Taking Relationships from Stressed to Supportive

Posted on by

18035056_1301826716532502_1564248780_nRelationships are meant to be sources of support and love, yet sometimes in the craziness of life, some relationships end up causing more stress or become “one more thing we have to attend to.” This feeling may be a sign that it’s time examine and possibly readjust the way we approach these relationships.

Theology of the Body tells us that God created us for relationships; that building the kingdom of God really means creating a life-giving “community of love” with the people who share our life.  It is ultimately the strength of our relationships with one another that bear witness to the glory of God and call others into communion with him.  As St Paul puts it, “If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels but have not love, I am a noisy gong….”  Unfortunately, as much as our relationships are supposed to be a source of grace, strength, and support, in our fallen world,  they can often be sources of stress, frustration and conflict. The challenge is not to run from these struggles, but to cooperate with God’s grace to respond in love and responsibility to work through these difficulties and create communion in spite of the things that tend to divide us.

Here are three More2Life hacks on how to take your relationships from a source of stress to a source of support:

1. Pull the Relationship Weeds–Healthy relationships allow you to be real and not hide important parts of yourself. Relationships are often a source of stress because we feel like we have to hide important aspects of who we are for the sake of “keeping peace.” That’s backwards. Relationships aren’t an end in themselves, TOB reminds us that God intends for our relationships to serve the mutual good of the people in those relationships–to help each person in those relationships be more of what God created them to be, not less. To build the kingdom of God in your relationships, be who you are. The people God wants you to create communion with will stick around, support you, and ask for your support. The people that can’t handle the “you” God created you to be will drift away.  Let them go. Pulling the weeds in your relationship garden will allow all your relationships to flourish and bear more fruit as you spend time with the people who are really capable of building you up!

2. Speak Up Sooner Rather Than Later–When people act in ways we find hurtful or offensive, we often let it go, telling ourselves it isn’t worth the trouble to address these issues and create potential conflict. While there is something to be said for choosing our battles, if you find that an offense continues to gnaw at you, speaking up sooner rather than later is always best. In the words of Pope St Gregory the Great, “Thoughts seethe all the more when corralled by the violent guard of an indiscreet silence.” The best way to address an offense? Don’t assume they intended to offend you and instead ask a clarifying question. Something simple like, “Hey, when you did thus-and-such, I wasn’t sure what to make of that (or it kind of hurt) what did you mean by that?” Once the other person explains their intention, you can either decide that it was all just a misunderstanding and let it go, or suggest other, more palatable ways the other person can express themselves in the future. Anyone who is interested in a healthy relationship will not be put off by this at all and, in fact, will be grateful for the opportunity to enjoy smoother sailing in the future!

3. Good Fences…Good Neighbors–Each person we know is good at offering a different kind of support. The key to less stressful relationships is not trying to make a person give you a kind of support they just aren’t capable of.  Some people are great at being kindred spirits.  Others are good sources of support or companionship around particular topics or areas of interest.  Others still, are fine to hang out with occasionally, but aren’t really capable of offering anything more personal support.  Enjoy each relationship for what it is, not for what you think it should be.  Base the level of trust and intimacy you expect from a relationship on a person’s behavior, not their title or role in our lives.  Sure, we “should” be able to be closer to, and have greater trust in, a parent or sibling or than a friend or a cousin, but in reality people are only capable of giving what they can. Having good relationship fences means knowing what each person in your life is capable of giving–and receiving–from you, and refusing to try to force more than this from them.  Focus on enjoying the ways each person can be there for you and you’ll feel less frustrated by the ways they aren’t.

For more information on how to cultivate strong, healthy, and supportive relationships, check out God Help Me! These People are Driving Me Nuts! and make sure to tune in to More2Life, weekdays at 10am E/9am C on EWTN Global Catholic Radio/Sirius XM 139.

3 Ways To Guarantee You’ll Be Your Spouse’s BFF

Posted on by
Shutterstock

Shutterstock

Many people question whether husbands and wives should expect to be each other’s best friends. Spouses are often faced with difficulties throughout their lives and marriage, so how can they still be best friends with one another? While it may come as a surprise to some, over 83% of married couples report being best friends with each other.

