Category: Marriages & Couples
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Why Do People Get Divorced? | The Myth We Blame and What Is Actually Happening
Most people believe divorce happens because couples fight too much. In reality, conflict is usually a symptom of deeper relational structures. Understanding differentiation, systemic awareness, and developmental growth reveals what actually determines whether a marriage endures.
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Love, Acceptance, and Growth | What Real Love Actually Asks of Us
Love involves more than blind acceptance; it requires balance between acceptance and growth. Authentic love respects individual uniqueness while also encouraging partners to develop and meet relationship needs. As partners grow, compatibility and understanding enhance, allowing both individuals to fulfill each other’s needs and broaden their experiences together.
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Double Binds in Co-Parenting After Divorce
The parenting plan is essential post-divorce, as it navigates the emotional conflicts partners face regarding time with their child. It provides a pre-negotiated structure, allowing both parties to recognize their legitimate feelings while preventing endless disputes. By adhering to the plan, empathy and structure coexist, promoting psychological stability for all involved.
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Emotional and Social Intelligence as a Living Balance | A Map for When You Want to Grow
This content discusses the importance of emotional and social intelligence for personal growth, emphasizing the need for balance in various capacities such as self-awareness, mindfulness, and empathy. It highlights how understanding these dynamics can facilitate psychological development, adaptability to life’s changes, and foster meaningful connections while avoiding extremes.
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Codependence and the Quiet Agreement Not to Grow
The content explores how comfort can create a codependent environment that stifles personal growth. It highlights that prioritizing stability often leads to enabling behaviors, preventing accountability, and reinforcing stagnation. True love involves embracing discomfort for growth and supporting each other in evolving, rather than retreating into familiar patterns that limit potential.
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When Intimacy Feels Unsafe: Understanding Fear Responses in Trusting Relationships
We flinch from the very thing we long for. This is one of the most painful paradoxes in human relationships. In moments where trust could deepen—or where emotional closeness is genuinely available—many of us experience not comfort, but contraction. Panic. Withdrawal. Or a conflict that seems to arise out of nowhere. This post explores why…
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Resilience, Humility, and the Temptation to Be Neurotic
Resilience involves embracing uncomfortable emotions like shame and guilt rather than avoiding them. True resilience is relational, allowing for emotional presence and accountability, particularly after causing harm. A meaningful apology acknowledges impact and fosters connection. By recognizing neurotic defenses, we can practice resilience and strengthen our emotional growth and relationships.
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Interventions in Relational Counseling
Relational therapy utilizes various acronym-based models to guide therapists. It emphasizes the importance of integrating different theoretical approaches for effective interventions, highlighting key intervention styles, including behavioral, pragmatic, structural, and more. These styles collectively support system needs and adaptability, allowing therapists to fluidly adapt techniques based on clients’ evolving dynamics.
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Happy Relationship – loving another as yourself – loving we to love me
A relationship is a system… it is a whole with interconnecting parts – and the whole ends up being greater than the sum of its’ parts so lets think about this is a ‘couple’ context – you and your romantic partner (though yes this could apply to any relational system) what are some of the…
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What is the purpose of Marriage?
In this post I will share some of the variables that can be experienced from a life long commitment or marriage. The purpose is to create somewhat of a road map to help you and your partner to identify the strengths of your bond and those areas that could use some attention. This could also…
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Feedback loop in a Couples interaction
Quick summary: In a Couples interaction there tend to be dynamics that are reoccurring which spiral out of control and lead to a vicious cycle in which resolution in highly unlikely. I will offer a tool to be used by a therapist to help a couple in isolating and reflecting upon their cycle. Once the…
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Relationship Help | “My partner says that I don’t listen” | how to meet the emotional needs of your partner
I am going to talk to you about what you should be paying attention to and what you should not be paying attention to while trying to become a better listener in your relationship.
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Relationship feel stuck? Try pretending that you don’t know everything about your partner
So what is the solution… pretend that you don’t know your partner at all… the more that you can honestly engage in this suggestion the more you will find that you actually don’t know your partner as well as you thought (in a good way).
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Parenting fundamentals – The basics for co-parenting your children
Quick summary: I will very briefly outline what I have found to be the most common ideas shared in the immense amount of parenting literature out there. I will give you ideas to think about as you work with your partner to create a supportive environment for your children.
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‘not -talked-about’ themes in Human Sexuality – normalizing
Quick summary – the topic of ‘normal’ or ‘day to day’ sex is perhaps not always given as much attention as could be helpful to the masses. As sexual education slowly decreases while pornography and celebrity gossip increases we find ourselves in a society that does not always know if they are more different or…
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What is empathy? How do I know if I am experiencing empathy?
Quick summary – Empathy is when a person opens up their emotional boundaries and allows another person’s feeling to be cradled and nurtured within the loving hands of his/her understanding. Empathy is holding a narrative of another person and allowing yourself to feel the person’s emotions related to his or her storyline while understanding that…
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Empathy building exercise – learning to be empathetic – increasing emotional understanding
Quick summary: In difficult times often we really want someone to ‘just be there for us’ and to ‘show compassion and understanding for what we are dealing with’ as opposed to offering pragmatic solutions or taking initiative to ‘fix it.’ In short people very often simply want empathy and they can feel worse, alone, or…
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Premarital counseling questions | life long commitment questionnaire | questions for a long & happy relationship
Quick summary: This is a premarital or a life long commitment questionnaire that I developed to encourage partners to talk openly about subjects that tend to have a significant impact on the success of a marriage or other long-term relationships. This questionnaire is suitable for people of all different cultures and religions and for any…
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What is Love? How do I know if I am in love or have experienced love? Love is selflessness and felt security… love is also a physical and emotional feeling
Quick summary: The reason that love is so difficult to define has much to do with the fact that the word “love” means far too many things in the English language. I will define the three most common definitions of love. Love is a euphoric to terrifying rollercoaster ride of emotions, love is a label…