Tough time in your marriage? 7 helpful tips

Are you angry with your spouse? Are there ongoing issues that try your patience, compassion and love? You may want your marriage to work, but are out of ideas of how to fix the issues. I have been providing marriage counseling for over twenty five years and have put together these helpful tips:


1. Communicate. There are different ways you can communicate. Talk honestly about what is happening. Each of you can share what you are experiencing. If talking doesn’t work, write letters or get a licensed therapist to facilitate a dialogue. Even if it is hard to communicate keep on trying.

2. Create a vision of the solution. If you made a video tape of how your marriage would look when your issues are resolved, what would be on the tape? How would you and your partner feel, what would you being doing and saying to each other? What would be different?

3. Express your authentic feelings, how you truly feel. To the best of your ability, listen to your partner’s feelings with an open mind and a lot of love. You may be surprised to find you both have similar feelings.

4. You may both want the same things, peace of mind, to be loved, appreciated, supported and respected. When I listen to couples fight, underneath the anger and stories I hear hurt and a longing to be accepted and loved. When you fall in love you often feel “now I have a safe place, someone who will be there for me, and support me”. When this does not happen, you feel disappointed and need to blame someone. To some extent, these unspoken expectations are there for everyone.

5. Work together. You can work together and share the journey as you move in an agreed upon direction. Continue to communicate and share your vision for the relationship. This is an ongoing process. Keep practicing.

6. Instead of looking at your partner’s behavior, look at yourself. What are you doing to block what you want in the relationship? Change your behavior.

7. Learn how to move past disappointment. Everyone will at some point in your relationship, disappoint you, (not live up to your expectations). We are only human. After experiencing disappointment, learn how to repair the martial connection and continue on the road towards your vision (what you saw on the video tape).

Make the commitment to work through the tough times. Having a partner who works towards a shared vision can bring many rewards. Having a companion who shares the tough times, as well as the good, is all part of marriage.

THE GOOD NEWS: Your marriage will often be stronger after you work thorugh the tough times.



*as seen on examiner.com

Does it feel like you and your spouse live in different worlds?

In a study reported in the book Rapt by Winifred Gallagher couples were given a checklist of events and activities and asked to mark ones that had occurred during the course of the week. The list included items like fights, lovemaking, issues with children and so on. The data revealed the percentage of agreement between husbands and wives was at the level of mere chance. Your spouse is experiencing an entirely different world from you!

How does this happen? Your experience of the world depends on where your attention is focused. We all have selective attention. What you focus on is what you will remember.

What determines what you pay attention to? Attention is determined by many factors, both conscious and unconscious. Each one of us is unique. Your past, your beliefs about the world and your self all influence what you focus on. This creates an individualized experience of the world.

For example if you get a new hybrid car, all of a sudden there seems to be many hybrid cars on the road. Your attention is now focused on noticing these hybrids cars. Before you bought one you never paid attention in this way and did not notice as many hybrids.

How can you benefit from this knowledge? Realize how important communication is for your relationship. Without communication, sharing your feelings, perceptions, and thoughts you lose the connection with your partner. You stay in your separate worlds.

Learn how to communicate with your partner, pay attention to them and listen to what and how they have experienced the world. Invite them into your world and be willing to enter theirs. Neither view is objectively “right”.

Communication will increase intimacy and satisfaction in your relationship and it just might expand your world.

How does your marriage affect your health?

How does your marriage affect your health?
When you marry your lifestyle habits become more alike. The November 2008 issue of Psychology Today presents research showing marital relationships steer our physical well being. Researchers are finding that spouses influence each others eating habits, doctor visits, use of alcohol, cigarettes and marijuana.

Couples can even develop the same illness over time the Yale School of Public Health did a study over four years of over 6,000 people. Results showed that in every single behavior there was spousal effect. For example if one spouse quit smoking the other was 6-8 times more likely to quit. If one quit drinking alcohol the other was five times more likely to quit. The one exception to this is exercise. Here there was an effect, but it was milder.
The good news: one of the best ways to change your spouse is to change yourself.

Nagging does not work and in fact can have the opposite effect. So look to yourself, and " clean up your side of the road", your spouse may follow. You may be pleasantly surprises what happens when you stop trying to "help" them change. Instead focus your attention on getting your own habits on track.

Three Steps To Change

Let’s say you have decided to make a change. You have recognized that you have a pattern or habit pattern that you want to pay attention to. So you have recognized something, you have choices. Congratulations!

Here is an example:

You may have found yourself following a habitual pattern or perspective on a situation in your life and you do not like it. You have yourself thinking self critical thoughts, measuring yourself against others, and coming up short. Thinking to yourself what a failure or burden you are, or that you are undeserving of love.

