problem with defensiveness is that it obstructs communication in relationships. Rather than understanding each other’s perspective you spend your discussions defending yourselves. Nothing gets resolved, so the conflict continues to escalate and more discussions characterized by attack and defensiveness occur. To see whether you or your spouse/ partner is overly defensive, take the following self-test, preferably soon after a disagreement.

SELF-TEST: HOW DEFENSIVE ARE YOU?

When my partner complains, I feel unfairly picked on.
I feel misunderstood.
I don’t feel that I get credit for all the positive things I do.
What went wrong was actually not that much my responsibility
To avoid blame, I have to explain why and how the problem arose.
I feel unfairly attacked when my partner is being negative.
When my partner complains, I realize that I also have a set of complaintsthat need to be heard.
My partner’s negativity gets too intense, too out of proportion.
My partner is too touchy, and gets his/ her feelings hurt too easily.
There is some truth to my partner’s complaints, but it is not the whole truth.
When my partner complains, I usually think, “I am innocent of these charges”.
When my partner complains, I feel I have to “ward off” these attacks.
I feel obligated to deny the complaints against me that are inaccurate.
It seems that all my partner can do is find fault with me.
during a hot argument, I keep thinking of ways to retaliate.

A “Yes” to several of these implies that you may be set up for a defensive stance.

The first step toward breaking out of defensiveness is to no longer see your partner’s words as an attack but as information. Your partner is trying to tell you something. Try to empathize with your partner. This is hard to do but it is possible and it effects are miraculous. Research shows that if you are genuinely open and receptive when your partner is expecting a defensive response, your partner is less likely to criticize you or react contemptuously when disagreements arise. Staying grounded may also help you feel more positive about yourself and your own self esteem, knowing that you are contributing to de-escalating an argument.

Of course, this change won’t occur overnight. But if you are consistently non-defensive, your spouse will finally get the happy message and your marriage and relationships will benefit tremendously.

Filed Under: couples counseling, Marriage Counseling, relationship counseling

August 1, 2014 | BY Denise O'Doherty

How To Ruin A Perfectly Good Relationship

Several years ago, Pay Love Ed. D and Sunny Shulkin, Ph.D. two Imago trainers and therapists published a book titled How to Ruin a Perfectly Good Relationship. I used to leave this book on a table in my waiting room and often got laughs and responses from my clients.

Below is part of their list of some seemingly insignificant behaviors they identify each of which over time services to erode the love between two people. madcouple

Interestingly, a common reason couples give for separation is that they “grew apart.” You can see how these specific actions separate couples.

In reading this list of behaviors, you may be embarrassed to recognize parts of yourself – and decide to change some of them on behalf of your relationship. As Sunny and Pay say, we sometimes have to have done it wrong before we can do it right.

Countrol everything and everyone
Never take the blame yourself, instead make your partner wrong
Make it a habit to spend money than you have
Win every fight, even the ones you couldn’t care less about
Keep Score
Use threats often
Find your partner’s weak spot and use it against him/her
When your partner tries to please you, find faults with their efforts
Hold fast to the belief, “If you loved me you would know what I want”
Demand your partner remain faithful but refuse to meet his or her sexual needs
Use silence as a weapon
Pretend that you don’t hear
When your partner tries to apologize, bring up more complaints
Refuse to give information
When you realize you haven’t given your partner some important info, insist that you did
Claim to be the only one interested in the relationship
Never ask for help
Confide only in friends
Take it personally when your partner wants time alone
Discount your partner’s physical complaints
Give advice where it isn’t welcome
Never pick up after yourself
Refuse to seek help for your depression
Refuse to talk
Focus on changing your partner
Focus all your needs on sex
Take all problems as further proof that the relationship will not work

To read the entire article Visit By Betsy Bergquist, Imago Therapist

Http://www.therapyct.com/ruin_relationship.html

Filed Under: areas of practice, couples counseling, Marriage Counseling, relationship counseling