Why must relationships be so difficult?

You meet someone... and suddenly you find yourself walking on air, writing bad poetry, and singing off key. You just can't stay away from that person... Your feet just follow her/him everywhere. This extremely handsome/gorgeous stranger begins to take up 24-hour residence in your head. You date. Finally, your dreams come true. You move in together and become partners--joint conspirators--in the creation of the life of which you've both always dreamed. Maybe you marry... or not. Either way, you feel like the luckiest people on earth. Everything is solved. And then, suddenly... or gradually... and much to your shock and dismay, the arguing and fighting begin. Or, perhaps worse, neither of you says a word... for days. You feel horrible. You wonder about what cruel jokester tricked you into falling in love with Voldemort (modern version of Darth Vader) or Bellatrix Lestrange (modern version of the Wicked Witch). This is not the person with whom you fell in love! Were you drunk at the time? Could you have been drunk for several months? Somebody clearly pulled the wool over your eyes. How rude.

Do you stay and fight it out, hoping to win? Hoping that your partner will finally come to her/his senses and, with lightening bold clarity, suddenly grock your point (which, of course, is The Only True and Reasonable Point)? Maybe you call an experienced helping professional to see if s/he can talk some sense into your (formerly) beloved. Perhaps this is just a phase... rather like a bad cold or the "terrible twos." One can hope. But still you suffer. You think about how unfair it is that such a nice person as yourself should be living with the devil incarnate. Your friends all agree with you. And you de-link, unfriend, and cut off all tweets to any who don't.

WHY do relationships have to be this hard?! Well, I think they're hard for a number of reasons. One reason is habituation, or a gradual numbing to the good stuff, so that we come to take each other for granted. A second reason is a hard-wired tendency to orient to the negative. A third reason is our lack of training for and awkwardness with conflict. Fourth... and this is a stretch, I realize... the purpose of life is growth and relationship conflicts afford us that "opportunity." Sweet.

My next four blog posts will focus on these four areas of difficulty, and the two groups I'm offering for this Fall are geared toward mitigating these four relationship challenges:

Assertive Communication Skills training is different now than it was in the 1980s. Then, it was more about learning to have a voice and to defend oneself. Now, it's more about how to say things in such a way that you prevent habituation, how to express negatives and set boundaries softly and gracefully (and effectively, of course), and how to stay open to your partner's needs and accept influence without being a pushover or a doormat and without losing yourself.

Meeting Your Selves: Voice Dialogue, Psychology of Selves & Aware Ego is geared toward exploring the way in which we might meet relationship conflict differently--seeing it as a gift rather than a disaster. In Voice Dialogue we can come to be more curious about what's going on and what it holds for us than we are offended by it. We can view and use conflicts in our relationships as adventures... opportunities to become more conscious of the range of "selves"--or attitudes, feelings, and behaviors--within us than we have ever been before.

© Nancy Young 2010

Hello and Welcome!

When I sent my web designer 7 pages for the Recommended Resources part of our site, she kindly explained that "all of that" was absolutely not going to go on our web site... and that my love affair with everything-but-the-kitchen-sink was being banished to a BLOG. Alas, the "blog thing" frightened me. That was a little over 18 months ago. I'm slow, but eventually reliable.

Technology seeks me. I do love email and I've begun a relatively recent love affair with texting. But, in my world, other social networking feels a little overwhelming. Even a seemingly easy thing like Facebook is a big challenge. I probably open my Facebook page once a month. I always struggle to find where, on the page, it lists my "Friends." If you noticed that I have a Farm... or now, I'm told, a Fish tank... Stephenie has run out of things to play with on her page and has co-opted mine. It doesn't bother me except that now all my "Friends" think I am wiling away my hours building imaginary animal real estate. Stephenie can do these things on the computer while she watches TV. Me? I don't have that capability. I'm either STARING at Royal Pains, Bones, Castle, White Collar, So You Think You Can Dance, or some such show or I am STARING at the computer, fully concentrating on whatever is on THAT. Sadly, my brain only goes in ONE direction at a time these days.

I do make an effort to modernize, though, and am proud to have joined Twitter and Linked-In (not that I have the foggiest idea what to do with either of them). People keep sending me requests for us to be "Linked" on Linked-In and I usually just say "Sure," though I have no idea why. That's about the only time I see that page. I just don't really know what it's for exactly. Maybe it's for business or for looking for a job. And I already have a job. Twitter? Well, I joined that when somebody on Facebook suggested everyone join it and put their location as somewhere in the Middle East to protect the friendly rebel forces from being located by the bad guys. I signed myself up there and then freaked out that I'd be put on some government list, so I changed my location to the real one and signed my deceased husband up in the Middle East. I thought he'd like that. Needless to say, he is not doing any "Tweeting" of which I'm aware, though I'm sure he would enjoy it. I've forgotten the password I gave him so I can't really check.

© Nancy Young 2010