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There are some people who never do understand what the word 'relationship' even means, for their whole lives. They take and they take and expect the world and everyone to revolve around them and their needs, their hopes, their dreams and are just not capable of being in a relationship with others, let alone with themselves. Then there are those who are so damaged, that they simply aren't capable of having a decent relationship with anyone, let alone themselves. These days, this seems to be the case more and more and everyone has to be very careful in forming relationships for friendships, or for romance. This is terribly sad, but non-the-less true.
Your experience of close relationship will probably be extremely important in discovering WHO you are. In close relationship each partner can serve as a mirror to the other so that ego, games, and manipulations can be unveiled. If there is clarity of mind, willingness to learn, honesty, and compassion, relationship can help you sort out and let go of the plots and ploys you've learned and refined. Of course, without clarity, when ego is running the show, it's nearly impossible to learn quickly and change. Rather, there is a resistance to change that usually results in abuse and suffering. Frequently, divorce will not change the way people live and love. They will fall back into the same choices and patterns that destroyed their previous relationships. Counseling may or may not help depending on the level of awareness of the counselor and the degree to which the principals agree to be honest and ready to look at their own patterns and manipulations.
People often prefer to share their life with another for a variety of reasons. A frequently voiced reason is that they are looking for their other "half" as though another person will complete them, that the other will fill a void in them. This can be expressed in a "mathematical" expression: 1/2 x 1/2 = 1/4. Wholeness cannot come from two incomplete people joining in a partnership. Often the outcome is disastrous. Of course, if one is abusive and the other is committed to playing victim there will be a modicum of satisfaction in that they help each other play out their roles. If they get along well they still might not help each other move to clarity and wholeness. That's OK, too. There is no right or wrong. Just experience. Sooner or later they'll get the picture and change themselves and/or changes their partners.
One clue is if a person has had many marriages, or many marriages and relationships and none 'stuck'. If a person jumps from one to the next, to the next, then they clearly don't have the skills necessary to form and keep a long term partner. These things have to be considered as an important personality trait when one is getting involved or even thinking of getting involved with a new partner.
In his book "I Am" Michael Grinder states that all relationships are really about the relationship with yourself, while the journey seems to be outside, it is an inner one. I have observed that the older a person gets, the harder it is, because not so much that they are 'set in their ways', but they have spent many years forming their personalities, finding their likes and dislikes and are in their comfort zones. Most people are not as flexible as they get older and have a hard time even wanting to change, wanting others to just 'accept them as they are', even willing to live alone for the rest of their lives so they don't have to grow and adapt. As evidenced by all the singles sites, we have a whole huge generation of boomers and elders who have lost their loved ones through sickness or divorce and find there is an empty place beside them, they would like to fill.
A good relationship is a precious thing...to share, to treasure. However a bad one can lead us to sing some real sad country soungs. We just have to get to know ourselves much better, and then take our time to get to know the 'others'.....for a good one!
Relationship News
Hot off the heels of Valentine's Day, we're celebrating another kind of romance: Bromance.
It's a unique kind of relationship, or at least a new term becoming a part of the pop culture lexicon, and was even the subject of the 2009 comedy "I Love You, Man."
According to a new study conducted by Badoo, a social networking site for meeting new people, "nearly three out of four American men either currently have a bromance—a close platonic relationship with someone of the same sex—or have had one in the past."
Hollywood's Top 10 Greatest Bromances, 2/16/12
Adding a new chapter to the research that cemented the phrase “six degrees of separation” into the language, scientists at Facebook and the University of Milan reported on Monday that the average number of acquaintances separating any two people in the world was not six but 4.74.
Separating You and Me? 4.74 Degrees, 11/21/11
From an outsider's perspective, a man who can convince more than one woman to be married to him at any given time, clearly wears the trousers.
But a new documentary has revealed that it is actually the women instigating polygamous marriage in Mormon communities.
In the newest series of OWN's Our America, two 'sister wives', from Centennial Park, Arizona, describe how they chose their man, rather than the other way around.
How women are the driving force behind polygamous marriage, 10/14/11
I'm not into self-sacrifice or self-deprecation. I am not suggesting that you ignore or devalue your feelings. I am also not advocating changing your opinion or standards based on how other people respond. I am suggesting that we let go of the narcissistic pattern of defending our intentions and taking offense at others rather than figuring out how to communicate more effectively.
Try it. For the next few days assume that those with whom you are in long-term, mutually beneficial relationships hold a positive intention toward you. This doesn't mean you need to do what they say or bow down to them in any way. Just assume they hold positive intentions toward you in what they communicate. And, as you communicate with them, if they respond to you in less than desirable ways, don't defend yourself. Find a better way to communicate your intention so that their response matches. Simple.
A counter-intuitive strategy for long-term relationship success, 9/10/11
Jack doesn’t know it, but he’s just created what the Department of Education calls a “hostile environment” for women on his campus—a violation of Title IX for which his college could lose all federal funding. Should Diane press sexual assault charges against him with the school, he’ll be tried in a judicial hearing that fails to guarantee him the most basic American legal rights—the right to counsel, the right to confront his accuser, the right not to be convicted unless found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. He could well be expelled, and have a record that will hound him should he try to get into another school.
