Anger is a poison in our relationship when it is misunderstood and unleashed. It gets in the way of understanding, connectedness, intimacy, love, and satisfaction in our relationship. Anger in its explosive or simmering manifestation, is a sign that something is wrong when it is prevalent. This indicates that there is pain and dysfunction in the relationship and that something needs to change.
I do not consider Anger a real emotion. I look at Anger as more of a temporary (or more permanent for some) state of being. The angry state is a reaction that covers more sensitive feelings. It is a protection for our vulnerability. When we feel angry, we actually have other more vulnerability inducing feelings underneath such as feeling hurt, insignificant, dismissed, lonely, hopeless, invisible, smothered and abandoned.
To deal with the anger in our relationship, we first need to start noticing the anger coming on before we act angry – whether it is withdrawing or yelling and throwing stuff around. Some tale signs that we are about to act angry are getting a knot in the stomach, sweating, feeling our heart beat faster, and getting flushed. Start paying attention to how the anger feels in your body.
Once you are aware that you are feeling angry and are about to start acting out your anger, you can take a second to identify what are the sensitive feelings underneath the anger. It is a bit difficult for some to identify their more vulnerability inducing feelings. If you need assistance with this, I have a huge list of emotions on the site, that you may use to assist you.
Choose the sensitive feelings that are related to your anger, don’t get stuck at the superficial level and identifying other reactionary feelings (i.e., frustration, exasperation, rage, etc.). If you allow yourself to go deeper, you will be surprised to discover more tender feelings.
Now that you know what you are really feeling, you need to identify what triggered those feelings. This is where your partner plays their role. Partners are a good source of triggers. They just have it in them to get under our skin.
In our interactions with our partner, we perceive the situation, we interpret such situation and we think on it. This is what creates the anger and the other deeper feelings. The reason for this is that thoughts create emotions. Think about this. How you think about something creates how you feel about it.
When you perceive your partner as selfish, self-involved, non-caring, or like they don’t care or are taking advantage of you or your situation, you are going to feel angry and upon further exploration you’ll realize that you are actually feeling unimportant, abandoned, abused, stepped on, etc.
Being able to recognize how you are thinking about something and identify the related sensitive feelings is huge. This gives you good positioning for healing and creating changes in your relationship. One way to accomplish this is that in knowing how you are looking at something you can choose to look at it from a different perspective, which leads to feeling differently.
Another way is that by having identified sensitive feelings you can interpret your needs and work on getting them met. Wow!!
This handy-dandy concept works wonders when addressing anger management, AND other issues, in relationships as both partners can benefit from better understanding their feelings and triggers. This creates a fertile ground for making changes and getting needs met.
Say goodbye to the anger and start having your needs met and enjoying the relationship you crave!!
Happy Anger Managing!!!
~ Your MetroRelationship ™ Assignment
Take inventory of how you feel when your partner gets under your skin. Search for the sensitive feelings (dismissed, unloved, ignored, suffocated, threatened, belittled, undermined, abandoned, etc.). Share with your partner how their specific behavior makes you feel these and ask for a specific behavior change that would resolve your complaint.
Copyright (c) 2016 Emma K. Viglucci. All rights reserved.
Want to Use this Article in Your Own Website or Publication?
Be our guest! Here is how, you MUST include: Emma K. Viglucci, LMFT is the Founder and Director of Metropolitan Marriage & Family Therapy, PLLC, a private practice that specializes in working with couples, she is the creator of the MetroRelationship™ philosophy and a variety of Successful Couple™ content that assist couples succeed at their relationship and their life. Stay Connected™ with Emma and receive weekly Connection Notes in your inbox with Personal Growth and Relationship Enrichment insights and strategies, visit: www.metrorelationship.com.
Most relationships have to endure a history of trauma experienced by one or both partners and a current trauma(s).
Traumas include abandonment, neglect, abuse, rejection, control, accidents, assaults/attacks, catastrophes, infidelity, infertility, loss, relocation, birthing and becoming parents, substance abuse, chronic illness, eating disorders, depression, extreme emotionality, obsessions, PTSD, unemployment, disability. Some of these are symptoms of a past trauma, but when experienced in the present they create a current trauma to the relationship.
