It is impossible to have a long-term relationship without getting into arguments at some point in time. The health or success of your relationship doesn’t depend on whether you argue or not, but how you argue and how you resolve conflict. This makes all the difference in settling your issue or letting it go. Sometimes ...
Last weeks blog was on the argument trap. This is referring to that trap that we get into whenever we discuss a certain topic, or a destructive pattern of arguing. There are many things we do that keep us in that negative cycle. As I was writing I realized there were so many, that I ...
Do you and your partner get in to the same argument over and over? No matter how much you try to avoid it, you find yourself back in the same trap. Or perhaps there is a certain topic that you tend to avoid, as you know it will lead to conflict. Obviously, neither of these ...
When someone gets angry with you or accuses you of something, your first instinct is to defend yourself. We want to protect ourselves, because clearly there has been a misinterpretation of our actions. Yet defensiveness is the worst way to clear up conflict. Reaction to defensiveness If the first thing you do is to defend ...
Your Communication Style My guess is that most people think they have a fairly healthy communication style. However, many of us also have trouble communicating at times. Or perhaps you don’t communicate in the most effective way. This is important as the way we communicate can either bring us closer to or further apart from ...
With so much uncertainty and unrest in our nation, you may be feeling powerless, overwhelmed and upset. You may have trouble processing what is going on, where we are and how we got here. I thought it would be a good time to talk about ways to handle uncertainty, as we don’t know how things ...
Do you think you are in an abusive relationship and wonder how you got to that point? I’m guessing everything was wonderful in the beginning, but slowly over time things went increasingly downhill. It’s like the analogy of the frog in the pot of water. If you put a frog in a pot of water ...
How is your relationship doing? Could it use a tune up? Have you let it coast on autopilot too long? This occurs in many relationships. Because all good relationships take work, it is important to nurture yours. If your relationship needs a boost, here are some tips that may help. Spend 10-20 minutes talking each ...
