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Tag : trust

  • Some of your most basic beliefs about love & intimacy are all wrong.

    For over twenty years, I have worked with people from all walks of life, who get stuck in a cycle of pain, disappointment, finding it hard to sustain a healthy relationship. By changing your view of relationships and widening your perspective on intimacy, it creates an opportunity for relationships to not only survive, but thrive!

    Love addiction, intimacy avoidant beliefs & patterns of behaviours;

    • You feel disconnected from your sense of inner peace and happiness
    • You fall in love easily and quickly, but have a hard time coping with long term relationships
    • You neglect yourself and have distorted thoughts about the relationship
    • You fear intimacy because you think you will be drained, engulfed, or controlled.
    • You feel disappointed – that you have not found the right person.
    • When attraction fades, you lose interest and neglect your relationship.
    • You jump from one relationship to another in search of a wonderful feeling you once had
    • You value instant attraction, rather than meaningful connection
    • When you bond with someone, you find it impossible to let go
    • You fantasise about love – your ideal partner you hope to meet, or a previous partner whom you once loved
    • When you are in love, your fantasies distract you from important, everyday tasks
    • Your relationships with family and friends suffer when you are in a romantic relationship

    What causes love addiction or avoidance of intimacy?

    It is hard to feel love when you are angry. Happiness depends on the quality of your inner life, your thoughts, emotions, beliefs and desires when directed towards finding inner peace and love. In essence, you might develop addictions or avoidance to shield yourself from love, or painful feelings. Suffering with negative, inflexible thoughts and emotions, fraught with anger, resentment and criticism, experiencing a loss of connection, perhaps not having experienced hope or love for a long time. You might expose yourself to a serious emotional vacuum and mistake intensity in a relationship for intimacy and love.

    The causes are fairly easy to identify: a history of abandonment, inadequate or inconsistent nurturing without proper bonding, or a lack of emotional connection with a parent rooted in a mature, stable place that nurtures and supports a child. No consistent positive role models of loving relationships. Holding unrealistic fantasises, values and beliefs about love. People struggle with an unconscious fear of of both abandonment and of intimacy.

    A quintessential characteristic of avoidance is a person who, consistently keeps an emotional and mental distance from their partner, feels overwhelmed by their partners’ desire for closeness, feels stifled by thoughts or pressures of vulnerability, they rely on escape, through distancing strategies. A person who is blocked from love, both desires and fears relationships, because they did not have a connection in childhood that comforted them, from fear or the emptiness of abandonment, they did not learn that relationships can be healing. People, often create intensity outside of their relationship, to relieve feelings of disconnection and unhappiness.

    Conscious Fear                            Unconscious Fear

    Love Avoidant

    Intimacy                                 Abandonment

    Love Addict

    Abandonment                               Intimacy

    Emotional Growth & Intimacy

    People who lack emotional maturity, find it hard to deal with their emotions and challenges in life. This is very painful; relationships are often short lived; they find it challenging to maintain relationships of any depth. Compromise is almost impossible, their capacity to understand or respond to another person is limited. They find emotions difficult to handle. In an attempt to avoid feelings, they control their world by creating an idealised version, being extreme in their behaviour, or having black and white thinking.  Over coming this mind set is an important part of growing emotionally, which involves learning to develop coping strategies and relationship skills.

    Relationships are places where this wound shows up. When you are not in a relationship, you can navigate life on your own terms, addressing your needs and wants. You are rarely confronted by the needs of another person in a meaningful way or need to listen to or contemplate someone else’s experiences. You feel in control, most of the time. When you become involved, you are forced to deal with another persons’ desires and needs. You may struggle and blame other people for your problems, situations or circumstances, for your feelings of anger, sadness and depression, without looking within.

    https://www.facebook.com/RussellBrand/posts/10155118538833177

    Mr. Brand’s thoughts about Love addiction;

    ‘At the root of all addiction is narcissism, a constant thrumming attention to self. If you are self-absorbed you are suffering, and if you suffer you seek ways to stop it — through drugs, alcohol, sex, maybe Facebook “likes.’
    He goes on to say;

    “We are trying to solve inner problems externally — whatever it is in our lives that is missing,” he said. “Eckhart Tolle said it perfectly: ‘Addiction starts with pain and ends with pain.’ Here’s the point. Drugs, booze, sex … It’s not the particular addiction that matters as much as the fact that your life is out of control because of it.

