Love bombing, Gaslighting and Ghosting; ABC of toxic relationships.

Love bombing is just fluff and flattery.

Social media have provided very fertile grounds for this new vocabulary to grow and thrive. But I wonder though is this new language making us more sensitive and prone to empathy or is our overusing them doing more harm than good? The range of ideas around terms like trauma, abuse, and bullying is larger than it has ever been. This means we are more vulnerable and more sensitive to harm, with increased awareness of human emotions and suffering. Naming specific behaviours helps us identify them and figuring out what’s wrong;

Love Bombing, Gaslighting and Ghosting:

These new digital era terms are interlinked. Love bombing, as the name implies, is a psychological manipulation technique that comprises lavish shows of affection and attention directed towards someone, usually in the early stages of a romantic relationships or dating periods. The love bomber expresses their strong interest rapidly, makes spectacular gestures, talks frequently, pays lavish compliments, and exchanges gifts too quickly to build the target person’s emotional attachment and trust. In contrast to positive and sincere expressions of love, love bombing is a result of a nervous and self-centered search that is ultimately motivated by ego boosts. The person who makes love bombing aims to develop addiction and emotional dependence to control the target person.

Psychologically speaking, people who engage in this behavior are narcissists. They get a kick and rush out of making other people dependent on them through love bombing. As relationship develops, the love bomber frequently becomes uninterested, stops showing attention, or starts acting manipulatively and this makes the victim insecure, dependent and confused.

Moving further, comes Gaslighting. After trapping the victim in relationship dynamics by love bombing, the narcissist starts manipulating another persons’ mind by causing confusion, i.e., causing them to question their perception of reality. Convincing the victim that it is his/her fault or a mistake is the tactic used by gaslighters. This involves continually accusing the individual of things, lying to them, denying them, and putting them in a situation where they are mentally startled. Undermining the victim’s confidence and making them doubt their own feelings, ideas, and knowledge is the goal of gaslighting. As a result of which, the victim’s confidence is lowered and they become dependant while not being able to believe what they feel and see. Lies and contradictions, Denying facts, Blaming and throwing responsibility, and Making the other person suspicious to make the victim feel insecure and powerless are the key traits of a gaslighter.

Now comes the worst of all, Ghosting; In relationships or communication, ghosting is the abrupt and unannounced withdrawal of another person by cutting off contact.The typical manifestation of ghosting is when someone leaves without saying they want to keep in touch or stop their relationship. Failure to reply to messages, calls, or social media engagements can be one way this shows up. Although, it can happen in friendships or professional connections as well, ghosting is more common in romantic relationships and dating phases.The individual who is ghosting frequently ends contact with the other person for private reasons (i.e., narcissist finds a new target for their affection, someone who can provide fresh admiration and validation) or without giving them a reason or a sense of closure. Ghosting, therefore, disappoint the other person and end the relationship unresolved and can often have an emotional impact, undermining a person’s self-confidence and self worth.

Side effects;

It might be difficult to balance emotional highs and lows in the fast-paced dating landscape of today. “Love bombing, gaslighting followed by ghosting” is one particularly notable experience that can severely damage our self-esteem. It’s a roller-coaster ride of emotions that takes us from the high of feeling loved to the low of being ignored. The abrupt change from intense affection to total silence can leave one feeling confused, abandoned, and questioning the authenticity of the affection they received. They may also develop a fear of abandonment and experience anxiety about forming new relationships. Trust issues are another significant impact affecting their social, professional, and personal relationships. For this very reason, more and more of us are turning to social media for comfort, the ultimate platform for any of us “seeking approval desperately”,a place where we can speak our minds freely and find likeminded individuals to do it with. In doing so, we might very easily overstep a number of boundaries and end up “oversharing” and exposing ourselves to the point of becoming deeply involved and inevitably vulnerable.

Healing from the damange;

Dealing with this kind of behavior can be difficult and a challenging journey. However, with time, patience, and the right strategies, it’s possible to heal and regain your self-esteem and trust in others.

Acknowledge Your Feelings;

Recognizing your feelings is the first step toward recovery. You may be feeling bewildered, wounded, furious, and deceived by what transpired. Realizing that these emotions are normal and a necessary component of the healing process is crucial. Give yourself permission to mourn the loss of the relationship rather than pushing yourself to move on quickly.

Don’t Blame Yourself;

Keep in mind that the individual who ignored and abandoned you was manipulative, and their behavior speaks for them rather than for you. The fact that they decided to behave in this manner is not your fault. Stay away from negative self-talk and self-blame. Rather, concentrate on the reality that you deserve an honest and respectful relationship.

Seek Professional Help;

The most useful strategy yet underrated for healing from the harm done by love bombing, gaslighting and ghosting is therapy. You can learn coping mechanisms from a mental health expert to deal with your emotions of loss, betrayal, and poor self-worth. Additionally, they can assist you in creating more positive relationship habits going forward.

Practice Self-Care;

Last but not the least, Self-care is essential during this time. Keep yourself engaged in any positive activity that makes you happy and relaxed. Learn to prioritize your well-being and do things that contribute to your physical, emotional, and mental health. It is vital to bear in mind that you will not receive the same treatment from all people. So, to begin, take baby moves toward developing trust and over time, as your trust grows, you will feel more confident in forming deeper relationships.

Foster healthy relationships. Be in the company of individuals who appreciate and respect you. Reminding yourself that not all relationships are manipulative and painful might come from having healthy ones. They can boost your self-confidence and give you a sense of worth and affection. And finally, learn and grow, i.e., Seize the chance to develop from this experience. To prevent such situations in the future, be aware of the red flags of love bombing, gaslighting and ghosting. If you recognize and reject love bombing, the person using this tactic might react negatively. They could become defensive, try to guilt-trip you, or intensify their efforts. However, standing your ground can also lead them to lose interest and move on. And most importantly remember that after ghosting, narcissists could come back, particularly if they think the relationship will benefit them in some way. So, beware, otherwise you may experience severe emotional pain if this cycle of idealization, devaluation, and discarding occurs more than once.

My Final Thoughts;

Now we know that these emotional manipulation tactics aren’t a sign of genuine respect or affection. Hence, it’s important to keep in mind that while being the target of love bombing, gaslighting and ghosting might be extremely difficult, it’s not a reflection of your value or desirability but rather of the person who is doing it. When someone uses such strategies, they are not highlighting any flaws in you; rather, they are disclosing their own fears and incapacity to maintain a positive connection. Healing may feel like a slow process in the aftermath, and that’s acceptable. It’s critical to give yourself the space and time you require to fully recuperate. The goal is to leave the healing process with a deeper sense of self, more insight, and more relational resilience rather than to rush through it. Remember, every experience, even the painful ones, contribute to our personal growth and understanding of the world around us.

P.S. Please feel free to ask any questions you may have – questions are welcome.

Depression

“Depressed people are actually the only ones who see the reality of the world we live in”…..

Depression is the emotional expression of a state of ego-helplessness and ego-powerlessness to live up. We all need to understand Depression is a kind of mental illness and there are two sides of this illness. The one side when you are around people and pretend like nothing is wrong and acting like you have everything together by smiling when deep down you are hurting. And at the same time on the other side you are feeling all alone. You are thinking it can’t get better, you don’t understand why you are going through this and wish you had somebody to tell yours state of mind to. The important point I want to point out here is people don’t fake a mental illness and you need to understand this. They smile when they are going through hell. They only say “I am busy” when they need time to take to cope with severe symptoms. They work and uphold their responsibilities all while appearing fine. Interestingly, they are often funny/caring/supportive one in any friendship/ relationships. And if something appears wrong, they just say “I am tired” to not arouse too much suspicion. And you know why they does all this? Because more than anything, they don’t want to be a burden or to let anyone down.

Remember, mental illness is and can be invisible. Like you have anxiety, but still sound confident. You have depression but still smiles and make jokes. Most importantly, You are feeling suicidal, but still turn up to everyday work and appear fine. One’s “inner world” is not always equal to their “outer world”. So, please always check in on your loved ones and don’t assume you know how they feel based on how they look. To help you all in this, I would tell you about the signs/warnings that someone’s depression is setting in and this will help you to identify it to help them during the onset of mental illness. First of all they become emotionally distant. They are disengaged/ struggle to follow conversation. More quite than usual. Decreased appetite. They usually say ” They are tired” a lot to avoid the confrontations. You have seen that they make plans to do everything and use their all strength to let things happen, but at last they feel completed exhausted then do nothing and feel completely worthless. And in the end as we all know social withdrawal is the most visible sign. In continuation, I also want to add less obvious factors that lead to mental health issues, i.e, Saying yes to everything, Trying to fix/save everyone at the cost of their mental health. Pleasing people is so common like putting others needs above yours. Defining a successful life based on another’s/ society’s expectations. Lonely/isolated but too anxious to socialize. And you know what going all together like this is going through hell. Here, I, Specifically want to say to the suffering ones’ that your mental health matters. So, please prioritize it.

There is an other notion that people confuse sadness with depression. No, sadness is temporary but depression is of many kinds, sometimes life long due to many reasons which includes your broken childhood, some past trauma (PTSD), broken marriages, and profoundly unable to achieve your ambition/goal which you once set will all enthusiasm and excitement. In addition, it’s also due to chemical imbalance in your brain by birth which seriously needs medication other than psychotherapy in general. Moving on to worst things to say to someone in a depressive episode. Which is , you have so much to be happy about, stop feeling sorry for yourself. We all have bad days though, so don’t be dramatic. Others have it worse than you and they are okay, just think positive. And the most worst is .. It’s all in your head. It is not real, snap out of it. Please people, depression is real and if you can’t understand it just coz you ain’t going through it then please leave the suffering individual at its own instead of worsening the situation for them. Truth is there is no simple solution- getting better generally require a combination of medication, psychotherapy, social support, and changed behavior. Yes, changed behavior. If you don’t help yourself, no body can. Remember it.

There is one surprising thing we all are not aware of regarding depression that it’s not just in the head. It creeps down. Becoming disconnected from those you love the most. Being unable to concentrate, memory loss, joint pain, irritability, thresholds, being impatient, sluggish, agitated, hopelessness, anxious, night terrors due to insomnia, headaches, nausea, stomach pains, rapid weight loss/gain, drained out all the time, shaking uncontrollably and so on. So please get rid of this myth that it’s just the mind. Depression is an complex illness that affects everything, inside out and can’t be minimized to just one emotion.

Have you ever noticed why people with depression become numb and actually sleep a lot? It’s because they are mentally and spiritually exhausted fighting a war in their head 24/7. It’s a strategy for them to block out suicidal thoughts and keep them living to fight another day and cope with severe symptoms. They feel being asleep is better than being alive. They did this to protect them from constant severe emotions. Depression puts a forcefield between the person and pleasure and with the passage of time they become desensitized to their own suffering. This is why you can’t just “snap it out of it”.

Now let’s talk about the stigma. The stigma which says those with mental illness are illogical, rude, attention seeking, and crazy. But the fact is, they can have a mental illness and be a logical/rationale person. It’s just their mental illness sometimes just ties up the logical side of their brain and lets the neurotic side runs free. And they are aware of it, but can’t stop it. Depression is unpredictable- some days you can endure intense trauma, but other days, you can break down over petty things like getting the wrong coffee order.

