lifestyle Insight

How can you rejuvenate and enliven a tired relationship? In the many years that I have been advising troubled couples about how they can improve their marriage and maintain the intimacy in their relationship, one thing had become increasingly clear: many couples don’t know the first thing about truly nourishing an intimate relationship. For example, I have met quite a few husbands who thought that as long as they were earning enough money, they’ve fulfilled their main role in the relationship. I have also met my fair share of ladies who had become a little too focused on taking care of their children at the expense of their husbands. How can you improve the state of your marriage? You can begin repairing your marriage as soon you learn about the essential foundations of a good relationship. Don’t worry – these guiding principles are relatively easy to learn and once you’ve mastered them, I can assure you, you will be able to apply them to your own relationship...

How can you improve your marriage by changing old systems that are no longer sustainable? Married couples often use predetermined patterns of behavior called schemes or systems to maintain equilibrium or balance in a relationship. However, there are many schemes that do more harm than good in a relationship. If you want to start fixing your marriage, you have to start recognizing the negative schemes that are ruining your relationship with your spouse. What negative systems can dissolve a marriage from the inside? If your marriage is wracked by discord and pain and there seems to be no way out, you and your spouse may have inadvertently trapped yourself in a behavioral pattern that has taken on a life of its own within the relationship. Here are some harmful patterns that may be lurking in your own marriage. If you do find them, you will already have an idea as to why they are harming your marriage in the first place. 1. Strict Roles – It is quite common for ma...

How do two people create systems or schemes within a marriage? Marriages won’t survive long enough to reach maturity if people don’t create behavioral schemes/systems to maintain harmony within the relationship. I know many happily married couples that have created wonderful solution-centered systems that actually help both people grow within the relationship. There is no “tried and tested” formula for creating a good system within a marriage. A good system arises between two people through trial and error. There are no shortcuts or “magic bullets” when it comes to crafting these systems. What does a good system look like? A good marriage system has the following characteristics: 1. It places subject feedback at the center of all interactions. 2. It is nurturing and supportive. 3. It places both parties on level ground. 4. It values fairness above all else. 5. It acknowledges individuals' needs and interests, as well as particular streng...

What strategies do people use to ultimately defend themselves from pain or hurt in a marital relationship? Being married to someone can definitely bring immeasurable bliss – until you find yourself against a most formidable enemy: marital conflict. Marital conflict is different from the personal conflicts that we encounter on a day to day basis. This type of conflict is much more difficult to manage because it often arises from opposing interests and beliefs within a relationship where both parties’ strengths and weaknesses are exposed. How do you know if you’re puttingup defenses in your marriage? We naturally want to avoid any type of pain or hurt inside our marriages. However, if we become too dependent on our psychological defenses, we start seeing marital conflicts as something that we can just avoid. A person’s focus can shift from “how can I solve this problem” to “how can I spare myself the stress and pain?” If you want to change how things are going in...

What do we consciously avoid in intimaterelationships? Marriage is often considered mystifying because it takes a lot of courage to commit to one person for the rest of your life. Of course, there’s still the option to separate from that person but there is definitely an idealism that when you commit to someone, you should try to make it work. Married couples often fall apart because they are unable to manage conflict within their relationships. Marriage is not exactly synonymous with conflict, but conflict is something that should be considered a normal outcome of committing to another person at such a deep level. What does marriage change? When you choose to trust and love someone so much that you marry him/her, you’re creating a unique path for yourself because you now have your spouse by your side. There are some golden couples out there who seem to have found the perfect formula for marriage. I’ve met people who say they’ve been married for more than ...

What role do defenses play in amarriage? Whether we’d like to admit it or not, marriage can sometimes be a painful experience because it’s not just an intimate relationship – it’s the type of relationship where all your strengths and weaknesses are bared to another person. When a person’s true strengths and weaknesses are revealed even to just one person, you will feel more vulnerable because the walls that used to protect your most vulnerable spots are now thinner and more transparent. Why do we put up defenses? The number one reason why people put up psychological and emotional defenses is they want to feel some level of secureness in the marriage. We humans are extremely complex beings. It’s not enough that we are part of an established social structure (e.g. marriage), we must also be able to fulfill very specific and complex needs within this social structure. Our complex nature can sometimes cause us to overuse defensive techniques to the point that a per...

What does a person feel when aparataxic distortion is about to happen? In our last blog post, we talked about the essential characteristics of parataxic distortion . We learned that sometimes, our minds get confused and make a direct association between the present situation and a past experience or memory in the effort to provide us with useful insight. However, what happens is we end up being frustrated, anxious or angry because we directly project our past experiences on other people (e.g. your husband or wife). Parataxic distortion has nothing to do with the idea of learning from our past experiences. You don’t learn when your vision of reality is distorted – you just end up harming yourself and the people around you. How will you know if a parataxic distortion is about to take place? Each person is unique when it comes to parataxic distortions. Some people experience it once or twice a year when they feel extremely stressed and they are unable to channel their...

What is parataxic distortion? Parataxic distortion occurs when you react to a present situation as if it were pulled out directly from your personal past. Parataxic distortion can be associated with any event from a person’s past but the most common source of distortions are negative experiences from a person’s childhood. A person’s history can be utilized in a variety of ways; however, only a few of these ways are useful in marriage. You have to make sure that you are not using mental filters that distort your use of past experiences. How does parataxic distortion affect people’s relationships? Here’s a sample scenario that features parataxic distortion: Jimmy was wildly in love with Daphne. However, he couldn’t shake the feeling that Daphne was a lot like his mother, whom he secretly abhorred because she was verbally abusive and critical of all her children. When Jimmy was 15, he ran away from home and never came back, because he didn’t want to be exp...