Commitment + Action

by Larry James, Relationship Coach

For you to achieve what you desire in a love relationship, both love partners must have similar levels of commitment. Each must honor a promise of mutual commitment to the other, a commitment to participate in life fully together.

This does not mean that you must have identical commitments. It means that for a healthy love relationship to thrive and survive, each love partner must support the other in their own individual commitments in addition to their commitment to each other as a team. She is committed to something and he supports her. He is committed to something and she supports him.

When true love is present, commitments arise naturally. They expand our capacity to love.

The commitment that supports a healthy partnership is the commitment each has to the other to always be working on the relationship, a commitment to always be in a dance with one another, showering each other with compassion and understanding.

Commitment is nurtured by compassion and understanding.

If you care to move past commitment. . . try surrender. Surrender is one step beyond commitment.

Surrender does not mean placing yourself at the mercy of someone else. To me, surrender is the ultimate commitment to unconditional love; it is surrendering to the process, not to your love partner. Having surrender present in your love relationship means having a devotion to keeping the fire of your love burning. . . for each other.

It is possible to give yourself fully to the relationship without losing your sense of self in the relationship. It empowers each of you when both love partners are willing to surrender to the moment, to those tender moments when you are unconditionally loving the one you are with. It promotes freedom of full self-expression.

You both must trust one another enough to allow each other the freedom to speak words of truth straight from the heart. Open, honest communication is just one of the many keys to a healthy love relationship.

Add to commitment a decision for action. That's when the adventure begins. If you only always know what you are committed to and never totally support each other in your commitments, you may rediscover the same ordinary relationship you may have experienced in the past. How boring!

Why not go for extraordinary? Or, if you are truly adventurous, go for outrageous! That is anything but boring.

Commitment plus action provides the momentum that can produce extraordinary results! It's doing what can be done to make a difference for each other. . . and having a commitment to do it together. Even when it feels like you don't want to.

Especially when you don't feel like it.

What You Permit. . . You Promote!

by Larry James relationship coach and author.

When you allow free-floating anxiety to permeate your relationship, you're basically giving it your "stamp of approval." Address the tough issues with straight talk and transparency.

Allow your partner to see and hear who you really are, because if you don't talk, your partner will most likely assume the worst and nothing will get better. Pretending everything is rosy when it's clearly not, will drive a wedge between you that is difficult to remove.

Find creative ways to communicate what is really on your mind. Infuse your relationship with lively and loving conversation. This is especially important when you really don't want to or you are afraid to because of past disagreement memories.

Silence is not golden. It's insulting to your partner and it erodes trust. If you feel the need to get something off your mind. Say it! Never candy-coat it or act like nothings wrong. Speak your words in the most loving way you can. The sooner the better.

What you permit. . . you promote!

Sameness does not promote relationship growth. If your relationship needs conversation, speak it. Scrutinize your relationship. Cut to the chase. Get down to the nitty-gritty. Inaction is a form of action however it usually gets you nowhere.

Is it time to re-think how you are being in the relationship? Is your relationship out-of-whack. . . or it is just you? Be honest.

If you need help, ask for it. If not. . . prove it.

What Is The Mood Of Your Relationship?

by Kali Munro, M.Ed., Psychotherapist

If you were to think about the present state of your relationship (or a point in time in a past relationship) as a mood, how would you describe the mood of your relationship?

The mood of your relationship is not how you feel about your relationship, but the unique combination of both people's feelings, reactions, beliefs, perceptions, thoughts about themselves, each other, and their circumstances coming together to form a mood. The mood of a relationship can usually be felt by people close to the couple as well as by the couple themselves. Some relationships have an undercurrent of irritability, and other relationships feel sad. Some relationships are emotional roller coasters, while others are shut down or numb.

Thinking about a relationship in terms of mood is helpful for many reasons. For one, it takes the focus and the tendency to blame off of the individuals -- the mood arises from both people. It also externalizes the problem -- the mood is about the relationship, not the individuals. And it offers direction -- there are ways to address moods.

Thinking about the mood of your relationship encourages you to step back and look at your relationship as a whole rather than getting caught up in the details of arguments and with who said what.

The first step is to identify the mood of your relationship. How does your relationship feel to you, not how do you feel about your relationship but how do the combined interactions between you feel? Do they feel hostile, irritable, hesitant, sad, closed, shut down? Can the two of you agree on how the relationship is feeling right now? Usually couples find that this is one area they can agree on.