Lastly, I would wind up this topic with few suggestions regarding self-care while being in depression. Self-care isn’t always about pleasure, comfort, or what feels good. It’s also about – Putting boundaries in with toxic people , Prioritizing your mental health above other obligations when you are burned out, Doing the hard things that will set you up for the future you deserve to have, Giving yourself time and space to process grief and loss and Learning to give yourself the love you so freely give it to others. Moreover, keep this in mind that all this survival mode requires courage and patience. Because when you are in survival mode, you are hypersensitive to your environment. You even struggle with the simple things, You engage in more risky/unhealthy behavior, You act out of character/ easily snap at others and break down over little things. Always remember, When you are in crisis and struggle to see beyond your present situation, don’t judge yourself by the same standards you have for when things are calm. You are not burden, Your identity and life are not defined by this moment, You are strong with success record of suring every tough times. Just be kind to yourself and like always, This too shall pass!

Love and All the best pals!

Why Cheat? If you are unhappy, just leave.

Part Time Love Will Never Fill A Full Time Soul! ~ Anonymous

I have a question when it comes to “Emotional Affairs”. The emphasis is always on how wrong they are, how destructive of marriage, and of course I can’t help but agree with that. But the advice is always to end it as soon as possible and re-cement the marriage. But, What about the other person in the emotional affair? Does one bear no responsibility to that person at all? He/She may not be married and may have nothing to fall back on, no relationship to go back and reestablish.

“So, that is my question. Not how a person who is abandoned by another in an emotional affair can handle it (that’s the usual case of what to do when you’re dumped) but what the person who is opting out of the emotional affair can do or say to make it easier on the other person. It seems to me it’s very selfish to think only of saving your marriage and basically telling the other person they can now go to hell, so to speak. I’m curious what you all have to say about this.

We often talk to the person who is jealous and fearful that a partner is cheating but not to the other people in the triangle. There’s no getting around it–whenever there’s an emotional affair (or even a physical one), there are 3 people–plus their families–affected in different ways.

Now of course, if you have ever been cheated on, you would probably not have much (if any) compassion for the person who is the “other woman (or man)” in a situation like this. You might be saying right now–“She (he) gets what she deserves if he goes back to his spouse.” But it’s not quite as simple as that and here’s why…

Stopping the affair, whether it’s emotional or physical, and focusing on the marriage or primary partnership to see if it’s possible to rebuild it is more than the “moral” thing to do.

It’s also about clearing up unfinished business that will not only make or break your primary relationship or marriage but will also determine to a great degree your happiness as well.

Our society (and the relationship rules most of us try to live by) is very clearly based on monogamy–this means 1 partner and 1 relationship at a time–but we all know that there’s also a lot of cheating that goes on.

With that cheating comes emotional turmoil for everyone involved because at some level, there’s a lot of anguish as a result of breaking vows–even unspoken ones–and not being monogamous. I’m not saying that any of this is easy for any of the people involved.

If you’ve been attracted to someone else and you’ve acted on that attraction, you’ve undoubtedly felt torn between not wanting to hurt your partner or the new person you’re attracted to–and you don’t know what to do.

If you’ve gotten with someone who is already in a committed relationship, you may feel torn also–partly ashamed, partly wanting the love that’s given, and partly wanting more.

The big word here is “part”–because you only have part of him or her.

And of course if your partner is cheating on you, you may have a sense that he or she is not completely IN the relationship and you are probably afraid of losing what you have to someone else. You are also torn apart. Because of all of these “torn apart” feelings swirling around in this kind of situation, we suggest facing what’s there– and that starts with turning toward the primary relationship.

The truth is that none of the people involved can truly know what they each want and move from the limbo place that they find themselves in until a certain period of time is focused on the committed relationship or marriage–and possibly getting some help to sort it all out.

Okay, so with that being said, it doesn’t mean that if you are ending an emotional or physical affair with the third person in the triangle, you have to do it in a hurtful, mean way–although that no matter what’s being said, it may feel that way to the “other woman or man.”

The key here is honesty–with everyone involved. Of course we don’t know what words need to be said in specific situations but here’s something that might be said that’s honest but not intentionally meant to hurt that other person.

I care deeply about you and I have allowed myself to act on those feelings and have allowed those feelings to grow deeper. I want to feel complete and honest in my life and to do that I need to turn my focus toward my marriage to see what’s there or what can be there.”

Now it’s up-to the other person to choose his/her reaction :

If you have been in an emotional affair with someone who is in a committed relationship–and you are being told something like what is wrote above–

You have to opportunity to choose how you want to react.

You can look at it like you have been dumped–again–or you can look at it another way.

You can look at it, as one of our teachers said, as being released from an “entanglement” where you can’t have completely what you want–and that you deserve more.

You deserve someone who can fully commit to you–and not half in and half out.

You deserve to be with someone who will love only you–and that person is out there.

If you think that it’s selfish to think only of saving the marriage…

We say “you’re right” and that’s a good thing.

We say that it’s far more “selfish” (or just plain crazy) to continue in a limbo situation where everyone involved is fearful and wants more–or to move on to a new relationship without truly resolving the previous one.

No one wins when that’s the case.

If you doubt us, just look at the divorce statistics for second or third marriages.

You have to deal with the relationship you’re in–or you just carry those emotions and patterns into your new one.

P.S. No one truly “wins” when there’s infidelity–either emotional or physical–until there’s honesty about what you truly want–and then giving that a shot!

“Behaviours that block positive energy.”

The unpredictability of life often results in volatile emotions. We all experience these emotional ups and downs as our lives unfold; most times leaving these emotions unchecked. If our ability to handle difficult situations is underdeveloped, we risk creating a negative outlook by default.This is certainly a problem since negativity manifests itself as stress. When stress is a constant presence we put ourselves at risk – physically, mentally, and emotionally. Instead, you can choose to be proactive in counteracting stress. You do this by understanding what thoughts and behaviours cause negative energy to proliferate. In choosing to abandon the behaviours that encourage negative energy, you allow for positive energy to occupy its place.
Here are 7 behaviours that block positive energy (and how you can avoid them.)

1. Allowing ‘success’ to dictate your life:
The fact is that most people desire to be successful. In and of itself, desiring success is not a negative behavior. In fact, it’s perfectly normal. It’s the obsessive preoccupation with success to direct and command your life that is unhealthy. There are millions of ‘successful’, yet miserable people that live among us. People with plenty of money, good looks, beautiful spouse, power, etc. They should be living the dream, right? Wrong.

This is because allowing society to influence what ‘success’ means is toxic. Unfortunately, our society is very materialistic and consumer-based. As a result, society’s definition of success is often based on the balance in your bank account, the car in your driveway, and the home that you live in. Per this definition, there is no uniqueness or individuality on what ‘success’ is. Hence, why so many ‘successful’ people are quite miserable. So, It’s time to re-define success. Only you can define what success truly is– not society, your parents, your spouse or anyone else. When you learn what success means to you, resolve to achieve it without any outside influences.

2. Preoccupation with vanity or self-image:
Again, society has influenced the definition of what beauty is – toned bodies, expensive makeup and clothes, makeovers, hairstyles, etc. As a result, people (especially young women) are increasingly susceptible to these harmful influences. We see this in disorders such as bulimia, anorexia, and others – leading to depression, and sometimes suicide.

Trying to earn acceptance and enhance self-image by adhering to society’s definition of beauty often results in emptiness. True beauty is found in your heart, mind and soul. What you do for others. How you treat strangers. What you give of yourself. Just Recognize and love your own beauty.

3. Stress addiction:
Yes, you can be addicted to stress. This happens when you’re stressed to a point where it becomes hardwired into your brain…not good. Stress addictions don’t result from external circumstances. Only your internalisation of stress can cause problems. The solution is mindfulness; being present; deep breathing; meditation; exercise. Also, remember to witness and observe your stressful thoughts as being fleeting, while refusing to engage them. Just let them fade away.

4. Living in the past:
Regardless of the number or severity of the mistakes that have been made, today is a new day. It is impossible to enjoy the present moment when your brain continuously replays the past. When we live in the past, we are essentially conditioning our brain to expect the worst. Your brain becomes wired in a way that is counterproductive to your present and future. You may even begin to feel victimised and burdened as a result.

It’s easy to say “just forget it and move on” but sometimes it isn’t that simple. Some of us have experienced trauma that has made it difficult to progress in life. But that doesn’t mean it is impossible. Consider learning about and committing to mindfulness meditation, a practice that has been researched and proven to foster acceptance and assist with the healing process.

5. Possessiveness:
Possessiveness is telltale sign of insecurity and fear. Whether it’s conditioning your partner, children, or loved ones to become too dependent on your acceptance, it’s harmful for both them and you. Possessiveness breeds other problems as well – anger, sadness, anxiety, and loneliness – all of which compromise our sense of peace and understanding.

Often times, being possessive brings the exact opposite result – loss. Loss or disconnection from the ones you love, simply because you didn’t allow them to enjoy the freedom of having their own experiences. Obviously, we want to protect the people that we love and care for, but that doesn’t make it acceptable to constantly monitor their every move.
Remember that everyone needs space and freedom to make their own choices. Embrace the fact that somewhat distancing yourself is beneficial and will ultimately strengthen the relationships that you have with others. Be accepting and open to change as it comes to both you and the ones you love.

6. Not forgiving others:
Some of us hold onto grudges for a long time. The problem is that unrelenting bitterness leads to angry emotions and disrupts your positive energy. This often makes it difficult to manage emotions or establish new, healthy relationships.

As with living in the past, some of you have experienced tremendous pain because someone betrayed your trust. Whether it was a parent, spouse, sibling, close friend or someone else, disloyalty can be very hurtful. Remember that forgiving someone is as much, if not more, about you than it is about them.

Learning to let go allows you to embrace feelings of gratitude, hope, joy, and peace. While what that person did may continue to hurt, forgiveness can lessen the emotional and psychological impact. Forgiveness does not justify or excuse what the person did…it just allows you to make peace with it.

7. Worrying about the trivial trials of life:
Running few minutes late, forgetting your cell phone, getting cutoff in traffic, being interrupted at work; being nagged…yes, all of these are annoying, but are any of these big issues? Not really. Yet, many of us allow these to completely derail our mood. One minute we are doing just fine, and then someone comes along and does something that causes our blood to boil.

It is okay to become irritated immediately after some small, unpleasant event. It is not okay to continually replay this event in your mind and cause undue stress and anxiety. This is the epitome of dramatic overreaction. Don’t make mountains out of molehills. Simply allow the thoughts to fade away without becoming trapped in a negative mindset. “Don’t sweat the small stuff” is a nice, simple quote to commit to memory.

P.S: By simply choosing to observe your negative thoughts with detachment instead of curiosity, you greatly reduce or eliminate their effects. You must always remember that negative thoughts are not an extension of who you are…they are just thoughts. In essence, these thoughts are the brain’s problem, not yours. Don’t allow negative thoughts to influence your behavior.

“Compassion and Empathy; Absolute Traits You Need for a Healthy Relationship.”

