Heart, Spirit, Mind

Lies we tell ourselves about our relationships

hsm — Wed, 30 Oct 2013 14:51:43 +0000

I have spent most of my adult life where you are. I understand the confusion, the heartbreak and the daily chaos you live with. I have told myself the same things that you tell yourself. I have rationalized and justified the insanity of an relationship that wasn’t emotionally safe for me.

I have also overcome those obstacles. It wasn’t easy. It took extreme circumstances to get myself out of that dysfunctional mindset. I still look to renew my own strength everyday and am ever determined to break the cycle that has plagued me my entire adult life.

The first step is to stop lying to ourselves.

1) This is normal

You tell yourself that your relationship is typical of most relationships. All relationships have their ups and downs right? You ignore the fact that you are constantly hurting. You ignore that you are constantly strategizing ways to get your partner to understand your point of view. You go that you are worthy of their love. You excuse misunderstandings saying that your partner is going through a rough patch, and it will improve.

It is illogical for you partner to verbally abuse you, their greatest ally and advocate. Blame, shame, confusion, diminishment, sarcasm and manipulations are not normal and regular responses for having a bad day and have no place in a healthy, loving relationship

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Love isn’t always enough

hsm — Thu, 19 Sep 2013 10:00:28 +0000

You have been with your partner for a long time. You have been through many trials and tribulations and you survived, but you aren’t thriving. You have worked at your relationship and given it your all. You’ve even tried counseling. You have tried to put leaving the relationship out of your mind, but it keeps coming back. You know things just aren’t working right, but you remain indecisive, unable to decide whether you should leave the relationship.�

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Five ways to destroy a relationship

hsm — Sun, 08 Sep 2013 14:00:00 +0000

It’s easier to destroy a relationship than to keep it together. Relationships are doomed if both partners aren’t a hundred percent committed to making the relationship work. Unfortunately, people do not know how to do that.

Here are some ways people destroy their relationships

Loss of respect. Name call when you fight. Nothing hurts more than having someone you love call you names. Embarrassing your partner publicly by making snide or sarcastic comments. Forget to be considerate and fail to practice basic common courtesies. If you make your partner feel like you don’t respect them, then they will become resentful and begin to stray from you. They will eventually stay away from you and seek attention and validation elsewhere
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Understanding anger will set you free to love

hsm — Mon, 01 Apr 2013 10:00:07 +0000

There are times or experiences in our lives that can be difficult and illicit very strong feelings. Some of the strongest emotions we feel are anger, forgiveness and love. These three emotions effect all relationships. The closer you are to someone, the more these emotions will effect your relationship.

Forgiveness is a difficult emotion for some people to master. Often hurt, resentment and feelings of betrayal get in the way of forgiveness. Lack of forgiveness toward a person who has hurt you however can be destructive. It can be a poison that slowly kills love until the relationship is unsalvageable.

In order to forgive someone, you must first express and release your own anger. Expressing and releasing your feelings is critical to begin healing. In order to do so you must first fully understand your own feelings of love, anger and let go of your resentments. Doing this will allows you to move on. It frees you from your own hurt and opens the space in your relationship for total forgiveness.

It all begins with Love

Every living creature is born with the ability and need to be loved. Each individual has unique needs. No two people are alike so no one will be able to meet our exact needs. It stands to reason that we will inevitably be hurt when we don’t get our needs met. It’s only natural to feel hurt when someone we love doesn’t meet our expressed and unexpressed needs. In fact, that pain can feel extreme, especially when it is inflicted by means of humiliation, manipulation, stone-walling of many other behaviors that are abusive.

It is vital to your mental health that you experience your feelings and not repress them. Once you have experienced and expressed them you should let it go. This is when you are ready to forgive and engage in love. To forgive someone completely is a process that only time can heal. Forgiveness is a gift to yourself, not for the person in need of forgiveness. When you commit to forgiveness, you give yourself permission to move on from the hurt, the anger and the resentment. It opens the space to love again.

Sometimes we get stuck and misdirect our anger. We lose our sense of perspective and focus intensely on the person you betrayed your trust or hurt you. Focusing on the “wrongdoer” makes it difficult for you to move on with your life and could very well keep you stuck, unhappy.

Sometimes people confuse anger and forgiveness because they share many of the same characteristics. When we forgive another person prematurely, we often do so without looking at ourselves deeply and without taking full responsibility for our part in the situation. This is a subtle form of the blame game with a bit of self inflicted martyrdom. We feel righteous because we took the high road and we hold that righteousness over our partner. When playing the martyr, we end up feeling even more resentment. This is not true forgiveness because not only did we victimize ourselves, but we didn’t take responsibility for our own behavior.
When you forgive someone without having really understood or expressed your anger, we dishonor ourselves. Going through the motions of forgiveness is not true forgiveness and does not lead to a good outcome. Deep inside, your heart and soul still carries the torch of anger and resentment.