    Healing Relationships from love addiction or avoidance of intimacy is a process of self discovery and emotional growth.

    Growing emotionally involves; breaking through denial, acknowledging repetitive patterns, owning harmful consequences of behaviour and thoughts, and interrupting the cycle. Only then is it possible to let go and address the underlying emotional pain at the core of this disconnection. If you avoid intimacy, you run away from difficult emotions. Learning to become present and aware of your feelings is important. Have you ever met a person who is sincerely concerned for your well being and is there for you when you need them? This is a compassionate, empathetic and loving person. For some, this comes naturally, for others, it takes work. Empathy is not the same as compassion. You can be compassionate with someone but able to fully understand what they are going through.

    When you feel something strongly; struggle, loneliness, self criticism, or insecurity, face it head on. Look at the situation, determine what is making you feel that way, and decide what positive steps you will take next.

    A solid relationship with a skilled psychotherapist trained in working with relationships, love and sex addiction can help guide you towards a sustaining a conscious loving relationship.

  • Conscious relationships

    Supporting aliveness, satisfaction and growth in intimate relationships. Relationships are a scared path. A Conscious relationship is a path of self-realisation. Being conscious is more than being physically awake and more than just being aware. Awareness refers to knowingness at the mental level, while consciousness is a state of knowingness that encompasses all mental, emotional and spiritual aspects of yourself. To be conscious is to have awareness of your thoughts, emotions, your own existence, sensations, and surroundings.

    Humanity & Consciousness 

    Humanity is on the brink of major transformation. Relationships are the missing link to creating a collective consciousness of humanity, contributing to a healthy, happy, whole, and peaceful planet. It is your ability to relate to others and yourself in a responsible and compassionate way that can be transformative.

    Responsibility is the willingness to take ownership over any “baggage” that you bring to your relationships. When you heal your relationships, with yourself, your partners, your family, and your communities, you create the possibility of a conscious and peaceful world. It begins with you. If you bring your entire reality into full consciousness and take positive action, you will find yourself in the flow of life. In this state of grace, ease and lightness you find yourself no longer dependent or reliant on things being in a certain way good or bad for your well being. The consciousness you operate within is equivalent to the lens with which you see reality. Your perceptions, beliefs, mind-sets and values you hold now are a result of the consciousness you are operating in. When you experience a shift in your consciousness due to an Aha moment or inner realization, you are breaking away from your old consciousness,  old belief systems and attitudes. You begin to see things in a new light.

    The shadow & Consciousness  Many people at some point run into all the unconscious stuff they have never looked at. One day the unconscious material from the past can become re-enacted or recreated in an undesirable form. Everyone carries a shadow and wounds from the past which are inevitably triggered in close relationships. In other words, you may expect to feel abandoned, not valued or listen to, worthless, trapped, rejected, unlovable. You may look for this unconsciously.

    Are you invested in the myth that relationships should only feel good?

    When something difficult occurs or when uncomfortable feelings emerge, or when things have not gone to plan. You might fail to see in these situations that these difficult feelings stem from your relational patterns – the past affecting you in the ‘here and now’. These feelings and issues are not caused by the other person, they have been created from your past wounding, beliefs and relational patterns. Be conscious about your relationships by not attributing blame, hate, anger and guilt. Do not enter into bouts of insanity, despair, depression and self doubt. Here you will find yourself feeling powerless, constantly looking outside yourself for approval and answers. You can step into conscious relationships with yourself and others and gain peace and clarity.

    Becoming conscious requires you to look at your past and current issues in relationships and take responsibility for them, it is only then you are able to create something new and dissolve dysfunctional relational patterns. Most of your core wounds, fears and traumas develop as a child within your relationship to your primary care givers. Often people who have suffered trauma consciously try to suppress their recollection of the painful events.