Pope St. John Paul the Great’s Theology Of The Body calls couples to recall the original unity–the remarkable best friendship–our First Parents enjoyed before the fall.  While many couples, today think that men and women aren’t supposed to even expect to be each other’s best friends, the Church is clear that that is exactly what God created men and women to be.  Adam’s exclamation, “At last, this is flesh of my flesh and bone of my bone!” was, according to St. John Paul, an acknowledgement that Adam and Eve saw, in each other, two people who could truly “get” each other.  Through God’s grace, they enjoyed “the peace of the interior gaze” that allowed them to share the deepest part of themselves with each other without fear or need to hold back at all.  Since the Fall, because of our tendencies to self-protection, selfishness, and fear of vulnerability, this level of friendship can be challenging, but that is what the grace of a sacramental marriage is intended to empower couples to enjoy. Our efforts to cooperate with that grace allow husbands and wives to be witnesses to the love God has for the world and the friendship he desires with each of us.

Here are three simple More2Life Hacks you can use to guarantee you’ll be your spouse’s BFF,

1.  Take Care–Being your spouse’s best friend begins with finding little ways to take care of each other every day. Happy couples look for little ways to make each other’s day easier or more pleasant, they look for opportunities to stay in touch throughout the day with “I love you” texts and short calls to check in.  Being your spouse’s best friend doesn’t require tons of money for elaborate dates or huge swaths of time to connect in deeply meaningful ways.  It means making the point of using this present moment–even the moments you are apart–to reach out to each other and connect in some loving way; offering a thoughtful act of service, a friendly call or text, leaving a short romantic note or other loving token of affection, an offer of prayerful support.  These little efforts make a big difference in how much you and your spouse can feel like each other’s friends.

2. Date Everyday–Date nights are wonderful, but they usually can’t happen often enough and they aren’t the panacea people make them out to be.  Couples who are real best friends don’t save their relationship for date night.  They date every day, making little appointments to work, play, talk, and pray together every day–even for five minutes at a time.  Making daily dates to do the dishes together, take a short walk or play a hand of cards, take a little time for couple prayer, and make a point of talking about something other than just the chores goes a long way toward maintaining the little connections that make being best friends possible.

3.  Enjoy Little Adventures–Research shows that couples who feel like best friends make a point of trying new things together.  They are open to participating in each other’s interests–even when they don’t personally enjoy the same things to the same degree.  Couples who are best friends practice the notion that the activity they do together isn’t the point.  Rather, the activity is just an opportunity to be together, to share something with each other, and maybe to learn something about each other.  The new things you try don’t have to be expensive or time consuming.  Make a meal together and try a new recipe.  Play a new game.  Explore a different part of the neighborhood. Try out something your spouse enjoys but you aren’t so sure about–and keep an open mind and friendly attitude about it. The point is, couples who are best friends look for little adventures to share that enable them to take their friendship in new directions.

For more information on how to be best friends with your spouse, check out For Better…Forever! A Catholic Guide to Lifelong Marriage and make sure to tune in to More2Life, weekdays 10am E/9am C on EWTN Global Catholic Radio/Sirius XM 139.

More2Life Hacks—Bouncing Back from Tough Times in Marriage

Posted on by
Image via shutterstock. Used with permission

Image via shutterstock. Used with permission

It’s all too easy to get caught up in the various problems we all experience in marriage Sometimes, we can get so focused on the problems that we think things will never be different.   Here are three More2Life Hacks that will help you bounce back from tough times in your marriage and re-experience the love and joy you crave!

1. Check your Commitment–Happy couples know that recovering from marital struggles starts with being even more committed to their vows than they are to each other.  What do I mean?  At various points, even the happiest husbands and wives become frustrated with each other and can feel like their spouse is undeserving of their commitment.  But where less happy couples use this as a justification for withdrawing their love and entertaining thoughts of divorce, happy couples remind themselves that their commitment is to their marriage, itself, even more than to their feelings for their spouse.  This allows couples to not catastrophize their problems and, instead, get to work on the problems.  Research shows that couples who make this greater commitment to their marriage bounce back from problems more quickly and are happier overall, than couples who regularly allow tough times to call their overall commitment to each other into question.

