The Relationship Saver Blog

In pros­per­ous west­ern cul­tures divorces are sky-rocketing while in poorer soci­eties fam­i­lies are far more sta­ble. What are the rea­sons for this phe­nom­e­non and what has that got to do with us? Do I have to become poor in order to have a happy rela­tion­ship, you may ask. Not really, but on the other hand, you may have no choice.

The more I learn about dif­fer­ences between men and women (or I should rather say fem­i­nine and mas­cu­line) the more I dis­cover the causes of mis­un­der­stand­ing and mis­com­mu­ni­ca­tions that that are per­va­sive in man/woman relationships.

Too often we for­get that we are deal­ing with a “dif­fer­ent species” i.e. female Homo Sapi­ens and by default, if we want to be nice, we treat them the way we want to be treated.

We think that we should know how to man­age our rela­tion­ships and thus are very resis­tant to look­ing for help until it is often too late.

lust |ləst|
noun
very strong sex­ual desire : he knew that his lust for her had returned.
• [in sing. ] a pas­sion­ate desire for some­thing : a lust for power.
• (usu. lusts) chiefly The­ol­ogy a sen­sual appetite regarded as sin­ful : lusts of the flesh.

Yes, of course, we all know the dif­fer­ence. We talk about love, sing songs, […]

“To achieve excel­lence, you must .….”

We think that some­how that feel­ing of love or a lov­ing feel­ing should always be present and only then we would know that our rela­tion­ship is OK. When a rela­tion­ship is break­ing up there seems to be a simul­ta­ne­ous loss of love, or loss of love pre­cedes the break up.

When it comes to your atti­tude towards your mar­riage, do you see it as a rela­tion­ship between two sep­a­rate peo­ple that have come together to share life, or do you see your­selves as a fam­ily and parts of the family.

Whether your rela­tion­ship is going well or not you can always think back to the out­set of the rela­tion­ship and, if you are able to look at those begin­nings with an open mind and objec­tively, you can always say, I told you so. Or at least your par­ents, rel­a­tives or friends could say it.

So, how is it that we are so knowl­edge­able yet can­not improve rela­tion­ships, no mat­ter what? The best exam­ple is over­weight peo­ple who want to lose weight. Most of them know exactly HOW to do it. The same applies to rela­tion­ships. We often know how to do it, yet we do noth­ing about it. And therein lies the problem.

Here we will address one of the very char­ac­ter­is­tic modus operandi under­ly­ing women’s behav­ior, which men in their sim­plic­ity can­not even fathom, let alone thor­oughly understand.

The ques­tion I have for you is this: can a man and a woman be equal, and what are the con­di­tions and rules of behav­ior given that men and women are so very different?

Often we are blind to the fact that our opin­ions are just that, and although they may appear as facts to us, they are just “our” truths and not THE truths. The first step in dis­solv­ing a con­flict of this nature is to start own­ing our opinions.

Hope is always asso­ci­ated with the future. We hope that things will change, that or our per­cep­tion of the sit­u­a­tion is wrong, that it is only a tem­po­rary thing that will pass as soon as cir­cum­stances change.

Two things hap­pened to San­dra Bul­lock this month. First, she won an Acad­emy Award for best actress. Then came the news reports claim­ing that her hus­band is an adul­ter­ous jerk. So the philo­sophic ques­tion of the day is: Would you take that as a deal? Would you exchange a tremen­dous pro­fes­sional tri­umph for a severe per­sonal blow?

Also, it seems that some peo­ple are able to ignore or tran­scend how things show up for them. I’ve observed a few peo­ple who seem to be suc­cess­ful finan­cially, in their careers, and in other aspects of their lives who still have a bunch of neg­a­tive self-esteem beliefs.

In charged sit­u­a­tions most of us assume that we see things as they are; that is not so. We actu­ally see things as they appear to us. Check out for your­self. When was the last time that you met an “idiot” who thought exactly like you do?

Oh, yes they do! Now, let’s see how this works. I under­stand that it is a gen­er­al­iza­tion, but we are gen­er­ally either men or women, so this would apply to all of us to a larger or smaller degree whether we are aware of it or not.

It is curi­ous to observe how far dif­fer­ent branches of sci­ence and phi­los­o­phy have come in learn­ing about human behav­ior as indi­vid­u­als and in soci­eties, and yet the gen­eral pop­u­la­tion is largely unaware of the knowl­edge avail­able to them.

How to actu­ally con­duct an effec­tive com­mu­ni­ca­tion that may promise the res­o­lu­tion of a conflict.

If you do not want to get into argu­ment in the first place, it is impor­tant to get a lit­tle pre­pared before hand as well as being aware of your behav­ior dur­ing the com­mu­ni­ca­tion. Here are some things to keep in mind.

