Monthly Archives: June 2018

Majority of people struggle with relationships. In fact, everybody does. The key to a successful marriage is to create a mission, a very clear mission to make your life with your partner, the most amazing. This one life we all have.  Problems begin when couples start taking each other for granted in no time. Instead when you start to learn more and more about your partner from day one you will create a beautiful union.

At the cost of sounding too giving, I feel gone are the days when you can focus on what you are not getting. Gone are the days when you can look for fairness and respect. Gone are the days when you can show your displeasure because your spouse is not doing things your way and gone are the days to be right all the time. What does your partner really need? What does he/she want to feel? What’s their kind of security? How would they feel truly loved and cared for? What kind of a life would he/she want? Learning to hear your partner when they speak, what they mean, what their fears and worries are can help them feel supported, safe and secure. A valuable lesson to remember. If both partners cultivate this attitude, they become invaluable to each other. If you are the husband, you must make your wife feel feminine and safe in your relationship. And if you are the wife you need to nurture your man in a way which makes him feel confident of protecting you while being himself.

Making your marriage a priority and your spouse one of the most important part of your life should be the essence. But people lose who they are in their marriage – they usually don’t continue being who they were when their partner first fell in love with them. This causes real problems.

A man and wife always think and behave differently. How you deal with life and problems can be different from the way your partner deals. Embracing these differences will give you the strength to create attraction.

Successful marriages just don’t happen. What makes a good marriage lies in the couple’s ability to create it together. By navigating your problems, differences, conflicts and stresses, you remain emotionally connected through a deeper understanding of each other. Don’t try to have the last laugh or the last word, make your connection last.

Kindness is in vogue! It is the latest word or rather deed, doing the rounds these days. Suddenly there’s a buzz about how important it is to be kind and how good it is for our own good etc. Something which everyone is enlightened about, then why this necessity to propagate it? There is no contest that kindness is an extremely important and integral part of humanity, but the fact remains there is a deficiency of it in reality. With so many brutal crimes coming to the fore, one wonders why the dearth of kindness as if some commodity shortage? Kindness needs to be ingrained from childhood, in the form of values at home and in the form of morals in school. Unless it becomes an inherent part of every individual, our society will always be devoid of it.

Kindness to the society is a given and that we should all give back to the society. But like charity, kindness begins at home – are we kind to our family?  Although the affirmative answer by most will say it all, it is not enough. People do these one-off acts of kindness and think they have done their bit.  Many times, providing materialistic comforts/pleasures is considered kindness which reflects only obligation.  Being kind means being respectful, empathetic and nice, by simply giving a helping hand at home, or an ear to listen or to just be available to talk. The reality somehow is unfortunately different.  I have see couples being indifferent and rude to their partners, taking their spouses for granted on a day to day basis. These everyday behaviour patterns of couples in long term marriages mirrors unkindness. Unless children don’t see their parents practising kindness – with them and others, they would never learn.

People underestimate kindness for they do not realize the positive power it holds. How many times have we seen husbands sulking after a fight and refusing to eat or wives wearing long faces after an argument? Not sleeping in the same room to show one’s displeasure is another unkind way which takes a heavy toll on the relationship.

It doesn’t cost much to be kind. Random acts of kindness can multiply into beautiful phases of life and relationships. All relationships should be driven by the synergy of kindness. What is your kind of happiness? Being kind? That’s kind of kind. Very kind.

Generally, couples seeking therapy are always sceptical if they can be helped. Over the years they have gone around in circles in their marriage and are mostly exhausted. This is a normal start to the process of couple therapy. But if they bring with them a willingness to learn and grow (not forced into therapy), their marriage can be saved even from the brink of divorce.

This means the success of therapy depends on how eager they are to learn and accept that their thinking – however logical it may seem, did not help them realize the truth of their relationship. One of the fundamental factors in a successful relationship is the ability to be on the same page with one’s partner. To achieve this a person needs to expand his/her perspective to understand the partner. The biggest fallacy most people make is to focus only on their own perspective. When the focus expands to include the partner’s perspective, it creates a different world altogether.

One of my clients felt there was no good left in his marriage. When asked if there was really no good or had he simply stopped looking for the good, he realized he had translated his wife’s behaviour from his own perspective. It had made him search for bad, unconsciously yet deliberately. It had created a bias in him about her. A very common pattern which sets in distressed couples. Its something like this – when appreciating rains in monsoon, if the same rains create a deluge, one is going to see only the inundation at that point. But at other times, one cannot take away the beauty of the rains. One still looks forward to it. The shift in focus from the good to the bad is only temporary. It soon returns to the good. That applies to relationships as well.

It’s all about developing our habitual focus to see the good. The wife of my client loved him, but he didn’t understand her.  Men and women are never meant to understand each other naturally. So, it’s always a struggle to be on the same page naturally. Here the husband had converted his thoughts/fear about his wife not loving him into presumptions. These presumptions intensified as time went by. He lived with this very thought for years. Finally, the reality dawned on him. Objective: get reflective to change your perspective.

A couple was on a verge of divorce. They were convinced they would never be able to save their marriage.  The husband had severe anger issues. The wife felt his inherent nature would never change. Despite going through several anger management programmes, he was unable to get a grip on his anger. My first question was why did he want to manage his anger when he needed to get rid of it in the first place?

Over multiple sessions he was made to understand he always used his anger to meet his needs. Hence it had become his core defence and coping mechanisms. It had become a means to protect himself from anything which went against his grain. The same needs could have been met constructively and it was not too late to do that. He needed to meet his needs that protected not just himself but also his wife and his marriage. One way of doing this was by translating his wife’s communication in a far better way. He realized that it was his anger which was responsible for his wife’s behaviour which in turn was triggering his anger. It had become a vicious circle. Slowly, she had grown indifferent and he felt he was not loved and vice versa. The wife was constantly scared of his outbursts and had shut down.

I’m often asked if a person can change their inherent nature, style, behaviour, thoughts? It is very difficult to change if you don’t know how. The key to modifying a specific behavioural pattern is to understand the main drivers that are the root cause of that behaviour. For example, a person may be depressed for years, affecting the marriage. Depression cannot be the core of the person or the problem. One needs to find out the root of the problem which disables his/her ability to feel happy.

Tapping symptoms for solutions is never the right approach. At least I am not a fan of it. Working on the root of the problem by understanding the patterns that were born in the past is a much better alternative. This way the essence of the person remains intact but at the same time, they are equipped to behave in a way that support the core needs of themselves and their partner and create a life to soar but to roar no more.