Just as we need to find ways to express, comfort, release and shift out of our own moods or feelings, we need to do the same with the moods of our relationship. Different things work at different times and with different couples. You will need to find what works for you.

If your relationship is sad, you may need to acknowledge that to one another and simply hold each other. Being sad together and comforting one another will help prevent that sadness being blamed on one another. Rather than being sad about each other, you are sad together. By acknowledging how the relationship feels and expressing and/or comforting that mood, something will shift.

If your relationship feels shut down or numb, you'll want to bring some emotion into it. As a starting place, you could state your feelings. If your relationship feels irritable, you may want to tune into your love for your partner and approach her/him with love. If your relationship feels sad, you may want to think about all the things you appreciate and enjoy about your partner and let them know those things. If you're hesitant with one another, you'll want to approach your partner with an open mind.

If your relationship is in a funk either or both partners can choose to shift the mood by changing something. You may choose to interact with your partner with a different expectation or belief. You may choose to articulate more of what you are thinking, in a positive way. You may want to suggest an activity that you both enjoy. Any change in your routine of behaviour, attitude, tone and emotional expectations will have an impact on the mood of your relationship.

Just as it's important to look at the whole of your relationship, it's important to look at the whole of your circumstances. Maybe your relationship is irritable or sad because one or both of you aren't being treated well at work. Maybe you are having financial difficulties; or your families are not supportive; or one of you is dealing with abuse memories, or is otherwise going through a hard time, and it's coming out on the relationship. Maybe the relationship isn't the issue but something else is. It's important to acknowledge whatever is affecting the relationship and find ways to comfort each other. When one person in a relationship is having a hard time, both people need comfort because it impacts on both people.

Maybe you feel good about your partner but, for some inexplicable reason, when you get together, you begin to feel sad or angry. While there may be things within the relationship that make you feel sad or angry and you need to have those things addressed, it is also possible that you are used to being sad or angry in each others' company, or have gotten stuck in that mood, and need an alternative way of addressing your issues other than directly talking about them (even though that can be very helpful.) Even when there are issues in a relationship that need to be addressed directly, tuning into the mood of the relationship -- your relationship's pattern of expectations, feelings, beliefs, reactions, etc. -- and looking for ways to address the mood can help shift some of those problem areas. Simply sitting, without judgment, with the mood of your relationship -- and not fighting it -- can be just as important as talking through your problems.

Relationships tap into our deepest feelings and insecurities, and it is no wonder that they often present us with our biggest challenges in life. Taking a different look at your relationship -- assessing its mood -- can help with finding new ways to address problem areas. Just as you have learned to honour and address your feelings, you can honour and address the moods of your relationship as well. Ideally partners will do this together, but change can happen even if only one person makes a change. What can you do to help shift the mood of your relationship? Change is always possible.

7 Reasons Why You Might Lie to Your Partner

By Richard Nicastro, psychologist and relationship coach

Most people lie to their partners or spouses at least occasionally. Since lying (especially when it becomes habitual) can have such a detrimental impact on your relationship, it's important to understand the reasons why you might lie and how to overcome the need to lie.

7 reasons why lying can creep into your relationship:

1. Self-esteem lies. Some people lie to bolster feelings of self-importance. In this case you might lie to your partner about your achievements and accomplishments. Your goal is to look good in the eyes of your partner (and others). At its extreme, deep-seated feelings of inadequacy can lead you to become a chronic liar.
   
   


2. Avoidance lies. The motivation for this type of lie is to avoid your partner's reaction-- such as disappointment or anger. You may feel that it's easier to lie rather than experience/endure your partner's emotional reaction. You may be someone who has considerable difficulty tolerating any perceived negative reaction. At its worst, your deceit is self-serving and hides relationship-damaging behaviors (e.g., an affair).
   
   


3. Self-denial lies. People lie to themselves all the time. It's a form of denial--refusing to accept a reality that is too painful. All you have to do is watch American Idol to realize that this kind of self-deception is alive and well. People with absolutely no vocal ability refuse to accept the judges' critical (and often harsh) feedback. Instead, they proclaim that they are excellent singers and will someday be wildly famous. Self-denial lies stand in the way of the openness needed for intimacy to grow in your relationship.
   
