Is your relationship in trouble? Do you wonder if you should split? Have you suffered enough? Do you want long-term solutions for emotional problems and difficult relationships?
I can help you clarifying your objectives and transforming your crisis or conflicts into closeness and developing a more intimate relationship. If you assume that you can get along without any professional help, you may end potentially wonderful relationships, or you may suffer for years without experiencing the lasting happiness.
Feeling Stuck
Feeling stuck in a high-conflict relationship where cold war is frequent and the silent treatment just won’t work?
It is not realistic to have a relationship goal of never fight or argue. This is because when two unique individuals get closer in an intimate relationship, conflicts are unavoidable. Conflict usually comes from differences in personality with different patterns of thinking, feeling and behaving. Conflicts thus happen even in the best of relationship. And habitual avoidance of conflicts is the #1 predictor of divorce. So the secret to love is NOT never fight, but know how to fight and be able to recover from a fight.
Communication Problem
Dr John Gottman can listen to a couple for 5 minutes and determine, with 91% accuracy, whether they’ll divorce. How can he tell who will split up? There are a number of indicators but at the core of Gottman’s research are ” The Four Horsemen.” The four things that indicate a marriage is in trouble are Criticism, Contempt, Defensiveness and Stonewalling.
A video clip on “Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse” by Dr John Gottman
Healthy way of communication is key to a loving and intimate relationship. Working on your negative communication patterns early in the relationship, or as soon as you begin to sense trouble, may save you a substantial amount of heartache down the road.
Through guided in-session practice, you would become aware of the destructive interactional patterns in your relationship, and learn to break these negative patterns and begin to form new ways of communicating that is based on honesty, respect and true intimacy.
Sex and Intimacy
Dr Sue Johnson‘s research on bonding science discovers that a good sex is where couples feel safe and have emotional connection with each other while making love. When the heart is open and when couples feel safe in sexuality, there are infinite number of discoveries that can go on. You can’t play when you’re anxious. You can’t play when you’re fearful. You can’t play when you don’t trust. So when couples having trouble with safety, they do not have satisfying sex. Safe emotional engagement is the key ingredient in relationship that turns couple on in bed and out of bed.
Safety is a defining feature in women’s sexuality. Women needs to talk, check out the relationship before they can let themselves go and descend into arousal. Talking before sex is thus a key part of foreplay for women.
In long-term relationships, we often expect our beloved to be both best friend and erotic partner. Relationship therapist Esther Perel argues that good and committed sex draws on two conflicting needs: our need for security and our need for surprise. In order for couples to remain interested in one another, they require distance, transgression, surprise, and play. We must be able to stand back from our partners, to view them as separate, mysterious people, for them to remain objects of our desire.
A video clip on “The Secret to Desire in a Long-term Relationship” by Esther Perel
Key Ingredients of Relationship Dance
Intimate Attachment
John Bowlby, the “father” of attachment theory, said this about attachment: “Intimate attachments to other human beings are the hub around which a person’s life revolves, not only as an infant or a toddler or a schoolchild but throughout adolescence and years of maturity as well, and on into old age. From these intimate attachments a person draws strength and enjoyment of life and, through what he contributes, gives strength and enjoyment to others. These are matters about which current science and traditional wisdom are at one.”
Connection – Feeling Secure
From birth to old age, we seek and struggle to maintain close emotional and physical connection with special others. This closeness gives a safe haven where we can find comfort and achieve emotional and physiological balance.
When we are most confident that others will be open, tune into us, and respond to us, we tend to reach for them when we are in need. If we feel safe, it’s much easier to identify, confront, and express our emotions.
Disconnection – Feeling Insecure
When we are disconnected with our loved one, we hurt. In our loneliness, we rage, cry, plead, sulk, and try to turn away—not to care. Feeling truly alone, abandoned, and rejected, is traumatic.
When we are uncertain as to how our loved ones will respond to our vulnerability, we often try to force them to respond by becoming aggressive and/or then trying to ignore our need for acknowledgment by shutting down, or distancing ourselves from them.
The Love sculpture above features two conflicted adult figures sitting back-to-back. Inside their frames stand two inner children who are reaching out to one another. We all have this deep yearning and longing for connection with significant others.
Negative Interaction Pattern
When feeling disconnected, 70%-80% of couples fall into a predictable dance where one partner is the pursuer and one partner is the withdrawer. The more the pursuer pursues, the more the withdrawer withdraws. Couples end up being stuck in their negative interaction pattern and can’t seem to free themselves. In order to make progress, both partners must understand that the pattern is the enemy not their partner; they have to give up their unproductive way of interaction and learn a new way of connection through guided in-session practice till both have the trust and safety that the other partner will respond when they are in need.
A video clip on “Love Sense: from Infant to Adult” By Dr Sue Johnson and Edward Tronick
Making Relationship Work
Victor Frankl said, “Love is the only way to grasp another human being in the innermost core of his personality. No one can become fully aware of the very essence of another human being unless he loves him. By his love he is enabled to see the essential traits and features in the beloved person; and even more, he sees that which is potential in him, which is not yet actualized but yet ought to be actualized. Furthermore, by his love, the loving person enables the beloved person to actualize these potentialities. By making him aware of what he can be and of what he should become, he makes these potentialities come true.”
According to Dr John Gottman, the seven principles to build a good relationship are:
- Enhancing love maps
A “love map” is that part of partner’s brain that stores the other partner’s history, worries, hopes, and goals in life; facts and feelings of his/her world.
- Nurturing fondness and admiration
It involves thinking on what makes one cherish his/her partner, and incidents that one appreciates in one’s partner; talking about the happy events of the past.
- Turning toward each other
It means being there for each other during the minor events in lives; and responding favorably to partner’s bids for attention, affection, humor or support.
- Accepting influence
It means sharing power; making decision by taking partner’s opinions and feelings into account.
- Solving solvable problems
According to Gottman’s research, 69% of problems in a relationship are unsolvable. These may be things like personality traits, long-standing issues around spending and saving money. For unsolvable problems, focus on managing your own expectation, to accept and adapt, than focus on changing your partner.
5 Steps to solve solvable problems:
- Soften startup. Bring up issues without criticism or contempt, express need in a positive way
- Make and receive repair attempts. Prevent negativity from escalating out of control
- Soothe oneself and partner
- Compromise
- Be tolerant of each other’s faults
- Overcoming Gridlock
Gridlock occurs when a conflict makes one feel rejected by one’s partner, they keep talking about it but make no headway, they become entrenched in their positions and are unwilling to budge, when they discuss the subject, they end up feeling more frustrated and hurt, less willing to compromise and eventually they disengage from each other emotionally.
But no matter how entrenched in gridlock a couple is, all that they need in order to get out of it is motivation and a willingness to explore the hidden issues that are really causing the gridlock through empathic listening and showing respect to one another, acknowledging and accepting the differences.
Shared meaning is a spiritual dimension to a relationship. It has to do with creating an inner life together — a culture rich with symbols and rituals, and an appreciation for the roles and goals that link a couple, that lead them to understand what it means to be a part of the relationship they have become.
When a relationship has a shared sense of meaning, conflict is much less intense and perpetual problems are less likely to lead to gridlock.
A video clip of “The 7 Principles of Making Marriage Work” by Dr John Gottman
Counselling Fee and Approach
Find out more about the counselling fee and counselling approach.