Good relationships are the glue to our life, helping all the parts stick together in a rewarding way. But when relationships become a problem it can feel as if our lives start to fall apart, especially when it is our love life that stops working. This site is the right one for some relationship problem advice.

Poor relationships are medically known to contribute to ill health and even to earlier death through the effect of stress on the body. That is not good!

If you need relationship problem advice there are a lot of “do’s and don’ts” about how to improve things. Some schools of relationship problem advice insist that it is all about communication. Others like teaching how to fight fair, although I never really thought that was useful. If I was fighting I would find it stressful. Other schools of thought say it is all about managing your emotions, others about managing your perceptions.

And they are all right to a degree. Relationship problem advice is about all of those things. But there is something they often forget about…

There is also an order to do things. It is a bit like cooking - some ingredients can all go in together, sometimes the order you combine the ingredients is really important.

The same goes for relationship problem advice. Sometimes the order you do things in really matters.

Relationship problems are just part of life - it is how you deal with them that is important. Remember this as it is easy to feel bad and beat yourself up when a relationship turns sour. It is bad enough having problems, but feeling bad about them is extra.

Firstly be gentle on yourself and accept the situation. What has happened has happened, so accept the fact of its happening. You don’t need to beat yourself up emotionally. And you don’t have to beat others up emotionally, either.

Secondly take charge of your own life. This does not mean you can control everything because you can’t control other people (or even your own body). But it does mean that given your own inner resources, your physical capacity at the time and the additional resources available online and from friends that you can become active in improving your situation.

Next it is time to do some reflection on your needs, the values and principles on which you base your life and decisions, how you set your boundaries to stop people walking all over you and all the roles you have been taking. Some of these will be excellent and you will want to keep them. Others of them will be outdated and some will be generally destructive and useful to let go. This is the same for all of us.

Don’t be the same as one of my clients who said, “I have never reflected on anything in my life and I don’t intend to start now.”

Fortunately others in the group wouldn’t let him get away with that statement. They asked him searching questions and outlined where reflection had been useful to them.

He had never done anything in his house other than use it as a hotel expecting the woman in his life to make his bed, serve all his food on the table and clean up after him while he worked bringing in a pittance of an income because he had the same attitude at work and refused to think about his work and learn from his experiences.

Over a few weeks he realized that reflection could be a useful tool. He could think things through and really take charge of his own life instead of being pushed around by others.

Step four is to develop ongoing awareness of what is working for you or not working for you. To do this takes some time and peace and quiet. This is not thinking or reflection time.

This is time you take for yourself - thirty minutes to an hour a day is usual for most people. It is time you might be going for a walk (including walking to work), weeding in the garden, going fishing (although you might do 3 hours of this once a week, rather than every day). Meditation is even more effective.

You are using this time to just be you, to relax, and let go of all the busy-ness of your mind. This is the time when that you get in touch with your inner wisdom and over time you will realize that you have a whole lot of new understandings of what works and does not work for you - your own internal relationship problem advice coming from within.

The last step is to do what is important. And what is important is to stay open to all possible sources of information. For an excellent ebook on managing a difficult marriage or partner relationship take a good look at Lee Boucom’s book.

For a six part mini-series on relationships sign on below at no cost to you

HP
22 Jan 2009

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