Relationships — Building and Maintaining

• Unrealistic Expectations In Relationships

  Often, we believe that others ought to treat us the way we want them to respond. We may tend to put a relationship on a pedestal expecting more from an interpersonal relationship than it can deliver. Then when others fail to meet our expectations, we feel betrayed, frustrated, and resentful.

• The Impact of Intimacy

  The impact of intimacy lies at the core of every significant relationship. Cultivating intimacy takes a lot of work. Intimacy is a complex set of feelings and behaviors that develop out of a relationship based upon integrity, commitment, passion and respect.

• The Terrors Of Life With An OCD Wife

  What in the heck happened? Why didn’t I see it coming? I guess I should give myself a break. I suppose you have to live with a partner before fully understanding the differences in the way people “live.” It didn’t take me long to find out that we lived on polar planets.

• Love Will Keep Us Together

  I have often noticed that couples who work hard on their relationship more than their relationship with their kids seem to hold up better in stressful times. Hear me out – I know that your relationship with your kids is what you live for and the most beautiful thing that has ever happened to you. I agree and understand that. But, I find it as (if not more) important to keep the strength of my relationship with my husband on the other front burner. A solid marriage can slip away pretty quickly if you aren’t tending to it as diligently as you would your role as a parent. Here are some things that work for us and for friends of ours who agree that one day our kids will be grown people with lives of their own and loves of their own.

• Relationship Glue

  Although several types of love play an important role in marriage, it’s Agape love that acts as “relationship glue”. Agape love is often described as, “Self-sacrificing love. Altruistic love that is experienced by people willing to do things for another person with no expectations.”

• Roots For Relationship Failure

  Within any intimate relationship, there must be a balanced cycle of contact and withdrawal. This means that in relationships, there needs to be a flow between meaningful connectedness and the ability to provide each other with appropriate psychological space. Couples must learn to be self-sufficient and confident enough to move between emotional contact and the need for appropriate distance.

• Patterns That Lead To Relationship Failure

  Within any intimate relationship, there must be a balanced cycle of contact and withdrawal. This means that in relationships, there needs to be a flow between meaningful connectedness and the ability to provide each other with appropriate psychological space. Couples must learn to be self-sufficient and confident enough to move between emotional contact and the need for appropriate distance.

• Empathy – A Key Relationship Skill

  The basis of emotional closeness in a relationship is empathy, the foundation of the experience of “we” rather than just “I” or “you.” If you sense that your partner really feels how it is for you, you feel less stressed, plus closer and more trusting, and more inclined to give empathy to him – and the same is certainly true for him with regard to you.