A common denominator among healthy, loving couples is that each has compassion and empathy for the other. In action, it means taking care of each other. It means thinking about how you speak to each other—being careful to not call each other names, get nasty, or fight dirty. Healthy couples have arguments and discussions, but it’s not about playing head games or winning. It’s about what is best for the relationship.

To come to resolution in a disagreement, each partner must show some verbal or emotional restraint. Many couples get into a pattern of arguing that may not be good for the relationship. If you storm out, and that causes your partner to feel abandoned, ignored, and unloved, then you’re not fighting fair. If you’re calling your partner names, jumping to conclusions, or undermining his or her good feelings for no productive reason, you’re not fighting fair. And if you’re not fighting fair, you’re not bringing care and compassion to the relationship.

Arguments and disagreements are about working through conflict to make things better and life easier. It is not about going in circles or trying to one-up your partner with logical twists and turns. If you get a perverse pleasure out of decimating your partner in an argument to prove that no one can beat you, it shows that you care more about your reputation as a word warrior than your partner’s well-being. If you care more about your skill in figuratively cutting someone off at the knees, you are probably upsetting someone beyond what is right and reasonable. To be a compassionate partner, you have to care more about the health of the relationship and both of your satisfaction more than you care about winning.

If one person is winning, everyone is losing.

Another way to have compassion is to sincerely care about the challenges your partner may face—at work, with family, with friends, or with their physical and emotional health with a tone of true caring and interest can make someone feel truly loved, especially if they are going through a crisis or problem. Sometimes you don’t understand why your partner reacts badly to what you think is “good news,” try to show compassion and empathy first, and then gently suggest seeing the positive side of things. When you’re not facing the same challenge, issue, loss, or difficulty as your partner, showing compassion as your first response is usually the best idea.

Feelings are not right or wrong, they just are. You can’t tell another person how to feel. Having some compassion and empathy goes a long way in helping your partner feel loved—and when you’re having a tough time, the compassion and empathy should be coming your way.That is how successful couples navigate life.
Good Luck!

“Internet can be toxic for your relationship.”

Love in the digital age comes with plenty of advantages—fast communication, new ways of meeting people, easy photo sharing—but the challenges for romantic relationships introduced by online technology are quite real and often overlooked.

How exactly does the Internet hurt relationship development and maintenance? Might the web be potentially dangerous for even the healthiest of relationships? The following list outlines some primary ways Internet connection can complicate romantic relationships.

1. Too many choices. Finding the perfect partner is a critical relationship hurdle, and online dating sites offer an appealingly wide assortment of potential partners. Sometimes, however, more choices create more problems. People flounder when encountering a large choice set of potential partners and ultimately make choices that are less aligned with their ideal mate preferences. There’s also some reason to suspect that happiness with partner choice might be less when the options are so many.

2. Online dating brings people together, but usually not forever. Some couples will meet online and live happily ever after, but the general pattern suggests otherwise. It turns out that marriage is more often an outcome for couples who meet offline than those who meet online. Couples who meet online also suffer more breakups and divorces compared to those whose relationships started offline. This underscore the need for careful discernment during the dating process. If you’re looking to date, the Internet might be a great start, but if you’re looking for long-term love, engaging in offline pursuits may be a more successful strategy.

3. Facebook / Twitter use, Partner monitoring and surveillance:
Spending time on Facebook and Twitter may seem like a harmless pastime, but it actually predicts a variety of negative relationship experiences, including jealousy. Jealousy can be lethal in relationships, undermining trust and lessening positive relationship behaviours. Moreover, with social-networking sites, people have new ways to keep track of their romantic partner, an ease of surveillance that may create unhealthy habits, thereby feeling jealous, they spend more time searching their partner’s Facebook profile, possibly seeking information to confirm or deny their suspicions. When your partner solicits or accepts new friend requests from people who might harbor romantic interests, that signals to you that your partner has low relationship commitment. Facebook and other social-networking websites can provide new sources of conflict that hurt relationship well-being resulting in negative outcomes like infidelity and break-ups. In addition, Not all couples communicate via Twitter, but those who do open up a new medium for potential conflict. Active Twitter use can translate to Twitter-related conflict for romantic partners, and in turn, such conflict can generate negative relationship outcomes. In short, Social networkings sites introduces a new source of conflict that can adversely impact relationships.

4. The ex-factor. While online technology has been praised for its ability to connect people, sometimes, it’s better to stay disconnected. Evidence shows that people who receive Facebook invitations from ex-partners and accept them tend to be more depressed and anxious than those who receive requests but ignore them. Men in these situations tend to be particularly depressed, even more so than women. In sum, the very goal of social networking (to connect people) can make it challenging to focus on new relationship opportunities.

What’s next?

Break-ups can be devastating, causing considerable emotional distress. So, Knowing the ways in which the Internet may complicate your relationship can arm you with strategies for keeping its effects at bay. It seems that moderate use of Internet is preferable to excessive use, as the latter seems conducive to relationship conflict, unhealthy partner surveillance, and jealousy.

“How do you live your Life”?

How do you live your life? Do you proactively make the most of your talents and seek out fulfilling experiences and relationships? Or is your focus on avoiding pain, confrontation and embarrassment—in other words, making yourself as small a target as possible so the world won’t shoot you down?

Putting yourself out there can be unsettling, but it feels worse to wonder what might have been.

Are you giving yourself the chance to be your best and to experience all that you can? Or are you living a miniature life? Here are five signs you’re living too small for your inherent bigness:

1. You wait to be asked …

… to speak in the meeting, to go to the movies, to join the conversation at a party, to share your opinion. You find difficult putting yourself forward; What if you speak up and say something stupid? What if you ask someone to the movies and they say no? Better to sit back and wait until someone begs you to join in. That way, if things go wrong, you can say, “Hey, it wasn’t my idea.”

The reality: If you wait to be asked, the invitation may never come. Yes, that might mean you sometimes avoid embarrassment, but it also means you are going to miss chances to grow, learn, and just have fun.

2. You’ll do anything to avoid confrontation.

No matter how big or legitimate your complaint, you can’t bring yourself to actually confront a person with your grievance. What if they get mad? What if they come up with some complaints about you in return? Instead, you live with the problem, and complain about your boss to your spouse, about your spouse to your friend, and about your friend to your sister, etc.

The reality: It can be hard to stand up for yourself, but doing so in a diplomatic way is more respectful to everyone involved than venting behind someone’s back. It’s also your best hope for bringing about real change. Give the person a chance to make things better or explain. You will both be better off for it.

3. You make room for the little stuff in your life before the big.

Life seems full of minutia—errands, chores, email, to-do lists. But despite all the busyness, it doesn’t seem to add up to much at the end of the day. You often feel as though you’re missing the big picture.

The reality: The oft-told story of the rocks in the jar applies here: If you put the little stuff in the jar first—the pebbles and the sand—you won’t have room for the rocks. But add the rocks first—the important things, such as family, health, faith and relationships—and the pebbles and the sand can be worked into the empty spaces. The point is not that there’s a way to squeeze everything into your life, but you should prioritize the things that really matter.

4. Criticism lays you low rather than helping you grow.

When discouraging words come your way, you see it as confirmation of what you suspected all along—I’m a loser. And it doesn’t even need to be words. A single disgusted look can make you wither. That’s why you wear a heavy coat of armor whenever you deal with people, whether at home, at work, or out in the world. You are eternally, exhaustingly, braced for attack.

The reality: People usually mean a lot less by their criticism than we hear. Pay attention to your reaction the next time you are at the receiving end of a negative comment. Does your pulse race, does your face go red, or are you hearing the outraged or anguished commentary in your head rather than really listening to what the person is saying? Try to stop yourself and listen as though you were taking notes for another person. Is the criticism valid? Is there something to learn from it? If so, great! You’ve had a positive experience, albeit a painful one. If not, say, “I see your point but I disagree, and here’s why.” Then move on.

5. You plan more than you produce.

You have ideas, maybe lots of them. You spend hours, weeks, months, even years thinking about them, planning them, and examining the pros and cons from all angles. But when push comes to shove, you find a million reasons not to do them. They probably won’t work anyway, you tell yourself. And what if you put your heart and soul into one of these projects and then it’s met with ridicule or, even worse, silence? Better to wait until everything is perfect.

The reality: Yes, it would hurt if your brainchild were met with indifference or derision, but what’s the alternative? Never taking a chance? Never seeing what you can really do? Stripping away the layers of creativity until all that’s left is an inoffensive shell? Perfection is an illusion, of course, and virtually every success story is preceded by a string of failures, sometimes spectacular. Be willing to have your own. Even if nothing turns out as you planned, you’ll learn plenty about what to do next time. At the very least, you’ll be able to look yourself in the mirror and say, “I gave it my best shot.”

“Casual Sex”

The phase between puberty and entry into marriage getting ever wider, as more “emerging adults” are turning to casual encounters as a way to express and satisfy their sexual needs. On one hand where Hookups are part of a popular cultural shift that has infiltrated the lives of emerging adults throughout the Westernised world, but on the other hand hookups pose a significant threat to the physical and psychological health of these young individuals.

In addition to the known risks of contracting STDs, developing unwanted pregnancies, or otherwise assaulted, people who engage in casual sex may suffer emotional consequences that persist long after the details of an encounter are a dim memory. In college life, where brief sexual liaisons are prevalent, unanticipated results can jeopardise a student’s career. In the workplace, the results can be just as disastrous, if not more so.

Despite our 21st-century reality, many of our social norms remain tied to 20th-century sensibilities. The old double standard still looks down on women, but either glorifies or fails to blame men who make a habit of having frequent, uncommitted sex. One common notion is there may be a biological basis to the greater acceptance of casual sex among men, but there’s no way to separate biology from sociocultural influences given that the two are so tightly intertwined—and will forever remain so.

Setting aside the issue of gender differences for the moment, what do we know about those unintended emotional consequences of short-term sexual liaisons?

There are plenty, For one, there’s the discomfort factor. Despite of western culture and living style which says hookups are okay, if not desirable, people may still feel that they’ve done something that violates their own internal standards. Feeling perhaps pressured to get involved because “everyone else is,” they may develop performance anxiety, ironically setting the stage for future sexual dysfunction. Other common reactions include regret, disappointment, confusion, embarrassment, guilt, and low self-esteem, although other individuals certainly report feeling proud, nervous, excited, and desirable or wanted. (Feelings tended to be more positive before and during a hookup, and more negative afterward.)

It’s difficult enough to conduct research on sexual behaviour. It’s even more challenging when the topic is sexual relationships outside the context of long-term relationships. Regret, faulty memory, and shame or embarrassment can taint or limit people’s self-reports—while, at the same time, others exaggerate their encounters in the opposite direction. But still, some Researchers examining the mental health associations of hookup sex report that people who were not depressed before showed more depressive symptoms and loneliness after engaging in casual sex. Another set of risk factors involve nonconsensual sex. Yes, approximately half the young women had a nonconsensual sexual encounter, where alcohol and other substances were more likely to be factors in nonconsensual sex. People who seek out casual-sex opportunities, particularly those who do so under the influence of alcohol or drugs, may be fighting off persistent feelings of loneliness, depression, and social anxiety that they hope to eradicate or reduce through brief encounters that grant them momentary closeness.

