If you’ve ever given any thought to the challenges and complexities of relationships and why some couples do well and many don’t, it becomes pretty elusive.
If you have found that your relationship(s) seem to break down, lose their vitality and joy, become “Hard work” with little return, you are a member of the disillusionment in relationships club.
If you find you’re great at starting a relationship but don’t have success at sustaining it, you are on the side of the 50/50 split in our country of those relationships that don’t make it.
What I’ve come to learn is it’s not relationships that fail; it’s the people in the relationships that fail.
I’ve worked with many unhappy couples as well as people coming out of dissatisfying relationships where the partners want to vilify each other.
What often astonishes me is the lack of any ownership or awareness by the one doing the vilifying of their own shortcomings and flaws that are contributing to the deterioration of the relationship.
Conversely, I have worked with men and women both, who totally blame themselves for the problems in the relationship.
With that said, there are often overt behaviors by one of the partners that trump and override the deeper dysfunctional dynamics embedded in the relationship.
Then they can be labeled the “Identified patient/problem” in the relationship; also referred to as the scapegoat.
The disintegration of integrity and compassion within the relationship has broken many hopes and dreams for those who have entered into a life commitment.
How sad it is to enter into a relationship with images and ideas that slowly deteriorate over time; where disillusionment sets in and the ideas of a future with meaning and purpose is replaced with despair and disappointment.
There are far too many couples who don’t have adequate understanding of what it takes to sustain and maintain a relationship over the long haul.
If you are currently in a relationship that feels less than gratifying, where you feel more like roommates than partners, there is hope.
Or, if you are looking for or desiring that next relationship, the one where things will work, it will be helpful to be armed with principles and skills that will improve your ability to communicate and connect.
I have found that what instills hope and confidence back into a relationship, or keeps it alive throughout the journey, is a combination of being able to talk and listen respectfully as well as forgive one another for being who each of you are.
If you can empathize with how hard, if not impossible it is to change that characteristic within yourself that you thought of, and to equal measure appreciate that it’s the same for your partner, you’ll be off to a good start in bringing to the relationship an indispensable trait called empathy that will immensely help its’ longevity.
Obviously, relationships have a better chance at sustaining when both partners are asserting efforts to improve closeness, connection and respect.
That’s not always the case, and I will discuss further into the book some ideas and approaches you can attempt, even when you’re the only one willing to work on the relationship.
If you’re better at getting in relationships then sustaining them over the long haul, it behooves you to try something new and different.
The more you are able to relinquish your old ideas and beliefs that are embedded in the false self the more you experience connection to not only your partner but to equal measure a place of unbridled joy, love and peace within yourself.
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