    ‘Over time the forgetting becomes automatic rather than wilful, in the same way that riding a bicycle requires a great deal of conscious mental and physical effort during the learning phase but becomes automatic over time’. David Spiegel
    Relationships work when you have the awareness to look at yourself truthfully and explore how your life experiences as a child has shaped how you respond to life now. A conscious relationship requires people who encourage one another’s growth, their relationship strives towards something greater than gratification. The relationship is a journey of evolution, where people create opportunities to grow. You are here to grow. Physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. When growth stops, you will feel like something has gone wrong. Without growth, you are not fulfilling your path. Learn more about conscious relationships with yourself and others Conscious relationship  weekend  2nd – 3rd June 

    The Gift of Vulnerability & Listening  When you connect deeply with another person, your heart naturally opens toward a whole new world of possibilities. This opening of your heart can make you aware of the ways you are stuck and asleep. Having the courage to be open takes you into the realm of vulnerability. Here you are seen fully. Love requires you to see and bee seen in the fullness of who you truly are. When you gift vulnerability, you are creating a space for the other person to share their vulnerability with you. Here you can love and be loved for who you and they truly are. Gift someone your full presence, with an open heart, without judgment or trying to find a solution. Your emotional experiences are not problems, they are simply experiences.

    ‘Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced’. Soren Kierkegaard

    Trust & Integrity in Conscious relationships  Trust is a vital ingredient in conscious relationships. It begins with you believing in the value of your partners’ word and the integrity of their character. When you mistrust others, it is a mirror of the mistrust you have of yourself.

    A conscious relationship requires you have integrity and keep your word. If you are trustworthy and have integrity, you will have relationships that mirror this back to you. When this is not happening and you are growing in different directions you may chose to end a relationship. Be open and present to receive all the lessons and grace a relationship can offer. To reap this bounty both of you must fully commit to being the relationship with your whole being, for the time that you are both consciously choosing to be in the relationship. Relationships inevitably bring you up against your most painful unresolved emotional conflicts from the past, continually stirring you up against things in yourself that you cannot stand—all your worst fears, neuroses, and fixations. If you focus on only one side of your nature at the expense of the other, you have no path, and therefore cannot find a way forward. This also limits the possibilities of your relationships as well. Love is a transformative power precisely because it brings the two different sides of yourself—the expansive and the contracted, the awake and the asleep—into direct contact. Love challenges you to keep expanding in exactly those places where you imagine you can not possibly open any further.

    ‘Intimate relationship is perhaps the ashram of the 21st Century—a place especially ripe with transformational possibility, a combination crucible and sanctuary for the deepest sort of healing and awakening, through which the full integration of our physical, mental, emotional, psychological, and spiritual dimensions is more than possible’Robert Augustus Masters

    Learn more about the conscious relationships with Living from The Heart. Transform yourself and your relationships.

    Continue to Grow and become conscious!

  • Why go on a Retreat?
    It may be that you feeling a little stressed lately? Living from The Heart Retreat could be just the thing for you. It may be that something is stirring inside, a call to explore some questions more deeply.
    It may be the best investment you make for your self, health and all relationships. It may be that you are yearning for an opportunity to pause and look at your life from a new perspective, which often unlock answers to the questions that you just may not take the time to ask.

    If you want to find balance of mind, body and spirit, or may need to find a quiet space to switch off.

    You are guided to make a stronger your connection with your sense of self, which helps you to shift into new awareness about yourself and relationships. You will learn to master the art of conscious relationships where you make considered choices about your life and relationships while restoring a sense of balance of mind body and spirit.

    Living from The Heart retreat provides a ‘container’ to connect to a deeper sense of meaning and self. Support is provided along the way during a healing and restorative, silent, creative and fun week. It can be a time for finding the courage to let go of things that no longer serve you or to become aware of what you are being drawn towards.