Moreover, Psychological researches shows that People who engaged in more hookups had greater psychological distress, depression, distress, anxiety, lower levels of self-esteem, life-satisfaction, and happiness compared to those who had not have casual sex. In contrast to the notion that men are okay with casual sex but women are not, researchers did not find gender differences in the relationships between casual sex and either distress or well-being. For both men and women, true hookup sex—with a casual stranger rather than a romantic partner or “friend with benefits”—seemed to bode poorly for mental health and self-esteem.

Many findings suggest that even though gender norms, biology, or some combination of the two may lead men to be more likely to seek (or at least to report seeking) casual sex, there are similar connections as for women between hookups and mental health. Moreover, the fact that we defined casual sex in the way that we did (with a stranger within the past month), it is possible that we were tapping into a population at particularly high-risk due to high levels of impulsivity. At that level, mental-health factors may trump socialisation or biology to wipe out gender effects.

P.S: We need to pay more attention to hookups at all levels, from the young men and women who gravitate toward these relationships, to parents, to college administrators, and to mental-health professionals. If you’re someone who’s been involved in casual sex, then you should think about how your sexual behaviour might affect, and be affected by, your psychological well-being. We all seek gratifying and fulfilling intimate partnerships, and by knowing the benefits and risks of short-term encounters, you’ll increase your own chances of making these relationship goals come true.

“Forgive even when it feels impossible”

Whether it’s a spouse or your love interest who was unfaithful, a parent who let you down as a child, or a friend who shared something told in confidence, we all must face the question of whether and how to forgive.

After you are wronged and the initial wave of emotion has passed, you’re presented with a new challenge: Do you forgive the person? By forgiving, you let go of your grievances and judgments and allow yourself to heal. While this may sound good in theory, in practice forgiveness can sometimes feel impossible.

To learn how to forgive, you must first learn what forgiveness is not. Most of us hold at least some misconceptions about forgiveness. Here are some things that forgiving someone doesn’t mean:

Forgiveness doesn’t mean you are pardoning or excusing the other person’s actions.

Forgiveness doesn’t mean you need to tell the person that he or she is forgiven.

Forgiveness doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have any more feelings about the situation.

Forgiveness doesn’t mean there is nothing further to work out in the relationship or that everything is okay now.

Forgiveness doesn’t mean you should forget the incident ever happened.

Forgiveness doesn’t mean you have to continue to include the person in your life.

… and most importantly forgiveness isn’t something you do for the other person.

By forgiving, you are accepting the reality of what happened and finding a way to live in a state of resolution with it. This can be a gradual process—and it doesn’t necessarily have to include the person you are forgiving. Forgiveness isn’t something you do for the person who wronged you; it’s something you do for you.

So if forgiveness is something you do for yourself and if it can help you heal, why is it so hard?

There are several reasons: You’re filled with thoughts of retribution or revenge; you enjoy feeling superior; you don’t know how to resolve the situation; you’re addicted to the adrenaline that anger provides; you self-identify as a “victim”; or you’re afraid that by forgiving you have to re-connect—or lose your connection—with the other person. These reasons not to forgive can be resolved by becoming more familiar with yourself, with your thoughts and feelings, and with your boundaries and needs.

Now that you know what forgiveness is not and why it’s so hard to do, ask yourself: Do I want to forgive?

Forgiveness requires feeling willing to forgive. Sometimes you won’t, because the hurt went too deep, or because the person was too abusive, or expressed no regret. Do not attempt to forgive someone before you have identified, fully felt, expressed, and released your anger and pain.

If you decide you are willing to forgive, find a good place and time to be alone with your thoughts. Then, try following these steps to forgive even when it feels impossible:

Think about the incident that angered you: Accept that it happened. Accept how you felt about it and how it made you react. In order to forgive, you need to acknowledge the reality of what occurred and how you were affected.

Acknowledge the growth you experienced as a result of what happened: What did it make you learn about yourself, or about your needs and boundaries? Not only did you survive the incident, perhaps you grew from it.

Now think about the other person:
He or she is flawed because allhuman beings are flawed. He or she acted from limited beliefs and a skewed frame of reference because sometimes we all act from our limited beliefs and skewed frames of reference. When you were hurt, the other person was trying to have a need met. What do you think this need was and why did the person go about it in such a hurtful way?

Finally, decide whether or not you want to tell the other person that you have forgiven him or her: If you decide not to express forgiveness directly, then do it on your own. Say the words, “I forgive you,” aloud and then add as much explanation as you feel is merited.

Forgiveness puts the final seal on what happened that hurt you. You will still remember what happened, but you will no longer be bound by it. Having worked through the feelings and learned what you need to do to strengthen your boundaries or get your needs met, you are better able to take care of yourself in the future. Forgiving the other person is a wonderful way to honor yourself. It affirms to the universe that you deserve to be happy.

P.S: “Without forgiveness life is governed by an endless cycle of resentment and retaliation”.

“Habits of highly happy couples”

Human beings are all about relationships and what makes them work—or fail would help us to know what makes a connection move from good to great. Some tips seem to really help couples find happiness and satisfaction:

1. Express Admiration and Affection:

Many of us know to make up after a fight. But it has been suggested that we build a bank account of positive feelings if we do these “make up” actions before we have a conflict. We build this account balance when we express our love without anything spurring the expression. Such expressions can consist of an unexpected text, a small favor, or a note left near the sink. As the account builds, we tend to override our tendency to see our partner negatively when stress causes irritability, allowing us to use our reservoir of positive feelings to be forgiving. The idea is to look for ways to appreciate and feel fondness for your partner, and express those things—when times are good.

2. Make Room in Your Head for the Other Person:

Our lives are busier than ever. We face demands on the space in our heads every second from emails, texts and other alerts. Our children make demands on us, too, as they should, asking for the attention they deserve. But as we fill our minds with so many bits of information, we’re actually happiest when we reserve space in our heads for our partner. Satisfied couples fill this space with important information about their significant other, including everyday things like important dates, favorite foods and music etc. This is to say that keeping knowledge in your head adds to your private map of him or her which deeper things that mean something to our partners. Asking questions about how your partner thinks about things or feels about different parts of life tells them that you care and want to know about them. Couples who love we’ll keep these “love maps” of each other in the forefront of their minds:

3. Accept Influence from Each Other:

Many people define power in relationships as the control we have over each other, but another way to define power is the balance of influence each person has on the other. We all ask our partners to allow us to influence them. We ask for help with the laundry, caring about our feelings, or a moment of undivided attention. Happy relationships consist of not just these efforts to influence or to connect, but accepting those efforts. In other words, if we mostly say “OK” to a request for help (and, of course, then do it) or turn toward our partner when they need us, the interaction affects how we both feel positively. When we fight, there is a special case of the acceptance action—saying “yes” to an effort to repair the breakdown in the relationship. The best of the repair efforts start off with a soft emotional message that includes a word about how the “repairer” might have contributed to the argument. To say “yes,” we turn our feelings and attention to our partner and take ownership over our role in the argument. Repairing an argument is not so much about solving the problem at hand (some problems in relationship just defy being solved)—it’s about managing a fight to fix the distance arguments could cause. If we can avoid that distance, we can stay connected rather than isolated from one another.

4. Know Your Partner’s Inner World:

We live in our heads more than most of us realize. We learn to attach meaning to events or family rituals, to words and gestures. Those meanings create a symbolic world in our thinking—a world often unknown to our partner. Conflicts often stem more from reactions we both have to these meanings than the real situation outside our heads. Thriving relationships consists of each partner’s efforts to learn the other person’s meanings and symbols. Some of the most important parts of that inner world are the dreams we have for our life and relationships. Many of us fund it hard to express our dreams, so partners often show love by looking for disappointed hope underneath the argument. As we learn more about each other’s inner world, each of us begins to share the meanings and dreams. We grow to see the relationship serving each other’s dreams and hopes, and spend energy helping our partner fulfill their aspirations for life. A key to happiness in relationships is knowing each other’s meanings and symbols, finding the dreams within conflicts, and creating shared meanings.

Good Luck!

“How do you deal with relationship transgressions”?

Even the happiest and healthiest of relationships include the occasional offensive remark, annoying behavior, or slip in judgment. Whether your partner forgets your anniversary, instigates argument after argument, or even has an affair. You know that your partner’s bad behavior can prompt an immediate fallout from you. But as it turns out, how you remember it can reveal important insight into the health of your relationship. Because new evidence suggests that it may be how you think about these transgressions that matters most. To get at the heart of this new finding, we have to talk about perspective taking:

We all think about relationship transgressions. We go over events in our heads, again and again, reviewing both our reactions and our partner’s. If we caused the pain, we might kick ourselves about what we did and why; if we were the victim, we might ruminate, search our memories for clues, and try to sort out what happened. When you recall the event, do you see it from your own eyes (first-person perspective) or do you see yourself engaged in the interaction with your partner, almost from a bird’s eye view (third-person perspective)? The perspective through which you mentally recall your partner’s transgression can actually accentuate or reduce relational anxiety. And which would you guess is a healthier memory style—first-person or third-person?

Here, What I am trying to say is that the effect of how you think about a partner’s transgression depends on your overall attachment orientation. An individual’s attachment orientation might be more secure (i.e., highly trusting of a partner’s love and one’s own self-worth) or more insecure (i.e., deeply concerned by a fear of potential abandonment and uncertain about one’s own self-worth).

Let’s sum up the many research findings to understand something incredibly important about how we think about relationship transgressions:

If you’re anxious and you offend your partner, avoid a bird’s-eye view:
When highly anxious people hurt their partners, if they remember the event from an observer’s perspective, they tend to report less relationship satisfaction than if they see the event from their own eyes.

The observer’s perspective is painful to anxious victims:
When you’re the victim, take account of your attachment tendencies before reflecting on the offense. Remembering a relational offense from a third-person perspective made anxious people highly distressed—but they were not nearly as distressed thinking about it from a first-person perspective.

A bird’s-eye view makes anxious victims question their relationship satisfaction:
Beyond general distress, anxious victims who see a partner’s offense within a broader context (i.e., from an observer’s perspective) report less relationship satisfaction. It doesn’t help anxious people to take a wider viewpoint: All signs suggest it hurts the relationship.

The bird’s-eye view is calming for secure victims:
Maybe this is because they feel so safe in their relationship, but taking the third-person perspective and seeing a relational offense in context makes more secure people less distressed about their relationship.

So what did you learn?

Attachment, particularly insecure attachments, can influence how people react to memories of relational transgressions. This influence takes place well after the transgression and occurs within a person’s mental imagery of the event. Remembering a conflict or transgression through an observer’s perspective is healthy for secure people but is not beneficial for anxious people or insecure people.

So here’s the tip:

if you’re chronically anxious in relationships and you have hurt your partner, or if your partner has offended you, try to think about those memories through the vantage point of your own shoes. Such efforts may be an easy way to improve your relationship quality.
Good Luck!

“Depression Myths”

The global conversation surrounding death by suicide has taken center stage, and now more than ever, we’re acknowledging the effects of undiagnosed, untreated and mistreated depression on those rising numbers. Approximately two out of three people who commit suicide suffer from major depression first. In the past, we have spent more time focusing on suicide than on this dominant root cause. And that’s finally changing.
A mass re-education is needed regarding battling the stigma surrounding the true origins of depression and how people with the disease suffer in distinct ways requires debunking myths and defying stereotypes that have incorrectly defined it for so long. Many of us have friends, family members, colleagues and role models with this illness, yet struggle to decipher the facts from the fiction of what they’re going through. The sooner we can understand the truths behind depression, the sooner we can find ways to help those who need it most.

