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Rebuilding a Relationship Requires Trust
Because I am reflecting about my failed marriage right now, I was especially glad to read Kelli Des Rochers’s post about “How to Rebuild a Flawed Relationship”. Although I know that divorce is the best for my husband and I, I believe in taking time during crisis to evaluate my part in adding to the dissolution. I see that over the years (15 years), I slowly quit expecting much affection, joy, or fun from my mate. I know we were friends at one time but now we are in completely opposite camps. I know that divorce can be less painful than this has been.
Kelli especially writes about being with a friend so that when problems come up, you can work together to come to a solution good for both parties. She includes these suggestions for mending a troubled time in your relationship from Dr. Phil. He includes the following qualities for a better relationship: (1) have a solid friendship, (2) meet each other’s needs, (3) set specific goals, (4) get back to basics, (5) take responsibility, and (6) turn the negatives into a to-do list. I would also add that setting realistic , clear-cut goals helps to undermine any hidden agendas.
Most of all, I have realized that each partner in a long-term relationship needs to share what I call the same world view. My world view is to help others—it is a deep-seated need that I have had most of my life. My soon-to-be ex’s world view is to have fun. Any one who looked at our world view would see where we were headed.
Basically there are three main stages in a relationship. Stage One is that wonderful period that the other person can do no wrong. This stage lasts for 6 months to a year generally. However, I have met people who are fixated on stage one—not a relationship I would care to have but it works for them. Then Stage Two occurs when each partner comes to believe that the other is seriously flawed—it seems that he/she has nothing right about them.
The real growth comes in Stage Three where we each accept the other in total and work on compromising our positions for the greater good of each partner. I never made it to stage three. We have been locked in stage two for fourteen years. So I dealt with the power struggle the same way my mother did. I knew it didn’t work for her because my parents died in stage two after fifty years of marriage. But the roles we adopt generally aren’t clear until after the relationship has ended.
What Steps Can We Take to be Happy?
From the Reader’s Digest–“Sonja Lyubomirsky, author of The How of Happiness: A Scientific Approach to Getting the Life You Want (Penguin Press, 2008) has researched the science of happiness for years. Here are her tips to help you cope with a bad economy, and increase your bursts of happiness throughout the day.
1. Avoid Overthinking
2. Practice Acts of Kindness
3. Focus on Your Relationships
4. Pick a Goal
5. Take Care of Your Body
From Positive Self Development: 10 Tips for Practicing Positive Psychology includes a report from Harvard Medical College and suggests the following tips to work more happiness and positive feelings in your life.
1. Forget multitasking—do one thing well at a time
2. Celebrate—don’t rush on to the next thing
3. Slow down—enjoy your daily life
4. Simplify your life—begin by decluttering your environment
5. Listen to relaxing music
Selena at Blissfully You suggests that in order to be happy right now, we: (1) get nuts (to eat), (2) go, go, go (raise your heart rate), and (3) get together (with the person who cheers you up the most).
Keep a Good Things Notebook on Your Desk is a great suggestion. In another post I wrote how I had to make a cardstock bright cut-out of the things that make me happy. I called it my Good Feelings Action List.
Finally, a reprint of a quotation from Rousseau’s autobiography, Reveries of a Solitary Walker, as included in a post by Kathy Kattenburg entitiled “What Is Happiness?” that she wrote for The Moderate Voice.
“If there is a state where the soul can find a resting-place secure enough to establish itself and concentrate its entire being there, with no need to remember the past or reach into the future, where time is nothing to it, where the present runs on indefinitely but this duration goes unnoticed, with no sign of the passing of time, and no other feeling of deprivation or enjoyment, pleasure or pain, desire or fear than the simple feeling of existence, a feeling that fills our soul entirely, as long as this state lasts, we can call ourselves happy, not with a poor, incomplete and relative happiness such as we find in the pleasures of life, but with a sufficient, complete and perfect happiness which leaves no emptiness to be filled in the soul.”
