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Concerned about porn use by you or your partner? This podcast discusses why porn might be detrimental to your relationship.
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I’ve gotten quite a few questions over the past couple of weeks and I’ve tried to answer some of them individually, but I’m going to answer some of the questions generally and hopefully help as many people as possible. I get this question in similar format all the time. Many times, the person asking the question has been in a relationship for quite some time. They believe things are alright and suddenly their partner leaves or kicks them out. I understand this can be devastating, especially if you didn't think things were THAT bad. Now usually the person writing the question wants to know how they can get their partner back. Sometimes the person writing the question can look back and realize this partner had never been who they needed in their life. They may even feel their partner really wasn’t capable of the depth of relationship they wanted. But sometimes, they still want them back. I'm sorry to disappoint, but I've never said I can make someone come back to a relationship! I’ve never been able to force another person to do anything. The only control any of us have is over ourselves. So, if your partner is done with the relationship, I can't tell you how to force them back. If you think there’s still hope and there’s some communication with your partner, there might be room for something to change. The first thing I advise if you’re in the wanting them back camp: Ask yourself, do I really? Do I really want them back? People will say their partner was emotionally abusive, cheating, lying, emotionally distanced, etc. …..WHAT is it you want to continue? Why do you want this to continue? Are you afraid of failure? Do you still have some love in your heart for this person? At some point, you have to accept that your partner isn’t going to be what or who you want them to be and that’s ok. Most of our angst in the world is because we want something to be different than it is. There've been times in my relationship when I thought I couldn’t take how it was. I felt miserable, unseen and unheard. What kept me here? When I rationally looked at my relationship, it wasn’t that my husband was mean or intentionally neglectful, I just wasn’t happy about what I was getting. I decided to more clearly communicate those things and guess what, things got better. If you’re anything like me, the tiniest bit of effort keeps me engaged. So, it was enough for it to make sense for me to stay. And I’m glad I did. Now if he'd been a liar or cruel, etc....I’d probably have made a different decision. We all have to decide these things for ourselves, but it’s really more about YOU. If you’re being treated disrespectfully, why do you subject yourself to this? Likewise, if your partner has left you, have you treated them disrespectfully? Did they get to the point, they could not tolerate it? I’m not saying this is the case and I’m not trying to kick you when you’re down, but if a relationship has failed, it’s part of our self-growth to learn what we can from it. So more rarely, someone reports their relationship ended, they thought they were both totally committed and suddenly, their partner ended it. Most of the time, there were signs if you look back. If your partner brings up reasons for their ending the relationship, you have to honest with yourself. Did they bring these issues up with you? Did you not take them seriously? Did you not realize how important it was to them? Maybe you can take some responsibility for that. I believe it’s all our responsibility though to communicate our wants/needs/desires to our partners in the best way we can and to make sure they understand how important these things are to us. The kicker to this is: Your partner has the right to respond or not to these requests. You cannot force your partner to do what you want them to or to not do what you don’t want them to do. Now you would hope your partner wants to contribute to your happiness (at least I do!) so they would be willing to change things within reason. Recently, I was walking around the house in my slippers. They were floppy slippers and when I walked around the house in them, they made a fwap, fwap, fwap noise on the floor. My husband said, "Those slippers are driving me crazy. Would you please get rid of them?" I said, "Of course." I threw them away and went to Wal Mart for a new and different pair. It was one small way that I could meet a need. Now that wasn't earth shattering, but how many times has your partner made a request and you resisted just to "fight for your right"? I could have told him, "No, get over it. You don't like them that's your problem. I want to keep my slippers." And I can tell you, at some time in my life, I might have reacted that way. His happiness was worth more than my slippers. Now if he had asked me to throw out my yoga pants, it probably would have been a different story! Your responsibility in the situation is to decide for yourself if you can live with it. As an example, if I had a partner who spent money irresponsibly, I would ask him to get it under control. I’d try to get his buy in to a budget, cut up credit cards, whatever I thought might help. If he refused, I’d have to determine how important it was to me. If he’s going to continue to spend recklessly, it could very negatively impact me. Now if that’s not so bad to me, I might just continue to be annoyed at his behavior and move one. If that’s unacceptable to me, I have some decisions to make. Can I separate my financial wellbeing from his? I need to find out if I’m liable for his overspending. If so, I might take measures to protect myself. I might even have to leave the relationship. You see all those responses are up to me. I don’t have to make him change to protect myself. My responsibility is to clearly articulate what I want/need or desire and how important it is to me. It’s up to him to change if he sees fit. I know that can be hard to accept just