Healthy Relationships
Maintaining a healthy loving relationship or saving your current one.
In this chapter will discuss how to maintain a healthy relationship with your new love or to rekindle an existing one if you’ve decided that your marriage is too good to leave.
Romantic relationships come in different types. When we’re in them we are often confused, shocked and bewildered about what went wrong. Some are amazing and burn like skyrocket then die abruptly. Some start off great and then die for some inexplicable reason slowly over time. Leaving us wondering what had gone wrong. Some of our attempts to rekindle relationships that were waning are a stellar success and some attempts to breathe life back into the relationship just exasperate the problem until the relationship is finally dead.
How to make sense of it all. I freely admit that despite having learned a great deal about finding the right woman, courting and the maintaining of a relationship, I still was feeling like there needed to be some way to look back and understand relationships and perhaps categorize them into different types. I felt it would be helpful in thinking about them. In reading a book by Lisa Nichols called, “An abundant life now!” I stumbled across just such a method to organize all healthy relationships into different types. She credits another life coach named Iyanla Vanzant in penning the idea. Whoever the original person that came up with it, I think it’s fantastic for looking back at relationships and understanding why they turned out the way they did.
The three types of relationships are divided into lifetime relationship, life-giving relationships and purposeful relationships.
In the lifetime relationship you’re destined to be together and that’s it. No matter what happens as one of you grows faster or slower than the other one, you just adjust, because no matter what happens this relationship will last forever. You always find a way to balance yourselves out even if it gets rocky and there are storms. When the going gets tough the two of you weather the storm because both of you know somehow you were meant to be together. Most people hope to find this type of relationship at some point in their life. And if they do, it will be the last relationship they’re in until one of them passes on. Some famous examples of people in a lifelong relationship include George and Gracie Allen and Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell.
One of the struggles many people experience is feeling or hoping that they are in a lifetime relationship when they are not.
The life-giving relationship rejuvenates you and is short-lived. They can last as short as a day and as long as a couple of years. They let you know you still got it. You’re still a sexy guy or girl. They get you out of your head and into your body again. They’re exciting and give you a chance to grow so that you’ll be ready for a lifetime relationship when the right one comes along. They’re exciting and their excitement can come from having lots of passion, fun or drama or combination of the three. When the end they usually end abruptly. They will put the spring back in your step and remind you that you are not out of the relationship game forever. Life is not done with you yet. They’re the kind of relationship you can look back on and fondly remember the rest of your life. So long as you don’t mistakenly think that it was a lifelong relationship that ended inexplicably. They will remind you that it is what it’s like to be in a passionate relationship. They remind you that you will not settle ever again, but rather, be in relationships that you can give and in which you can grow.
The purposeful relationship is the third type, the most common type and the most misunderstood type of relationship. The understanding of the dynamics of a purposeful relationship in our past can bring some enlightenment to our soul. It is a relationship that begins and progresses for some purpose or purposes and the love is real. It can be wonderful and intense just like a life-giving relationship but is usually much longer lived. They can last 5, 10 or even 30 years. But as the purpose or purposes become realized, the relationship begins to die. What makes this relationship difficult is that most couples don’t realize or won’t acknowledge what the purposes were. When they try to fix the relationship that should just end with dignity, they end up with a train wreck. When you try to fix a purposeful relationship whose purpose is ended it only makes matters worse. Often these are the type of relationships my fat, trapped and lonely readers are/were in when they read my book. The purpose ended, the intimacy ended, attempts to resuscitate the relationship, thinking it was a lifelong type of relationship have just exacerbated the problem and finally a conscious or unconscious decision was made to just survive as roommates for years or even decades with the relationship begins to fail. It would not be inaccurate to say my “Chapter 3 Should I stay or should I go?” really boils down to this question, “Is this a lifelong relationship or is it not?
The coping mechanism to allow married life without emotional connections is frequently excessive food, alcohol, television, gaming, drugs, shopping, affairs (real or cyber), pornography, hobbies or becoming a workaholic. What are these purposes around which your relationship might be based? The classic is to have a family of your own, have children, buy a house and create a family unit of your own. The kids go off on their own or to college and your left wondering if you even like your spouse. This situation is much different for those in a lifetime relationship. They simply ask themselves if it time to sell the house and buy an RV and see the country together or perhaps a sailboat and become live aboard world cruisers or move and downsize or just go discover something new? One thing’s for sure it’s finally time for mom and dad to lose the van and the four-door Honda and get a sports car.