You ask “How can I change this?”
Here are three steps to take. Do an experiment, try this for 3 days.

• Awareness: Become aware of the signs that the pattern is present. Clues:
Thoughts and feelings.

• Acknowledge: Do the work to understand and explore yourself, so in the moment of awareness you can remember what is happening.

• Correct it: What is the change? What is the new choice? For example I deserve and receive love. See it, feel it, think it. Create a momentary, in the present, experience of this feeling. You may have a memory of something you experienced in you life that already gives you this experience.

Now follow these three steps through out the day. Practice this for three days. Pay attention to what happens. What inspires you, what dreams you dream, what is happening? Is anything different?
Perhaps you would like to continue this experiment a few more days and continue to pay attention.

Favorite Self- Talk

Here is my favorite self talk (self talk = things you think to yourself)

I AM HERE


If you like that thought, try this:

On a piece of paper write in large letters:

YOU ARE HERE

Hang this up where you see it often.

These tips will help bring you back into the present moment. Try it, and see what you experience.


In my esoteric studies of the hebrew letters I understood this about I am here:

This is what Moses was saying at the burning bush.

I am Here

I am present in a High place, a mountain, where I hear the still small voice.
A place I hear divine revelation. I breathe out.

The present.

Goals: Three Ways They Sabatoge Success

You might be thinking, WHAT, how can having a goal possibly sabotage me?

1.When you set a goal it is something you hope will happen in the future.The future has not occurred yet.You have no control over the future.


2. The goal you set might or might not happen. This future oriented focus puts pressure on you. It is an end point you are trying to get to and this pressure will sabotage the outcome.

3. Setting a goal puts an expectation in your mind. If what is happening does not match your expectation you feel discouraged, angry, and disappointed. You need to blame someone or something. Often you blame yourself.

So what can you do? Not set goals? Then how do you create changes in your life?

Here is what you can do. Set an intention. An intention is present oriented. It means in this moment you are putting your focus, your attention, and your will in the direction that you are aiming for. You can focus on the intention right now.

For example say your intention is to get a job. Right now, in this moment, you are putting yourself in the direction of a job.
 Right now, in this moment, you act according to that intention by making a call.
All of this is happening here and now and you have the power to make a choice now to act accordingly to that intention.
You can focus on the power of now by making choices that support the intention. This gives you power, because you have a choice each moment. Your actions take place in the present moment.

As you focus on your intention, you can make choices aligned with this. If you do not make the call today, you can refocus on the intention later and act.

Staying in the now helps. You have choices in the now. The future does not exist yet and what will happen out of your hands. You influence the future through the now, by the choices you make each moment..

Set an intention and conceptualize that this means all your attention will be focused in this direction today, the outcome, what happens in the future, will be what it will be.

Thoughts Become Things

How do you create?

First understand the basics of the creative processes. Causation comes from the divine. Another words, what this means to you... what is the spark or impulse of the first stirring in consciousness of the answer to this question, What Do You Want?

Believe it or not most people do not know the answer to this question. Let us say what you want is a successful business. Initially you experience this as a spark of energy, an idea. What happens then? You begin to have thoughts and images of what that will be like. These thoughts and images spur feelings. You may feel anything from excitement and motivation, to fear and paralysis, or some combination. Depending on which of these thoughts and feelings are happening you begin to make choices. The choices are the concrete actions (or in action) that you do in your everyday life. Do you pick up the phone and make the phone call. Or do you put it out of your mind. If you want to lose weight, do you take that walk this morning, or make some excuse to yourself.

So what is going on from the divine spark of the idea, to the thinking, and imaging, to the emotional response and finally the choices you make?

As the initial divine impulse comes into being it channels through you. You have a set of patterns and beliefs, kind of like programming. This comes from both your life experience and from the meaning and responses that you bring to these life events. As the spark of divine light comes into being through you it begins to fragment, to split. Some Energy gets trapped, held or in some way diverted from the original intention. You may begin to de-rail your actions by how you think and feel about what is happening. Bottom line you are not moving towards what you intended. It is not happening, or perhaps something is happening but not what you intend.
This is the opportunity for you to become conscious of the thoughts and images, these create the feelings which provide the fuel for the choices in this world of action.

What fuel are you giving your self? Are your thoughts an unending stream of critical negative self talk, are fears and anxieties paralyzing you, stopping you from fully participating in life.

Keep going back to the original intention you started with. Follow the process:

Emanation Spark of direction. Flash of Inspiration. Make sure you have an understanding of what you are truly seeking.

Thoughts, beliefs, Images then begin after the initial spark.

Feelings: the fuel for the next step

Actions. Actual physical doing, what choices you make in your everyday life.

Working with a therapist can help you to make changes. Therapy can teach you how to develop tools to unlock places in your life you feel stuck.