2. Re-Engage Through Care-taking–Every couple gets stuck in arguments from time to time–even for extended periods.  But happy couples know that sometimes they have to disengage from the fight and find little ways to remind each other of their love for each other BEFORE re-engaging the discussion.  While struggling couples either adopt a “fight til we die” approach or simply give up the fight from exhaustion, happier couples adopt a pattern that allows them to alternate between arguing, intentionally stepping away to build rapport, and then re-engaging the discussion from a more secure base.  If you’re going through a rough patch, don’t stop talking about it altogether, but take breaks where you intentionally choose to do little things that remind each other that your relationship–and your commitment to loving each other– is bigger than this present problem.

3. Seek Help–Happy couples know that when a problem starts to feel overwhelming, it’s time to seek new resources.  When you feel tempted to stop working on a problem–or stop working on your marriage altogether–see that as a sign that it’s time to get help.  Read a new book together that offers new ideas for improving your relationship. Go on a Marriage Encounter or Retrouvaille weekend.  Or seek professional marital therapy.  Research shows that most struggling couples wait 4-6 years before seeking professional assistance but that just makes problems grow.  Seek help early to get the new skills you need to reclaim the peace and joy in your marriage.

For more tips on how to make your marriage thrive, check out “For better…Forever! A Catholic Guide to Lifelong Marriage.” AND spend time with us every weekday at 10am ET by tuning in to More2Life on EWTN Global Catholic Radio.

Image via shutterstock. Used with permission

Image via shutterstock. Used with permission

Unhappy Marriage? New Study Reveals 1 Simple Trick Can Turn Things Around.

Posted on by

shutterstock_214596574

According to a new study by the UK’s Marriage Foundation, 70% of couples who said they were in unhappy marriages reported being happy 10 years later.  Of those, 30% of the formerly unhappy couples were “extremely happy.”  This was especially true for couples who were feeling the strain a growing family can put on the marital relationship.  If you’re unhappy in your marriage today, it turns out that the one thing that is almost guaranteed to turn it around is to just stay put!

Of course the EVEN BETTER NEWS is that you don’t have to be miserable for 10 years waiting for your marriage to fix itself.  You can take charge of the process and significantly shorten your recovery time.  As I reveal in When Divorce is Not An Option:  How To Heal Your Marriage and Nurture Lasting Love (which reveals the 8 habits that distinguish marital bliss from a marital miss)  happy couples are proactive about seeking help.  They don’t take unhappiness lying down.  They seek out good books, attend marriage-building workshops like Marriage Encounter, Retrouvaille, or PAIRS, and they seek  professional help early.  Less happy couples wait 4-6 years before seeking assistance for their marriage.  Why wait.  In the last 20 years, new discoveries in marriage therapy has increased the success rate of trained marital counselors (as opposed to individual therapist who, “also do marriage counseling”) to over 90%.

The takeaway?  Hanging tough through tough times is often enough to get you to a happier place in your relationship. But if you want to get there quicker, or fear that you’re stalling out, seeking appropriate resources early can help you not just survive tough times in your marriage but learn to thrive in spite of them.

Sure, marriage can be hard work, but the the good news is that the light at the end of the tunnel isn’t just an oncoming train.  It really is the sun peaking through the darkness promising that a brighter, more joy-filled relationship is just around the corner!

Making MARRIAGE Great Again: 3 Ways to Supercharge Your Relationship

Posted on by

shutterstock_234539329

Working on your marriage isn’t some selfish enterprise that just benefits you and your spouse.  In his Theology of the Body, Pope St. John Paul the Great reminds us that marriage plays a critical role in God’s plan for saving the world and that creating a beautiful marriage is the primary way that married people can bring people to Christ!  By putting energy into making our marriages strong, loving, understanding, and holy, we not only satisfy the deepest longings of our heart to feel truly loved and connected to another person, we also bear witness to the free, total, faithful, and fruitful love God wants to share with every one of his children.  As a married person, working to make your marriage great–or working to make it great again– is the most important thing you can do to serve the Kingdom of God.  Here are 3 simple tips from For Better…FOREVER! A Catholic Guide to Lifelong Marriage (2nd ed. Rev & Expanded) to help you create the marriage God wants you to have!

