Discernment Therapy and Relationship Rescue Therapy
(Part II) Therapy to determine whether to Stay or Go :
Discovering Why Your Partner Wants Out of the Relationship This is taken from my Relationship Rescue Manual
This next exercise will help you identify why your spouse does not want to stay in the relationship. Before starting, it will help to understand that there are eight basic negative behaviors that experts believe destroy relationships:
1. Criticism – Relationships thrive on acceptance and approval. A spouse who feels like she can’t do anything right will eventually just stop trying.
2. Contempt – Love and positive feelings are severely injured when one partner believes that the other is being patronizing and disrespectful.
3. Overly demanding – No one likes to be bossed around. After a period of time the demands just get to be too much.
4. Focusing on factors other than your partner – This often happens when one spouse becomes so involved with the children or work that there is no time for each other. The hurt partner’s thinking may go like this: “If you care about/ love me why don’t you want to be with me?”
5. Non responsiveness – When one partner feels that the other isn’t listening or doesn’t care, the fabric of the relationship begins to wear and tear.
6. Being smothered – The other side of non- responsiveness is not having any personal space.
7 Addictions – If one partner is addicted to the internet, alcohol, drugs, etc., the other
partner feels neglected and a distant second choice to the addiction.
8. Grudges (Emotional Wounds) – Specific incident(s) that have occurred in the past
that have never been healed / resolved.
9. Relationship with in-laws that is contentious.
What we do in Relationship Rescue Counseling *
- Identify the problems that the relationship has been dealing with.
- Begin a dialog with the couple.
- The couple vents and presents their point of view
- The couple learns how to communicate their perspective so their partner can hear another perspective
- Couples learn to heal old wounds
- Couples learn to deal with their anger constructively
- Couples learn to negotiate and problem solve.
Relationships can be saved but it takes patience and work
*Couples may find my: Relationship Rescue Manual, and my”Negotiation for Couples’ of help as much of what we will be covering will be in these books. The books will serve a re enforcer and an in depth description of much of the material we will be covering in counseling . These books may be purchased on the site.