    The retreat can provide a place, a space a moment in time to allow a deeper exploration; to discover within a renewed sense of meaning; to experience a deeper sense of connection and your willingness to be open more deeply and fully, in your heart, mind and body.
    Transform challenges into positive, personal, professional and spiritual transitions
    Living from the Heart will support and facilitate a process of being able to go beyond your familiar mind, with its logical and sometimes restrictive ways of seeing the world to a deeper, steadier and quieter place where new insight and inspiration can bring you closer to your true identity, your true Self. From this place of balance you will find fulfilment through living your life in a more congruent way.

    Find a sacred and Healing space
    Retreat for Individuals and Couples
    September 2018 Portugal

  • Stay Young and Beautiful. Living from the Heart encourages you to live an authentic, healthier, happier, more joyful, purposeful life. To lead a life you can be proud of together with a lifestyle of practices that guide you towards a long healthy life. I encourage you to cultivate a set of practices to keep your mind, body and spirit engaged and strong and support your essence in the activities you immerse yourself in, changing and responding to your needs in the moment. Each moment helps you learn more about yourself and the world. People seek help when they recognise they are disconnected in some way from a life that supports and nurtures. People do not usually arrive knowing what is wrong with them, much of what causes suffering or dis-ease is often buried. People come with symptoms, which may be experienced as relationship difficulties, exhaustion, anxiety, depression, stress or tiredness. It may be that you are dealing with a bereavement, illness of a loved one, health problems, struggling with your career, or trying to create a new relationship or maintain the ones you have. When you become disconnected from what truly matters in life things can become really tough. Luckily, the answers and solutions can be found within you. Your energetic heart can be accessed through meditation, it is as vast as the entire universe. You can learn to access the power, clarity, insight, love, and peace of your heart. When you learn to listen to your heart you can gain access to the incredible qualities that you didn’t even know you had. When you have discovered and healed your heart, you can use your heart’s power and vulnerability to create a life you know is possible.

    The first secret to Happiness and Longevity is to release judgements and cultivate an attitude towards not making up stories, or predefining age, or imposing limits to your true nature. The only true measure of life is not to measure it at all, but rather to simply live it fully. Live each day fully and actively. Lead a life that is rich and full of experience. This provides an edge to keep you healthy, flexible and strong. Live life according to your unique nature. Judgments provide for a life lived within a very defined set of rules with effectively limited or no free will. To live in this manner limits your potential and reduces the possibility of your actions.

    “If you ignore the dragon, it will eat you. If you try to confront the dragon it will overpower you. If you ride the dragon, you will take advantage of its might and power.” — Chinese Proverb

    The second secret to Happiness and Longevity is eating well.

    Learn to listen to your body and respond to it by providing a good mixture of essences and nutrients to maintain your body’s optimum health. The body needs a balanced, varied and healthy diet. There are many books and literature that go into great detail about when, how and what you should eat. Essentially it is all about eating in balance and moderation. Many diets fail when they do not change in response to the changing needs of your body and climate. Experience and wisdom teaches a practice of treating food with respect with the least amount of processing. Food intake should be in moderation and balance. The respect you show towards your food’s life cycle mirrors the relationship with your own life cycle. Think. If an animal or plant is tortured during its growth, its essence will be saturated with fear, stress and imbalances. When this is consumed you devour its’ essence, any accumulated stress hormones or illness is taken into your own body. Eating such food promotes a life of fear and perpetuates mindless practices.

    The third secret to Happiness and Longevity requires you to listen to your authentic nature.

    Learn to accept yourself and lead a life of discovering who you are. Your nature is ever changing and remains the same. It is futile to attempt t resolve contradictions in life, instead learn to accept your nature. There are so many distractions, opinions, thoughts, ideas, desires, expectations, visions and images competing, working, trying to lead you to a supposedly better way. This chatter creates a distracting noise. How can you attain longevity if you are always busily moving to the rhythm of a larger world? Learn to live a long healthy life, move to rhythm of your own subtle cues, follow and trust your gut feelings and instincts. Longevity is pointless, unless you are your own person. Whats the point of extending misery? Meditate. Ask yourself ‘who am I’ and allow yourself to answer the question deep from within. Enter your inner space and ask, “Who am I?” You will arrive at a deeper experience of your consciousness and unique nature.