True forgiveness is placid and peaceful. It resonates throughout your entire heart, mind and spirit. Until you have released and resolved those feelings there will always be lingering anger and resentment.

Understanding your responsibility and theirs when dealing with angry feelings.

It is very important to know the difference between your own behaviors and theirs. You are not responsible for the other person’s behavior that triggered your anger. You are responsible for your own emotional reaction to that behavior and the actions you take as a result. In other words, the only person responsible for your feelings is you. The only person responsible for your actions is you.

Authentic and healthy forgiveness involves:

Love without agenda or an expectation for a particular outcome
Personal Empowerment to take responsibility for emotions and behaviors that belong to us
Constructively expressing and releasing negative emotions allowing you to move on
Being open to love, seeing yourself as your partner sees you, seeing your partner as they need you to see them, and allowing love to flow in and through each other.

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What is a moral compass?

hsm — Wed, 13 Feb 2013 13:00:12 +0000

What is a moral compass? Simply stated, it is the thing inside of us that tells us which direction we should go when we have to make decisions involving right and wrong. This is how we judge a person’s character and whether they will make a moral and good decision.

Many claim to have a simple formula on how to evaluate a person’s character. When you hear their opinions on it, it is clear that they form the basis of their opinion on only a single issue.

This is wrong because the sum of a person is not whether they make no mistakes in judgement. Instead it is the quantity and quality of those mistakes. A person could otherwise live an upstanding life, be very moral and very good in so many ways, and yet be guilty of a personal failing on a single issue

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How to fine-tune your relationship

hsm — Sun, 27 Jan 2013 18:10:26 +0000

People often believe that a sign of a good relationship is one that is free of fighting and squabbling. Unfortunately, that is a misconception.

The truth is that happy relationships still have their ups and downs. While it is not pleasant to have disagreements, they don’t have to mean the end of your relationship. It takes a lot of maturity to be in a relationship with another person. There will always be issues that need to be resolved and obstacles to overcome. When done constructively, relationships will build stronger bonds. If done unconstructively, it can lead to unhappy relationships.

Even the best partnership has areas that could stand growth. Here is a guild to help improve your relationship

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Boundaries and people pleasing

hsm — Wed, 02 Jan 2013 10:00:50 +0000

You know the best way to get what you want is to ask for it. You also know that the best way to avoid getting what you don’t want is to say “NO”. Then why are these two simple things so hard to do when you are in an intimate relationship

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Self-deception in relationships

hsm — Sun, 25 Nov 2012 14:56:11 +0000

Denial. To a greater or lesser degree we all do it. Some of it is pretty harmless. However, there are other times when self-deception is far more extreme. In fact it can be disastrous for relationships. Self-deception can often reach a state where people are unwilling to look at themselves and their situations as they really are. They have deceived themselves into believing their own truth which is often more about what they want to believe rather than how things are. People will justify and rationalize their behavior and their decisions. People in denial often will not accept the truth from people who know them best. They perceive the opinions as flawed or biased. It is necessary for them to believe this so they can continue to perpetuate their self-deception. When you are close to a person who deceives themselves, it can cause a lot of pain. The self-deceiver will preserve their self-image at the expense of the well being of their relationship. Many people do not want to face such challenges and instead chose to resists or quit when someone they love challenges them to grow. They instead develop strategies of resistance such as

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Hurting the one you love

hsm — Sat, 27 Oct 2012 10:00:58 +0000

I ran across this article and thought it summed up a kind of enmeshment phenomenon that I only discovered in the past few years. This article focuses on the mind of the abuser rather than the victim, or recognition of the signs of abuse. It explains how abusers tend to brainwash their victims by taking over their personalities. I’m going to excerpt it

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Codependency

hsm — Thu, 30 Aug 2012 16:00:44 +0000

What we live with we learn; what we learn we practice; what we practice becomes habit; our habits have consequences.”

Codependance at first glance sounds like a wonderful state for a relationship. You are one with each other. You depend on each other. Doesn’t that sound great? There is a fine line between, “this is good” and “this is necessary for my survival” or “I will let you trample over my boundaries” or “do what you will to me”.

Codependency involves a habitual system of thinking, feeling, and behaving toward ourselves and others that can cause pain. These habits can lead us into, or keep us in, destructive relationships that don’t work. These behaviors can prevent us from finding peace and happiness with the most important person in our lives… ourselves

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Heart, Spirit, Mind

Lies we tell ourselves about our relationships

Related Posts:

Love isn’t always enough

Related Posts:

Five ways to destroy a relationship

Related Posts:

Understanding anger will set you free to love

It all begins with Love

Understanding your responsibility and theirs when dealing with angry feelings.

Related Posts:

What is a moral compass?

Related Posts:

How to fine-tune your relationship

Related Posts:

Boundaries and people pleasing

Related Posts:

Self-deception in relationships

Related Posts:

Hurting the one you love

Related Posts:

Codependency

Related Posts: