The other day I was browsing through Barnes & Noble, and as I passed by the rows of books about love and sex I felt annoyed. Seeing those volumes brought to mind the biggest open secret in today's culture: Most relationship advice doesn't really help you and your partner improve -- or sustain -- your love life.
Most people know this to be true. And ironically, the never-ending stream -- books, magazine articles, workshops and now, websites and e-zines -- confirms it, because if any of them really did help, there wouldn't be so many of them. In fact, substantial research confirms that these programs and advice aren't very effective at all.
I think the reason is this: Most of the prescriptions for restoring emotional and sexual vitality focus on the wrong things. Most teach techniques -- actions and strategies for having better sex, for improving listening and communication or for successful negotiating around conflict. But if you want to deepen intimacy and build greater vitality in your whole relationship, you have to nourish its spiritual core. Acquiring new techniques won't do it. However, there are some practices that help you nourish your relationship's spiritual connection, as I describe below.
What Handicaps Most Relationships
Let me explain. By "spiritual," I'm referring to a less visible, less behavioral realm than most relationship advice and strategies deal with. Your relationship's spiritual core includes, for example, your sense of purpose and life goals as a couple, and how your values and ideals may change and evolve over the years, as separate individuals and as a couple. The relationship challenge is whether these and other spiritual dimensions are in synch. If they are, some relationship techniques may be helpful along your journey together. If they aren't in synch, none of them will.
In fact, when you don't service the spiritual core of your relationship, you're likely to end up, at best, improving what I call the "functional relationship" -- one that may work fairly well for dealing with the logistics of daily life, but in which intimacy keeps heading south the longer you're together. Couples within the functional relationship describe their interactions as increasingly transactional, devoid of energy and less fun. Moreover, if you're carrying with you unconscious conflicts, projections and expectations about your partner -- those that require a good therapist to help you resolve -- applying relationship improvement techniques may intensify those deeper conflicts and damage the relationship beyond repair.
And there's more: Even those couples whose relationships are not highly distorted by dysfunctional attachment patterns from childhood have trouble servicing their spiritual core. Two other problems, in addition the functional relationship, handicap them. One is the widespread struggle to deal with the so-called "work-life balance" problem. It gets a lot of media attention, and couples try hard to find the right kind of balance. But most don't realize that "work" and "life" can't ever be balanced because both are on the same side of the true scale, between your inner and outer life. The other problem is broader: We learn a model of love in our culture that's really an arrested version of adolescent excitement and infatuation.
That is, most adult men and women relate to each other in ways that are an extension of adolescent relationships -- replete with struggles over power and dominance; a tendency to idealize; an experience of passionate connection most strongly when you're unable to "possess" the object of your desire; feeling intense attraction towards someone new and unknown, but then finding that passion cools with familiarity.
This adolescent experience is the basis of what most people learn to think is the norm for adult love and sexual relationships, as well. Interestingly, some research shows that falling in love, in the way that most adults experience it, affects the same areas of the brain -- and triggers the same sensation of euphoria -- as taking cocaine. It's an addictive "high."
However, that results from a socially conditioned experience of love, based on what's normal for adolescents. Consequently, people assume that strong connection and vitality must necessarily decline with familiarity with your partner, over time -- just as it does for adolescents. But in fact, that's true only to the extent that you practice an adolescent version of love. In contrast, both research and clinical evidence show that couples are able to "make it last" when they build the spiritual core of their couplehood. For example, recent research has found specific brain mechanisms by which romantic love is sustained in some long-term relationships. One study using brain imaging found "very clear similarities between those who were in love long term and those who had just fallen madly in love," according to Arthur Aron, one of the lead authors of the study.
Growing Your Relationship's Spiritual Core
When you nourish the spiritual basis of your relationship, you inject positive energy into three interlocking dimensions -- your emotional, relational and sexual connection. I've referred to these three in another post as "radical transparency" with your partner regarding your thoughts, feelings, desires and fears; "sharing the stage," so to speak -- making decisions and choices in daily living that promote mutuality, rather than either of you trying to maneuver to gain the upper hand at the expense of the other; and "good vibrations" in how you relate physically and sexually. I'll be writing more about these three in future posts, but the point here is that nourishing the spiritual core of your relationship -- its soul -- is the underpinning of all three.
