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Don't Let Anxiety Take Over
If you suffer from anxiety it can be hard to maintain a strong bond with your partner. When you are freaking out and he or she tries to get close, your fear might tell you to push your partner away. In reality, it’s important to learn to turn to your partner and gang up together against your anxiety, but this might not come naturally.
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Here's the Social Media Conversation You Need to Have
When you’re in a new relationship there are some necessary conversations when it comes to social media. In this day and age, there are just so many chances for miscommunication, over sharing, or crossing boundaries when it comes to online activity. So that you don’t thwart a new romance by doing something on social media that offends or confuses your partner, here are some conversations you should always have about social media behavior.
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Issues to Consider
A lot of shows on the Bravo network only provide a guilty pleasure, but a new show caught my eye because it deals with the first year of marriage, which can be a challenging time for any couple. The series follows four couples for a year, all of whom are in very different situations. They deal with issues like money, sex, a short courtship, familial approval of the relationship, and control. I will be writing up a blog each week as the episodes unfold, and talking about the issues that come up.
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Quick tips on how to stop fighting in a relationship
Arguments in relationships become a cycle — when a specific pain point or topic gets brought up, one partner gets defensive and the other pushes to get the point across. One partner might always flee, and then the other has to chase him. You might also experience arguments more when one person is exhausted after a day at work. These patterns become a comfortable cycle, even though they may be detrimental to your bond as a couple.
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Premarital counseling is not just for couples in severe distress.
Premarital counseling can help you build a strong base for your future as a married couple. It will help provide you the tools necessary to learn how to communicate better with each other. Sometimes what seems like a small issue has the potential to grow into a substantial wedge and you don't realize it just yet. Your therapist may even see some red flags and point them out to you so you can work through these before they become damaging to the relationship.
Here are three main reasons that seeing a professional counselor before the wedding day is a good idea.
We all experience love in different ways.
Like my #BeingLovedIs project has shown, what it means to be loved can be so different from one person to the next — and no one way is right. If you and your partner have different love languages, it can seem like you’re not on the same page. One or both people in the relationship might wind up feeling neglected, which will cause a crinkle in your bond. The best thing you can do is figure out which love language applies to you and get your partner to do the same. Once you know who you each receive love, you can start to best communicate your love for each other!
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Sometimes you might find yourself in a relationship that is not totally healthy anymore, or where you’re no longer happy. Instead of taking the necessary steps to begin to leave your relationship, you stick around and just hope things will be better. When you’re stuck in a rut and your partner isn’t really trying to work with you, you might just be in denial about what you need to do. On the other hand, if you do still have strong feelings for your partner and hope that things could improve, it might just be time to step up and fight for your relationship.
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Learning tools for Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD)
When you are living with a partner who has ADD, there are additional challenges above and beyond what the average couple will encounter on a daily basis. You might feel like your partner doesn't listen to you or can't really "see" you. Because your partner has difficulty focusing and may have trouble with organization or forgetfulness, you are bound to encounter situations where you ask for something from the store and he forgets, or you need help with a project but he walks away half-way through. When a long pattern of this occurs is where most problems occur. It can be easy to take your partner's actions personal, even though they are the result of the ADD, and not a reflection on how much he cares for you. If you don't treat the underlying issue, the ADD, it's easy to build resentments over years of forgotten birthdays, impulsive behavior, or distracted conversations.
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How Addiction Can Impact Your Bond
Any relationship has its bumps in the road, but addiction is a real road block that can cause your relationship to lose its secure attachment and pose real danger -- both emotional and physical. If you are the loved one of an addict, you may feel helpless, and torn between staying in the relationship or walking away. Many people who love addicts fear being an enabler, but also don't want to leave their partner in the cold. Substance abuse is a hard road, but with the right resources, when the addict is ready to get help you can get to the other side.
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Alex Steele, a college student at Point Loma Nazarene University (PLNU), began volunteering at Estes Therapy in Fall of 2013. She was able to be a part of the #BeingLOVEDIs project and she interviewed students at PLNU. In this article, you will read about her experience and what she learned about what other's think it means to be loved.
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Keep your relationship connected during the difficult times.
When you are living with anxiety or panic, it can be debilitating. You feel like you can’t breathe in the midst of it, or worse – you believe you're actually going to die or catastrophic events are always around the corner. It can also be very stressful to be the partner of someone with extreme anxiety. No matter what you say, you feel like you can’t alleviate your spouse’s anxiety and she snaps at you when you say the wrong thing.
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Tools to Keep Your Grief From Breaking You Apart
Losing a child is quite possible the greatest pain you can experience in your life. The stress of the tremendous grief you must walk through is not only detrimental to your own personal mental health, but it can wreak havoc on your marriage. Men and women often grieve in opposite ways, and when you navigate through your pain differently than your spouse, sometimes it seems like you are in it alone. If you experience the unthinkable and lose a child, this is the time when you need most to turn to each other for support, even if your grief looks very different from your partner’s. Here are some ways to stay close as you go through the loss of a child.
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Why Opening the Door Can Bring You Closer
Do you have a family secret that you have been harboring from your partner? Is it fear or embarrassment that keeps you from revealing the secret? Sharing a heavy family secret, such as molestation or physical abuse, is not an easy topic to discuss with anyone, let alone the one you love the most. Strangely enough…rather than scare your partner off, revealing a deep secret can help couples grow emotionally closer and build a better bond for their future.
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