What are some other examples of the purposes in a purposeful relationship? Your purposes can be varied and you may really not have a grasp of what they were or what they are but some of the following might ring true for you; to get out of your parents’ home, to escape an abusive situation, to be loved, to have children, to create a business, to be needed, to learn how to love, to get started with life, to get out of a bad situation, to be like your friends, to do something with your life when you felt lost, to please your parents, to learn how to accept love, to have a sexual partner, to be with somebody who will give you an emotional connection or to have a best friend.
Realize that you probably did not consciously go into relationship for these purposes, but it is nevertheless the reason you were drawn to it. Now that you know a method to classify relationships in your past, you can look back without rose-colored glasses and see the truth of your life’s relationships in a new way. This allowed me to see my 35-year-old marriage in a much more positive light. The beginning 10 years was magical. I was loved and I loved her. We had a purpose to escape our bad home situations which lacked emotional intimacy, to create our own home, to discover our careers at a time when we were lost, to discover new activities together. I had a best friend, a home and children. When the purposes were complete and we began to grow apart the trouble began. We mistakenly thought that we were in a lifetime relationship as most people do and tried desperately with classes, psychologists and marriage counselors to fix it. You can’t make a silk purse from a sow’s ear and you can’t create a lifetime relationship out of the purposeful relationship. No one can.
We both found a way to survive those last 10 years. Nothing could fix the problems though we both tried multiple times. Even when wealth came our way it did nothing to improve the situation. Personal career successes and failures made no difference. The children getting older and putting less demands on our time did nothing to improve our marriage. The way we coped with all these failures was that she became a workaholic, got addicted to computer gaming and shopping and I used compulsive overeating, television, cigar smoking and daydreaming.
After curing my binge eating disorder and clearing my head, I read a book called, “Too bad to stay, Too good to leave” by Mira Kirshenbaum and I realize now in hindsight, which is always 20/20, that the true purpose of her book was to confirm that I was simply in a purposeful relationship whose purpose had ended. Going forward it is important that you evaluate your relationships for being purposeful, life-giving or life-long relationships. Especially if you find all attempts to solve problems in the relationship to be seem to be failing or making the situation worse.
Let’s take a look at what the research shows us about how to live with a woman. To have a loving lifetime relationship that makes you both feel connected, loved and supported.
It doesn’t matter if you’re with a new partner or you have decided the relationship with your lady is too good to leave; the way a man should behave in a healthy relationship is the same. Or to put it another way, what you did to get the girl to fall in love with you is with you is what you’re going to do to keep her in love.
Research shows, the bottom line of why most women are unhappy in a romantic relationship boils down to only two reasons. Either you’re just not there for her or there is no intimacy and connection in the relationship. Why? Because nobody wants to be in a relationship where they are lonely…including you!
The way to avoid each of you be unhappy and lonely in the relationship is to never stop dating her, always connect with her rather than ignoring her, don’t avoid conflict, always be curious about her, appreciate her looks and deeds and support her dreams.
Never stop dating her. At least once a week have a date night with her. Make sure it is a real date where you pick the time, choose the place and let her know ahead of time. Then she can look forward to it and prepare for the day. The only thing she should have to worry about is looking beautiful and having a great time with her man.
This is nothing like how many unhappy boring couples have a date night sitting in their car, in the driveway at 7 PM each Wednesday night taking turns asking each other, “Where do you want to eat?”, “I don’t know, where do you want to eat?” Act like an alpha male if you want her to act like a feminine woman. Make it like a real date and you’ll go a long way to keeping the passion alive.
Don’t avoid conflict. It is only natural for men to want to avoid rocking the boat. Avoiding conflict and perhaps hiding some parts of yourself from your lady is a major mistake. It only creates distress in the relationship. It sets up an atmosphere in the relationship of distrust, lack of commitment and betrayal. Lack of trust, over time, creates a vast chasm between you and your best friend and damages your emotional bonds.
So for us guys it’s pretty simple, we want less fights and more sex. If that could happen then all will be right with the world. The good news is that with women if there are less fights it will lead to more sex. The bad news is that fighting, arguing and conflict with a woman can be very frustrating and confusing for many men. I hope that in sharing what I’ve discovered I’m able to make your lives a little easier in this area. First, why is she so pissed off? Women get angry for one of three reasons. If they feel powerless in a situation, if they feel that some injustice has been perpetrated on themselves or someone they care about or if they feel that someone is acting irresponsibly. Now their anger may or may not be directed to you. However, if she feels ignored or that you don’t care about her or don’t care to understand her situation and her feelings then she will turn her anger and be mad at you. And yes, mad at you usually equals no sex.