As partners experience their relationship and each other, they are affected by what is going on with each other. Partner’s personality, coping, expectations, visions, perceptions, needs who they are as people is largely composed and influenced by their history, and current context. Therefore, what each brings to the table has an impact on the nature of the relationship and therefore on the satisfaction quotient of the relationship.
When partners have unresolved past traumas, not only do these influence who they are as people and what they bring to the relationship, but they are bound to be symptomatic. These two factors are major sources of stress, tension, friction, and conflict in relationships.
Partners with unresolved traumas are easily triggered and not fully present in their life and relationship. They also have a host of symptoms and additional stressors that manifest as a result. The current relationship keeps getting hit.
These are the couples that appear to walk around with a black cloud over their head when anything happens to them. They go from one problem to the next, from one crisis to another. The reason for this is that their inherent make-up, coping and relating are crooked attracting negativity and creating situations that are more of the same. They are in a negative cycle that is difficult to break away from.
When one of the partners is the one that is the most symptomatic, it doesn’t mean that the other partner is any less traumatized. It takes two individuals to have a relationship however that relationship turns out. Here the saying, It takes one to know one, fits well. Partners collude with each other to create their reality and their current context.
When one partner is having a real difficult time and appears to be carrying the brunt of symptoms (is less well functioning), this is a sign of unresolved past traumas and a sign for the need to have things change in the current relationship so that it is healing. Remember, our current relationship is a venue to our healing past wounds and becoming whole.
If one or both partners are not doing well, they are not utilizing the relationship well to serve its purpose.
Here is the opportunity to do something different. The signs are there it is time for a change!!
Happy Changing!!!
~ Your MetroRelationship ™ Assignment
Plan a Talking Date where you each get to share how you are doing and how you’ve been. Together determine what your traumas were and how they are traumatizing your relationship today. Employ acceptance and caring in your discussion. Please don’t use blame or criticism.
Create a safe environment to bring forth areas that might need some looking into. Then, make a commitment to make specific and concrete changes to address and heal your traumas.
Copyright (c) 2016 Emma K. Viglucci. All rights reserved.
Want to Use this Article in Your Own Website or Publication?
Be our guest! Here is how, you MUST include: Emma K. Viglucci, LMFT is the Founder and Director of Metropolitan Marriage & Family Therapy, PLLC, a private practice that specializes in working with couples, she is the creator of the MetroRelationship™ philosophy and a variety of Successful Couple™ content that assist couples succeed at their relationship and their life. Stay Connected™ with Emma and receive weekly Connection Notes in your inbox with Personal Growth and Relationship Enrichment insights and strategies, visit: www.metrorelationship.com.
I often find that couples hold a fairy tale expectation of happily ever after, for which I chide them. I dismiss this notion not because it seems unrealistic, but because couples go about creating their fairy tale all wrong. For you see, “happy endings” are possible… This is called unconditional Love…
I used to think unconditional love in and of itself was unrealistic, but boy was I wrong! I myself, bought into the self-preservation approach to love. That being in a committed relationship and loving someone had to look a certain way, my way…
And, since I’m the Relationship Expert, I knew best! (my poor husband…). Talk about being egocentric… Can you imagine living with a know-it-all, always right, “their s***t don’t stink” person? I’m sure you can…
The moment I “detached” from outcomes, let go of my way, and “freed” my husband to be himself, is when everything changed… I actually beheld my husband for the first time in many years… I know that leap of faith, letting go of control, and trusting that you’d be OK is nauseatingly scary. It is also painful.
As you let go of preconceived notions, “attachments”, and your usual way of being it feels at first like a loss and like your world is upside down… This is the worst of it (taming your ego…) and I know you can get through it… The rest is magical (embracing your and your partner’s Authentic Selves)…
Please understand that true and unconditional love creates freedom, the flame that fuels healing, growth, change, creativity, self-expression, aliveness and joy. This is the Key to our Authentic Self. When we hold dear conditional love, what I call the self-preservation approach to love, we snuff out the flame. Conditional love flows from egocentrism and separatism, fear.