allowing them to continue to do behavior you consider harmful. The truth is though we’re all people of free will and we are not truly capable of changing another person. Usually when you get to this stage of giving ultimatums, there’s a fair amount of pain and anger involved. When we’re in those painful emotional places, it drives us to act in desperate manners. We may be making our requests by screaming, crying and berating. This behavior on our parts does not improve our communication. It actually makes it harder for our partner to listen to our actual concerns. When we let our negative emotions drive our actions, we actually get more of what we don’t want. So, pulling back on our instinctual reactions can help us be more understood. I understand how difficult this is and at times, relationships are too far entrenched in this negative behavior cycle and it’s impossible to get it out. In those cases, a relationship may end. Another situation that occurs pretty frequently is a partner is having an affair and believes they are in love with the affair partner. There is a biological basis for this so those feelings may be real. I’ve talked about that a lot so I’m not going into it here. Affairs are secretive by nature, forbidden fruit so to speak. They may see in the affair partner things they don’t see in you or things they used to see in you. The problem with this is, bringing an affair into the light, shows some of the flaws as well. It’s entirely possible the affair will be over as soon as this happens. You staying present and open to that possibility could save your relationship in the end. The more you show yourself to be clingy/a bitch/nagging/controlling whatever description they have of you, the more you reinforce their skewed view of reality. If you really want your relationship to survive this, you must keep the walls down. It’s perfectly acceptable for you not to remain open to continue the relationship as well. No one would blame you, it’s easy to leave, it’s much more difficult to stay and stick with the feelings that are going to come up. If you’re trying to rebuild after an affair, it really does pay to get professional help. It is always your responsibility to communicate what you don’t like (and what you do like) clearly and if it’s a deal breaker, communicate that too! Any situations you don’t like, you have a responsibility in them. You can accept or not accept the situation and probably a whole slew of other options as well. We very well may not like the options, but that’s trying to make reality different than it is isn’t it? So, in summary, 1. Stop trying to control partner 2. Take responsibility for your part in the situation 3. Decide if it’s worth it, or are you wanting it to be different than it is? 4. Don’t let your feelings run the show. If you need some help in improving your communication, check out my new course here. As always, hope this helps and let me know how it’s going! Allison xxoo Is there such a thing as caring too much? All the world needs is a little more love, a little more caring about each other, right?
While this rings true to most of us, you’ve probably wondered, is it possible I care too much? In this world, balance exists in all things, gentle and sweet/ violent and chaotic. You might expect there’s a situation where someone might care too much. To quote philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, “Almost all of our sorrows spring out of our relations with other people.” Caring for others gives us the greatest cause for gladness and distress. Emotional stress is a sign that we may be in this state of too much caring. Our best judgment comes when we have just the right measure of caring and detachment. Too emotionally attached, we lose objectivity. This causes us to make irrational decisions. What are the signs that we care too much? We feel emotionally upset by what is going on. Feelings are going to happen, but we don’t have to act on every feeling we have. I’ve been married almost 25 years. I have been very upset at my husband MANY times. As a counselor, this scenario plays out for me in my office several times a week. One of a couple, for their own reasons, does something their partner feels is detrimental. They may feel very strongly about it and express it. Once voices are raised, rationality has left the building!! Strong feelings give us an opportunity for self examination. What underlies these feelings? Are you afraid for your partner’s safety? Is your attachment bond being jangled? Are you feeling neglected by your spouse? Teasing out these feelings and exposing them to the bright light of day often reduces their impact. If you’re forcing a thing, this might also be a sign that you’re caring too much. At times, we see what we think is the most direct or best route to an end, and we try to force the “how” of achieving it. The more you push, the less “flow” can occur. Who can argue that the universe has a serendipitous way of easily making things happen? Often in spite of our so called assistance! Examine yourself. If you have areas in your life where you feel you are caring too much, give yourself space to take a step back. What are the thoughts and fears pushing you? Look around. Aren’t there an infinite number of other possibilities? Now, I don't really want you to care less. I do want you to cling less to what your fear tells you to do. Taking responsibility for your behavior in the face of your fears is the anecdote to that powerless feeling we get from caring too much. Don’t let your fear have a seat at the table. It makes you grab on just when you should be letting go. If you want to go deeper, sign up for my self coaching course here. It’s a great step to creating a relationship you love! Caring just the right amount, Allison xo
While you may believe you’re doing something to attract the wrong guy, that may not be the biggest part of the equation. Do you do different behaviors when you attract a good guy vs. when you attract a bad guy? Probably not. You’re probably presenting yourself in as attractive a manner as you see fit and then attraction happens.
