Category: Family
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Set Limits to Reduce Holiday Stress and Enjoy the Season
Holiday stress may feel like an unavoidable force that you have no control over. However, that is false. Setting boundaries, knowing your emotional, physical, and financial limits can result in a calmer and ultimately more enjoyable holiday season. One of the saddest parts of the joyous holiday season is many people become so busy and…
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Why Letting Go of Perfection Can Lead to Happier Relationships
In relationships, no situation and no one person is perfect. This means we all ‘settle’ for less than our ideal fantasy of a person and circumstance. ‘Settling’ does not mean sacrificing our primary wants and needs. What it does mean is letting go of getting everything on your ‘checklist’ and realizing you don’t need everything…
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How to Cope with Missing Someone After a Relationship Ends
What does missing someone feel like? What does it say about the attachment you had when you miss someone? How to stop missing a friend, family member, or lover if the relationship is over? Missing someone indicates you experienced an emotional attachment that had deep significance for you. We miss people with whom we built…
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How Music Helps Couples Communicate Feelings and Needs
Music is a form of communication between couples that can express and clarify feelings, wants, and needs. It is difficult for some people to find the words or say the words that create vulnerability and intimacy. The fear of rejection or feeling embarrassed can be a deterrent to opening up to a partner. The right…
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When Communication Fails, Trust and Love Are Tested
When communication breaks down, so does trust. When someone you’ve been close to shuts down or completely breaks off communication, it is tempting to decide you no longer care about them and that they are unworthy of your trust and love. Then, unexpectedly, they will do or say something that opens you up to re-engage…
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Can You Be Friends with an Ex? Benefits and Challenges
Becoming friends with an ex-lover is possible for some, but not for all couples. Deciding how much time is needed to heal from a break-up, what the benefits are to creating a friendship, and assessing the possible downsides are important issues to consider. If a relationship starts out as a friendship before becoming romantic, the…
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Why Financial Betrayals Hurt More Than Sexual Ones
Financial betrayals may be more difficult for married couples to recover from than sexual betrayals. How or “if” someone recovers from any kind of betrayal depends a lot on one’s personality, prior experience with trauma, abandonment, or abuse, level of their self-esteem, and how much in love and happy they were with their partner…
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Breaking Up or Compromising: Can Love Be Saved?
Breaking Up With Someone You Love Is Painful. What Reasons Justify Doing It? Or Are There Ways Of Keeping A Love Connection By Making Compromises Or Deciding On Non- Traditional Scenarios. Romantic love is a powerful, intoxicating, exciting feeling of being deeply connected to someone physically and emotionally. Being in love makes your mind and…
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Trust: Building It Slowly and Recovering After It’s Broken
Healthy trust builds over time through a series of kept promises. Trusting someone too soon is emotionally risky and is based on a desperate need to connect. Being unwilling to regain trust that has been lost can be just as self-sabotaging. Many people eager for a relationship make the mistake of deciding a person is…
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How Childhood Trauma Builds Emotional Resilience
Emotional resilience is one result from growing up in an alcoholic or other type of dysfunctional family system. Those who suffer trauma early in life are often better prepared to cope with stress and crises later in life than those who grew up in healthy, stable home environments. Growing up in an alcoholic family, frightening,…