   


4. Hide-and-Seek lies. The impetus here is to hide parts of yourself from the world. Painful life experiences have caused you to feel unworthy of love to such a degree that you feel it is necessary to lie about yourself or your experiences. When you feel exposed, feelings of shame overcome you and act as a powerful motivator to hide from others (including your partner).
   
   


5. Saving-Face lies. While closely related to avoidance lies, saving-face lies are created to help you cover up your original lie. When it starts to become apparent to your spouse or partner that you've lied, you concoct a web of more lies to avoid the embarrassment and repercussions of having lied in the first place. This is one reason lies can quickly multiply.
   
   


6. The Compassionate lie. Sometimes the motivation to lie is altruistic--you don't want your partner to get hurt. In this instance, you're not protecting your partner from something that you've done that might be hurtful to him/her. Rather, you're trying to shield your partner from something you discovered (e.g., you overheard a neighbor say he doesn't like your wife) or an opinion that you believe would be upsetting (your wife asks if you like her new haircut and despite her uncanny resemblance to one of the Three Stooges, you respond with a definitive, "I love it!").
   
   


7. The Spiteful lie. In this case lies are used as weapons to hurt someone. Schoolchildren often do this, fabricating rumors that are designed to put down others. In social settings such as school this is sometimes done to ostracize someone from a peer group while solidifying the liar's position in the group. When this occurs in a marriage or relationship, it's usually when anger is at an all-time high or the relationship is being dissolved. It's less common for this type of lie to occur while the couple is committed to a future together, although some couples do report "fighting dirty" and saying hurtful, untrue things while they argue.

If you've lied to your partner recently, feel the urge to lie, or if lying has been a problem for you in general, begin to question your motivation for spinning these tales. Check your reasons with the list above to gain further clarity. It's obviously best that your relationship be built on a foundation of honesty. Honesty is the backbone of trust--once trust is compromised, your relationship can begin to spiral out of control. But the reality is that many partners do end up lying to one another, and while your motivation to lie might be benign, lies seem to have a viral-like capacity to spread. Have you ever noticed that once you've gotten away with a lie or two, it seems to get easier to lie in the future?

Be aware of that fact and of the reasons you may lie, and you take the first important steps toward a healthier, more honest relationship.

Dealing with Abandonment Issues

by Sue Anderson, psychotherapist and author

When a relationship ends, both partners experience turmoil and loss, but the one who is left feeling abandoned bears the brunt of the pain. Why does it hurt so much when someone leaves us?

Loving and wanting someone who does not love us back engenders a deep personal wound. Rejection hits a raw nerve whose root begins in childhood. It arouses our abandonment issues. Abandonment is primal fear, the first fear that each of us experience as an infant. It is the fear that we will be left, literally abandoned, with no one to care for us. Abandonment's wound is cumulative. It contains all of our losses, disconnections and disappointments from early on, the death of a parent, a teenage breakup, being out-shown by a sibling, these experiences make us more susceptible to heartbreak when we are abandoned as adults.

The abandonment wound, stored deep within the limbic brain, is easily triggered. You feel its raw nerve twinge when you fail to get recognition at work, a friend forgets to invite you to a party, or a date you thought was special did not call back. When being left is the trigger, core abandonment fears erupt. Stress hormones course through our bodies, compelling even the strongest among us to feel desperate and dependent. However self-sufficient we think we are, we suddenly feel we can’t live without her.

Being left also kicks up our control issues. The breakup wasn't our choice. Someone else cast us into this aloneness by choosing not to be with us. We feel at loss of our personal power to compel another person's love. "I must be unlovable and unworthy for him to discard me like that." Abandonment is similar to other types of bereavement, but its grief is complicated by rejection and betrayal. We turn the rage against ourselves, accounting for the severe depression that accompanies heartbreak. When we blame the breakup on our supposed inadequacies, we abandon ourselves. We automatically think to ourselves, “There must be something wrong with me that makes me not worth keeping.”

We emerge not only disconnected from self-love, but with a heightened fear of abandonment. If one person can discard us, we fear others will do the same to us in the future. Rather than dissipate, this fear tends to incubate. Its insecurity burrows deep within us where it sabotages our relationships. The fear of being left makes it more difficult to let go. The rejection creates nagging conflict; closure remains incomplete. We feel unjustly dismissed and we long for an opportunity to vindicate the hurt. We are left alone to grapple with the broken pieces. Mixed with our rage is a desire for our ex to come back to take away the hurt and rejection.