What I mean is, attraction is an emotional response. I don’t believe we can control our emotions, but we can take 100% responsibility for what we do with those emotions. Just because I want a brownie, doesn’t mean I have to eat the brownie! That brownie might look good, smell good and promise to taste good, but I can still choose to walk away. So my question back to this person is why are you giving the wrong guy a chance to date you? There are certain characteristics that may indicate “wrong guy” status. Too often, we’re swept up in that attraction and those warning signs aren’t strong enough to get our attention. Think about the last “wrong guy”. What was the first sign you were in a relationship with the wrong person? Be honest. It was likely a long time before the last straw showed up. Why did you continue to remain in the relationship? You ought to answer this question before you take another step towards getting into a relationship again. Do you just want to be with someone so badly you tolerate things that might not contribute to your happiness in the long term? Learning your own insecurity that caused you to stay with a bad partner is imperative to making a better decision next time. Choosing a partner is definitely a choice! Do you have any idea how many people you’ll be attracted to in your lifetime? You can’t possibly be in a relationship with all of them! What’s your criteria for a “good guy”? If you’re always attracted to a pretty face, how’s that working for you? Maybe you need to know what deeper characteristics you want and look for those. Everyone has the potential to be with “good” or “bad” partners. The difference is when we’re clear about what we won’t tolerate, we don’t stay with the bad partners for long. We don’t give them chances over and over. We acknowledge what they show us and we CHOOSE to move on. We all teach people how to treat us, so when you tolerate treatment that you don’t like, you’re teaching your partner that it’s ok. Now you may complain about it or beg them to change, but bottom line, you’re allowing it. You have to set a firm boundary and then your partner can decide if they want to operate within that boundary or not. They have 100% ownership of that decision. The decision you have 100% ownership of is are you going to stay and tolerate it? Seeing warning signs and ignoring them in hopes that he’ll change, is you fooling yourself. Learn to trust yourself, see the red flags and then CHOOSE. There’s plenty of people who are good people with some really crappy flaws. The law of attraction states that we find what we’re looking for even though we might not always see it right away. Start looking for the things you DO want in a partner. You’ll find that too! Loving and respecting yourself means you live in integrity with your wants, needs and desires. Putting your attention on this will ensure that you only stick with a partner who values you as well. Sure, ending a relationship can be painful. But compromising yourself is more painful. If you want to increase your self awareness, check out my self coaching course here. It will help you get in touch with what you really want out of a relationship and create a relationship you love! Only good for you! Allison xo
We celebrated together which doesn’t always happen. If you don’t know, my husband works away and sometimes we miss spending important days together.
We talked a bit about the choices we’ve made in our shared past and how it’s impacted us. We discussed some future plans too. We talked about how every decision has a cost and you have to decide if you’re willing to pay it. One of the decisions for us has been the lifestyle we’ve chosen. There’s been a big cost to us like not spending certain times together, not sharing in certain things, but the benefit has been a great payoff too. We’ve been able to travel with our children. For the past 10 years, we’ve travelled somewhere new every year. It’s made us more diverse as people, a couple and a family. We feel it’s been worth the cost. Many families spend the day to day with each other, never connecting, never really enjoying each other, taking each other for granted. I joke with my husband that we have 3 honeymoons a year. No doubt things would be very different if we’d made different choices along the way. Would they have been better? Maybe they would have been worse. I believe it taught us an appreciation of our time together. Maybe we’d have found our way to that without being apart. There’s no way to know. Now we anticipate seeing each other, and we’re sad to part, but we immediately start to plan and look forward to the next time we’re together. It hasn’t always been that way. There’s many times we’ve felt isolated and taken for granted, so it’s a constant readjustment, renegotiation, and reassurance situation. So my question for you: How connected are you and your partner right now? Are you in a cycle of non appreciation for each other? Do you look forward to spending time together? Can you talk to your partner about how you’re feeling? If not, can you move in that direction? Practice Time: If you feel disconnected from your partner, think back to the last time you felt connected. What were the BEHAVIORS that YOU were doing at that time? Were you listening attentively to your partner? Were you smiling at them? Were you holding hands and going somewhere fun together? Recreate the scenario as closely as you can. You might not feel like it, but you don’t have to. Just DO it. Even from a distance, Allison PS-Join me in my self coaching program if you want a little extra.
