Have you ever felt more relaxed when listening to music? Have you ever listened to music that instantaneously brought up strong feelings or brought you back to a special time from the past? Have you ever felt a sense of inner strength or peace when listening to music? Have you ever sung a lullaby to help comfort a crying baby or sung the alphabet song to a young child who is just learning the alphabet?
Picture this - you're out for lunch together, you and your loved one, on a date. But every time you begin to talk, his phone rings, or yours does. You both feel it's important to at least check who is calling. It may be work, or a friend in need. By the time lunch is over, you've both spent more time responding to others than to each other.
Often when couples are grappling with ongoing problems that don't seem easy to resolve, arguments can get going at home, and it's hard to avoid these happening out of earshot of the children. Even when we think they're unaware or unaffected, it can be a shock to discover that they have witnessed our angry outbursts, and may start to either act out or become depressed/anxious in response.
Who says marriage is where desire goes to die? We can't quite bring ourselves to believe that passion can thrive on modern love—because our sexual imagination is stuck in the past.
Conflict in relationships is never easy. Many of us would like to have a relationship free of conflict, at least most of the time.
However, conflict is not only impossible to avoid, but can be healthy in a relationship. Done skillfully and with awareness of what buttons are being pushed for yourself and your partner, conflict can take couples into new territory that promotes personal growth as well as enhancing intimacy together.
One of the most painful things to witness - as a counsellor working with distressed couples - is where one person, having tried every way they can to let their partner know that their needs are not being met, becomes stuck in communicating this in an angry and critical way. Their partner then defends themselves against this perceived attack, and the distressed person is then left feeling even more desparate and unheard, and that their needs are not important to their loved one.
Grief is an inevitable part of living - it's pretty much impossible to avoid losing someone close to us at some point.
Some forms of grieving are less obvious, and we may not even realized we are experiencing an emotional response to a loss.
Examples of this might be:-
One partner has had a serious illness
You have a child with a disability
A partner may have responded to stressful life events in a way that might feel like they are no longer the person we first fell in love with, s/he has changed in subtle and/or profound ways.
In long-term relationships, we often expect our beloved to be both best friend and erotic partner. But as Esther Perel argues, good and committed sex draws on two conflicting needs: our need for security and our need for surprise. So how do you sustain desire? With wit and eloquence, Perel lets us in on the mystery of erotic intelligence.
"Renovate Your Relationship" is an easy-to-read, accessible guide for men about how to navigate their way through what can be the very confusing territory of intimate relationships. It uses a 'toolkit' format to give clear intructions about the things to think about, how to do them, what to avoid, and where you may need to get extra help from a counsellor or other professional person.
Produced by Relationships Australia and Mensline, this is a great resource which could well be a 'must read' for any man wanting to make his most important relationship the best it can be.