When we have conditions that need to be met, we are saying, “I’m afraid that __________”. This is a restrictive way of being and loving to “make sure” we get what we want, when in actuality this prevents our partner from being and giving from their awesomest self… We are cheating ourselves of something better that actually meets our needs even better!
Conditions are stifling. When we set conditions and parameters we truncate the opportunity for growth and change. We resist change, we resist something different, we resist our partner’s ways, and what we resist persists (a universal law…). Conditional love is your love of love, not love of your partner… Built into conditional love is the fear that your needs won’t be met and you won’t be OK.
But you invariably are guarantying this by restricting your partner from fully showing up for you! Conditional love does not allow for expansion, inclusiveness, connection, and Authenticity.
Conditionality restricts freedom and happiness as we are tied to conditions and outcomes… It eliminates our ability to choose how to show up, Be our best Self, and be Happy at any given moment. You are doing yourself and your relationship a huge disservice by holding on to your fairy tale conditional self-preservation and rescuing approach to love.
You are actually setting up your relationship to fail right off the gate. “Happy endings” are guaranteed only when there is a freedom and unconditional (accepting and compassionate) approach to Love. Take your risk now – accept, detach, and let go!
Happy Unconditional Loving!
~ Your MetroRelationship ™ Assignment
Think about the “conditions” you hold your partner to in your relationship. Think about how these can be restrictive to them. How do they limit your partner from embracing their Authentic Self, for your sake…? Note how at the end of the day, neither of you is satisfied… Decide to let go of this “condition” and inform your partner of how you are “freeing” them of this condition (no strings attached please!).
This is an act of Love, a Gift (to both of you!)…
Accept, Detach, and Let Go!
Add this to your Tool Kit…
Copyright (c) 2016 Emma K. Viglucci. All rights reserved.
Want to Use this Article in Your Own Website or Publication?
Be our guest! Here is how, you MUST include: Emma K. Viglucci, LMFT is the Founder and Director of Metropolitan Marriage & Family Therapy, PLLC, a private practice that specializes in working with couples, she is the creator of the MetroRelationship™ philosophy and a variety of Successful Couple™ content that assist couples succeed at their relationship and their life. Stay Connected™ with Emma and receive weekly Connection Notes in your inbox with Personal Growth and Relationship Enrichment insights and strategies, visit: www.metrorelationship.com.
Being parented by imperfect parents/caregivers is considered a traumatic experience of childhood in some of the trauma and attachment literature and information I have come across. This includes being abused, abandoned and/or neglected to various degrees.
When trauma is defined in this fashion, it follows that most of us experienced traumatizing childhoods to some extent, and therefore were wounded rowing up. This has all kinds of implications for intimate relationships. Please note that I’m not a trauma or attachment expert, I’m simply integrating some additional concepts into my relationships working knowledge.
In very basic and crude terms, when we grow up in an environment where caregivers are not appropriately and consistently available to us, we learn to fend for ourselves for our emotional and sometimes physical survival and wellbeing. This does not give us a chance to develop the secure base necessary for our healthy development.
Instead, we develop coping, defense, mechanisms that allow us to do the best we can. The result is that our developmental tasks are barely accomplished and so continue our development with limited emotional resources.
To make up for this deficiency and manage our life as we become adults and involved in significant relationships, we continue using our defense mechanisms making them more sophisticated overtime. These can pick up any form: super-achieving, perfectionism, obsessions, compulsions, addictions, depression, anxiety, panic-attacks, and other forms of being over or under involved in our relationship.
This is great news in that we can have a better understanding of why we have some afflictions and how we can get stuck in dissatisfying relating in our relationship. According to relational and other theories, we would pick a partner with whom we can recreate the hurts from childhood.