Here are myths and misconceptions about depression that hinder us from truly understanding the disease:

Depression and sadness are one and the same:
While an overwhelming sense of sadness is often a symptom of depression, it is not synonymous with it. Sadness is fleeting and temporary. Sadness is catalyzed by upsetting life experiences and powerful memories, but it comes and goes — it is not constant. Depression, on the other hand, is a chronic condition. The deep sadness depressed people feel doesn’t fade on its own, and sadness is far from the only negative emotion they experience. People with depression can feel empty, apathetic, anxious and tense in ways that make going about their daily lives incredibly arduous and painful.

It’s a sign of mental weakness:
This stigma is one of the main reasons why so many people elect to suffer in silence rather than seek the help they need. However, no one chooses to develop depression. It is a complex mental disorder that affects a person biologically, psychologically and socially, and does not discriminate. If anything, there is great resilience in the person that feels truly debilitated by this condition but makes an effort to work through it on a daily basis.

It’s always brought on by traumatic life events:
While certain circumstances can (and often do) trigger depressive episodes, the events themselves cannot take all responsibility for a person’s depression. Loss of a loved one, divorce and other upsetting life experiences will leave any emotionally sensitive person feeling sad, remorseful, lonely and empty, possibly for a prolonged period of time. However, those who are truly depressed find their symptoms lasting longer than two weeks and reoccurring frequently — one of the key symptoms a doctor looks for in a depression diagnosis.

It isn’t a real illness:
While its symptoms may be difficult to recognize and it doesn’t boast a “one size fits all” treatment, depression is a serious medical condition. People with depression actually have physical differences in their brain, and neurotransmitter and hormone imbalances that determine their condition, not to mention its severity. Depression, like many illnesses, affects a person on every level, from their moods to their thoughts to their physical existence. Categorizing this condition as a matter of character only belittles how people with depression feel and deters them from seeking treatment.

It’s all in your head:
Emotional symptoms are often thought of as the main characteristics associated with depression, but it doesn’t stop there. Many people with depression find themselves coping with ailments all over their bodies. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, depression can manifest as fatigue, insomnia, unusual changes in appetite, chronic muscle aches and chest pains. By promoting the idea that depression is only mental, we overlook these physical signs of the more serious issue at hand.

An antidepressant is all you need to feel better:
Because depression manifests differently in each person, it is not the kind of illness that allows a person to simply pop a pill and feel better tomorrow. Antidepressants are a common treatment prescribed by doctors as they see fit, but they aren’t the only option: Many people suffering from depression opt for psychotherapy or a combination of methods to address their symptoms. In fact, many doctors consider using both medication and therapy to be the most effective way to help someone suffering from depression. Those who do opt for medication usually will not experience its benefits for at least six weeks as the body acclimates. Many people also have to try a number of different methods before finding one that suits them best.

You’ll need medication for the rest of your life:
Depression treatment is entirely customized to the person exhibiting symptoms: Some people use medication for short-term assistance, some stick to a consistent regimen over the course of their lives and some opt for no medication at all. Several forms of psychotherapy can offer effective treatment; for an estimated 40 percent of people dealing with depression, it works even better than medication. Experienced doctors run through all of the treatment options with their patients to ensure that they are getting the care that they need and feel comfortable with the route ultimately taken.

Talking about it only makes it worse:
Because we have treated the issue of depression with kid gloves for so long, it instinctually feels uncomfortable to talk about it at first. But we can’t will it away or expect it to heal on its own. By abandoning the stigma associated with the disorder and being receptive to those who are concerned for their well-being or that of a loved one, we are able to initiate the conversation in a proactive, helpful way rather than reinforce destructive, negative feelings. More people will express how they feel before those feelings become more severe — or even fatal — and begin seeking the support they truly need.

P.S: Depression can make you feel helpless, hopeless, or empty and numb; but there’s a lot you can do to change how you feel. With help and support, you can overcome depression and get your life back.Therefore, do not wait too long to get evaluated or treated. Continue to educate yourself and others about depression and be patient; because depression is something that can improve gradually not immediately.
Good Luck!

“Emotions”

Emotions serve many functions. They provide you with inner cues about the way a situation is affecting you, and they give you a way to signal to other people whether you like or dislike what they’re saying or doing. But we’re not always sure when to let our emotions show.

Researchers who study emotion regulation are interested in the factors that determine whether and how we compartmentalize intense feeling states and allow ourselves to move on with our daily lives. In part, getting hold of your emotions becomes easier as you get older. Moreover middle-teens have the poorest control over their emotions. In middle adulthood, people better control their negative emotions such as fear and anger, though they seem to do so in ways that lead them to avoid confronting their feelings—and they are less likely than younger people to seek social support when they’re sad and angry. As you get older, then, you may be better at keeping your feelings to yourself, but this may not always be the most adaptive strategy. The ideal is to find a balance between holding back and expressing your feelings in accordance with the situation.
Hence, we need to know the factors determining whether and how to show your true feelings:

Your own ability to regulate your emotions:
The better you understand yourself, including your emotional triggers, and the better you’re able to cope when those triggers set you off, the more likely you’ll know whether it’s okay or not to vent.

Your feeling of safety and comfort
in the situation:
If you believe you can trust the people around you, showing your true self will be far easier than if you’re afraid of harmful consequences for taking down the mask of social nicety.

The extent to which you feel accountable:
The reason it’s so easy to act out against an anonymous voice on the phone is that you feel little compunction to be nice. This can prove counterproductive (no one wants to help a customer who’s insulting), but it might make you feel that you’re off the hook. The more you stand to lose, the more likely you’ll keep your feelings to yourself.

Ideally, you can find enough emotional release through the use of coping strategies so that you can manage your emotions in situationally-appropriate ways. As mad, frustrated, disappointed or anxious as you might feel, it is possible to find fulfillment by recognizing, accepting, and eventually expressing your emotional needs.

“Learn about the opposite sex”

Although, we are alike in so many ways, but when it comes to relationships and love, there’s no denying it: Men and women can seem to be complete opposites. What might surprise you however is just how many and how real these differences truly are. And yet, you can’t ignore these different ways of looking at love if you want to build a successful relationship.

I believe there some simple steps you need to know to take your relationship from Good to Great. Because becoming aware of the differences between you and your partner will lead to a stronger and happier relationship in the long run.

3 Things Men Need to Understand About Women in Relationships:

Conflict lingers:
Women are much more sensitive than men about conflict and problems that arise in relationships. When a woman has a disagreement, it lingers in her mind for two-to-three days. She replays it over and over. She wants to go over the disagreement the next day. By contrast, when men have a conflict with their partner, once it’s been discussed, it’s resolved. The fight doesn’t linger in their minds. They have already moved on to thinking about something else.

Don’t fix things:
Men need to understand that when women have a problem and they come to share that problem with you, they don’t need the problem solved. Men want to repair or fix issues when women raise them. Women just want you to listen, empathize, and say you understand.

Women connect through talk:
Women connect and feel close to others by talking and sharing personal information. Talking time is therapeutic to women. If you want a woman to feel close to you, she needs to open up to you and you to her. Most men feel connected by doing activities with others, but women feel close by simply talking.

3 Things Women Need to Understand About Men in Relationships:

They need affirmation from their partners:
Affirmation is the degree to which you are made to feel loved, cared for, and valued or special. Studies show that long-lasting relationships are those in which men feel affirmed. Women also need to feel cared for, but they have so many other people they can get affirmation from—sisters, friends, their mother, even neighbors and co-workers. Men, however, typically do not receive affirmation from anyone besides their partners.

Track what they do, not what they say:
Men are action-oriented. They have trouble verbalizing their love. They can learn to verbalize their feelings, but they are more likely to express their love by doing, rather than by saying—like picking up your cleaning, or sometimes making breakfast/coffee for you, helping in household cores. Romantic? Perhaps not by your standards, but to men it is what love is all about.

Talk can be a problem:
Men don’t like to be criticized. And when women bring up the need to change something in the relationship or just in them men interpret this as criticism. Women may have the best intentions at heart, but men hear that there’s trouble and that it’s their fault. The next time you are tempted to talk about your relationship, praise or acknowledge your partner’s strengths first. Then zing him with the discussion of necessary change.
Good Luck!

“Sexless Marriage”

Sex is not only physically pleasurable; it is also an avenue for intimacy and emotional and sometimes, mental and spiritual connection. It is a stress reliever when a relationships is strong, but it can be the cause of tremendous stress when a relationship is not. Really, being held hostage in sexless marriage is a sort of torture.

Affairs, those that occur in response to a sexless marriage somehow seem more understandable than those that occur in marriages where there is still passion and romance. Nonetheless, affairs can occur regardless of whether there is loving happening at home or not. Having reservations about jumping back into sex with a partner who has strayed is common—certainly there are cases in which a betrayed spouse simply cannot overcome the hurt feelings, fear of inadequacy, and lack of trust.

There are other causes that lead one or both spouses to lose the desire to be physically intimate with their mate. Hurt feelings that never healed may turn into resentment, and not having sex may be a way to “get back at” or feel a sense of power over the other. This drain a person of his or her energy to the point where there is no interest in sexual connection.

Whatever the reason, the end result is the same—zero sex. When couples find themselves in this spot, the choices are limited, couples therapy; suffering in silence; an extramarital affair; or divorce. More couples may be choosing open marriages, in which the spouses agree that being sexual with someone outside the marriage is okay. In addition it had been reported that “ethical non-monogamy” is practiced in as many as 21 percent of marriages, and postulates that the numbers of couples choosing this option would be even higher if it were as socially acceptable as divorce.
Today, divorce is a far more accepted option than having multiple sex partners. But for those who get along reasonably well, or are co-parenting young children, or who want to stay together for financial reasons, an open marriage may be a compromise.

Remember, The danger of withholding sex is that it births feelings of resentment that can accumulate over time. Touching, conversation, laughing and other ways of connecting dwindle as well. If not attended to, the risk of infidelity and divorce become a reality. Couples who avoid each other by going to bed at separate times, blame and argue over sex and make excuses for being uninterested are worsening the problem. I’ve heard couples say things like, “You no longer excite me” or “If you would be nicer, maybe I would be more interested.” The danger in these types of remarks is that they only blame and do not result in a way to resolve the issue. Blaming is criticism and criticism is the first step on that road to emotional distance.

P.S: Although, I will suggest don’t go sexless in you marriage but still I consider fidelity is more a function of honesty rather than strictly of sexual exclusivity. And I firmly believe that authenticity and respect are much more important qualities in a healthy marriage.

“Surprising Real Reason Why Do People Divorce”

“In every marriage more than a week old, there are grounds for divorce. The trick is to find and continue to find grounds for marriage.”
-Robert Anderson

Society has a special place in its psyche for true love. We think of it as unconditional, intimate, and everlasting. Divorce, on the other hand, seems the antithesis of love—temporal, legalistic, and involving lots of paperwork. So would it surprise you to learn that the development of our Western notion of romantic love is what ultimately led to the development of divorce law?