The paradox of abandonment is the tendency to idealize the abandoner. She emerges in our imaginations as a powerful figure. We assume she must be very special to have caused this much torment simply by being absent. The intense craving is confusing to our limbic brain. Stress hormones course through our bodies, causing a heightened response to anything related to our ex for a long time. An important thing to understand is there are five universal stages that accompany the loss of love: Shattering, Withdrawal, Internalizing, Rage, and Lifting. As we make our way through these stages of grief and recovery, we build self-esteem, resolve fear and self-doubt and restore the spirit.

The Five Stages of Abandonment are:
1. Shattering: Severing of love-connection, devastation, shattering of hopes and dreams. The emotions are shock, panic, despair, feeling you can't live without your love.

2. Withdrawal: You're in painful withdrawal of love-loss, as intense as heroin withdrawal. The emotions are yearning, craving, obsessing, longing for your ex's return.

3. Internalizing: As you try to making sense of the rejection, you doubt and blame yourself. Idealizing the abandoner at your own expense, narcissistic injury sets in and fear incubates.

4. Rage: Reversing the rejection and having retaliatory feelings. Displacing anger on friends who don't understand or are critical of the abandoner leads to more unhealthy action.

5. Lifting: Rising out despair, life begins to distract you. You begin to open to love again and all its possibilities. You “SWIRL” through all the stages over and over until you emerge out the end of the tunnel a changed person capable of greater life and love than before.


If you are struggling with abandoment issues and you would like more information, Susan has created a great site, http://www.abandonment.net/, where you can find advice, books, articles and support.

Susan Anderson is a psychotherapist and author of “Journey from Heartbreak to Connection,” “Journey from Abandonment to Healing” and “Black Swan.” She is founder of abandonment recovery and www.abandonment.net, a program of support groups and healing techniques, the result of over twenty-five years of research, clinical practice and personal experience.

Ten Rules to Live and Love By

By Kathy Freston from the Oprah Show

Seeing your partner through the lens of love rather than fear automatically elevates the relationship to a higher plane. When you can get quiet and note when you are projecting fear, you can make the adjustment to see through a different filter. So often we feel indignant or incensed, but upon closer inspection we will find that we are really afraid. Once we assume our partner's core goodness rather than focusing on their "guilt," they will be more free to show us their best, which accelerates the process of shifting our perspective from one of blame and anxiety to one of acceptance and peace.

Being willing to forgive yourself and your partner, and to make amends when necessary is an ongoing process of cleanup. We all make mistakes; it's human. But when we hold fast to a grudge it eats away at our sense of peace and serenity. If you aren't willing to forgive, you might ask yourself what habit of ego you're attached to. Do you want to continue life with unresolved issues hanging over you?

When we take a stand and refuse to let go of something, we can always find evidence to justify it. Or we can try to make peace. Instead of blaming or making excuses, we can clean things up and move forward. This is not an excuse for staying in a dysfunctional situation, but an opportunity to see innocence. Once we do that, we gain—or give—freedom to move out of a "stuck" place.

Relaxing when times get tough; assuming that "this too shall pass" allows you to roll with the punches. If you know things will inevitably arise to challenge you, you can be more detached when they do. Problems become worse when we dig in our heels and try to force a solution. By relaxing into whatever struggle arises, we remain flexible and open to inspiration and insight.

Even if you have a hard time letting go, you can at least observe yourself taking things very seriously, which in itself helps to detach you from the experience of anxiety. Whatever is happening now won't be happening a year from now, so just keep breathing through the situation and see if you can take things a little less seriously.

Seeing in the dynamic of the relationship the reflection of what you need to learn helps bring you back to what is important. Sometimes we get lost in the chatter of day-to-day patterns and lose sight of the soul's mandate to bring us closer to realizing our Oneness. The best way to see where we need to work on things is to observe who we are and what we do within the context of a relationship. Any time you recognize your impulse to create distance rather than intimacy, you can make the adjustment and get back on track.

This relationship, as with all relationships, is part of a curriculum to evolve into our highest potential. We come to know ourselves by how we interact with our partner, and by so doing we come to know Spirit.