here are several criteria to successful behavior changes. First, there has to be a desire to change. Second, there has to be a substitute for the problem activity. Third, a system of accountability ensures lasting change. While it is fairly easy to find an accountability system, it’s even easier to find a substitute activity. The really difficult part of this equation is to develop the desire to change.
How can you develop the desire for change to occur? There are two types of motivation. One is a “towards” motivation. Examples of a toward goal is regaining health or reconnecting in lost relationships. The second type of motivation is “away from” motivation. Examples of away from goals are losing employment or losing my residence. The best type of goal builds in both towards and away from motivators. Another method of building motivation is to increase the discomfort with the present situation. This is often what occurs when an Intervention occurs. Loved ones raise the awareness of the negative aspects of the situation and outline clearly what the boundaries are for the future. Often this involves a withdrawal of support or a suspension of relationship which creates a new level of discomfort and urgency for change to occur. While I am speaking to work with addictions, these techniques can be very useful for any type of behavioral change. If you have struggled with a particular behavior, identify the towards and away from motivations. You can create a motivator to “turn up the volume” in one direction or another. You can do this with yourself, but embedding a system of accountability into it is helpful. For instance, a friend and I are training to run a 5k race. We agreed that every day we are supposed to train and we don’t, we will pay the other person $1. I don’t want to pay her $1, but I really don’t want to have to tell her I didn’t follow through. You can see that even if we aren’t very good at our routine, we won’t likely go broke! You can be sure though, that we eagerly report to each other when we do our workout (and even when we don’t). There is a towards motivation: being prepared to run a 5k. There is an away from motivation: paying the $1. There is a system of accountability: we report our success to each other. The replacement activity in this case is the running which takes the place of other activities in our lives such as watching TV or sleeping in. What ideas can you come up with for establishing your own behavior change? Constantly changing, Allison Sign up for my email list and I’ll share some great relationship tips with you! https://www.winningyourrelationshipgame.com/sign-up-for-4-awesome-videos.html Concerned about porn use by you or your partner? This video discusses why porn might be detrimental to your relationship. Sign up for my email list and I’ll share some great relationship tips with you!
https://www.winningyourrelationshipgame.com/sign-up-for-4-awesome-videos.html
Emotions are always trying to tell us something. Is there a source of unhappiness in your relationship? Boredom? Believe me, every relationship has issues. I bet you felt the same excitement about your current boyfriend when you first met.
Unfortunately, when we feel attracted to another person, we begin to compare them to our partner. Of course, we know all our partners warts, so we are comparing apples and oranges. Consider it fully before you end a real relationship for something you don't really know. If the relationship is important to you, consider counseling. It may help you recognize whether you really want to be committed or not. Hope that helps, Allison PS- Sign up for my email list and I’ll share some great relationship tips with you! https://www.winningyourrelationshipgame.com/sign-up-for-4-awesome-videos.html  Outcomes are goals that we strive for. As a culture, we are pretty addicted to meeting goals. We’re taught how to set goals that are SMART. (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Time Limited).