The truth is this: Not only did the development of romantic love coincide with the development of available divorce, it was the trigger. This juicy part of societal history has been widely overlooked.

Let’s start from the beginning: From 0 A.D. to the 1600s—that is, 1,600 years—divorce was not available to married couples. The Catholic Church influenced and controlled marriages. With only a few exceptions, marriage was permanent, regardless of abuse, fault, irreconcilable differences, or anything else short of death. This permanent marriage was not based on ideas of romantic love, but on much more practical matters, such as reliably keeping land in the family, and keeping status stable.

Indeed, romantic love was not encouraged, and was even frowned upon, between married couples. Up to the 18thcentury, “it was generally held that passionate sexual love between spouses within marriage was not only independent, but positively sinful.”

If divorce was unavailable for 1,600 years, how did it become so widespread (relatively) recently? The Church became less influential, and the importance of family land became less crucial. But the more important—and interesting—factor is that Western concepts of romantic love began to arise in the 1800s.

Enlightenment thinkers in their salons, and romance novelists in their publications, began pushing married love as a credible idea. After women began reading these books and listening to these ideas, it began occurring to them that they should marry for love rather than convenience—a novel concept at the time.

However, once romantic love entered the equation, eternal marriage became psychologically inconsistent. Romantic feelings are emotional. And emotional feelings change over time. Therefore, a marriage built on romantic feelings could not be indissoluble. Because “human emotions need not remain eternally constant…divorce became practically possible.”

In sum, it is ironic that today, many of the people who advocate against easy divorce do so with the idea that they are defending romantic love—because it was the very emergence of romantic love that triggered the availability of divorce. Marriage based on other factors like religion, land, and family obligations were much more stable bases for marriage than emotional love.

So the next time you hear someone complaining about the frequency of divorce, blame it on love.

“Relationship Red Flags”

Most of us will have at least one, if not a few, significant relationships during our lifetime. Our first intimate encounters may be more difficult or challenging because we’re new to the experience of forming an intimate bond with another person, and may not really know what we’re doing and what to expect. But time and experience should help us navigate through future relationships in a much better way.

It’s essential to get to know yourself in every possible way before you move into a committed relationship. Often, individuals go in search of a relationship without this essential knowledge. But how can you ever hope to know another individual if you don’t know yourself first? How can you address another’s needs and desires if you’re disconnected from your own? As obvious as these issues may appear, and as much as you may feel you understand them intellectually, it should come as no surprise that what initially seems unimportant may take on greater significance as insights occur over the course of the relationship. In retrospect, individuals are often baffled about their own behavior and expectations in a relationship.

Learn to ask yourself the hard questions out of the gate, the first or second time you meet someone, before opinions are solidly formed. Most of us seem to do much better when we have no real expectations of someone, because we hardly know who they are and are not yet trying to impress them. And watch for red flags—indicators that something needs to be questioned or otherwise validated. Often these are clues that something may be trouble in the future. Here are relational red flags to look out for:

Lack of communication:
These individuals find it difficult to talk about issues or express how they feel. Often, when it would seem most important to be open and honest, they distance themselves emotionally, leaving their partner hanging, or having to deal with a situation on their own. Often, whatever is “communicated” is expressed through moodiness, and sometimes the dreaded “silent treatment.”

Irresponsible, immature, and unpredictable:
Some people have trouble mastering basic life skills—taking care of themselves, managing their finances and personal space, holding onto a job, and making plans for their life and future. Small crises surrounding the way they live their daily life may take up a lot of time and energy. If so, there may be little time and energy left for you and your issues. These people may still be working on growing up. In other words, it may be hard to rely on them for almost anything.

Lack of trust:
When a person has difficulty being honest with himself or herself, it may be hard for them to be honest with you. Some of this behavior may not be calculated and malicious but simply a learned way or habit of coping. However, being out-and-out lied to is a no-brainer. A person who holds himself or herself unaccountable for their actions lacks integrity and lacks respect for their partner. You may feel, and rightly so, that there are a lot of “missing pieces,” so much that you don’t know or that is purposely hidden from you.

Significant family and friends don’t like your partner:
If there is something “off” about this person that seems obvious to those who know you so well, you may need to listen to what they’re telling you. Often, in the throes of a new relationship, hearing criticism about your new “beloved” may not be welcome, but others may see things more clearly from an outsider’s perspective. At the very least, hear these people out.

Controlling behavior:
Similarly, a partner may attempt to “divide and conquer,” driving a wedge between you and other significant people in your life. They may be jealous of your ongoing relationships with these people or simply feel the need to control where you go and who you associate with, limiting your world to allow in only what is important to them. Sometimes, they may make you choose them over significant others as an expression of “love.”

Feeling insecure in the relationship:
You may often feel that you don’t know where you stand in a relationship. Rather than moving forward, building on shared experiences that should be strengthening your connection, you feel uncomfortable, uncertain, or anxious about where the it’s heading. You may seek reassurances from your partner, but somehow these are only momentary and fleeting. As a result, you may be working double duty to keep the relationship on track while your partner contributes little.

A dark or secretive past:
Behaviors that are suspect, illegal activities, and addictive behaviors that haven’t been resolved and continue into your relationship are obvious red flags. But you shouldn’t ignore or excuse anything that strikes you as strange or makes you feel uncomfortable.

Non-resolution of past relationships:
These include not just intimate relationships but those with family members and friends. If a person is unable to evaluate why past relationships haven’t worked out, or consistently blames the other party for all of the problems, you can bet with a great deal of confidence that the same thing could happen with your relationship.

The relationship is built on the need to feel needed:
Often we enter into a relationship strongly identified with our needs. The need may be that you, my partner, must do certain things for me to make me feel secure and satisfied, or that you allow me, your partner, to feel needed by fulfilling your needs. If this dynamic is the focal point of a relationship, however, there may be little room for real growth, individually or as a couple.

Abusive behavior:
Finally, and of course, any form of abuse, from the seemingly mild to the overtly obvious—verbal, emotional, psychological, and certainly physical—is not just a red flag but a huge banner telling you to get out immediately and never look back.

P.S: A red flag is a good intuitive image to help you process what you’re really feeling. At the end of a difficult relationship, people often say, “He (or she) told me who he (or she) was at the very beginning, but I just didn’t listen.” Learn to trust what you feel. You never know your hunch is probably right and remember the right man/woman comes at the right time.
Good Luck!

“Strengthen Your Relationship”

Relationships are always an important part of life. I mean all relationships by choice – friendship, love, marriage, live-in. Learn what makes them tick, why they sometimes go wrong, what one can do about it because they are precious. One of the biggest mistakes we can make in a relationship is not asking enough of the right questions. By asking the right questions, you can discover what your partner needs and wants from you and your time together. Here are a few to try:

“What can I help you with right now?”
If you find yourself with some time on your hands, why not offer those minutes to your mate as a loving gesture. Most of us have too much on our plates, and an extra pair of hands can make a big difference in getting things done. Plus, doing things together can be bonding.

“How can I show you I love you?”
Most couples are good at saying those three little words, but actions speak even louder. Perhaps your loved one will want a kiss or some help in the garden. Whatever his or her request, your offer to display your love will make your partner feel cherished.

“Is there one ‘little’ thing about me that you would like me to change?”
Yes, this can spark a serious (and tricky) conversation, but by emphasizing the word little, you can lighten it up significantly. Sometimes we unconsciously do things that make our partner uncomfortable, but it’s not quite annoying enough for them to tell us. By asking this question, you can stop a little annoyance from becoming a big issue.

“Is there someplace special that you would like to go?”
Ask if he or she would like to go with you and than you can make plans for a grander vacation if the mood (and budget) strikes you. It’s a great way to have something to look forward to, which fosters happiness.

“What is it about our life together that makes you happy?”
This question will cause your lover to think about all the things he or she enjoys about your relationship. Just talking about the joys will make the two of you feel closer and add more depth to your connection.

“Is there anything I can do to make you feel more loved?”
This tender question may render your partner speechless, at least for a moment. But even if you have a great relationship, your mate can surely think of something that can make your love even stronger.

“What’s something you’d like to do together that we have never done before?”
This can open up some ideas to excite both of you. You can play around with different ideas until you come up with a couple that really captivate you. Remember, doing new things with your partner will make you feel closer.

P.S: When we get caught up in daily activities, even couples with excellent communication skills can forget to ask a partner what he or she needs or wants. If you can get better at asking the right questions, your relationship will be better for it.

“Happy Couples”

“Take my hand and we’ll make it – I swear.”
– Jon Bon Jovi

Happy couples have different habits than unhappy couples. A habit is a discrete behavior that you do automatically and that takes little effort to maintain. It takes 21 days of daily repetition of a new behavior to become a habit. So select one of the behaviors in the list above to do for 21 days and voila, it will become a habit and make you happier as a couple. And if you fall off the wagon, don’t despair, just apologize to your partner, ask for their forgiveness and recommit yourself to getting back in the habit. Now the point of concern is what does it take to be happy in a relationship? If you’re working to improve your marriage, here are the 10 habits of happy couples.

1. Go to bed at the same time:
Remember the beginning of your relationship, when you couldn’t wait to go to bed with each other to make love? Happy couples resist the temptation to go to bed at different times. They go to bed at the same time, even if one partner wakes up later to do things while their partner sleeps. And when their skin touches, it still causes each of them to tingle and — unless one or both are completely exhausted — to feel sexually excited.

2. Cultivate common interests:
After the passion settles down, it’s common to realize that you have few interests in common. But don’t minimize the importance of activities you can do together that you both enjoy. If common interests are not present, happy couples develop them. At the same time, be sure to cultivate interests of your own; this will make you more interesting to your mate and prevent you from appearing too dependent.

3. Walk hand-in-hand or side-by-side:
Rather than one partner lagging or dragging behind the other, happy couples walk comfortably hand-in-hand or side-by-side. They know it’s more important to be with their partner than to see the sights along the way.

4. Make trust and forgiveness your default mode:
If and when they have a disagreement or argument, and if they can’t resolve it, happy couples default to trusting and forgiving rather than distrusting and begrudging.

5. Focus more on what your partner does right than what he or she does wrong:
If you look for things your partner does wrong, you can always find something. If you look for what he or she does right, you can always find something, too. It all depends on what you want to look for. Happy couples accentuate the positive.

6. Hug each other as soon as you see each other after work:
Our skin has a memory of “good touch” (loved), “bad touch” (abused) and “no touch” (neglected). Couples who say hello with a hug keep their skin bathed in the “good touch,” which can inoculate your spirit against anonymity in the world.

7. Say “I love you” and “Have a good day” every morning:
This is a great way to buy some patience and tolerance as each partner sets out each day to battle traffic jams, long lines and other annoyances.

8. Say “Good night” every night, regardless of how you feel:
This tells your partner that, regardless of how upset you are with him or her, you still want to be in the relationship. It says that what you and your partner have is bigger than any single upsetting incident.

9. Do a “weather” check during the day
Call your partner at home or at work to see how his or her day is going. This is a great way to adjust expectations so that you’re more in sync when you connect after work. For instance, if your partner is having an awful day, it might be unreasonable to expect him or her to be enthusiastic about something good that happened to you.