1. Have a Marriage Mindset–Throughout the day, even when you apart get in the habit of asking the question, “Is what I’m doing now–and the way I’m doing it–good for my marriage?”

If the answer is “yes”, then good on you.  Keep doing that!  Alternatively, if the answer is “no,” ask what you would have to change to behave in a more marriage-friendly way and start working toward that.  

Asking this question reminds couples that every choice you make as a married person either says, “I do” or “I don’t” to your spouse.  Happy couples don’t just say “I do” on their wedding day.  They say, “I do” a million times a day, every day of the rest of their lives by making choices with the marriage in the forefront of their minds. What are all the ways YOU can say “I do” to YOUR beloved TODAY?

2. Prioritize Your Connection–Everyday, the happiest couples make at least a few minutes to connect across the four domains of work, play, talk, and prayer.   For instance, each day, a couple might take two minutes each morning to pray together about the day ahead.  Additionally, they might clean up the kitchen together after dinner, take a short walk, play a hand of cards, or read to each other for a few minutes, and make a point of checking in about what they could do to feel closer or more supported by each other.  All of this might take a total of 15-20 minutes, cumulative, but it makes a world of difference in marital quality.

Prioritizing and protecting these simple, daily rituals of connection helps a couple make sure they are doing everything they can to at least maintain the skeleton of their relationship. Using these times of simple connection, happy couples will then take plan out other, longer ways of connecting across these four domains of work, play, talk, and prayer throughout the week.  

Where other couples HOPE they might get time together like this, happy couples make a point of making this time happen every single day and planning around this time to avoid conflict.

3. Take Care–Caretaking is the single most important quality for a happy marriage–research by the Gottman Relationship Institute reveals it to be even more important than good communication.  

Happy couple make a point of looking for little ways to make each other’s days a little easier,  more pleasant, or more loving.  They text loving thoughts throughout the day.  They keep each other in prayer.   They look for little jobs they can do to lighten each other’s burdens. They remember to follow through on promises and they ask what more they can do to take even better care of each other.  

The more you take care of each other, the more deposits you make in your emotional bank account with means you have capital to spend on discussing improvements to the marriage and a more than adequate cushion to land on in tough times.  Ask what you can do to take better care of your spouse today!

You Can Do It

Imagine what a difference these simple ideas could make in YOUR relationship if you could do them consistently.  Start today and you’ll be able to  both find the love your heart has been looking for AND find more effective ways to bring Christ’s love to the world.

Dr. Greg and Lisa Popcak are the hosts of More2Life Radio and directors of the Pastoral Solutions Institute.  To get more tips for having a more graceful marriage, check out For Better…FOREVER! and learn more about the Pastoral Solutions Institute’s Catholic Tele-Counseling Practice.

3 Ways To Unleash the Spiritual Power of Your Marriage

Posted on by

 

Shutterstock

Shutterstock

What’s the point of marriage?  Do we even need it anymore?  If so, what for?

If you ask a dozen people these questions, you may get a dozen answers, but the Catholic answers to these questions reveals a depth and spiritual power to marriage that many people don’t fully appreciate.  Simply put, Catholics believe that when a Christian couple gets married they are promising to be each other’s best hope for becoming everything God created them to be in this life and getting each other to heaven in the next.  When you say, “I do,” in Church you are not just saying that you have warm-fuzzy feeling for someone and like hanging out with them.  You are agreeing to play an essential and active role in God’s plan of salvation for your spouse, second only to the saving power of Jesus Christ. The following ­­­3 tips from For Better…FOREVER! (2nd ed. Revised and expanded) can help you begin to unleash the spiritual power of your marriage.

