Sunday, October 31, 2010
Doing Something for a Better Friendship
What To Do On A First Date
Friday, October 22, 2010
Get Your Romantic Groove On
Dating Guidelines for Women
The Good Old Regular Dating
Sunday, October 17, 2010
Got to Have Tips for a Better Relationship in Dating
Thursday, October 7, 2010
Relationship Counseling: Setting Up A Talk Session
All relationship counseling is about getting the two people in the relationship to talk to each other and start to try to understand each others feeling more. The problem that any relationship counseling advisor will tell you is that getting those two people in the same room for more than a few minutes and remaining calm throughout is the difficult part.
If you’re experiencing relationship problems of your own, here’s a few tips you can try yourself at home, with your partner, before you consider looking for qualified (and potentially expensive) relationship counseling services.
Plan a time when you are not likely to be disturbed. You will need maybe ten minutes if this is your first talk session, but it would be better to leave a bit of leeway after the session.
Turn off any music, radio or television, and put the phone on ‘answer’.
Set a kitchen timer, alarm or stopwatch for ten minutes from the start (or two five-minute periods to give you a changeover time).
When starting your relationship counseling at home, you should both come with a written agenda for one or two things you would like to talk about.
Try to have an agreement that you will not say hurtful things during the ten minutes.
Divide the time equally between you.
Decide who will start with their agenda items.
Switch over to the other person after five minutes.
If arguments begin, you could try to end by ‘agreeing to differ’ at the ten minute deadline, or if they are getting out of hand, you could just stop the session and plan to meet at another time.
In later sessions you could use communication training or negotiation as the main agenda.
In your later “in home” relationship counseling sessions you could extend the time, if you both agree that it is safe to do so, up to 20 minutes at the most.
This approach should be very helpful, and as you can see doesn’t involve any relationship counseling services – you can easily work through this plan of attack in the comfort of your own home.
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
Relationship Help – Translating Requests Into Tasks
Following on from my previous post where we started talking about negotiating as part of the communication process, here’s how we can translate our requests into actual tasks that our partner can work on:
The question of doing the vacuuming and supporting you in front of George are still requests, and now need to be put in the form of tasks. Ideally these should specify when, where and how they should be carried out. You may have a weekly routine of house tidying, and the vacuuming could be slotted into this at a time which is convenient to both partners. Similarly the meetings with George probably happen at predictable times, and the tasks can be limited to those times. You may even want to specify the issues you want support on, such as when, for example, George ridicules your political beliefs or your taste in music.
The tasks should be reciprocal, so that each partner has something they can do for the other This is one of the most important aspects of negotiation. The partners should feel at the end of a negotiation session that they have both had their say in making requests and in setting tasks. Ideally there should be one, or at the most two, tasks for each partner in operation at any one time, and the number of tasks should be equal between them. Thus the woman may request that the man looks after their baby while she goes out with her friends, while the man may request that the woman lets him go out to the bar with his friends. If this sort of bargain is struck, the number of times per week that each task is to be carried out should be specified, and ideally this should be about equal for both partners.
It is not easy to get into this kind of agreement the first time that you try, and there may be a fair number of trials before you get it right. However, it is usually well worth trying something like this in order to get away from the repetitive struggles that people get into.
Making Sure That The Tasks Are Practicable
Before settling on the tasks to be done by both partners, it is important to make sure that both of you agree that they are practicable and fair. This will require all your negotiating skills, and it is not always possible to get it right the first time. It may require you both to make compromises, for example to settle on fewer nights going out than you would ideally like, or making a different division of household chores. The key consideration is to be practicable, and that may mean one partner at first making a few concessions in order to get the process going.
It is also a good idea to set tasks which are within the daily life that you have as a couple. There is little point in setting up plans to have an expensive vacation or an extension on the house as part of your exchange of positive behavior. It is much safer to settle on things such as weeding the garden, looking after children or doing the weekly shopping, since these can be repeated on a weekly or daily basis and you can meet frequently to discuss progress on them.
