Why Invest in Relationship Skills Before Finding Love?
No one wants to live with a feeling that disaster can strike at any time. However, we all take precautions to make sure that in the event that something bad does happen, we’re covered for major, albeit unlikely or seldom occurrences. Invest time in learning about who we are and what makes some partners more right for you than others is essential.
Many of us take precautions to make sure that we can live with peace of mind. Those of us with valuables have home and contents insurance, in the event a thief invades our home and takes off with our precious belongings.
Prevention
Those of us who have a car take it in for a regular service so that it’ll drive more smoothly, so that we feel safe and protected when we’re on the road.
We don’t wait for our teeth to go rotten before seeing a dentist. Therefore, we visit a dental hygienist from time to time.
For some reason, when it comes to general health, even though we may have health insurance, many of us tend to utilize it only once disaster has struck as opposed to taking advantages of its preventative services to keep us as healthy as possible.
Similarly, when it comes to our relationships, many simply rely on fate. They think they should just suffer and face the music when the time comes. For now we love each other, and they hope and pray things will carry on that way.
Given the divorce rate is very nearly 50%, it seems like throwing caution to the wind may be a dangerous way to run our lives. To just hope for the best, rather than take actual preventative measures to ensure our marriage runs as smoothly as possible doesn’t sound like much of an insurance policy.
One of the reasons many people don’t avail themselves of preventative relationship services is a lack of awareness. There are several health prevention programs around, yet still most marriage therapists focus on helping marriages in crises. Few are trained in preventative approaches.
Many read self-help books about how to keep their relationships healthy and think that alone will ward off all gloom and doom in their marriage.
While self-help books can help a lot with encouraging healthy behavior patterns, they do little to help a couple who have, for example, experienced challenging relationships in the past. Moreover, people can have all the information at their fingertips about what they need to do to create a more loving relationship, but applying the information in real time when faced with a partner that looks and sounds like a wild dragon spewing fire out of its nostrils, is another story entirely.
Dr Sue Johnson, an acclaimed expert on love and relationships, says that when we feel triggered by something our partner does, even if their intentions are good, this can make us feel like they are against us. When we feel threatened and our sensors are down and we’re not expecting it, we react badly.
Self-help books don’t give couples awareness about their past and knowledge about how this may influence their future relationship dynamics.
Awareness is Key
The more aware we are of what we bring into a relationship the better able we will be to choose a partner who will trigger us less and with whom we can be our most real and vulnerable selves.
Furthermore, the more aware we are of our past relationship wounds, the more we can heal these and become more reflective as opposed to reactive, the better able we will be to withstand relationship challenges.
Click here to read more:
https://gethelpisrael.com/why-invest-in-your-relationship-skills-before-you-even-find-love/
Book Review: Marry Him: Case for Settling…
Does the idea of Settling for love petrify you? Lori Gottleib knows all too well, as she is a 45 year old single Mom at the time of writing this book. She thoroughly researches what makes women run away from a potentially good man…She makes an excellent case to Marry Mr. Good Enough.
A soundtrack to #MeToo – ‘Toy’ by Netta
While Toy, the female empowerment song is great for helping women feeling stronger. It begs the question, where do men fit in?
Make the Facebook Dating App work for you!
The best dating apps can suggest the best person for you, but if your relationships skills suck you may blow your chances for finding true love…
Make your Relationship Feel more Free?
The more aware Daniel and Rebecca became of their emotions that were fueling their dynamic, the better able they were to calm down and not feel afraid they were losing themselves in this relationship. The more they felt they understood themselves, the better they were able to express what they needed from one another.
They couldn’t always get things exactly the way they wanted it, but at least they felt their partner wanted the best for them, which was even more important.
When we feel we’re in a relationship where our partner has our back, this feeling of safety and security gives us the greatest feeling of FREEDOM!
Should You Stay Together for the Sake of the Kids?
Tammy was torn about what to do. She was married for fifteen years and had three children with her husband, Tom. As a couple, Tammy and her husband had many ups and downs. Getting married young and having made Aliyah on their own shortly before they met, they found comfort in knowing that someone had their back. Early on in their marriage they used to turn to one another during hard times. Once the kids came around and work demands increased along with strains on their budget, they began to share less emotionally. Tom found himself with longer hours at work, needing to unwind before coming home. He knew once he walked through the door, the kids would jump on him and Tammy would expect him to help out.