When you don't know how to handle a problem, pray and meditate.
Praying and meditating aligns your limited energy with that which is all-powerful. Of course we don’t have all the answers, but by consigning our limitations to our Higher Power, our burden is lifted. We need to be accountable for our words and actions and be willing to work through where we are stuck. We need to stay present and forgive. Beyond that, our creative power is fueled by Spirit. By praying, we ask for help and guidance; by meditating we clear our minds so that the answer will become apparent. By moving aside, we create an opening for God to work miracles in ways we could never imagine.

Honoring your partner's path and allow them the space to find their own way sends a clear message of respect. People need to work things out in their own manner and in their own time. If you try to help where help is not requested, you are signaling your lack of belief in your partner. If you back off and assume someone is strong and intelligent, strength and intelligence are what they will likely find.

Although we are all on this path of realization and expansion together, each of us is unique in our lessons to be learned; the way you do something might be totally different than how someone else needs to process a situation. Rest assured that Spirit is at work in all of our lives, and give yourself a rest from overseeing your partner's personal business.

Keeping up your personal growth work means you will keep your mind sharp and your awareness keen. Read, study, and attend lectures; don't rest on the laurels of what you think you already know. The moment we think we have it all figured out is the moment things will come crashing down around us. Arrogance leaves no room for intimacy or growth, and is certainly not part of a spiritual curriculum. When you immerse yourself in learning, you will always have new skills and interests to apply to a relationship, and thus the relationship will always feel fresh and relevant.

Following the path of your own creativity keeps you attuned to that which moves and inspires you. As you indulge your creative side, you become less dependent on your partner to feel whole. Creative energy is the force that breaks new ground. To sustain love, we need to continually fuel whatever inspires us on the deepest level. Also, creativity balances out the egoic and intellectual side of life; it teaches us to play and have fun. When we engage our passions, we radiate passionate energy and thus maintain the interest of our partner as well as having your own sense of fulfillment.

Staying present keeps us in the moment which is where life is. Life does not exist in future predictions or past grievances; all we have for sure is right here and right now. Every moment teaches us something, and if we are busily trying to change or control something we miss the grace intended for us.

By allowing the sacred mystery to unfold without trying to tamper with it, we can move through anything with much more ease and simplicity. As we cease resisting, any so-called negative situation or emotion will have the space to work out. And by the same token, when we are completely alert and aware in any given moment, we are open to the subtle miracles happening all around us. By staying present, we will see our partner for who they are; we will hear clearly their communication and respond to it astutely.

Being grateful for what you have zeros in on what is working, which in turn magnetizes more of the same. Where you put your focus is where you direct your creative intention; so if you want abundance, be grateful for the vitality you have now. If you want a soulful relationship, be grateful for the soulful moments. Gratitude is like a seed you plant; it grows more as it is watered and nourished. Show your partner what you appreciate in them and let them know that they have a positive effect in your life. The acknowledgement of good will call forth more of the same.

5 Reasons Couples Fight and Breakup and What you Can Do About It

by Susie and Otto Collins, Relationship Coaches

Nearly everyone has experienced a relationship breakup or divorce and it can be one of the most painful periods in your life as you try to heal your broken heart. What we have discovered in our relationship coaching practice, many breakups don't have to happen.

So, if breakups don't have to occur, what causes them and how can you prevent them?

Here are four ideas to help you better understand why breakups happen and what you can do to prevent them in your relationship.

1. Old Fears Surface.

It's to be expected that being in an intimate relationship will inevitable bring up fears and challenges from the past. These might include fearing not being good enough, attractive enough, wealthy enough or even feelings of abandonment. If fears are not expected, looked at and healed, they interfere in some way or another with the health of every relationship. Take some time to notice when the fears surface, be loving with
yourself but look inward instead of outward blaming your partner for what clearly is your issue.

Ask yourself if your fears are "true" or are you just making "stories" up in your head. If you are creating those "stories" and there's no basis of truth to them, then change your thinking. It's not always easy to do and it takes moment by moment monitoring of your
thoughts. If you need help and support to make the changes you want in your life, be courageous enough to get it.

You may not have healed your broken heart from past relationships that ended and you find it very difficult to trust your current partner or open your heart completely to him or her. We suggest that you stop living from the hurt of those past relationships and bring yourself into the present moment, without continuing the "stories" of the past. Commit to starting over, allowing your fears to be there but reminding yourself that this is a new day.

