10 Rules for Civilized Dialogue

Your ability to talk with your partner determines the level of the connection you have with each other. To save your marriage, you should be able to have a civilized dialogue.

When Gal and I were a young couple, we said we knew we would grow old together because we could talk for hours. We could talk about anything or nothing for hours and we loved every minute of it.

If you have been with the same partner for many years, you might think you know everything about them, but you probably don’t.

Why? Because people change. We change our thoughts and behaviors, and as hard as it is to believe, we even change the way we perceive our past.

Here are some rules that can strengthen and deepen your relationship and save your marriage…

This post is part 21 of 33 in the series Save Your Marriage

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10 Tips for Re-Building Trust

Trust is a very important ingredient in relationships and when it is broken, it is hard to mend. In all the years I have been coaching couples, the most challenging were those whose trust has been broken.

My mom used to tell me, “It takes a long time to milk a cow but seconds to spill the milk in the bucket”. Trust is just the same. It takes a long time to build and seconds to destroy. My first suggestion for all you couple is to guard their trust at all costs because it is one of the hardest things to fix.

Trust is built on honesty and telling the truth. In every marriage, there is an agreement to be truthful. As soon as one person lies, even once, it is like forming a tiny crack in the milk buckets which slowly lets out all the milk.

This post is part 22 of 33 in the series Save Your Marriage

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The King and His Servants

Being in a marriage or a close relationship is the secret to a long life. But it requires effort. If you want to save your marriage, it helps to learn about communication.

On our wedding days and during our honeymoon periods, we tend to be very accepting and flexible. Communication flows, even if we say nothing at all. It is the life that begins later, which tests the strength of our relationship. Slowly, day after day, the conversations, experiences together, arguments and stress create holes in our communication.

This can lead to the destruction of the relationship. In a happy relationship, time is a healer. In an unhappy relationship, time is a prison.

Some researchers claim they can listen to a married couple’s conversation and predict the success of their relationship about 90% of the time. 90%! That is a lot! With the couples that come to do my relationship coaching program, I can often tell from the way they talk to each other or about each other if their relationship is still as sweet as honey or whether they are feeling the bitter taste of separation.

This post is part 23 of 33 in the series Save Your Marriage

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The Nitpicker

In the last chapter of save your marriage, I explained how a “king/queen” mentality can impact even the most wonderful of relationships. Over time, kings only strengthen their position of feeling superior, which can drive any “servant” out of the relationship.

In this chapter, I will talk about the king’s cousin, the nitpicker.

In a similar way to the king who adopts his mentality from his upbringing, the nitpicker adopts his habits from his parents. Growing up with a parent who is a nitpicker starts a pattern that children carry on into adulthood. Depending on their emotional state, kids will choose to either adopt or totally reject this mentality. They will either be like their parents or avoid their company and adopt a completely new way to communicate. This is not a conscious decision. Most people are not even aware that they do it. That is why external help is necessary if you want to change from a nitpicking communicating style.

This post is part 24 of 33 in the series Save Your Marriage

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Expressing Feelings in a Marriage

Expressing feelings in a relationship is very important. Feelings are at the heart of every marriage. We get married because we love and have strong and positive feelings towards someone, and we choose to spend our lives and have children with him or her.

As long as we express those happy and wonderful feelings towards our partners, the more happy our relationship with them will be. Problems start when we express those not-so-happy feelings and this can easily get out of control.

Many of my relationship-coaching clients confuse between thoughts and feelings. They learned that expressing feelings was important so they added the phrase “I feel” into their communication. Unfortunately, instead of expressing feelings, they disguised thoughts as feelings.

Imagine your communication with your partner as a ball game. You can throw the ball in a way that your partner will catch or you can throw the ball in a way that will probably hurt them. One of these is called communication and is a constructive way to create a happy marriage. The other is called “the blame game” or painful communication and it contributes to struggles in a marriage. No one wants to play a ball game if they need to protect themselves from getting hurt.

This post is part 25 of 33 in the series Save Your Marriage

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Don’t Be On Guard

In the last chapters of “Save Your Marriage”, I explained how some parenting styles can “breed” kids who clam up and withdraw into their shells. This communication style can be very devastating for them in their future relationships and marriage. In this chapter of the series, I will explain how parents who abuse or bully, like the “king/queen” or the nitpicker, can raise kids who are constantly on guard. These kids try to protect themselves from pain and heartache and by that, they invite bullies and conflicts into their lives.

Growing up in a household where you feel constantly attacked and ridiculed, where one or both of your parents make you feel small and helpless, where you have no support and protection, where one or both of your parents nitpick, criticize, complain, are never satisfied and often angry, can make children alert and hypersensitive to any small signs that someone is going to hurt them.