Venn Dia­grams are great tools for solv­ing prob­lems and mak­ing com­plex con­cepts clear. It is fun and you may even get some valu­able insights.

Why do cou­ples argue so much? You would think that since you will­ingly started your rela­tion­ship that you must have agreed on most issues and even in the areas where you ini­tially did not you thought that as rea­son­able peo­ple you would be able to work things out. Well, after months and years of being in a close rela­tion­ship not only did the dis­agree­ments not get bet­ter, they got worse.

Have you ever found that after argu­ing with some­one about some­thing for some time you real­ize that both of you are actu­ally talk­ing about the same thing, but express­ing it in a dif­fer­ent way?

Although some events may induce a feel­ing of hap­pi­ness and even tem­po­rary eupho­ria, hap­pi­ness is not merely a feel­ing. So, how do we achieve a last­ing state of being happy?

Here is how you can, with one almost mag­i­cal touch, not only repair, but have your rela­tion­ship back again.
One of the first things I say in The Rela­tion­ship Saver is that if you want to start repair­ing your rela­tion­ship you will have to start agree­ing with your part­ner. The first think that may think about […]

I heard so many peo­ple say, “It’s my truth”, and they leave it at that, as if their truth some­how becomes true and just as valid as The Truth itself. Of course they find many rea­sons and other opin­ions that attempt to jus­tify their opin­ion, but the bot­tom line is that all these rea­sons and excuses are just plau­si­ble sto­ries that often prove nothing.

Right-wing pro-marriage advo­cates are cor­rect: Monogamy is def­i­nitely under siege. But not from unclos­eted polyamor­ists, ado­les­cent “hook-up” advo­cates, rad­i­cal fem­i­nists, God­less com­mu­nists or some vast homo­sex­ual con­spir­acy. The cul­prit is our own biology.

These two very oppo­site ways of think­ing and pro­cess­ing cause men and women to com­mu­ni­cate in very dif­fer­ent ways. There is one area this is par­tic­u­larly evi­dent and often problematic–the apology.

Hav­ing trou­ble in your rela­tion­ship?  Here are three sug­ges­tions how to get it going again.
1.  Give up your right to be right.
It feels sooo good to be right!  I do not know a sin­gle per­son who does not enjoy it. It makes us smart, intu­itive, more respected and liked. Right? Not really. Espe­cially in our rela­tion­ship, when […]

Ego is not only indis­pens­able – you can­not get rid of it because it is a part of your per­son­al­ity – but also very nec­es­sary in order to have a sense of self. Now, we can talk about a healthy or unhealthy, bal­anced or unbal­anced ego. Where in our rela­tion­ship does this ego, or sense-of-self, come into play?

There are a few behav­iors that once you rec­og­nize them they will give you a pretty good idea of how respon­si­ble you are. In the coach­ing com­mu­nity we call it RACKETS. What it means is that we pre­tend we are doing the right thing when in fact there is a much more insid­i­ous rea­son for our action: avoid­ing respon­si­bil­ity at all costs.

Being self­ish in that way is not only okay, but also nec­es­sary for a healthy rela­tion­ship. Regret­ting some­thing means that you have sac­ri­ficed something.

In order to start solv­ing a prob­lem, one must first cor­rectly iden­tify the core of the prob­lem. So, this led me to the ques­tion: “If I had to choose one thing that dri­ves each gen­der what would it be?”

Appear­ance is every­thing. What will oth­ers think about you? Do you come across as stu­pid, incom­pe­tent, not lov­able, too old or too young, not sexy enough, not beau­ti­ful, rich, respected, well dressed enough? The list goes on. Pick your own rea­sons as to why and in which area you think you are not good enough. So now you may think what has that got to do with rela­tion­ships. Maybe you already have an inkling.

If a woman is not phys­i­cally or sex­u­ally abused by her hus­band,
peo­ple gen­er­ally con­clude there is no abuse. But women should
give this ques­tion more seri­ous thought. Abuse need not be
ver­bal, phys­i­cal or sexual.

“When any of us feels the stir­ring of the sex­ual impulse within our own body and mind, we are feel­ing, at a bio­log­i­cal level some cre­ative surge that pro­pelled some­thing from noth­ing four­teen bil­lion years ago. But, of course, in our lack of humil­ity, too many of us under­es­ti­mate the power of what we’re actu­ally deal­ing with …”

No one can put thoughts in your head. No one can make you think any­thing. Think­ing is a process that starts and fin­ishes inside your mind. It often looks as if some­one made us have cer­tain thoughts, but that is in fact impossible.

Whose respon­si­bil­ity is your rela­tion­ship? You guessed it, it’s not 50/50. Find out how to empower your­self and your rela­tion­ship. The Game­less Rela­tion­ship may just be the ticket.

In the past it was com­mon for divorce rates to spike dur­ing times of finan­cial inse­cu­rity. Is it money, or some­thing else much more important?