2. Not Feeling Understood, Valued, Loved and Appreciated.
Everyone wants to feel understood, valued, loved and appreciated and when we're not, we tend to either withdraw or attack the other person for not meeting our needs. If you want to be appreciated, start appreciating the other people in your life. Sounds simplistic but it really works!

If you are not feeling loved, start being open to seeing and feeling love and appreciation that people are giving you that you may not be aware of in your daily life. It may be that someone allows you to go ahead of them in traffic or tells you to go ahead in a grocery line. Send some appreciation back to them and to everyone around you and watch love snowball in your life.

3. Not Making their Relationship a Priority.
Many couples take each other for granted and don't give their relationship the attention it needs most of the time. The lack of closeness and connection can be overwhelming and can cause great loneliness. Make your relationship a priority in your life. Set aside time everyday to connect with your partner.

We believe that sex happens long before the bedroom. It starts all day long when you have thoughts about your partner--Are these thoughts positive or negative? It continues when you come together--Are you happy to see each other and express love and appreciation or do you great each other with a laundry list of chores, things to be done or grievances?

These are just a couple of ways we make our relationship a priority. Try them in yours!

4. One or Both People are Made to Feel They are "Wrong."
One of the biggest mistakes people make is that they make each other wrong. As soon as critical words are said, defenses and walls go up and suddenly that person who you love and they love you becomes an "enemy."

Before you jump into blaming and judging your partner, stop and take a moment to breathe. Ask yourself if making your partner wrong will drive you further apart or move you closer toward healing. Open your heart to understanding the dynamics of what's going on between the two of you. Understand the full story before you start making someone wrong. So often we assume to know what is in someone's heart and we really don't. Take the time to find out!

5. Not healing your heart after a previous relationship breakup
Many people go from relationship to relationship without truly healing their hearts. They never discover what went wrong in their previous relationship and what they could have done differently. They keep repeating the same mistakes over and over again and always expect a different outcome.

We suggest that you take the time to heal your broken heart and your attachment to being a victim, in being right or whatever holds you to a previous relationship. Spend some energy in taking responsibility for what happened, forgiving yourself and your previous partner, and deciding what you want to change in your life.

If you are interested in more information to help you heal from a relationship breakup, visit www.howtohealyourbrokenheart.com

Contaminating a Relationship

Another interesting relationship article from Dr. Phil.

Every one of us has an irrational and destructive emotional side to our personality. This dark side can sabotage your relationship in an insidious way.

Below are the most common characteristics of what Dr. Phil calls "bad spirits," and how they can impact a relationship.

You're a Scorekeeper
Competing can quickly turn a relationship into an ugly battle of one-upmanship. How can you possibly be a winner if it is at the expense of making the person you supposedly love a loser? Solid relationships are built on sacrifice and caring, not power and control. Competitiveness can drain the joy, confidence and productivity out of any relationship.

You're a Faultfinder
There is nothing wrong with constructive criticism if it is designed to improve the relationship. But it can often give way to constant faultfinding -- in which you obsess over the flaws and imperfections rather than find value in your partner. Get off your partner's back and you may see your partner moving toward you.

You Think It's Your Way or the Highway
If you've always got to be right, then you're ready to fight till the end. No truer words were ever spoken, says Dr. Phil; you will fight to the end...the end of your relationship. You can't be self-righteous or obsessed with control and do what's best for the relationship at the same time.

You Turn Into an Attack Dog
When you get in an argument, do you have a killer stare, a harsh tone and hurtful words? Attack dogs may experience short-term gain, but the target of the abuse becomes filled with bitterness and resentment. While it's easy to fall into viciousness, it's much harder to repair the resulting consequences.

You are a Passive Warmonger
Instead of fault-finding or engaging in character assassination, these toxic partners try to thwart their partner by constantly doing that which they deny they are doing -- in such an indirect way as to escape accountability if they are confronted. A passive aggressive person is as much of an overbearing controller as the most aggressive, in-your-face person you could imagine -- only they do it insidiously and underhandedly.

You Resort to Smoke and Mirrors
Because you lack the courage to get real about what is driving the pain and problems in your relationship, you criticize your partner about one thing when you're really upset about another. What is real never gets voiced, and what gets voiced is never real. The real issues will eventually burst forth in a torrid way.