Tammy became increasingly more resentful as her interior design career took off. She had many challenging clients that expected her to always be available during every building hiccough. This combined with having to tend to the needs of her three demanding children meant that her “me time” was scant and precious. But Tammy never wanted to rock the boat so she suffered in silence.
Slowly the couple began doing things more independently and while the household continued to function, they felt less connected. Neither wanted to talk to the other about how they felt as each feared hurting the other.
(To read more continue here:)
Why Staying Together for the Kids Isn’t Doing Anyone Any Favours
Top Tips on How to Consciously Create Love
By consciously coupling and considering carefully how you want to connect with your partner, you can create a lifelong loving relationship.
Why We Wait to Feel Desperate?
When I met Shana, an attractive woman in her 30s, she was dating a new guy every few months. She was feeling desperate and frustrated that everywhere she looked her friends were pairing up, but for some reason it just wasn’t clicking for her. When Shana went to parties, she’d either not feel a connection with anyone, or she’d see a cute guy but talk herself out of flirting with him. She’d go to synagogue kiddushes and have plenty of pleasant conversations with people who were nice and well-meaning – yet somehow she just couldn’t seem able to strike up a conversation with the cute guys that she really wanted to meet, or get people to follow up on dating suggestions.
When I talk to people about considering relationship coaching when things aren’t moving for them, they often look at me like I have three heads. I’ve received comments ranging from “You have GOT to be kidding me, normal people go for relationship coaching?” Or, “I would have to feel desperate to do that.”
Sadly, I run into many of those same people years later and they’re often at the point of feeling desperate and beyond hope. Sometimes they do get married but feel they’ve made a mistake or that they were ill-equipped to withstand the challenges of a successful long term relationship.
It makes little sense why we wait to feel desperate, or like we’ve hit rock bottom, before figuring out how to get something we really want. If we want to be thin most of us try and eat healthy and exercise. We go to the dentist to prevent cavities rather than wait ‘til our teeth are ready to fall out. We meditate and do yoga to reduce anxiety and stress, we take lessons to learn how to drive, rather than wait until we get into an accident (fortunately the law doesn’t allow for that). And for those of us with strong career aspirations we work with a business coach to get our careers moving in the right direction.
If we were to wait for our teeth to rot, our careers to fall apart or our heart to pack up before taking action to improve our lives we would most likely be so far down in the dumps at that point that it would take too much effort to then make a change.
Many of the married couples I’ve worked with have said to me they wish they’d taken the time to understand themselves better before even starting to date, because it may have either influenced their choice differently, or they would have entered the relationship with a different set of expectations and they may have behaved in such a way that would have vastly improved the healthfulness and success of the marriage going in.
It’s heartwarming to know that there’s so much research now about what ingredients make a successful relationship, and that we have the power to make good relationship choices right from the very start. It no longer makes sense to wait until a marriage gets shipwrecked before learning how to make it strong and steady.
When I worked with Shana, we identified that hopefulness was not her strong suit and she allowed me to help her uncover some of the reasons why she didn’t feel entitled to talk to the guys she was attracted to. By pushing through her fears and overcoming old baggage that was weighing her down with negative thoughts she was able to shift her approach and finally meet someone she really liked in real life.
5 Tips to inspire you to take a proactive stance to dating, so you don’t feel desperate
Focus on the features you love about yourself and accentuate them.
Clarify the things you love about your relationships with others
Be brutally honest with yourself…then change the things you don’t like, or that aren’t working for you.
Acknowledge the parts of your life you do feel happy about and celebrate them.
Know that you don’t need to do a complete overhaul, but rather just fix the specific areas where you may be getting stuck.
If you may occasionally be feeling desperate, check out this link to hear my interview with Zoe, a single woman living in Jerusalem about how she deals with feeling desperate.
http://jewishcoffeehouse.com/real-relationships-using-sadness-as-a-tool/
How to Get Matchmakers to do the Best Job for You?
The more clear you are about what you need from a relationship, the better able you’ll be to express this to a matchmaker who will then be in a better position to set you up.
Hidden Shame of the Harvey Weinstein Scandal
Men report they feel emasculated and no longer able to flirt and show affection towards women. Women feel less safe about creating relationships with men…We need to create a shift in our thinking and do a reality check in order to heal from this scandal.