1.Be Apprentices

Christians are called to spend their lives learning how to love as God loves.  For Catholics, marriage is an apprenticeship in loving another person in the free, total, faithful, and fruitful way God loves us.  When a couple gets married in the Church, they willingly surrender their right to love each other as they might naturally prefer.  Instead they say, “I want to love this person with the love that is in God’s heart. I don’t know how to do that on my own, so I promise to spend the rest of my life learning.” Getting married in the Church is meant to communicate that you believe that there is something unique and truly beautiful about the Catholic vision of love and that you promise to spend your life apprenticing and living out that vision of love in your home, both so that you can fulfill the deepest longing of your heart for a love that doesn’t fail and so that you can be a physical sign to the world of the kind of passionate, faithful, intimate love that God has for the world. Unleashing the spiritual potential of your marriage begins by  recognizing that you are on a lifelong apprenticeship in the art of godly loving and by making an ongoing commitment to developing parts the parts of yourself that would enable you to be a more communicative, more intimate, more passionate, more generous mate.

2. Pray Together

Recent studies suggest that only about 17% of Catholic couples pray together, but we can’t be true apprentices to the art of godly love if we don’t make a point of sitting at the feet of the Master and asking him to teach us how.  Every day, sit with your spouse and ask God to give you the courage to be the husband or wife he wants you to be, the husband or wife your spouse needs you to be.  Pray for the courage to grow, stretch and change in any godly way this loving effort requires of you.

Don’t worry. It’s not all work. Research by Baylor University shows that couples to pray together are up to  30% happier than those who don’t.

 

3. Invite God Into Your Bedroom

Too many people think that God and sex don’t mix, but research consistently shows that couples who are able to connect with the spiritual dimensions of their sexual relationships have deeper, more passionate, and more frequent sexual relations.  That’s because these couples don’t see sex as a nice thing to do at the end of the day if you have time or energy.  They see it as a way of communicating their love for each other in a language that goes beyond words.  A language that says, “See how well we work for each other’s good all day long! Even our bodies have learned to work for each other’s good!”

To this end, the Church’s teaching on Natural Family Planning isn’t just about having an ethical way to space children. It is a blueprint for creating a physical relationship that is rooted in communication, prayer, and generosity. True, NFP isn’t always easy, and if you only see NFP as a technique for avoiding pregnancy, you will probably find it more frustrating than not.  But if you embrace NFP as an invitation to deeper communication, prayer, and generosity, you will discover how to walk the sacred path allows sex to become (as Pope Benedict put it) “an ascent in ecstasy toward the divine.”

Marriage isn’t just a guaranteed date for bowling night.  It communicates real spiritual power that enables everyday Christians to become something remarkable; living, breathing, signs of God’s own loving heart.

Dr. Greg Popcak is the author many books including, For Better…Forever! The Catholic Guide to Lifelong Marriage  and Holy Sex! The Catholic Guide to Toe-Curling, Mind-Blowing, Infallible Loving.  He is the host of More2Life Radio airing weekdays at 10am E on SiriusXM130.  Learn more at www.CatholicCounselors.com

Alternative Facts? 3 Ways to Solve Conflict When You Can’t Even Agree on What Happened

Posted on by
Shutterstock

Shutterstock

This past weekend saw  a lot of discussion about “alternative facts.” Whatever you think of the crowd-size kerfuffle between the Trump Admin and the press, the phrase, “alternative facts” points to a problem I often encounter in counseling; namely, how can you help two people solve a problem when they can’t even agree on what really happened?  Is the other person lying?  Are they stupid?  Exactly what is wrong with them anyway that they see things in such a radically different way than you do?

Interestingly, there is a huge body of research showing that people regularly perceive “alternative facts” when witnessing the same event. For instance, this article from Scientific American relates the very common problem with the unreliability of eye-witness testimony in court and how, even when people are not intending to commit perjury, witnesses can have very different and even contradicting memories of the very same experience.

So what can we do when we see things so differently from our spouse, kids, or co-workers that we can’t even agree on what happened, who started it,  who said what, and/or who did what to whom much less what to do about it?  Here are three tips Lisa and I discussed on More2Life Radio that can help you overcome the complications “alternative facts” can cause in your disputes with the people you care about.