You Will Not Forgive
When you choose to bear anger at your partner, you trap yourself in pain and agony -- and the negative energy can crowd every other feeling out of your heart. If you wallow in resentment and refuse to forgive and move on, you will tear up your own life and your relationship. You can't change the past but you can deal with the resulting feelings and hurt by truly forgiving.

You Are the Bottomless Pit
Are you so needy that you constantly undermine your chances of success? Can you never get enough satisfaction, love, attention or appreciation? Your partner will be frustrated by never seeming able to "fill you up." We all want reassurance, but an insatiable appetite for it never gives your partner any rest. Free yourself from the internalized sense of inadequacy, and find other ways to feel your self-worth and value.

You're Too Comfortable
If you're in a comfort zone, you are failing to meet your responsibilities in the relationship. You aren't contributing, you aren't stimulating, and you aren't energizing. If you don't make a move, it becomes easier and easier to stagnate.

You've Given Up
When so many bad spirits crowd your life, you cannot imagine there being any way out. You become so forlorn, lonely, isolated, negative, cynical and far from your core of consciousness that you believe you are trapped. Be strong enough to confront your problems instead of giving up.

Coping with Loss

This Article comes from the Relationship Institute

Of all of life's multifaceted teachings, the experience of loss is among our most powerful vehicles for awakening. As much as we resist its sting, loss is omnipresent in the universe. The poet Yeats reminded us that no matter how solid anything appears, ultimately ''...things fall apart.'' In a similar vein, modern physics' Law of Entropy proves that over time, everything loses coherence and tends toward disorder. In all forms of relationship, at some point in the future we will have to say good-bye to the physical form of everyone we now know.

With intimate relationships, we see loss everywhere around us in every possible form: passionate, seemingly transcendent romances suddenly crashing to the ground; old, distant, lifeless relationships finally acknowledging what has been obvious for a long time; unfulfilled lovers paralyzed by fear, unable to break through to deeper levels of intimacy; fragile new budding relationships that don't survive even the first disagreement; and friendships ending when one person never returns the call. And when a relationship ends, there are losses on many levels. We lose contact with the person, of course and all the gratification, real or imagined, that they brought to our lives. But even more painfully, we lose the vision of what this relationship has meant to us in the past and present and the hope of what it might mean for us in the future. We lose the story and the myth that embodied the relationship and for many of us this is the most difficult loss of all.

How do we react in the face of impending loss? We have several choices. If we are attached to a particular form of this relationship, by virtue of a belief we have about what should or must be rather than what is, we can hold on tightly, hoping to control a process that we intuitively know is out of our control. Holding on tightly usually only hastens our journey to aloneness by scaring off our partner with our rigid, suffocating energy.

We can also choose to prematurely let go, to check out, to disengage emotionally, preparing for the loss before it even happens, protecting our soft underbelly from the pain that lies ahead, numbing or distracting ourselves from the uncomfortable sensations surging through our hearts and minds through work, addictions or a new warm body. We can also retreat to victimhood, reassuring ourselves that this other person wasn't so great to begin with, that ''we can do better'' and that we have been treated poorly or unfairly, through no fault of our own.

But there is another path, the path of consciously being with and embracing our loss, responsibly, without judgment toward ourselves or our partner, being fully present with our feelings of sadness, despair, loneliness, grief, anger or whatever else comes up. There may be profound sadness that something beautiful or hopeful has died or was never even given a chance to live. There may be anger that we didn't try harder or that they didn't either. There may be fear that we will always be alone or despair that it seems too hard to connect with others. Regardless of what comes up, we can choose to be present with all of our feelings, lying in the rubble of our shattered dreams, perhaps confused and not sure what to do next. There is nothing we have to ''do'' other than allow our feelings to move within and through us at their own pace and time.

We can honor the process by not needing to change or distract or distort or numb what is happening within us. And if we can stay with this process mindfully, eventually we will get to a place of acceptance and even understanding, where we can look back with gratitude at what was once a beautiful thing. We can honor the connection that allowed our spirit to soar and our loving presence to expand. We can review what we have learned from this journey and make notes about how we will do it differently the next time around.

Although we may initially be horrified at our losses, they aren't going to go away, ever. Nor would we want them to. Regular losses are essential throughout our life spans for all growth to occur. Every loss creates a space for something new to be born: a new hope, a new beginning, a new vision, a new opening to loving ourselves and others more deeply. It is only when we fully embrace a loss, that we can truly gain.