Saturday, October 2, 2010
5 Signs You Are Smothering Him
Women have this problem with men because they have the tendency to smother the one they love. With enough smothering you realize maybe it would have been better to eat a box of cookies and go to the gym to work off the calories.
Don’t smother each other. No one can grow in the shade.In this case, you would have been able to put some distance between the two of you. If you want to keep the love of your life loving you, then be careful of these 5 signs you are smothering him:
Going Out: Do you notice that your boyfriend has gotten incredibly busy lately without any major life changes? Talking on the phone, on the internet and spending all of his free time with you might be just peachy for you but he might have other things on his mind. This doesn’t mean that he doesn’t love you, just that he wants to hang out with his friends, play golf or just give him space to appreciate you. You do not have to spend every waking moment with him.
Walking Away: While you are out together, is he the first one to offer to get people drinks? Go to the bathroom frequently? Or any other reason to walk away from you. Once again, he wants to socialize and show off the woman he loves and admire her from a distance. He can’t do any of these things if you cling on to him all night long. It might even be good for you to make some new friends and get your mind off of your boyfriend.
Stops Communicating: If you obsessively call, text and email don’t be surprised that he just stops answering. Then come the lies like “I left my phone at home,” “My sister was on my computer” and “Really, you texted me? My service has been really weird lately.”
Frustration and Fights: What happened to the incredible patience that your boyfriend used to have? You wasted it about 40 texts ago. The more you close your man off, the more frustrated he becomes and as a result you end up fighting. Men need to be aired out. You can take them out for a while and then you have to leave them alone for a while.
The Break Up: The final sign that you are smothering your boyfriend is when he breaks up with you. There is only so much a man can take. You can try to win him back with promises that you will give up your smothering ways but it may be too late.
There is always smothering in a relationship. If you notice that your relationship is suffering from a few of these signs, don’t wait until the last moment when your man breaks up with you because you have been smothering him.
Just because you do not spend every moment together, it doesn’t mean that he loves you less. Let him go and you will see that he ends up loving you more.
Relationship Help – Try Role Playing
Do you have difficulty in understanding (empathizing with) each other?
I am not referring here to the understanding of everyday language, but to emotional understanding or empathy. You may feel that you have a fairly good way of communicating, but that there is something missing in your emotional rapport and that this is getting in the way of being open with each other.
Beware of too much openness
Before getting into the ways in which you can achieve more openness, a word of caution. In even the closest relationships there are some things that you might be wise to keep to yourself. A man who walks along the road with his wife and says ‘Look at that attractive girl over there’, is playing with fire if his wife is worried about her own attractiveness. He should not really raise that kind of ‘open’ discussion if he values his marriage. Similarly, a woman who praises a friend’s ability to understand her may be taking a risk if her partner feels that by implication she is saying that he doesn’t understand her.
Try ‘reversed role-play’
If you have real difficulty getting into your partner’s mind, it may be worth trying a technique called ‘reverse role-play’.
Exercise: Reversed Role-play
Sit down together with no distractions (TV, music, telephone or radio) and the timer set for ten minutesIf you are used to sitting in your favourite place or chair, change placesStart to have a discussion, perhaps about some fairly ordinary subject that you disagree on (but not something serious like religion or education) but taking your partner’s point of view. Perhaps you might change your voice tone and use the kinds of reasoning that your partner usually usesTry to enter into your partner’s way of thinking about the subject. This means, of course, arguing the opposite case from the one you would normally supportAt the end, perhaps for the next ten minutes, you should change back to your usual chair, your own voice and your own point of viewTry to talk together about the discussion you had, and discuss how it felt to be taking your partner’s side, and exploring their way of thinkingThis exercise is an interesting one that we have tried many times in the couple therapy clinic, and it usually helps the partners to gain a greater degree of empathy with each other.