Articles on Love

Beyond the Honeymoon

Outside the Hole You Can Resolve Issues

When you deal with challenging issues from outside the Hole, you can be resourceful and this enables you to actually resolve those issues. Here are some of the internal resources you have access to, outside the Hole:

Instead of trying to LABEL or CRITICIZE your partner, you become curious about what is happening inside of them. Suspending your own judgments, you ask them what is going on for them. You then will learn something new about them, and they won't feel under attack.

Instead of putting the BLAME on them for the situation, you see your own part in how things developed. This gives you an active role in changing things, and empowers you to avoid similar traps in the future.

Instead of making them the CAUSE of what you feel, you own your feelings. Instead of needing them to change in order to fix how you feel, you begin to learn to self-care for and heal your emotional states.

Instead of getting DEFENSIVE over what your partner may be saying, you listen. You get to understand their viewpoint and learn more about their sensitivities. This helps you avoid hot buttons in the future.

Instead of starting to STONEWALL or CLOSE DOWN, you open to hear what is true for your partner. They feel heard, understood and accepted as human beings. This is a basic requirement for a relationship to grow and prosper.

Instead of being exclusively focused on your own needs and feelings, you can also consider the other person's sensitivities, as well. Partners who work things out together well have developed a map of each other's hot buttons and sensitivities. They know how to avoid setting off emotional landmines.

Instead of a WIN-LOSE outcome, you are interested in finding a mutually satisfactory solution. You will take into account the other person's needs. This enables you to co-create happiness together on an ongoing and lasting basis.

Unfortunately, a majority of us have not been exposed to many positive strategies for dealing with issues from outside the Hole. We probably did not see many of these constructive ways of relating when we were growing up.

This is one reason that today there are a lot of unhappy couples who mainly deal with issues from inside of the Hole. And it is why our divorce rate is so high.

Until we consciously learn to do something different, we just repeat the relationship strategies we saw or developed in our childhood. Being open to learning and personal growth is the pathway to becoming a successful couple.

Here are some powerful new tools for successful communication, for how to work through and heal negative feelings and stuckness, and for how to avoid destructive relationship patterns. (Read more...)

Excerpt from Relationship Tools for Positive Change
by John Grey, Ph.D.

(Full text available here)