    The fourth secret to Happiness and Longevity is exercise. Move your Body.

    A physical practice keeps the body healthy. It is critical to keep the body moving and subtle. Exercise such as Yoga and Qigong help keep your body strong and flexible for an entire life time. They are both moving meditation. Working with the breath or pranayama is fundamental for the development of physical well-being, meditation, awareness, and enlightenment, it is both a form of meditation in itself and a preparation for deep meditation. Breathing or pranayama can rapidly bring the mind to the present moment and reduce stress. Breath work along side psychotherapy can relieve depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, stress and anxiety. By inducing stress resilience, breath work enables you to rapidly and compassionately relieve many forms of suffering. Stress is not caused alone by stressful situations or relationships – it is your response and reaction that creates a response in your mind and body.

    The fifth secret to Happiness and Longevity is to attend to your attitude. Attitude is everything.

    Your attitude to life is one of the key elements of your personality. It defines how you view reality. If you treat yourself as an opponent or as something to be dominated, there will be resistence. The more you resist the world, the more the world will resist back. The world is larger and more powerful than you, the battle will be lost when you make life a fight. Resistance is at the core of psychotherapy. It determines the process and is largely why psychotherapy can take so long. Understanding it, facing it, and working through are at the heart of therapy, One can resist memory by recalling facts but not the impact on yourself and others nor the experience. Reconnecting with the totality of an experience or relationship can free you from symptoms that cause distress such as anxiety and the anticipation of suffering or humiliation. Becoming conscious of your experience and range of feelings and perceptions can transform you. It is fine to fight occasionally, it is important to stand up for yourself, but to make a stand excessively against the world means the world will erode you eventually. There are times in your life when you are open to new ideas that run counter to the demands of your resistance, when your mind and heart are not open and resistance is high, nothing can reach you. Resistance works like friction it may feel like everything in your psyche is pushing you in the opposite direction. Resistance, develops from your defences, which are at the heart of your personality. It can take many forms, appearing as mistrust, anger, feeling discouraged, supercilious, bored, boring, confused, confusing, or dependent. When triggered it is central to your functioning and necessary for your survival.

    Leading a life with low stress is desirable and necessary to accessing happiness and longevity. Stress is a major factor that contributes towards premature aging and dis-ease. Harness a good attitude which concentrates on good humour and low stress. Laughter is a healing balm with real healing powers, laughter has the power to charm and influence those around you in daily life, laughter can extend life, and make days truly worth living. Laughter is beautiful, it is infectious. The sound of laughter is far more contagious than a cough, or sneeze. Laughter can bring people closer together. Laughter triggers healthy physical changes in the body. Humour and laughter can strengthen your immune system, boost your energy, diminish pain, and protects you from the damaging effects of stress. When you laugh, you enter a state of “no thought” or emptiness, if only for a microsecond. With practice, laughter can be a powerful path to consciousness and enlightenment.

    The sixth secret to Happiness and Longevity is cultivating a spiritual practice. You are more than a mind and body. You are a trinity of mind, body and spirit. Your Spirit is uniquely defined within the actions of how you lead your life. A spiritual practice keeps both the mind and body in balance with each other. A practice can be anything that helps you to find peace within your own nature. There are day to day activities you can perform with an intent of spirituality. Recognise how natural and easy it is to carve out a spiritual connection with the world. Spiritual practice is a combination of intent within your actions and the exploration of mysteries in your life. Your spiritual practice needs to define and refine over time responding to your needs and circumstances. If you are to lead a long life, then it helps to have a reason to do so. A spiritual practice provides motivation for enjoying a longer happier life not a miserable one.