10. Be proud to be seen with your partner:
Happy couples are pleased to be seen together and are often in some kind of affectionate contact — hand on hand or hand on shoulder or knee or back of neck. They are not showing off but rather just saying that they belong with each other.

P.S: If there was one key to happiness in love and life and possibly even success, it would be to go into each conversation you have with this commandment to yourself front and foremost in your mind, “Just Listen” and be more interested than interesting, more fascinated than fascinating and more adoring than adorable.

“Are you really in Love” ?

“I am catastrophically in love with you.”
–Cassandra Clare

Falling in love and building an attachment are a wonderful basis for a healthy relationship, but keep in mind that staying in a relationship (or, for that matter, choosing to start one) is often based on more than satisfaction and feeling good in another person’s presence. Relationship success needs staying power of mutual investment and commitment. If love is passion, security, and emotional comfort, commitment is the necessary decision made within one’s cultural and social contexts to be with that person. Love simply needs the buttressing of commitment to flourish into a stable and healthy partnership.

Now the question is “Are you really in love”. The answer can change so much about your life, from how you interact with a current or potential partner to how you view yourself to what goals you have for the future. Gain some insight by considering these research-based signs of love and attachment.

You’re addicted to this person:
Love changes the brain. In early-stage relationships, that euphoria that people feel appears as heightened neural activity in dopamine-rich areas of the brain—areas linked to the reward system—and in areas associated with the pursuit of rewards. There’s even some hint of activity in the anterior cingulate, the area of the brain linked to obsessive thinking, which is a classic experience when people are falling in love (Aron, Fisher, Mashek, Strong, & Brown, 2005). As a relationship progresses into a long-term partnership, thinking about the partner activates the reward centers as well as brain areas implicated in attachment, but less so obsessive thinking (Acevedo, Aron, Fisher, & Brown, 2011).

You really want your friends or family to like this person:
New evidence shows that people are often motivated to “marshal support” for someone they are dating (Patrick & Faw, 2014), which is consistent with the idea that the people in a person’s social circle often play an important role in the success of a relationship (Sprecher, 2011). Being attuned to how your family and friends might think about your partner or potential partner is a good sign that you are becoming increasingly attached to the person.

You celebrate this person’s triumphs (even when you yourself fail):
If you’ve fallen in love with someone, you probably have an atypical reaction when witnessing them excelling at something you don’t. Because romantic partners feel connected and can share the outcomes of each other’s successes, romantic partners will often feel pride and positive emotions when they see their partner succeed, even at something they themselves can’t do, rather than feeling negative and inferior (Lockwood & Pinkus, 2014).

You definitely like this person, and this person likes you:
Liking is different from love, but is often a prerequisite for falling in love. In a cross-cultural study, researchers showed that a critical factor recognized as directly preceding falling in love is reciprocal liking, when you both clearly like each other (Riela, Rodriguez, Aron, Xu, & Acevedo, 2010). In addition, an evaluation of the other person’s personality as highly desirable tends to be a precursor to falling in love.

You really miss this person when you’re apart:
In many ways, how much you miss a person reflects how interdependent your lives have become. If you are questioning whether you love someone, perhaps consider how much you miss him or her when you’re apart. Le and colleagues (2008) showed that how much people miss each other tends to correspond with how committed they feel to the relationship.

Your sense of self has grown through knowing this person:
When people fall in love, their whole sense of self changes. They take on new traits and characteristics, growing in the diversity of their self-concept through the influence of their new relationship partner (Aron, Paris, & Aron, 1995). In other words, the you before falling in love is different from the you after falling in love. Maybe you feel the difference, maybe others notice it, but the things you care about, your habits, how you spend you time—and or all of this is subject to the (hopefully positive) influence of a new romantic partner.

You get jealous—but not suspicious:
A certain amount of jealousy is actually healthy, not toxic. From an evolutionary perspective, jealousy is an adaptation that helps relationships stay intact by making its members sensitive to potential threats. People who are jealous tend to be more committed to relationships (Rydell, McConnell, & Bringle, 2004). Keep the jealousy in check, though: Reactive or emotional jealousy is the type that is predicted by positive relationship factors like dependency and trust—but people who engage in suspicious jealousy, which includes taking actions like secretly checking a partner’s cellphone, tends to be associated with relational anxiety, low self-esteem, and chronic insecurity (Rydell & Bringle, 2007).

Good Luck!

“Taming Perfectionism”

“Perfectionism is a self destructive and addictive belief. Perfectionism isn’t what matters. In fact, it’s the very thing that can destroy you if you let it.”
– Emilly Giffin

Procrastination and underperformance are often linked to unrealistic aspirations. When people pursue realistic goals, their anxiety tends to be manageable and might actually increase their motivation and concentration. However, when our goals are unrealistic, the accompanying anxiety can be overwhelming and counterproductive. For many perfectionists, the need to be the very best in whatever they do can render them worried, powerless, and hopeless.

The “perfect” is the enemy of the “good”:
Perfectionism is rampant in our society and often takes the form of obsession with appearance, achievement, or prestige. It is a common view that any of us can achieve whatever we want if we just try hard enough. However, perfectionism can also lead to feelings of worthlessness, fear, and shame. Preoccupation with perfection tends to go hand in hand with low self-esteem. Perfectionists often have a harsh inner voice that castigates them as lazy or losers when they fail to measure up to their unrealistic expectations. This internal critic is always on the lookout for flaws.

Perfectionists are often insecure and anxious about falling short of their own standards—as a result, they constantly live in fear of private shame and public humiliation. Perfectionists perceive themselves in all-or-nothing terms—“Either I become this great person that I fantasize about or I am worthless.” They find themselves caught in a vicious cycle of chasing perfection, worried about living up to their aspirations, then procrastinating because they are anxious, then feeling even more inadequate, and so setting up new expectations—and on it goes.

Unfortunately, by its very nature, perfection is a moving target. No matter how hard-working and accomplished a perfectionist might be in the eyes of other people, he or she never feels good enough. A perfectionist’s quest is like the labor of Sisyphus from the Greek myth, whose eternal punishment was pushing a boulder up a mountain, only to see it roll down every time.

An equal-opportunity curse:
Perfectionism affects people from all walks of life. Perfectionists are so preoccupied with achieving perfection that they can’t tolerate the anxiety and imperfections of the creative process. In particular, they feel they are not allowed to produce less-than-perfect rough drafts. For e.g, A writer spends hours every day in front of his/her computer laboring to give birth to the perfect words in the perfect order. He/She believes that only exquisitely written prose can redeem his/her as an artist, and as a human being. As a result, He/She writes very little and feels bad about herself. In the end, Unable to deliver a masterpiece on the first try, they feel demoralized, defeated, and ashamed.

Perfectionism and parental expectations:
It has been observed that Perfectionism often stems from childhood experiences with primary caregivers. Many insecure parents get emotionally invested in raising highly accomplished children. They tend to be very critical of their children’s appearance or academic performance and fail to empathize with their children’s limitations.
This emphasis on success and recognition, along with the accompanying sense of guilt and shame whenever children fell short of their parents’ expectations, contributed to their fragile self-esteem and insecurities.

5 steps to taming perfectionism.
The reality, of course, is that nobody is ever perfect. With that in mind, here are five practical steps you can take to begin taming your perfectionist tendencies:

1. Acknowledge and cultivate the part of you that sees yourself as worthy, as “good enough.” For instance, make a list of things you like about yourself, like good personal qualities, rewarding relationships with others, meaningful experiences.

2. Pay attention to your “all or nothing” thoughts, and remind yourself that you don’t need to be the best in everything in order to feel loved and respected. When you feel the urge to beat yourself up for perceived imperfections, tell yourself, “Here I go again. Enough already.”

3. Try to be less critical of other people, and treat them with patience and compassion. In addition to improving your personal and professional relationships, it might reduce your fear of being criticized by others.

4. Surround yourself with people who are less caught up in the pursuit of status, money, and success—people who appreciate friendship, family, and community.

5. Find a therapist who will help you contact the unique and special qualities you already possess. In psychotherapy, you will learn to articulate the desires and vulnerabilities that can lead to perfectionism. As you become more self-accepting and hopeful, the pressure to be perfect may subside.

P.S: Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people. It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life, and it is the main obstacle between you and a shitty first draft. Perfectionism is based on the obsessive belief that if you run carefully enough, hitting each stepping-stone just right, you won’t have to die. The truth is that you will die anyway and that a lot of people who aren’t even looking at their feet are going to do a whole lot better than you, and have a lot more fun while they’re doing it.

“Basic rules of relationships”

Human beings crave intimacy, need to love and be loved, and function best when they are. Yet people have much trouble maintaining relationships. Because men and women, have no idea what a healthy relationship even looks like that’s why I feel obligated to say something. From many sources and experience over the years, I have culled some basic rules of relationships. This is by no means an exhaustive list. But it’s a necessary list and life for sure will test you on them. Here we go;

Choose a partner wisely and well. We are attracted to people for all kinds of reasons. Evaluate a potential partner by looking at their character, personality, values, their generosity of spirit, the relationship between their words and actions, their relationships with others.

Know your partner’s beliefs about relationships. Different people have different and often conflicting ideas about relationships. You don’t want to fall in love with someone who expects dishonesty in relationships; they’ll create it where it doesn’t exist.

Don’t confuse sex with love. Especially in the beginning of a relationship, attraction and pleasure in sex are often mistaken for love.

Know your needs and speak up for them clearly. A relationship is not a guessing game. Many people fear stating their needs and, as a result, camouflage them. The result is disappointment at not getting what they want and anger at a partner for not having met their (unspoken) needs. Closeness cannot occur without honesty. Your partner is not a mind reader.

Respect. Inside and outside the relationship, act in ways so that your partner always maintains respect for you. Mutual respect is essential to a good and fair relationship.

View yourselves as a team, which means you are two unique individuals bringing different perspectives and strengths. That is the value of a team—your differences.

Know how to manage differences; it’s the key to success in a relationship. Learn how to handle the negative feelings that are the unavoidable byproduct of the differences between two people. Stonewalling or avoiding conflicts is not going to manage them.

If you don’t understand or like something your partner is doing, ask about it and why he or she is doing it. Talk and explore, don’t assume or accuse.

Solve problems as they arise. Don’t let resentments simmer. Most of what goes wrong in relationships can be traced to hurt feelings, leading partners to erect defenses against one another and to become strangers Or enemies.
Learn to negotiate. Most modern relationships no longer rely on roles cast by culture. Couples create their own roles, so that almost every act requires negotiation. It works best when good will prevails. Because people’s needs are fluid and change over time, and life’s demands change too, good relationships are negotiated and renegotiated all the time.

Listen, truly listen, to your partner’s concerns and complaints without judgment. Much of the time, just having someone listen is all we need for solving problems. Plus it opens the door to confiding. And empathy is crucial. Look at things from your partner’s perspective as well as your own.

Don’t take everything personally. Sometimes a lousy day is just a lousy day.

Work hard at maintaining closeness. Closeness doesn’t happen by itself. In its absence, people drift apart and are susceptible to affairs. A good relationship isn’t an end goal; it’s a lifelong process maintained through regular attention.