And here he thought it was his lucky night.
New Rules of College Sex, 8/29/11
Can you spot a good marriage? I was pretty sure I could, starting with my own. My husband and I rarely argued, we had similar careers, we shared common interests. Things weren't perfect, but we seemed to be humming along in harmony better than most other couples we knew. In fact, nobody was more surprised than we were when our 17-year marriage ended in a New Jersey divorce court.
It turns out, though, that the signs of trouble had been there all along, if only I'd known what to look for. Instead, I was judging my marriage by the wrong standards—which, I've since learned, most of us do. In one now-famous study, researchers asked therapists, married couples, and others to watch videotaped conversations of ten couples and try to identify the relationships that had ultimately ended in divorce. The results were abysmal—even the therapists guessed wrong half the time.
So how can you diagnose the health of your relationship? Armed with huge volumes of data on married couples, scientists have identified some simple but powerful indicators that can help couples recognize marital strife long before their relationship hits the skids.
Surprising Habits That Can Sink a Marriage, 8/2/11
The link between violence and hot weather is so intuitive that it’s embedded in our language: Hotheads lose tempers that flare, anger simmers and comes to a boil, and eventually we cool down. So what does science have to say? Do tempers truly soar with temperature? The answer, appropriately enough for these triple-digit days, is hazy and hotly contested.
Hazy Science of Hot Weather and Violence, 7/22/11
Humans are highly social animals and for many years, psychologists have observed a variety of both positive and negative effects resulting from a human tendency called "memory conformity."
When groups of people are exposed to a similar experience, their recollections of the experience, as well as their feeling and values related to the event, tend to reshape over time in order to conform to those of their peers.
Peer pressure causes people to literally alter their memories of recent events, 7/20/11
The key to being a charismatic gentleman is making others feel important. And what better way to make someone feel important than by remembering their name? Remembering someone’s name tells them that they were special enough to have made a real impression on you. And everybody wants to feel special. Thus there are few better, and easier, ways to build rapport then to answer, “You probably don’t remember my name,” with, “Of course I do!”
And saying someone’s name is a powerful persuasion tool. It makes people feel at ease and comfortable. Legendary success writer and Mr. Charisma himself, Dale Carnegie, once said that “a person’s name is to him or her the sweetest and most important sound in any language.”
How to Remember a Person’s Name (And What to Do When You Can’t), 6/15/11
He is head of the world's biggest family - and says he is 'blessed' to have his 39 wives. Ziona Chana also has 94 children, 14-daughters-in-law and 33 grandchildren. They live in a 100-room, four storey house set amidst the hills of Baktwang village in the Indian state of Mizoram, where the wives sleep in giant communal dormitories.
World's biggest family: The man with 39 wives, 94 children and 33 grandchildren, 2/19/11, 2/19/11
Bestselling author, political adviser and social and ethical prophet Jeremy Rifkin investigates the evolution of empathy and the profound ways that it has shaped our development and our society.
Normal human beings are naturally empathic. Human society however has been plagued throughout its history by the influence of psychopaths who, having attained to positions of power, exerted a nefarious and pathological influence on human thought, 'morality' and beliefs.
Jeremy Rifkin: Empathic Civilisation, 10/29/10
The human condition is family and tribe as an expression of the extended family. This item investigates the natural hard wired need for acceptance into a tribe. Family acceptance is a given, but stepping into the greater community by a rite of tribal acceptance is powerful.
This is expressed in many ways and it is been positively modified in the modern world. A city can be thought of as an assemblage of virtual communities and today, the internet is creating those virtual communities without the drag of geography. It will take a while for all this to work out.
This item is an excellent insight into the idea of tribe that needs to be embraced and well channeled, rather than allowed to emerge out of chaos as the idea of gang has.
Violence and the need for Tribalism, 9/28/10
Although women the world over have been doing it for centuries, we can't really blame a guy for being a guy. And this is especially true now that we know that the male and female brains have some profound differences.
Our brains are mostly alike. We are the same species, after all. But the differences can sometimes make it seem like we are worlds apart.
The "defend your turf" area -- dorsal premammillary nucleus -- is larger in the male brain and contains special circuits to detect territorial challenges by other males. And his amygdala, the alarm system for threats, fear and danger is also larger in men. These brain differences make men more alert than women to potential turf threats.
Meanwhile, the "I feel what you feel" part of the brain -- mirror-neuron system -- is larger and more active in the female brain. So women can naturally get in sync with others' emotions by reading facial expressions, interpreting tone of voice and other nonverbal emotional cues.
Perhaps the biggest difference between the male and female brain is that men have a sexual pursuit area that is 2.5 times larger than the one in the female brain. Not only that, but beginning in their teens, they produce 20 to 25-fold more testosterone than they did during pre-adolescence.
Love, sex and the male brain, 3/25/10
A leader needs the guts to stand alone and look ridiculous. But what he's doing is so simple, it's almost instructional. This is key. You must be easy to follow!
Leadership Lessons from Dancing Guy, 2/11/10
The wedding vows.... elegant, beautiful, solemn... but... every once in a while...
My Waffle Wedded Wife
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