The main way you can do that is by learning to let go of self-interest in your relationship. That may sound contradictory, but loosening your grip on what you want to "get" for yourself is actually the key to growth and happiness as a couple. Letting go redirects your energies towards increasing vitality, connection and pleasure between the two of you, and away from the self-centered goal of just getting what you want from your partner. In short, you're more likely to "get the love you want" by not aiming for it.
Research and clinical observation confirm this. For example, studies by psychologist John Gottman and other marriage researchers have found that key predictors of a positive, resilient relationship include mutual support and a willingness to sacrifice. That means willingness to forgo personal interests and putting your partner's needs ahead of your own. Letting go of self-interest in these ways is directly linked to a long-lasting, happy relationship. Staying entrenched in your own ego won't do it.
There are many steps you can take to strengthen your relationship's spiritual core. Below are some that help you move beyond and through the tendencies we all have to dwell on our own needs, as well as our perceived slights, resentments, and so on -- those features of self-interest that are sure-fire killers for your relationship.
Show Your Partner What You Want By Giving It
Disengage From Your Conviction That You're "Right"
Another part of self-interest is the tendency to believe that your own point of view, your own "reality," is the true or correct one -- especially in situations of conflict. You can be pulled into reacting to your partner's emotional needs, demands or conflicts in ways that hurt the relationship because of your own issues, such as insecurity, longing for acceptance, or fear.
Research supports the value of disengaging from your self-interest in this way. One example: researchers at the University of Minnesota found that if you have an argument with your partner, and either one of you disengages from the emotional impact of the dispute upon you (that is, you don't let it overflow onto the relationship in other areas), then both partners feel more positively toward each other afterwards.
That is, recovering well from a dispute includes not letting its remnants spill over into other parts of the relationship. Those might include maintaining resentments and disappointments about your partner's "failure" to provide you with what you want ("I know he's going to be resentful if I tell him what I want, so why bother?"), or dwelling on negative emotions from the conviction that you're "right" and your partner is "wrong" regarding some issue of disagreement or difference ("I just can't talk to her about the finances because I know she just doesn't understand the whole picture").
The following exercise can help disengage you from that reactivity and respond, instead, in ways that bring you and your partner into greater synch, spiritually.
Here, you're learning to separate who you are -- what you think, feel and believe -- from who your partner is, and to distinguish your own internal "reality" from that of your partner's. That fuels greater respect for each of you as separate, individual people, and it can deepen intimate understanding of each other -- an important part of your spiritual core.
Douglas LaBier, Ph.D., a business psychologist and psychotherapist, is Director of the Center for Progressive Development in Washington, D.C. You may email him at dlabier@CenterProgressive.org.
Follow Douglas LaBier on Twitter: www.twitter.com/douglaslabier
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http://www.astonishinglifestyle.com/relationship-problem-advice.html
Talking about creating a balance between inner and outer worlds, very few people focus on what the core of the issue really is, in a relationship. They tend to focus on matters which are superficial in nature, which blur out the crux of what really matters. With an open mind, introspection and certain level of understanding, people could create a balance between what they seem to accept as reality and what the real situation actually is.
While some people are capable of adopting new perceptions, others need guidance. Whether with the help of a psychologist, therapist or psychic, it is good to have a helping hand in providing direction to realize the 'spiritual core' of what really counts in a relationship. It is only when you are aware of yourself will you be able to build a strong relationship and understand your partner better. This calls for a paradigm shift in perception, to delve inside and make a better world for yourself outside!
However, this article does not address brain function. And though spirituality and brain function are not mutually exlusive, it is important to understand that basically we are attracted and have "chemistry" for people who help us regulate our emotional arousal. We like sexual arousal and do not like anger arousal. We basically find that certain people help us maintain emotional equilibrium. Being around them brings contagious contentment and excitement.
