This is a big question.
Are you lonely in your marriage?
That is not a fun place to be, but there is good news – growing your intimacy can expel loneliness from your marriage and stop it from creeping back in.
It’s not rocket science to know that rejecting your spouse is a really, really painful thing to do. But, think about the opposite for a moment: if I asked you to sit down and list the things you do regularly to communicate your unconditional acceptance of your spouse: how long would that list be?
There are some things you can do without in marriage – and still have a pretty good marriage. Commitment is NOT one of those things. It is foundational. If you don’t have it, your marriage is toast. But, the good news is, even if you don’t have it right now, you can choose to be committed today and start building this essential piece into your marriage.
If you’re living with another human being in this wonderful institution called marriage, then there is a good chance that at some point in your experience as a couple, your spouse is going to experience anxiety. I’ve seen this over and over and believe me, some couples handle it much better than others. Here are some how-to’s and how-not-to’s.
In marriage, we need to strike a healthy balance between independence and dependence on each other. This is where we sort out the sticky stuff like needing you as my spouse versus just being needy – being an individual without taking away from a sense of ‘us’.
You know, even if you are committed to your marriage, you can still make it a miserable experience. Today, we will look at three negativity traps you can fall into and how to get out of them!
Sometimes it is just too scary to let someone else make the decisions. Other times the fear of losing someone is so powerful we won’t even let ourselves get close to them. These sound rather extreme but are more common in marriages than we might think. Let’s take a look at what triggers these fears.
If you’ve ever come up against some really strong feelings – either your own or someone else’s – then you’ve probably felt yourself freaking out a little bit. Going into flight, fight or freeze mode! In Part 2, we talk about the fear of feelings and the fear of anger.
When you hesitate and find yourself stopping just before sharing something very personal with your spouse, how do you make sense of that? Shouldn’t we be able to share everything with our soul mate?