So what to do when she’s angry. I talk a little bit about this in the other chapters in the book. The bottom line is you can listen to her. To be a good listener you ask questions, pull what she says into your own words and repeat it back, you’re going to try to understand her feelings about the situation, you are not going to argue with her, try to use your logic to eliminate her sadness or anger, you’re not going to raise your voice to her or bully her or try and tease her about the situation. Now you may do a little bit of teasing if she’s giving you the silent treatment just to get her to start talking. What she needs is a good listener and to be understood.
How do you know she’s angry? Well she’s going to behave differently than a man would. Research shows most women, but not all, are more likely to get silent. They tend to be mad longer and can get resentful. Generally when they want to express their anger they do it in an indirect way. Many women won’t yell (but yours might!)
An example of an indirect expression would be her saying, “Why don’t you take out the god damn garbage!” When what she really means is, ‘I told you I was upset because Jennifer took credit for my project at work today. But instead of sitting next to me and listening you went across the room and turned on the game and ignored me. I gave you the benefit of the doubt and reminded you that I need you and you weren’t listening to me. I hoped that you would realize I was really hurting…but you didn’t. You got all defensive and said, “I am listening.” Even though you weren’t. Although I was mad at Jennifer when I got home, now I’m just mad at you for being such and ass. I was mad at the injustice at work and now I feel even worse because I feel powerless at home too. It feels like the trust in our relationship eroding.
For most situations when a woman is upset what she really needs is for you to turn toward her and understand where she’s coming from, show empathy and not try to fix it or discount it. If you turn away from her, it won’t be very long before you cause serious damage to the trust in the relationship. While being a good listener sounds easy, what makes it difficult is that you’re a man. It’s actually in your DNA not to react well to the indirect way women vie for your attention when they’re upset.
When your woman says something like you’re not listening to me. The way your mind reacts to it is to consider it a threat. It doesn’t really see much difference between verbal arrows and real arrows.
Your fight or flight instinct becomes automatically engaged and your heart rate naturally goes up. Other changes include your hearing ability becomes dulled, you lose your sense of humor, your vision is more focused forward and your peripheral vision fades and of course adrenaline is released. Psychologists call this flooding. If you are cartoon character your head would swell up, turn red and steam would be squirting out of your ears. This is what happens to you when your wife says, “You never listen to me.” (Which was meant as a criticism. She added the word never after she got no response from, “You’re not listening.”)
So what happens when men get flooded? Both sometimes it literally is fight (domestic abuse) or flight (they walk out the door) but generally there are four more controlled reactions. The first one is being defensive, for example saying, “I am listening to you!” (While you’re watching the game and not really listening. You had a hard day and the last thing you want is more drama.) Another reaction is to criticize your woman by saying something like, “You never stand up for yourself.” The fourth typical reaction is stonewalling which is exactly what it sounds like. You sit there like a stone focused on something other than her trying to ignore her as much as possible and hope that she loses interest in pursuing the matter. These four typical male reactions to having an upset partner who needs to talk are responsible for the ending of over 80% of relationships. It would be true to say that if you can avoid doing this you would come all long way in improving your domestic tranquility.
So how do you avoid flooding? Well knowing what it is and that it’s going to happen is 90% of the battle. It may be that just from your understanding, breathing deeply and trying to calm yourself down, you will see your heart rate drop back down to normal. As long as your heart rate gets back down you’re no longer flooding and you can go sit with your sweetie and get to listening. Now if you have trouble getting your heart rate down let your sweetie know you’re going to take a break. Tell her that you want to talk but you’re having trouble focusing. Explain you are going to take a 20 minute break and afterward give her your complete attention.
If it’s your first time doing this, it’s important that you let her know that this is something you are going to start trying. Don’t just walk out of the room or out of the house or you’ll have her wondering if you’re ever coming back. (An interesting side note regarding marriage in the good old days, before no-fault divorce, occasionally frustrated unhappily married men would go out for a quart of milk or a pack of cigarettes and just never come back.) So don’t freak out your girl. Let her know what you’re up to.