This mutual regulation is often present during courtship. It is spontaneous and each person tries hard to help regulate the other. And it is in this way, that relationships deteriorate over time. The regulation is less consistent as we focus on individual goals and time passes. The high from dopamine release goes down and we resent what we see as a "change" in the relationship--or more exactly a broken promise. And from that perspective, we begin to see key relationships as disappointing and as renegging on unspoken agreements.
The spiritual solution is one for beginning to find mutual regulation. But, understanding the neuroscience is important so we are clear what we are really fighting.
Thought you need to know that I tried to access this from an email sent to me from stumbleupon and after trying their link to your article twice and waiting for a long time, each time, only a few stumleupon type headings were visible. I had to go to google and then enter: Douglas LaBier Why Relationship
I agree with your take on relationships. I am sure you get critcism from others because you make people think instead of dish out commercial functionalism. (You only get praise from me, but I instinctively feel and intuitively know that all (most?) external praise is often an engineered attempt(somtimes un or subconsciously) to get an agenda accomplished.
I'd be interested in knowing if it is just my computer (maybe its my computers' limited,and/or too full memory, etc.) that makes stumbleupon's links inaccessible. Have others, and/or you had the same
result? Will this even be posted because it mentions stumbleupon?
.
Of course the other thing we heard is: Opposites attract. Yeah, they do (the Alpha and Beta thing). BUT that often leads to a rocky relationship and an unsatisfying marriage for the Beta.
So we're back to the first one, which I think is what you are saying. Marry someone you have a lot in common with: common life goals, common likes/dislikes/hobbies, same sex drive, etc. Like you said, this makes so much more sense!
Those issues of common values and character are essential. As you say, all the techniques in the world won't bridge value gaps. I also appreciate your focus on disengaging from being right (or wrong), and trying to step into your partner's perspective and experience. It can be eye-opening.
As a self-proclaimed relationship failure I'm going to cut to the chase. It's not possible to compartmentalize the personal relationship as separate from the general concept of relationship. Relationships are some of life's best opportunities for learning. For me it's also been one of life's most difficult areas.
Additionally, personal relationships are built of hooks and barbs. I do something nice for you to hook you into the relationship. If I don't get my way I barb you. It's a universal pattern.
If you've read my comments you don't need me to point out who I learned this from.
I'm not sure why society maintains a belief that perpetuating personal relationships is an achievement since this dynamic is the underpinning of relative system relationships.
Lately I've been seeing my partner as a mirror. His unresolved problems, bad habits are life trying to show me the message is for me. I intend to get the message. I've seen the formula induce miracles.
I've had one relationship in my life, been married more than fifty years, and wouldn't advise anyone about relationships.
How much can you trust someone who has only done something once?
Slightly off-topic I guess, but I sometimes wonder how many people in this country, who would otherwise grow into sophisticated men and women of the world, spend a lifetime clinging to a self-centered, "rock and roll", "teen-age rebel", vision of themselves. A visions that's been fostered by popular culture for the last fifty years.
I get the idea sometimes that many people think that becoming sophisticated is somehow a betrayal of themselves and that remaining a simpleton is "keeping it real". I dunno.
I take it you're not a James Dean fan.
Pass the brie, Max. And yes, I will have another glass of chardonnay.
BTW I need space is not ground for breakdown of relationship it simply means he/she is boring and my advice is that if you 2 cant find the connection then write down all your emotional needs ( Be creative) as words are always followed by deeds unfortunately often also cost money!!
Sage
Compassion, and, the correlates of the love it enhances, does good things for people, including creating better health, better well-being, better self-esteem, and, even better longevity, for those who create it, and, for those who receive it. More compassion in our lives, means a better life for us as individuals, for us as partners in a relationship, for our society, and, even for our world. Compassion can help reduce self- hatred, and, hatred some have for those who are different from us. Compassion will reduce violence in our lives, and, in our world, it is a good thing, something we all need and want more of.
The woman uses her lack of desire as part of a relationship wedge. The intent of the wedge is to drive the man away, to make him ask less so that she will not turn him down as frequently so she doesn't feel so bad for turning him down so much. The way the woman works it is to pretend to make it his fault, viz: "Why should you want to, I'm old" "Don't touch me, it hurts" "Don't you see I'm getting fat". Stop me if you haven't heard this a thousand times.