Hit a Home Run in the Game of Love!!

by Emma Viglucci

Are you using the parts you love about yourself in your relationship? Do you bring the best out in each other? Do you complement and learn from each other? Are you a team working towards a common goal? Do you stimulate each other? What is the underlying theme to your interactions with your partner? Is your essence present in your relationship? Or do you hide behind funny coping? Do You get lost in the shuffle?

If you find that you are constantly struggling to get your needs met and to feel your partner, it might be that your partner is not really Seeing you. They can’t feel you. It might be that you are not really available to your partner from your core self. The person your partner fell in love with is hiding behind all the demands, criticisms, and complaints.

Your partner can no longer see the beauty, mysticism, courage, motivation, energy, drive, interest, softness, caring that made you alive and available when you first met. Your partner can only see what you now show them. How are you showing up to your relationship?

Are you constantly frazzled, stressed out, bored, down, disinterested, distant, mean, critical or judgmental? How else do you show up to your relationship that keeps you from your partner? Do you show your vulnerable side and your needs?

Let go of that defensive and offensive role and just show up for the game! When you bring your self to your relationship amazing things can happen. When you put forth You, you are inviting your partner to be available and present. It is safe for them to show up as well. We too often put up protective walls and defense mechanisms that keep us from being fully engageable and make our partners do the same.

I recently saw a couple in which one of the partners was complaining about the other’s unavailability, lack of support and under-accomplishments. The message to their partner, the husband, was you are an idiot. The husband heard this loud and clear, and was not able to see the woman he had married. In the wife’s attempts to get her needs met, she was very critical, demanding, cutting and undermining.

She could not see how her approach was not allowing her husband to be there for her the way she needed him. I said to the wife, it is very difficult for him to come massage the feet of a dragon when it is breathing fire down his neck.

In bringing our self to our relating without our armor and our biased lenses, we allow for a genuine interaction where both partners can really see and be with each other. This is at the heart of a satisfying relationship. From here partners can truly enjoy each other and have their needs met.

When you bring your essence to an interaction and stamp it with your unique signature, you are utilizing your creativity. Creativity is You showing up wherever you are and in whatever you do. Your ingenuity and vision are the driving forces in your relating make your dreams come true, create the relationship you want,use Yourself in your relationship!

Let your Essence step up to the plate and hit a home run in the game of love!!

Happy Stepping Up!!!  

~ Your MetroRelationship™ Assignment

How can you show your partner acceptance, adoration, unconditional love, trust, empathy, interest, compassion, mysteriousness, exhilaration, faith, eagerness, enthusiasm, liveliness, animation, strength, softness, nurturing. What else was there when you first met your partner that has now been dampened by routine, power struggles, and everyday minutiae?? Peel your layer of defense off and come out and play like old times! 

   Copyright (c) 2016 Emma K. Viglucci. All rights reserved.

Want to Use this Article in Your Own Website or Publication? 

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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. 

Can You Change Your Partner?

by Emma Viglucci

Many couples operate under the assumption that being in a relationship means to be bossed around, told what to do, and to loose their personal freedom and choices. I have heard references to young couples getting engaged as “he bit the bullet” and other similar degrading remarks.

I’m sure you have heard before couples complain about how their partner wants to change and control them and references to partners being “trained,” “whipped,” “on a short leash,” etc. All these really set up the stage to struggle in one’s relationship.

After the “infatuation” stage, the honeymoon period, is over and the “power struggle” sets in (the second stage of relationships), we get stuck in our perspectives and have repeating arguments and conflicts. We try to resolve and address this by wanting and trying to change our partner.

When we address our relationship thinking that we have to change our partner so that we get along better, so we’d like our partner better and to get our needs met we are setting ourselves up for dissatisfaction.

Partners CANNOT be changed. Yes, you read that right. They cannot be changed. Please, read that again: They cannot be changed. I can’t emphasize this enough. I come across this concept probably more so that the average person in my I work with couples and creating changes.

It is very frustrating to watch couples beat each other up with hurtful words and actions because each partner is entrenched in their views and stance and they want to change their partner.

Why would you want to change your partner anyway? If they changed they would no longer be the person you fell in love with… Personality and people’s core are very difficult, if not impossible to change. What we really want to change is the partners’ behaviors and their reactions toward each other. These are changeable.

But, the catch here is that the partners cannot change each other. Whenever you see couples with partners who supposedly changed their partner what you are actually seeing is dynamics with baggage at work. The partners are actually not really satisfied in their relationship. Take a closer look.

If the couple looks very different from how they were and appear to be getting along nicely – then the partners have both mutually worked at changing themselves within the relationship. They have compromised and resolved issues. One did not change the other…

So, the point is you cannot change your partner and your partner can’t change who they are, but both your behaviors and reactions can be changed. AND, each partner is responsible for owning up to their own thoughts, feelings, and behaviors and the changes made in them. Stop trying to change your partner – it doesn’t work. Only they can change their behaviors and reactions.

Another very common and frustrating mistake partners make, is that once partners understand this concept they now wait for their partner to change their behavior. And they wait. And they wait. And the will continue to wait forever…

Change in relationships happen when one partner owns up to their stuff and create their OWN changes. If both partners are doing this, then change in the relationship is imminent. If both partners are not working together as allies yet, the trick is to take ownership and change oneself, take the initiative – the other will have no choice but to change in response.

This is the only way that you can actually change your partner – inviting them to change… Remember – It Takes Two To Tango!

Happy Dancing!!

~ Your MetroRelationship™ Assignment

Pay attention to your partner’s actions and make note of the responses, reactions and behaviors that bother you and that you find hurtful. See if you can find a common denominator for them.

For example, your partner is always late, they make plans with others without consulting or including you, they eat their own meals without regards for your nutrition, etc. The common denominator could be said to be: appearing not to be a priority or important to your partner.

What are you doing to receive this kind of treatment? Are you too busy yourself and not available in the way your partner would like? Are you too clingy, critical or bossy that they need to create space? Whatever you find, and the hint will be in your partner’s complaints…, you need to change.

What happens next is that as you change the behavior that invites the treatment you don’t like, then the treatment needs to change as well and therefore your partner’s behavior will have changed. It works try it!!

   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.