Which is great if you actually could set a goal like that! Believe me, when I worked with an agency, there was like 1 person out a 100 who could actually set a goal that the auditors thought was SMART. In your relationship, what’s your goal? Is it to fight less? Not fight at all? Is it to be “in love” again? A lot of times, I have people say, “I want us to get back to where we used to be.” Those are all pretty big goals. What happens when a goal seems out of reach? When we look at it and it seems impossible. Fighting less might seem like a great goal, but what are the steps it takes to get there? Do you know the steps? If you knew and could do the steps, wouldn’t you have already done them? When we start doing these little steps, we get frustrated because we feel we should be at the goal already. We feel shame and blame we’re not meeting what we see as our desired outcome. We also fail sometimes. I can’t tell you how many couples are making good progress and they slip and have a huge row and they feel like they’ve lost all the progress they’ve made. All that can make us give up and stop going for it. It seems like an exercise in futility, it’s too difficult, or we just aren’t capable of doing it. Well, I’d like to reassure you. When the end game seems impossible, it’s time to focus on the process, not the outcome. Using a football analogy here: If your desired outcome is to win the Super Bowl, but your team has not learned to run a play yet, you better focus on running the play! Not only do you need to learn to run the play but you need to become great at it! You are going to run that play over and over until it’s second nature. You’re going to know that play inside and out. At first, the play is going to be awkward. At first, the whole team isn’t going to be good at it. There’s going to be a lot of failures in making the play. But eventually, your team runs a great play! They win a game, then another and before you know it you’re a Super Bowl contender. That outcome that seemed so impossible is now within reach. But only after you’ve mastered the process. There have been times in my relationship when I’ve felt happiness wasn’t possible. I didn’t think it’d ever happen again. That seemed like an outcome that was too much to hope for. Turning that around took a focus on the process. The processes of a happy relationship, (I call the pillars) are compassion, communication and commitment. Making the little decisions every day that align with these qualities is what got me closer to the end goal. I had to be kind when I didn’t want to be. I had to decide to stay just one more day when it would have felt great to walk out. Talking about things that made me vulnerable created intimacy little by little. I focused on the process because I didn’t know how to get to the outcome I wanted. I was so far away from it, I needed a telescope. By paying attention to the process, I moved closer and closer, with consistency and persistence, until I could see happiness on the horizon. I tried to stay focused on my own behaviors, not my partners. By continuing on, we’ve found our way to a place of happiness I don’t think we ever imagined. We’ve now passed our 20th anniversary and we enjoy each other more now than we ever did. Do we still disagree? Yes. Do we still annoy each other? Yes. We fail all the time. But we focus on the process. Practice time: What is your desired outcome? What processes do you need to get there? It’s the little things you practice every day that lead you to winning. What is one process you can commit to today? Consistency and persistence are mandatory! Let me know what you decided. Comment below, I’d love to hear from you! Cheers to the process! Allison PS-Did you know I have a Self Coaching Program? It's available here.
Now, recall the last time you got angry at your partner about something. Was it over the dirty laundry left in the bathroom floor? Now, in the grand scheme of things, that dirty laundry really isn’t’ that big a deal is it? Get curious about what’s really going on. What’s really got you going is the meaning you’ve placed on that situation. So does dirty laundry on the floor even though you’ve asked a million times mean that you’re not being heard? Does it mean that your partner doesn’t care about what’s important to you? Does it mean you feel disrespected? Apply some curiosity and you’ll find a deeper meaning.
Pretty soon you’ll understand why you’re so riled up. The dirty clothes serve as evidence for something that’s meaningful to you. The ability to communicate in deeper terms allows you to more truly express yourself to your partner and it allows them to know you more and more. Our intimacy grows when we can share our inner selves more with our partners. Maybe even more important is recognizing that the same way you get wrapped up in something insignificant, applying deeper meaning to it, is your ability to recognize the same thing happens to your partner! This is where curiosity helps again. When your partner is angry at you, can you get curious about the deeper meaning? What’s on the surface is only minimally related to the deeper attachment need, our need to belong. If you can tease out the deeper meaning for your partner, you can help to soothe the part of them that’s feeling a bit shaky. What a wonderful thing to be able to do for each other. Practice time: OK, cast your mind back to the last time you got irritated or flat out mad with your partner. What was the surface issue? Did it really mean that much? Or was there a more significant, deeper, truer meaning? What was it? Can you initiate a conversation with your partner and let them know what was actually happening for you? This isn’t to resolve it, it’s just to let your partner know you better. If you want bonus points, think about the last time your partner got angry with you. Look beyond the surface issue and get curious about the deeper meaning. Can you initiate a conversation about that with your partner? You might just end up knowing them better too! Curiosity might have killed the cat, but it saves relationships! Stay Curious Lovelies, Allison I want you on my email list! I'll send you 4 videos with some great, practical relationship tips and share so much more! SIGN UP HERE |
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