Some of the reasons we do this are because 1) it is familiar territory so it feels more comfortable than the unknown, 2) to get now from the interactions what we couldn’t get then, and 3) to complete developmental tasks becoming healthier adults.
How do we use this information on our daily interactions? One way to start the healing process is to hold our own from a non-reactive place. When we react to something, become angry or upset, it is a sign that we have been triggered, that our boundaries have been compromised, that we are being hurt in some (old) way.
Therefore, it is our job to identify how we are hurt or how our needs are not being met, and to figure out how to meet them without trampling on someone else.
When we do this, we start to find ourselves, heal ourselves, complete our developmental tasks, develop healthy coping mechanisms, meet our needs, be present for our partner, and accept our partner’s love and nurturing!
Wow! Figure out those hurts and start feeling the love!
Happy Un-Wounding!!!
~ Your MetroRelationship ™ Assignment
Going back to growing up, identify how you were hurt or disappointed by your caregivers. Remember, we were all hurt to some extent. Identify and capture the flavor of the wound that was caused and name the feelings associated with it. Now find similar feelings in the present, in your current relationship. What is your partner’s behavior that engenders these feelings his is how you are triggered.
Translate these feelings into needs.
Create a list of very concrete and specific behaviors that you and/or your partner can do to meet these needs.
Finally, create a plan on how to have these needs met: schedule things in your calendar, hire services, ask your partner for concrete behavior changes or nurturing gifts.
Do this from a non-reactive stance. Keep your cool. Be respectful of your partner’s needs. You don’t have to agree but learn to accept and love each other for who you are.
NOTE: this might be intense work or create ripple effects in your relationship/life that might feel frightening. You don’t have to do this alone, get professional assistance if you feel you are on shaky grounds.
Copyright (c) 2016 Emma K. Viglucci. All rights reserved.
Want to Use this Article in Your Own Website or Publication?
Be our guest! Here is how, you MUST include: Emma K. Viglucci, LMFT is the Founder and Director of Metropolitan Marriage & Family Therapy, PLLC, a private practice that specializes in working with couples, she is the creator of the MetroRelationship™ philosophy and a variety of Successful Couple™ content that assist couples succeed at their relationship and their life. Stay Connected™ with Emma and receive weekly Connection Notes in your inbox with Personal Growth and Relationship Enrichment insights and strategies, visit: www.metrorelationship.com.
What is an affair? What constitutes cheating? Infidelity? These are very personal definitions. Most people have their own version of what constitutes what. Here is a definition I have adapted from experts in the field that works well: An affair involves one of the partner’s passion being directed at someone or something other than their partner that often includes secrecy.
Affairs/cheating can include making-out with or kissing someone at a club, one-night-stands or flings, cyber sex, or behaviors for getting sexual gratification. They can also include devotion to cars, work, projects, children, etc. If the activity keeps one partner from fully engaging and being available to the other, then the activity can be considered an affair.
For the purpose of this article, the focus is on affairs that involve one of the partners going outside their relationship for sexual and/or emotional intimate gratification with another person(s).
The affair is not the problem in the relationship, but a symptom in the relationship. Affairs happen for a reason. Even if you thought your relationship was great until the affair was discovered, there was still something in your relationship dynamic that allowed for the affair to take place.
Affairs are discovered in many different ways and can be addressed once they are acknowledged. It is more difficult to do any repair and healing work until this happens. Very often one of the partners has a gut feeling their partner is cheating to have the other stubbornly deny it.
This leaves the suspicious partner very disgruntled, confused, insecure, and with a host of other not so pretty feelings. In my own experience and from literature, it is believed that when a partner has this gut feeling it is usually true.
**A note of caution: sometimes because partners have been wronged this way or have experienced other forms of betrayal, they are unreasonably suspicious. It is therefore unfair to say that if there is a gut feeling their partner is cheating for sure.
The suspicious partner’s reality is tentative and questionable if their instincts are denied. If they believe, and can a lot of times prove something, but their reality continues to be denied, they are left with a world that doesn’t make sense. Things don’t add up and the relating with their partner is off, and yet they can’t put their finger on it.
