All relationships – especially our romantic ones – experience conflict from time to time.  Sometimes issues are easily worked through, and sometimes it takes an objective, third-party to help you understand what’s really going on and how to get through it.  

Oftentimes the issues in a r​elationship are perpetual issues – they’re never going away.  Instead, you and your partner have to figure out how to best manage these perpetual issues in a way that works for both of you – how to dance the dance that works for your relationship.  If the dance you have been dancing doesn’t work anymore, it’s time to find a new dance.

Sometimes the issues we face in relationships are a result of stored-up irritability, frustration, and anger that we ultimately become resentful about.  Relief and true connection can take place when both parties share their grievances, the origins of the grievances are better understood, and a new plan is put in place to manage these patterns of behavior when they begin to pop up again.

Oftentimes when people point the finger at their partner or spouse, wanting them to do something different, it’s the perfect platform for learning more about yourself.  Why are you frustrated with the other’s behavior? What is that behavior bringing up for you? Does it remind you of something your mother, father, or sibling said or did when you were growing up? Grievances about another person is the perfect opportunity for exploring yourself and gaining deeper self-awareness.

Are you looking to End Your Relationship Well? Sometimes a person come to therapy already having made up their mind that it is time to end their relationship and they want to do that well. While we can’t determine how the other person will receive the information we offer them when ending a relationship, we can control our own non-verbal communication to help that difficult conversation can go as well as possible.

And let’s not forget all that is good in our relationships.  Sometimes we focus solely on the negative aspects of our relationships because they hurt the most or make the most “noise”.  What you feed, grows. When we shift our focus and start listing all the good things, we can put the not-so-good things into a better perspective.