Do You Really Want a Relationship? by Mark Brandenburg MA, CPCC
With a divorce rate in this country that approaches 50%, and a fairly
sizable percentage of marriages that aren’t particularly blissful, it’s
difficult to avoid searching for the answer to the battle of the sexes.
Would you like to stop searching?
We’ve moved through the old paradigm of getting your needs met in
relationships and it has proven itself to be a miserable failure. Why?
Attempting to get your needs met in your relationship causes some
troublesome things to happen. First, it causes you to focus mainly on
your needs and not on the desires of your partner. Secondly, it sets you
up for disaster because it has you believing that you deserve something
that may well not be delivered.
All across this great country of ours, battles are raging between men
and women: she needs to talk and connect, and he needs his space and
independence. Who wins here?
The answer, of course, is that both lose because of a flawed view of
what a successful relationship is all about. What also happens is that
both people start to blame the other for not meeting their needs.
For men who are really serious about success in their relationships,
it’s important to understand how blaming your partner is an enormous
problem itself. It creates a bigger problem and has you convinced that
you are not part of the problem. Nothing could be further from the
truth. Blaming has never worked and never will. It may have you feeling
justified in your position, but it will always hurt your relationship.
It’s particularly important to develop the realization that your
feelings can deceive you in your relationship with your partner. This
can be difficult for people raised during the honor your feelings era of
relationships. Your feelings tell you things like, I can’t believe she
could do something like that to me, or, How could she treat me so badly?
These feelings are the result of your own low self-esteem and your own
personal history of victimization.
While it’s true that your partner may treat you in a way you don’t like
sometimes, it’s not true that you need to react to it with strong
negative feelings. These strong negative feelings are a reflection of
your own esteem issues. They also have a way of keeping your partner
engaged in the struggle with you so that you can continue to blame each
other. When you are both engaged in the struggle, you’ll believe that
she needs to be fixed. She’ll think the same of you. Nobody wins and
everybody loses. This isn’t very smart or effective.
What would happen for men in their important relationships if they gave
up defending themselves and believing their needs needed to be met? What
would happen if they worked at being kind and caring with their
partners? I’ll tell you what would happen. They’d have great
relationships! After all, the only thing that you can do to improve a
relationship is to improve you.
So stop looking over at your partner and seeing all of her flaws. Stop
blaming her. She has issues just like we all do. But if you see her as a
collection of flaws you’ll have no chance at a successful relationship.
And it’s successful relationships in life that make us truly happy.
About the Author
Mark Brandenburg MA, CPCC, is a certified personal coach, speaker, and
workshop leader who helps men to create balance in their lives and to
immediately improve their family relationships, guaranteed! He is the
author of Fix Your Wife in 30 Days or Less
http://www.markbrandenburg.com/e_book.htm#fix and can be reached at
mark@markbrandenburg.com
or at
http://www.markbrandenburg.com.
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