Relationship Advice Series

Why do we always fight when...?

One of the things I love to help transform in a client's life, is the way of their intimate relationship. The relationship advice  I give is based on  my experience. My own path wound through a 19-year first relationship which produced much pain and 4 kids, a short 1 1/2 year relationship which taught me what I didn't know about what a relationship could be but wasn't and, 30 years ago, the one that has it all.

My husband and I have an amazing intimate  relationship - amazing if it was the only one we ever had but most amazing because it is a 3rd marriage for us both. "The Martian",  aka  my  husband, promises to comment on my entries on this topic. We're calling him Martian because he's a high school teacher and doesn't want his students to find him on the internet.

I haven't fully figured it out but almost every time there's a weekend or a vacation, the first thing that happens is - we have a fight - small and dumb - but a fight nonetheless. Somebody wrote a song that says something like, "why do we always fight when I ....... something? "

 Relationship advice:  Maybe we feel safe enough to bring our frazzled energy picked up from the rest of our lives to each other to dump out so we can refill it with the love that we share the rest of the time. It's like removing the sediment of life so pure, fresh love has room to flow.

I always thought we'd get over it but we've been together for 30 years and we did  it not long ago at the beginning of a weekend. But we always work through it and find our way more easily and more easily to our everyday love and respect.

YOU University Coaching/Life Coach Training and Life Coaching

Married and Sex

Senior Sex Drive

You've probably read or heard stories like I have about how much sex seniors have - in retirement homes, in movies. Anyway, somewhere I picked up the idea that my senior sex drive would be strong because I love and am attracted to my husband. And that's me. And he's a man. Need I say more?

Well, it just ain't happening that way. When we were first together I think we stretched the "all you think about is sex" part of our relationship to about 5 years whereas the old adage is "put a bean in a jar for every time you have sex in the first year of marriage and then it'll take the rest of your life after that to empty it if you take one bean out for each time you have sex". (I just noticed how exactly opposite these two tall tales are.)

The way it is happening is, over the past 2 or 3 years, we don't have a lot of sex. First it was upsetting to talk about with a bit of blame, guilt and responsibility floating around for each of us but, as is our way, we don't let things like that stay problematic. We keep dealing with them until we're satisfied that we are on the same page about it. We are on the same page about it. We are both in consternation and desire to have it be different.

So yesterday we were having a conversation about it - a thing we do often on the weekend - and I think I realized something about it. I need you to imagine a line drawing here. Imagine a line across the lower part of the page and imagine that that is the level at which I lived. It basically represents at what level of happiness and fulfillment I lived in my life - particularly the intimate relationship part. Now along comes the Martian and that level sharply rises. Now one could think that the level of not too much sex represents the level at which I live but that isn't true. If you've read this blog or know me, you know I live at a very high level of fulfillment and happiness. So I'm thinking that that big jump that I made when the Martian came into my life which was out-pictured by the intensity of my sexual experience is now the level at which I live.

So maybe I'd have to have another gigantic spike in energy to give to sex but our lives are so full of other things and our love isn't new. It's deep but we are used to it.

I think at the point we currently are, people who don't have really fulfilling relationships or lives, probably put all their energy somewhere else. Often with another person. Neither of us is about to do that.

So we'll keep talking and having sex when we do in the loving way that we do.

YOU University Coaching/Life Coach Training and Life Coaching

Maybe he really is from another planet

Men Are from Mars.....

I know my husband since Oct. of 1982. I've been in an intimate relationship with him for 29 years and married to him for 27 and sometimes I haven't the foggiest idea who he is. He's like a beautiful being from another planet that has come into my life to give me more than I could ever have imagined. He loves me amazingly. He believes in me and my abilities - often some steps ahead of how much I can believe in myself. He is so known to me and yet - sometimes I'm almost breathless with the knowledge that how this happened - how we finally found each other is like some kind of play Directed by Someone beyond thought.

Now how does that sound coming from am a total proponent in the belief that we create our own lives? But I can't quite wrap myself around having created so amazingly while being unaware that I was doing it. How did it happen? Am I really this powerful? Is he?Does anyone else feel this way? Do I feel this way because the contrast with my former life and relationship is so great?

Signs of a Bad Relationship

You’re searching all over the internet to find out signs of a bad relationship. So that means you have the question and somewhere inside you the knowledge that your relationship sucks. Otherwise, why would you be searching. I mean we all know what a bad relationship can look like:

• You don’t agree on much.
• You each blame each other for lots of things
• You argue or you shut down. And he does the same.
• Your eye is wandering to other relationships and you are seeing theirs as way better – or at least it looks better than yours.
• You feel pretty badly about yourself.
• You’ve started to believe that NO relationship works.
• You feel abused.
• You are abused.
• You feel sad, angry - just plain unhappy.
• You want to leave.
• You’re afraid to leave.
• You think maybe you haven’t tried hard enough.
• You think maybe you’re totally codependent and can’t live on your own.
• You don’t really trust your partner anymore.
• You don’t really trust yourself anymore.
• Your friends say you should leave.
• You friends say you should stay.

These and many others are signs of a bad relationship. When a relationship is good, you feel happy, fulfilled, excited, absorbed, loved, connected. You are happy to see each other. You can’t wait. You think mostly loving and good thoughts about your partner. You feel good about yourself.

It’s not signs of a bad relationship you need to know about. It’s:

• “How can I notice the signs more quickly?”
• “How can I feel good enough about myself to brave leaving if necessary?”
• “How can I feel good enough about myself to open my mouth and say what isn’t working for me?”
• “How can I say what I feel and not get into an argument about it?”
• “How can I be heard?”
• “How can I be brave enough to know I can make it on my own, if necessary?”
• “How can I accept the inevitabilities of life without a not-working relationship as a crutch?

I can answer these questions for you by telling you some things.

• Everyone on the planet has a past.
• Everyone on the planet has parents.
• No parents, no people are perfect.
• And in our imperfection, we affect each other.

Most of us growing up somehow lost touch with the idea that we are OK, that we are deserving of happiness.  I personally believe that we come to planet earth expressly for that purpose – to learn how to love ourselves so that the inner promptings we all have – the actual biological chemistry that humans have that allow/make us feel our feelings is a kind of internal guidance system. That’s why you are reading this article. That’s why you searched on the internet for “signs of a bad relationship”. You feel lousy and you are not happy.

That’s because bad relationships feel bad. So the answer to how you can notice the signs early, have enough self-esteem to say how you feel and have a good strong bottom line of expected behavior is to heal your emotional past so that it is no longer in charge of your choice of partners and learn how to appropriately communicate with your partner – current or future – in a way that allows you to feel heard and feel good and grows the relationship rather then tearing it down.

I learned how to do just that. It took work but, boy, have the rewards been fabulous. After two failed marriages, I have been very happily remarried for 27 years – my third marriage. We communicate. It’s not always easy but no feelings are under our rug waiting to explode. Our past is largely where it should be – in the past – not in charge of our lives and our relationship. I wish “10 Tricks to a Happy Relationship” worked but I’ve never found it to be true for anybody.

Now that you're done, I have one thing left I'd like you to do.

I'd love to hear your thoughts so comment below and (uh oh this is 2) please follow this blog over there on the right. I'd love to get to know you.