One caveat about what to do while you’re taking a break. You can think about anything but her. It’s not surprising that if you think about the argument or how much you makes you mad that it would be hard to calm down. What is surprising is even if they are pleasant thoughts about her, like a great trip to Jamaica you went on together, you will still have trouble calming down. You must get her out of your mind. Feel free to flip through a magazine, think about politics, and mess around with the car or anything else. Just don’t think about her. In 15 to 20 minutes you’ll be ready to be the best listener ever.
Trust is the number one thing a woman is looking for both a dating or long-term relationship. For a woman trust means you are who you say you are and you do what you say you are going to do. While lack of trust in this at the heart of most failed marriages. If you don’t have trust then she cannot count on you to be there for her. That will make her feel physically and emotionally unsafe. And if that’s the case eventually someone else will help her to feel the trust she is longing for. It just naturally sets the stage for an affair to be able to happen.
On the other hand, if you’re open with her, are there for her and she can count on you, then your interactions will build trust and make her feel safe enough to let down her walls and be vulnerable. This strong place of loving and knowing one another intimately will allow your relationship to continue to blossom beyond the courtship phase.
No doubt about it, if you want a successful relationship you will have to put a lot of energy into it. The good news is, being listening to, is like Viagra for women, so your efforts to be her rock and always there for her will be rewarded.
When she wants to talk listen to her and don’t turn away or she’ll turn to somebody else. But if she can count on you being a good listener she will feel safe, both physically and emotionally. It will build trust and make her love you more. Listening is easy, women are fascinating creatures after all. It’s easy if you remember that having a conversation for a woman is different than that for a man. It’s all about sharing and being understood. It’s not about solving the problem. Don’t tell her what she should do unless she directly asked for your opinion. If you think she’s asking for opinion ask her first if that’s really what she wants. Usually she is looking for empathy, to be understood and for her feelings to be acknowledged.
Don’t forget to share your interior world with her too and be vulnerable. While she will be impressed with the accomplishment of your goals, she will be even more impressed that you achieve them despite your concerns and fears and she will love you more for it.
Keep in mind every opportunity to connect with your lady will either lead to adding a brick to the structure of the relationship or tear it down. You add bricks by always turning toward her and listening with empathy. You create cracks in the foundation of trust when you can’t be bothered.
As an example, she comes to you upset about a text that she got from her BFF (best friend forever), you can tell her you understand why she would feel that way, ask questions and show empathy or you could say to yourself, “I don’t have time for this drama” and turn on the TV and ignore her. Build trust or destroy it, it’s up to you.
Remember to kiss the girl. Kiss her when you get up, when you leave for the day and when you get home. Remember the research shows that if you’re kissing lasts at least six seconds you’ll release oxytocin, the hormone that makes ladies feel like they’ve had a nice glass of wine, which will keep the passion alive in the relationship.
Touch her often and hug her. It doesn’t need to always be sensual either. Hold her when she is happy and when she is sad. Hold her when she needs it and when you need it. Hold her when she doesn’t want the held and find out why?
Women need to be appreciated and complemented. Complement her on how she looks dressed up and how she looks first thing in the morning. Feel free to elaborate on why you think her blue eyes are so beautiful. Complement her on how she treats others and how giving she is, thank her for the things she does for you, the way she keeps the house or for work. Tell her what you admire about her. Show her you appreciate her by helping her without being asked. Never be critical of the way she looks or compare her to any other women.
Doing these things are like money in the bank. As guys you can count on doing something stupid eventually and if you have plenty of money on deposit, plenty of good feelings on deposit, she is likely to forgive your mistakes quickly and without much drama.
Support your woman’s dreams. Men are all about achieving goals and women find it natural to help support their man. Sometimes to the detriment of their own dreams and goals. Treating her right also means that you know what her dreams are and don’t overlook them.
If you don’t know what her hopes and dreams are find out! A woman whose dreams are unrealized and squashed will eventually get sad and depressed. Move mountains to make sure she achieves her dreams and she will help you move mountains to achieve yours.
Never let your curiosity about your lady die. When you’re on dates or cuddling or after sex or just hanging out ask her open-ended questions. What does she dream about? What would she do if she inherited $1 million? What does she worry about? What’s her greatest fear and what is she struggling with right now? These discussions will bring you closer and are the glue in the relationship. Make it a habit and spending time with your lovely lady adding to your bank of knowledge about what’s going on in the mind of this fascinating creature, who for some odd reason, is in love with you.
Why go through all this effort? Though women can confuse us and drive us crazy, we never feel as alive as when we are with them. Many men have discovered that living life with a great woman is an adventure full of passion and wonder, but life without one, is not really not worth living.
Cappy