Even if you're exhausted and don't believe a better outcome is possible, you can still create one. The first step is getting your own inner resources back.
Many people don’t believe that anything positive can still happen in their relationship.
It feels as though this vicious circle of conflict, resentment, irritation, exhaustion and emotional burnout will never end.
The thought comes that this relationship has to end… and yet alongside it a faint hope still flickers that maybe something can be repaired. After all, there was once love in this relationship, and respect, and understanding, and passion, and joy.
And now there’s a person beside you who seems to do everything out of spite, refuses to listen, behaves like a child and takes offence at nothing. Anger and indignation fill you up, and you just want to run as far as your feet will carry you…
The good news is that even if you are utterly exhausted and don’t believe in the better scenario at all, you can still make it happen. The key is to follow the right method for coming out of a crisis.
Most couples are unhappy because people don’t know the basic principles of building a relationship and make mistakes that lead to conflict. It often seems to us that the whole problem is the other person, but most of the time both people are doing foolish things.
Our online school runs a course called “Healthy Relationships”: four weeks and thirty practical assignments, one for every day. You’ll learn a method that produces results if you actually follow it.
But to start dragging a troubled relationship back out of the ditch, the very first thing to do is to secure your own inner resources. It isn’t the only condition, but at the beginning it is critical.
Something has to appear in your day that you genuinely love and that makes you happy. Any emotionally meaningful ritual.
For some people that’s a conversation with a friend, for others some beauty treatment like a massage, for others watching a favourite series. We all have different things that lift our mood.
Some activities give us energy and some drain it. You need to add things to your life that fill you with inner strength and give you positive emotions.
On the “Healthy Relationships” course we go through lists of exactly these activities and build them into daily life.
We do this because two exhausted people cannot create a happy family.
To build a good relationship, at least one of you (preferably both) needs the inner strength and the desire for it.
So, paradoxical as it sounds, forty minutes of quiet in a park with a book you love can do more for your relationship than three hours of non-stop arguing with your husband or wife.
Do you have more energy-giving or energy-draining activities in your day? How do you restore your own state?
Articles do not fix relationships
Texts give you understanding, but your situation is always more specific than any text. Fifty minutes is usually enough to see where the problem actually starts.
Talk through your situation