    The seventh secret to Happiness and Longevity is to avoid addiction. Addiction is a process of self destruction. It redefines an empty space with something external to your true nature. It is important to live as yourself. not in a haze. There are addictive substances that appear to solve problems; using drugs to shift the balance of your mind, to fit a social norm, using television, mobile phones and social media to help pass the time, all addictions erase a persons’ unique nature. The root cause of suffering is addiction or aversion to what you think will make you happy. ‘When you look at addictions’ says Ram Dass, ‘it’s not like ‘evil,’ it is just an attempt to ‘get back.’ The problem is that most behaviours that get you back, will allow you to be in the presence of something divine temporarily, it does not allow you to remain ‘at home’ in your unique nature. Live life as your self. Life is a challenge and the struggle has edges which defines your unique shape.

    The eighth secret to Happiness and Longevity is unspoken.

    Learn how to put these into practice on the next Healing The Heart Retreat 17th – 24th September 2015 in Portugal. The Venue is located in Central Portugal between the towns of Tomar and Sertã and near the small town of Cernache do Bonjardim. The nearest Airport is Lisbon which is approximately 1 hour and 45 mins away from the venue. Set in a tranquil location in the forested hills of Central Portugal, far away from the crowds, just 3 km from the beautiful ‘Castelo de Bode’ lake and 8 km from the small town of Cernache de Bonjardim.

  • What are the healthy Characteristics of negotiation in Relationships A healthy functional intimate relationship is based on equality and respect, not power and control. Think about how you treat and desire to be treated by someone you care about. The quality of a negotiation depends upon two things; the quality of the basic relationship between the two people and the quality of the communication that takes place. A good relationship with good communication between two people should enable successful negotiation. A poor relationship with poor communication is likely to create unhealthy relationships. Too often people try to use negotiating skills from the office at home these – skills do not translate into relational tools. The health of a relationship impacts the quality of communication between two people. If you do not trust someone, you are in danger of either disregarding what they say or looking for hidden meanings that may or may not actually exist. The health of a relationship impacts heavily upon negotiation and is a major influencing factor on the likelihood of both partners getting what they need to flourish and grow. Trust This means being supportive, wanting the best for your partner, knowing your partner likes you, and being able to rely on your partner, offering encouragement when necessary, and being comfortable with your partner having different friends and interests.

    Intimate relationships are complex, they can be identified by a growing degree of attachment or dependence – in other words, how much we ‘need’ the other person. Attachment or dependence can be hard to negotiate because it defines vulnerability. It is usually our own dependence – our own vulnerability – that we find difficult to confront and to accept. Like it or not, however, dependence, vulnerability, and consequently power are influencing factors in all relationships. You might feel that you control the power balance, that you are subject to it or that it is equal. Nevertheless, it exists and it is a major influencing factor.

    Types of power

    Positional power This type of power comes from one person’s position in relation to another. For instance, one partner may have more financial wealth or may have power because of the position that he or she occupies at work, the other partner may have less power because of the way in which their partner perceives them and the division of finances, decisions making or labour in the home. Positional power is characterised by a need for the relationship to continue. Information power As individuals, the more information that we have, the more we feel able to control what is going on about us. This form of control involves one person having more information than another and using it to control the other person’s uncertainty. People can become dependent upon others because of their need to control their own uncertainty.

    Control of rewards Buying a sports car to reward a partner for their compliance is an example of this. Paying for everything in the relationship. This is about having the power to reward for desired performance or behaviour. This type of power creates dependency upon the person giving the reward.

    Coercive power This is about having the power to punish for failure to behave in a desired fashion. This type of power is also likely to create dependency. People can depend on not being punished as well as depend on being rewarded.

    Alliances and networks This concerns the relationships with Social networks (Facebook Literally) and real ones with Family and friends. This is an extended form of information power together with positional power.

    Access to and control of agendas If one person controls what terms of the relationship are negotiated, they can effectively set the ground rules i.e. when one partner wants complete control of their partner’s behaviours and loyalty without any relationship skills or creation of the necessary skills to create a healthy relationship. This avoids intimacy. One person focussed on conditions that are favourable to themselves and for needs and requests from their partners that are unfavourable to be blocked. When the discussion is controlled, the relationship becomes dependent on the other to explain the rules for communication and subsequently negotiation. This is unhealthy in adult relationships and creates a power imbalance.

