Introduction
It appears as though developing good relationships with our significant others and raising children are two of the most challenging professions we face, and yet we receive no official training in either.
It's as though people assume that we are born with an intrinsic aptitude to perform these two things. Yet, look around us. In the US, the divorce rate is just over 50%! I don't know anywhere else beyond baseball where a 50% average is a good thing.
Couples go through life getting along while circumstances are good and then arguing with, ignoring, or abandoning one another when things are bad.
Most individuals assume that seeking assistance with their relationships implies accepting a certain type of defeat that says something about who they are as a person. Or rather, they feel that relationships are something we are merely meant to be able to handle on our own.
Or, ultimately, some individuals assume that those out there counseling couples can't know any more than they do. After all, what is there to know about keeping partnerships together?
Well, the reality is that there is a whole lot to learn when it comes to relationships. Unfortunately, the only training most of us ever get is the passive learning we acquire via the modeling of the people who live in our family with us and the media.
Now, I don't know about you, but my parents had only gotten the informal instruction they got from their parents, from my great-grandparents, and so on back through the centuries. There is so much more to know about relationships than that!
My parents have contributed to corroborate that 50% estimate given earlier in that they divorced around their 25th wedding anniversary. What I learned about relationships from observing them is that couples never dispute, particularly in front of the children.
On the surface, my parents had a pretty happy marriage, but my father underwent a conventional mid-life crisis and suddenly questioned the purpose of life and thought marriage was holding him back somehow.
In some respects, this style of training may have been as detrimental as those who had parents that quarreled all the time. Disagreements are a normal by-product of partnerships.
It is nearly impossible for two individuals to join together and form a life without some of their goals, values, views, or day-to-day activities coming into conflict with one another. The question now becomes how the pair handle this dispute.
There are numerous things to consider when discussing couples and their obstacles and places for growth and development.
The first is compatibility. I know there is an idiom that states opposites attract, and I feel there is some veracity in that statement when you think of attraction as that chemical reaction that happens when two individuals meet and are attracted. This chemical attraction doesn't care what the other person's values are, what is important to him or her, the personality qualities involved, or what either of you loves to do in your leisure time. Compatibility is a prerequisite for a good, healthy relationship. Go to www.therelationshipcenter.biz and take the free assessment to discover your compatibility with your mate.
A second reason is simply that there are big variations in how men are in relationships compared to women.
Women typically do understand males because the guys don't behave like women, and similarly, men don't understand women because they don't act like men.
And if a woman has never been a man and a man has never been a woman, how does one learn about these fundamental differences?
John Gray explored and wrote about these difficulties in his book, Men are from Mars; Women are from Venus. But I would argue that the majority of individuals in partnerships do take the time to understand these gender disparities.
It is easy to point a finger and blame the other person for his or her unreasonable actions.
As indicated previously, the third area of development is learning how to handle disagreement.
There are time-proven strategies for settling conflicts that we don't learn in school or from a book. There are techniques to genuinely hear each other in partnerships.
By putting the relationship first in priority, these approaches may be applied by couples to dramatically increase their pleasure.
conclusion
There is so much to learn about successful relationships that your parents never taught you.
Please don't become one of the statistics of divorce or even worse, remain in a horrible relationship to keep your marriage vows while having so many regrets about your life as the clock ticks away.
Take charge and take control of your life. Learn some fresh techniques to enhance the relationship you are in now or to prepare yourself to become a better, improved partner for the next person in your life.