On Waiting for a Love Letter rather than getting out there and Writing One?
or
What to do if you are mad at your partner on Valentine’s Day?
For my clients:
In Relationship Therapy sometimes we are longing for a breakthrough while still waiting for the Perfect Future- where conditions are just right to start loving. Don’t wait too long. Even for those of us who are prone to a bit of idealism or even disappointment when it comes to wanting things to be different, or even in our head correcting a loved one’s behavior, here is a simple exercise to practice when you notice you are starting to get mad at your partner and tempted to give them the silent treatment.
Getting Beyond Blame
The winners get that the Breakthrough they are looking for is based on letting go of a habit of blame and the need to be right. But if we want our partner to love us first, and take the lead we can end up procrastinating when it comes to creating more loving relationships.
Start with a piece of paper and create a positive and negative column called a Cost Benefit Analysis, Titled “Blame and All the Good Reasons to stay mad and not to love (your partner) more until s/he expresses love first!”
But wait if you are saying “that never gets me any where and I don’t want to do that!” then you can advance to go.
This is the first step to recognizing how distracting blame is and can be; here relapse is defined as the pull to blame your partner.
Blame and the need to be right perpetuates many of the relationship problems we find ourselves in.
How to Win The Game of Anger
The second step of the game is to notice how easily you give into blame (otherwise known as criticalness, perfectionism, defensiveness, stonewalling, contempt); and instead decide to outwit the blame game, by doing something nice in the next 24 hours for that someone special you are mad at!
Poof – Somehow in the doing the anger often goes away!
Can you find other ways to work on your relationship problems and outwit blame?
In Highly Effective Therapy you learn ways to love yourself unconditionally, to sustain more meaningful even difficult conversations, to be more attractive, and even more vulnerable; instead of hiding, you can reveal yourself, while relying on empathy to create more loving conversations.
We sometimes can find ourselves mystified by the reification and the concept of love: the word love has become out dated, and too often is laden with striving for perfection, and loaded with evaluations, what if it was just about the fun of it and expressing gratitude?