 

  1.  Don’t Expect to Agree On History–It can be frustrating, even scary when you and someone you care about can’t even agree on what happened.  Be not afraid.  Even the closest friends, families,  and couples rarely agree on who said and did what.  Even in these times, you CAN both agree that you didn’t like the way things happened and you CAN come to an agreement on how to handle things differently the next time something like this comes up.  Don’t get caught up in arguments about history.  Listen to each other’s version of events respectfully, but then say, “Well, obviously we see things really differently and that’s ok, but what can we do to handle this better the next time it comes up?”  Focusing on solutions instead of history allows you to respect your differences while remaining hopeful that your future can be more agreeable than your past or present. 
  2.  Disagreeing isn’t Lying--Too often when parents and kids or even couples express different versions of the same events they can accuse each other of lying. Of course, if the other person regularly hides things from you, tells half-truths or makes things up, then seek professional help immediately, but if they are generally a truthful, transparent person and that’s why it is so upsetting that they seem to have such different views about what happened, don’t accuse them of lying.  It isn’t a lie to see things differently.  Again, as with our first tip, focus on what you can agree on, namely, the fact that neither of you like the way things played out and that both of you want to handle the situation better the next time.  Instead of putting the other person on trial and trying to prove that your version of events should be entered into the official permanent record, concentrate on establishing some ground rules and expectations to handle the next time better 
  3. Listen Emotionally MORE Than Factually--Even when you’re trying to identify solutions for the next time something like this happens, sometimes it can be really tempting to get hung up on the fact that the other person sees things SO radically differently.  It can be especially hard when they seem to be drawing unkind conclusions about you and your motivations.  Try not to get caught up in defending yourself from these unkind “alternative facts.”  Instead, listen to the emotions behind the accusations.  For instance, you can say, “I certainly didn’t mean to come off that way, and that was the furthest thing from my mind, but I understand that you felt X (attacked, hurt, disrespected, humiliated, etc.) and I’m really sorry that’s how it seemed.  What can I do NEXT TIME to make sure I don’t come off that way to you?”  By using this formula, you don’t have to agree with the other person’s perceptions, but you can still manage to be sensitive to them and do a better job of managing their perceptions in the future.

Pope St. John Paul the Great’s Theology of the Body (TOB) reminds us that each person is unique and unrepeatable.  While that sounds great on paper, practically speaking, it means that we all see things very differently.  Yes, there is such a thing as objective truth, but it can be hard to get there sometimes because our different experiences and different perspectives cause us to emphasize different aspect of an experience to the point where two people can go through the same thing and describe almost two completely different events.  Despite this, TOB reminds us of the importance of working through or getting past those differences to create a “community of love” where, despite your differences you can still work for each others good and create connection.

If you’d like more information on how you can stop “alternative facts” from creating conflict on your relationships, check out When Divorce Is NOT An Option: How to Heal Your Marriage and Nurture Lasting Love.

 

The Two Shall Become One: Married People Become BIOLOGICALLY Similar, New Study Says.

Posted on by

shutterstock_234539329

In a study presented at the annual meeting of the Gerontological Society of America, University of Michigan researcher Shannon Mejia and her team looked at health indicators from 1,568 married couples across the United States. The couples were separated into two groups: those who had been married for about 20 years, and those who had been married for about 50 years. Overall, Mejia found that the couples had striking similarities in kidney function, total cholesterol, and grip strength.

Mejia and her fellow researchers found that there was similarity in the biomarkers beyond the race, education, and age factors that they statistically accounted for. The strongest example was in total cholesterol: The math says that 20 percent of the outcome for total cholesterol is attributable to couple membership.

The similarity between members of couples goes against what Mejia calls the “independence assumption” in the United States: Your health is thought to be individualistic. After all, it’s yourbody that the doctor investigates, not your partner’s. But as Mejia’s work indicates, environments matter.

Because of the nature of the data she’s working with — a large-scale longitudinal study — Mejia can’t really isolate the mechanisms of couple health concordance. She points to the work of University of British Columbia psychologist Christiane Hoppmann, who takes a more granular approach. Hoppmann zooms in on the mechanics of coupledom, finding, for instance, that members of couples who share greater intimacy have lower levels of cortisol, a hormone associated with stress.   READ MORE

When scripture tells us that, “the two shall become one” we often think of that in philosophical and spiritual terms.  Most people don’t take that verse literally, but the research consistently says we should.  In addition to the above research, other studies have found that the body responds to break-ups and divorce in the same way it responds to physical injury.  Divorce, in particular, has potentially very serious long term health consequences.