This is actually a very natural reaction, in an attempt to protect themselves. But when taken into adulthood, into relationships or marriage, it can be very damaging. There is a phrase, the best defense is offense. These kids adopt this philosophy because they were attacked a lot. As a result, they sometimes see an attack when there is none. They are very sensitive to criticism and their emotional state is “I am not OK, You’re not OK” (see series I’m OK, You’re OK Parenting for tips on emotional intelligence).

This post is part 26 of 33 in the series Save Your Marriage

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Don’t Clam Up

In previous chapters of the “Save your Marriage” series I explained the two communication patterns that can destroy every marriage: The king/queen and the nitpicker. As I said before, no one becomes a “king” or a “nitpicker” because they enjoy it. Most of the time, they do it on a subconscious level, because they grew up in a house where one or both parents were kings or nitpickers and made them feel small and helpless.

In the last chapters, I explained how parents who abuse or bully, like the “king/queen” or the “nitpicker”, can raise kids who are constantly on guard. In this chapter, I will explain how some parenting styles can “breed” kids who clam up and withdraw into their shells. This communication style can be very devastating for them in their future relationships and marriage.

This post is part 27 of 33 in the series Save Your Marriage

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Have Good Sex to Save Your Marriage

Sex is one of the top three reasons why couples divorce. That means that it is highly important to work on improving your sex life. Of course, good sex goes hand in hand with good communication, trust, respect and working on keeping the relationship alive.

Attitude to sex is something many couples need to work on. In our growing life, there is not enough education about the importance of sex for health and wellbeing. It is a very sensitive topic that most people are left to learn from experience, friends or even the World Wide Web through porn movies (which unfortunately present a very unhealthy picture of the importance of sex and how to enjoy it).

Many of the clients I see who are separated or considering divorce report that sex was a major issue in their relationship. Not enough, not satisfying or enjoyable, too much, too little, too fast, too slow, only when drunk, feels like a chore, they feel their partner does not deserve it, no romance, not sexy. Every one of these is sad and painful for both parties.

This post is part 28 of 33 in the series Save Your Marriage

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Trust (or The Boy Who Cried Wolf)

Trust is a very important currency in marriage. It gives both partners a sense of certainty in the relationship, which helps it survive and remain strong. Certainty is a need we all have in life. Subconsciously, we would be willing to do a lot in order to have it met. When our sense of certainty is a bit shaky, we get anxious. This can be a killer in a relationship.

If you know the story of the boy who cried wolf, you understand why trust is so valuable. In the story, they boy would run to the village to beg the townspeople to help him. A wolf was chasing his sheep. The villagers rushed to help, only to discover that there was no wolf and the boy had lied. A week later, the boy did it again, and again, and again. The villagers came once, twice and even three time, and each time, there was no wolf. Until one day, the boy came running in a real panic, begging for help. A wolf was really chasing his sheep this time. But the villagers did not believe him. He had lied to them too many times. And the boy could only watch in horror as the wolf ate his sheep.

This post is part 29 of 33 in the series Save Your Marriage

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Emergency Relationship Coaching Essentials

I have seen many couples who are in pain in their relationship. Many of them come for relationship coaching when they can no longer stand the pain. I have been in a relationship with my boyfriend/partner/father-of-my-children for 35 years and I have learned over time that couples can love each other very much but still be in this pain.

It is easy to take each other or the relationship for granted. The investment of energy we put into the beginning of this relationship (the chase) cannot continue with the same passion and effort forever, so we all ease the pressure of the hunt, which is natural and more sustainable, and sometimes we ease it too much.

The good news is that getting help is much better than not. Every year, I have more couples coming for relationship coaching. Every year, we hear about another couple we knew from our travels around the world who separated or divorced. Every year, our kids tell us about more friends whose parents divorced, and every year, another couple from our community is in some crisis and considering divorce.

Those people didn’t get help. At least not on time to sale their marriage. Do you know the phrase “seek and you shall find”? If they asked for help, they would have found it.

Those who did come for relationship coaching look for help because they still love each other and want their marriage to work. When both of them come with the desire to make their marriage work, it will work. Why? Because whether you think you can or think you can’t, you are always right, and they think they can.

Many of them search for quick fix and want to leave the session feeling fully in-love and without hurts and hard feelings, which never happens in the first session, though they leave with big hope because I give them emergency tools to manage the communication while allowing the pain to dissolve.

This post is part 30 of 33 in the series Save Your Marriage

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