    Power All negotiation is about power. Because there are always power imbalances in a relationship, negotiation goes on all the time. No matter what your overall approach to negotiation, you may need to consider the nature of power. Remember that the power in the relationship will influence how intimacy is negotiated. There are many ways people play out power dynamics in relationships through money, sex, decision making, and giving or withholding affection.

    Healthy negotiation in an intimate relationship

    Taking  Responsibility

    Accepting responsibility for yourself, means looking after your needs without holding someone else responsible for your life. If you need help get it. Acknowledge past and previous bad behaviour including verbal, emotional or physical violence. Being able to say sorry and admit when you are wrong goes a long way to creating harmony in a relationship. Be sure to communicate openly and honestly. Keep your agreements. Do not create excuses for you or your partner actions. A healthy Relationship is built on truth rather than game playing and deception.

    Good Communication Good Communication is based on clarifying issues, specifying feelings, and working together for mutually satisfying solutions. If one partner does something that hurts the other in any way they can take responsibility, and make needed changes in their demonstration of love for the other partner.Any two people can have different perceptions. Differences are not a problem; it is how two people deal with differences. It is often best to take a conscious approach to making decisions in relationships. There is no right or wrong. Take time to listen and reflect. Navigating your desires and reactions. Stop the internal dialogue with yourself about the other person’s motivations and emotions. Ask questions instead of making assumptions. Work towards finding mutually satisfying resolutions to conflict, this means talking. Take time to work what your desires and needs are. They are just as valid as your partner’s. You do not need to agree or even understand differences in opinion to respect your partner. When differences come up observe the situation from your partner’s point of view. No issue or problem is more important than the relationship. When one person wins an argument there will always be a loser rather than two people winning. Conscious decision making Making money decisions together, making sure both partners benefit from financial arrangements, sharing dating expenses, accepting both partners need to hold a job. Making decisions together, splitting or alternating costs on dates. Being mindful of the other person’s needs as well as your own – doing things for each other, going places you both enjoy, giving as much as you receive. Basic Steps to Maintaining a Good, Healthy Relationship • Be conscious of what both want for yourselves and from the relationship. • Be vocal about what your needs are communicate them assertively. Neither of you are mind readers • Recognise that your partner will not be able to meet all of your needs. These can be met outside of the relationship. • Do expect your partner to change to meet all your expectations. Accept differences that you see between your ideal how you would like things to be & the reality of who they really are. • Expect conflict. It’s healthy and be willing to negotiate & • Observe and have compassions and empathy. See things from their point of view. You don’t have to agree to respect and understand differences. • Healthy relationships take continual work and effort to maintain.   Take your relationships’ Temperature • How well do you and your partners listen to each other? When you and your partner talk, do you look each other in the eye and really listen, is one of you pre-empting a response before the other has finished talking? • How willing are you to take responsibility for your role in your relationship? Many people are good at finding fault in others; particularly those with whom they are in relationship. How capable are you of both identifying your relational limitations and working to change them? • Re you willing to make compromises? Generally and in your daily routine are you conscious of your partners’ likes and dislikes, sensitivities and emotional needs? Do you allow your partner to make compromises for you? In order for a relationship to be balanced and healthy, each person needs to assert his or her own needs and be responsive to those of their partner. • Do you both recognise the qualities you enjoy and appreciate about each other? Are you able to express these, or are they left unsaid? Over time, couples have a tendency to take each other for granted, recognition; appreciation and affection need to be regularly exchanged, in ways that work for both partners. • Are you able to express your concerns without fear of how your partner will react? I Are you both able to express concerns gently and respectfully and do you become harsh or ridiculing? How you express the things that bother you matters at least as much as what your concerns were in the first place. These factors share common themes: mutual respect, openness and consideration. Take time to consider that your care, attentiveness & respect in your romantic relationship are the gifts that matter most every day and create a healthy loving relationship.

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