To learn more about having the kind of marriage that promotes health and well-being across every dimension of your life, check out For Better…FOREVER! A Catholic Guide to Lifelong Marriage–2nd Edition Revised and Expanded.

Relationship Problems? Be Careful Who You Talk To!

Posted on by

shutterstock_248504056

New research in the Journal of Personal and Social Relationship shows that talking to your best friend about your relationship problems may very well lead to even bigger relationship problems!  According to the authors of the study,

There appears to be link between discussing problems with your partner and greater romantic love. This could mean that discussing problems strengthens feelings of love. Of course, it could also be that couples who are more in love are more likely to discuss problems or that the problems they’re discuss are less severe (e.g., “I don’t like that shirt you wear.” Vs. “I don’t like your personality.”).

When your relationship experiences problems and challenges, it is important to discuss them with your partner.  Discussing your issues with a best friend may actually be counterproductive. It is important to note that relationship work with one’s friend and partner are not mutually exclusive. You can discuss issues with both. Most likely, the problems with best friend relationship work arise when it takes place in place of relationship work with the partner.

Overall, it seems the best takeaway is to deal with relationship problems at the source. After all, your partner is in a much better position to fix what’s wrong.   READ MORE HERE.

I actually discuss this in When Divorce Is Not An Option:  How to Heal Your Marriage and Nurture Lasting Love which explores the habits that separate happy from unhappy couples.  The 8th habit is “Seek Healthy Support.”  Spouses who first try to speak to their mate about their concerns and, failing that, are careful to seek help from people who are both impartial and able to offer new tools or ideas are MUCH happier in their relationships than spouses who seek support from friends who will take their side or are in the same relationship boat.    People in happy marriages are much more likely to attend workshops and retreats on marriage improvement, read books on improving their relationships, or go to counseling.  Couples who are less happy tend not to do these things. Instead, they tend to take their problems to people who will take their side, join in their complaints, and support them in keeping things the way they are.

If you are struggling in your relationship, tell your spouse about your concerns first, but if that doesn’t seem to be working, be sure to turn to sources that can offer you something new and work for your mutual good.  And if you’d like to learn more about seeking faithful professional support for improving your marriage, please visit the Pastoral Solutions Institute to discover how our tele-counseling practice can assist you in experiencing the marriage God wants you to have.

 

More2Life Hack: 3 Tips for Staying Close Through Conflict

Posted on by

m2l-logo

Today on More2Life radio, we looked at ways husbands and wives can grow closer not just in spite of conflict.  Here are three things happy couples know about managing conflict…gracefully.

 

  • Avoid catastrophizing conflict–couples in happy marriages argue as often as couples in unhappy marriages.  The difference between happy and unhappy couples is not how often they argue, but how they manage their conflict.
  • Keep Calm in Conflict–The most important thing in conflict is self-regulation.  Use the 60-40 rule. Pay 60% attention to how you’re reacting and 40% to what they are saying.  If you feel your emotional temperature rising to the point that you are showing outward signs of disgust (eye-rolling, disgusted sighing, refusing to look at them, speaking over each other) get control of yourself or take a break until you are calm.  If you can’t have the conversation respectfully, don’t have it at all.  Or, if this is a long term problem get help from a trained marriage therapist who can teach you how to have respectful disagreements
  • Be Caretakers Through Conflict–Smart couples know that even in conflict, taking care of your partner is job #1.  Find little ways to reassure each other, to reassure your spouse that their concerns are important to you, that you are grateful for them working through this with you, and that even though you don’t see eye to eye, you still love each other. 

For more tips on staying close through marital conflict, check out When Divorce is Not An Option:  How To Heal Your Marriage and Nurture Lasting Love and For Better Forever: A Catholic Guide to Lifelong Marriage.  And don’t forget to tune in to More2Life radio each weekday at 10am E/9am C on a Catholic radio station near you or SiriusXM Channel 130.