As a result they go on a quest to prove and make sense of things, becoming detectives, nags, interrogators, etc. This situation is not healthy to any of the parties involved, Both parties can’t get their needs met and are not satisfied in their relationship.
When there is a suspicion and/or the relationship is not working, it is better to come clean so some real work can be done. It is risky business disclosing affairs as the partner who went out of the relationship has to face consequences and related fears. My thoughts are that if one wants a genuine and satisfying relationship, works needs to be done and it can’t happen when there are secrets and exits in the relationship.
What’s the point of continuing a dissatisfying situation? It might get pretty heated and ugly in the face of a disclosure, but in the long run, whether one creates a satisfying relationship with their partner or moves on, they are taking charge of their life and meeting their needs.
Once the affair is admitted or disclosed, the offending partner needs to be prepared for the other partner’s reactions. Once the storm settles the couple can get to working. A lot of patience is required here and the offending partner needs to hang in there until their partner gets a grip. At that point the work entails rehashing the details of the affair so the non-offending partner can finally make sense of their world.
This includes admitting lies, filling in the blanks, and answering questions about events, situations and the other person. Even thought this is painful and uncomfortable for the partners, it is very helpful in co-creating history and their reality and establishing a platform from which to build the new conscious relationship. Remember our imaginations are pretty powerful, it is better to have facts out there than to leave our partner guessing.
Then some real healing and rebuilding can start to happen. The partners need to put the affair in context of their dynamic and see it as a symptom of what they have and how they have related. They need to own what they contributed to this dynamic that eventually led to one of them going outside their relationship. This is very hard work, especially in the face of the tumultuous feelings going on.
The aggrieved partner needs to receive a sincere and complete apology and amends need to happen for forgiveness and healing to be possible. The offending partner needs to initially suck it up and be at the partner’s whim in creating security and proving their sincerity. The hypervigilance and micromanaging eventually subsides, hang in there.
While this work is being done, the partners also need to be working on creating changes in their dynamic and healing their original wounds that set this wheel in motion in the first place. Making these changes empowers both partners and serves as a preventive measure for relapse.
Experiencing this traumatic situation in our relationship is not an easy thing to undergo and heal from. Doing the work is worth all the effort and pain. Couples do not go back to how they were before the affair, but create an amazing new, intimate and strong relationship.
There is nothing good to loose by not addressing these lapses in judgment. Tap into your courage reservoir and get to healing!! You can only make things better in your life in the long run!!!
Happy Healing!!!
~ Your MetroRelationship ™ Assignment
Discuss with your partner how you’ve been absent, emotionally and otherwise distant or unavailable, and your plan of action to correct this lapse. Tell them specific behaviors you will be implementing (i.e., coming home two hours earlier, not accepting out of town projects or meetings unless your partner can join you, not watching T.V. at dinner time, breaking off the relationship with the other person and not having contact with them, etc.).
Copyright (c) 2016 Emma K. Viglucci. All rights reserved.
Want to Use this Article in Your Own Website or Publication?
Be our guest! Here is how, you MUST include: Emma K. Viglucci, LMFT is the Founder and Director of Metropolitan Marriage & Family Therapy, PLLC, a private practice that specializes in working with couples, she is the creator of the MetroRelationship™ philosophy and a variety of Successful Couple™ content that assist couples succeed at their relationship and their life. Stay Connected™ with Emma and receive weekly Connection Notes in your inbox with Personal Growth and Relationship Enrichment insights and strategies, visit: www.metrorelationship.com.
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Emma K. Viglucci, LMFT has been in the mental health profession in varying capacities for the past 20+ years. She is the Founder and Director of metrorelationship.com a psychotherapy and coaching practice specializing in working with busy professional and entrepreneurial couples who are struggling getting on the same page and feeling connected. The work helps couples create a radiant and successful relationship and meaningful life by becoming a strong partnership and increasing their connection, intimacy, and fun. Emma is the creator of the MetroRelationship™ philosophy and the Successful Relationship Strategy™.
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