Take a long-range view. A marriage is an agreement to spend a future together. Check out your dreams with each other regularly to make sure you’re both on the same path.

Never underestimate the power of good grooming.

Sex is good. Pillow talk is better. Sex is easy, intimacy is difficult. It requires honesty, openness, self-disclosure, confiding concerns, fears, sadnesses as well as hopes and dreams.

Never go to sleep angry. Try a little tenderness.

Apologize. Anyone can make a mistake. Repair attempts are crucial—highly predictive of marital happiness. They can be clumsy or funny, even sarcastic—but willingness to make up after an argument is central to every long-term relationship.

Not every major problem requires solution by talkathon. Sometimes just doing something together—a hike, for example—calms and reconnects partners.

Some dependency is good, but complete dependency on a partner for all one’s needs is an invitation to resentment at the burden and unhappiness for both partners. We’re all dependent to a degree—This is true of men as well as women.

Maintain self-respect and self-esteem. It’s easier for someone to like you and to be around you when you like yourself. The more roles people fill, the more sources of self-esteem they have. Meaningful work—paid or volunteer—has long been one of the most important ways to build and exercise a sense of self.

Keep the relationship alive by bringing into it new interests from outside. The more passions in life that you have and share, the richer your partnership will be. It is unrealistic to expect one person to meet all of your needs in life.

Cooperate. Share responsibilities. Relationships work only when they are two-way streets, with much give and take.

Stay open to spontaneity. Fun and surprise are sexy.

Maintain your energy. Stay healthy.
Recognize that all relationships have their ups and downs and do not ride at a continuous high all the time. Working together through the hard times will make the relationship stronger.

Don’t just run away from a bad relationship; you’ll only repeat it with the next partner. Use it as a mirror to look at yourself, to understand what in you is creating the relationship. Change yourself before you change your partner.

Remember that love is not a limited commodity that you’re in of or out of. It’s a feeling that ebbs and flows depending on how you treat each other. If you interact in new ways, the feelings can come flowing back, often stronger than before.

“Psychological Manipulation”

“There are those whose primary ability is to spin wheels of manipulation. It is their second skin and without these spinning wheels, they simply do not know how to function.”
― C. JoyBell C.

Psychological or Emotional manipulation can be defined as the exercise of undue influence through mental distortion and emotional exploitation, with the intention to seize power, control, benefits, and privileges at the victim’s expense.

First of all, it is important to distinguish healthy social influence from psychological manipulation. Healthy social influence occurs between most people, and is part of the give and take of constructive relationships. In psychological manipulation, one person is used for the benefit of another. The manipulator deliberately creates an imbalance of power, and exploits the victim to serve his or her agenda. Most manipulative individuals have characteristics like, they know how to detect your weaknesses. Once found, they use your weaknesses against you through their shrewd machinations and they convince you to give up something of yourself in order to serve their self-centered interests.

In work, social, relationships and family situations, once a manipulator succeeds in taking advantage of you, he or she will likely repeat the violation until you put a stop to the exploitation.
Root causes for chronic manipulation are complex and deep-seated. But whatever drives an individual to be psychologically manipulative, it’s not easy when you’re on the receiving end of such aggression. How can one successfully manage these situations? Here are keys to handling manipulative people. Simply utilize what works and leave the rest.

1. Know Your Fundamental Human Rights:
The single most important guideline when you’re dealing with a psychologically manipulative person is to know your rights, and recognize when they’re being violated. As long as you do not harm others, you have the right to stand up for yourself and defend your rights. On the other hand, if you bring harm to others, you may forfeit these rights. Following are some of our fundamental human rights:
You have the right to be treated with respect.
You have the right to express your feelings, opinions and wants.
You have the right to set your own priorities.
You have the right to say “no” without feeling guilty.
You have the right to get what you pay for.
You have the right to have opinions different than others.
You have the right to take care of and protect yourself from being threatened physically, mentally or emotionally.
You have the right to create your own happy and healthy life.
These fundamental human rights represent your boundaries.

Of course, our society is full of people who do not respect these rights. Psychological manipulators, in particular, want to deprive you of your rights so they can control and take advantage of you. But you have the power and moral authority to declare that it is you, not the manipulator, who’s in charge of your life.

2. Keep Your Distance:
One way to detect a manipulator is to see if a person acts with different faces in front of different people and in different situations. While all of us have a degree of this type of social differentiation, some psychological manipulators tend to habitually dwell in extremes, being highly polite to one individual and completely rude to another—or totally helpless one moment and fiercely aggressive the next. When you observe this type of behavior from an individual on a regular basis, keep a healthy distance, and avoid engaging with the person unless you absolutely have to.

3. Avoid Personalization and Self-Blame:
Since the manipulator’s agenda is to look for and exploit your weaknesses, it is understandable that you may feel inadequate, or even blame yourself for not satisfying the manipulator. In these situations, it’s important to remember that you are not the problem; you’re simply being manipulated to feel bad about yourself, so that you’re more likely to surrender your power and rights. Consider your relationship with the manipulator, and ask the following questions: Am I being treated with genuine respect? Are this person’s expectations and demands of me reasonable? Is the giving in this relationship primarily one way or two ways? Ultimately, do I feel good about myself in this relationship?
Your answers to these questions give you important clues about whether the “problem” in the relationship is with you or the other person.

4. Put the Focus on Them by Asking Probing Questions:
Inevitably, psychological manipulators will make requests (or demands) of you. These “offers” often make you go out of your way to meet their needs. When you hear an unreasonable solicitation, it’s sometimes useful to put the focus back on the manipulator by asking a few probing questions, to see if she or he has enough self-awareness to recognize the inequity of their scheme. For example: “Does this seem reasonable to you?” “Does what you want from me sound fair?” “Do I have a say in this?” “Are you asking me or telling me?” “So, what do I get out of this?” “Are you really expecting me to [restate the inequitable request]?”
When you ask such questions, you’re putting up a mirror, so the manipulator can see the true nature of his or her ploy. If the manipulator has a degree of self-awareness, he or she will likely withdraw the demand and back down. Remember, truly pathological manipulators will dismiss your questions and insist on getting their way. If this occurs, apply ideas from the following tips to keep your power, and halt the manipulation.

5. Use Time to Your Advantage:
In addition to unreasonable requests, the manipulator will often also expect an answer from you right away, to maximize their pressure and control over you in the situation. During these moments, instead of responding to the manipulator’s request right away, consider leveraging time to your advantage, and distancing yourself from his or her immediate influence. You can exercise leadership over the situation simply by saying: “I’ll think about it.” Take the time you need to evaluate the pros and cons of a situation, and consider whether you want to negotiate a more equitable arrangement, or if you’re better off by saying “no,” which leads us to our next point:

6. Know How To Say “No”(Diplomatically But Firmly):
To be able to say “no” diplomatically but firmly is to practice the art of communication. Effectively articulated, it allows you to stand your ground while maintaining a workable relationship. Remember that your fundamental human rights include the right to set your own priorities, the right to say “no” without feeling guilty, and the right to choose your own happy and healthy life.

7. Confront Bullies, Safely:
A psychological manipulator also becomes a bully when he or she intimidates or harms another person. The most important thing to keep in mind about bullies is that they pick on those whom they perceive as weaker, so as long as you remain passive and compliant, you make yourself a target. But many bullies are also cowards on the inside. When their targets begin to show backbone and stand up for their rights, the bully will often back down. On an empathetic note, When people don’t like themselves very much, they have to make up for it. The classic bully was actually a victim first and that’s why some people try to be tall by cutting off the heads of others.” When confronting bullies, be sure to place yourself in a position where you can safely protect yourself, whether it’s standing tall on your own, having other people present to witness and support, or keeping a paper trail of the bully’s inappropriate behavior. In cases of physical, verbal, or emotional abuse, consult with counseling, legal, law enforcement, or administrative professionals. It’s important to stand up to bullies, and you don’t have to do it alone.

8. Set Consequences:
When a psychological manipulator insists on violating your boundaries, and won’t take “no” for an answer, deploy consequence. The ability to identify and assert consequence(s) is one of the most important skills you can use to “stand down” a difficult person. Effectively articulated, consequences give pause to the manipulative individual, and compels her or him to shift from violation to respect.

Note: Reasons for chronic psychological manipulation are complex and deep-seated. It is not your job to bear or change or save them.

“Breaking Up”

“Like some wines our love could neither mature nor travel.”
– Graham Greene

The moment you get off the phone with your ex, or the texting finally stops, or you leave each other’s space, you experience withdrawal, and you are hit relentlessly by the reality of the loss. It can be a brutal process, and it can take a long time until you feel deserving of investing in your own independent, reshaped life path. You may have known somewhere within you that this breakup was coming, even for months or years, and yet you are still blindsided. No matter how the lead-up has looked, now that the breakup is actually happening, you may be overwhelmed, immobilized and haunted by fear, loss and despair about life without this person. The idea of living without it is simply unacceptable.

During the process of letting go some anticipated stages often occur all at once, or in varying orders at varying times.

1. Desperate For Answers:
Initially, you remain driven to understand what happened, at any cost. The pain, disorganization, and confusion can become all you think about, or talk about. The desperation to make sense of something so jarring compels you to debate friends, family, coworkers, even strangers, about why the relationship ended, while you justify to them the reasons it shouldn’t have, as if convincing them it is equal to convincing your ex. But remember the drive to know is consuming and can come at the expense of rational thoughts and behaviors. You must understand why this happened, maybe beyond anyone’s ability to explain it.

2. Denial:
It can’t be true. This isn’t happening. Its just you cannot be without your ex. It feels like you’ve put everything you are into this relationship. It’s been your world, your life. You cannot accept that it’s over. You funnel every last hope into saving it, even at the expense of your well-being. You postpone your need to grieve its end, because it’s just too painful to face. In so doing, you temporarily derail the grieving process by replacing it with unrealistically inflated hope that the relationship can still be salvaged.

3. Bargaining:
It means you are willing to do anything to avoid accepting it’s over. You’ll be a better, more attentive partner. Everything that’s been wrong, you’ll make right. The thought of being without your ex is so intolerable that you will make your own pain go away by winning him or her back, at any cost. But guys sorry to say it is simply illogical. However, during this phase, when you promise to fix all the problems between you, you are placing the entire burden of repairing, maintaining, and sustaining a relationship onto yourself. It’s as if the responsibility is yours and yours alone to make it work this time. Bargaining can only briefly distract from the experience of loss. Reality inevitably comes crashing down, over and over again. So, stop performing superhuman acts.

4. Relapse:
Because the pain is so intolerable, you may actually be able to convince your ex to try again. You will temporarily relieve the agony of withdrawal. However, despite your best efforts, you will not be able to carry the relationship solo. I’m sorry to say, it probably won’t end well this time, either. Unfortunately, you may need to go through this process of breaking up and reconciling more than once before you’re absolutely convinced it’s time to let go.

5. Anger:
Not initially but with time breaking up plummets you into the unknown, which can evoke immobilizing fear and dread. Fear, at that point, trumps anger. Therefore, when anger sets in, it’s because you have let go of some of your fear. When you’re able to access anger, the experience can actually be empowering—because at the very least there are shades of remembering you matter too, of feeling justified in realizing that you deserve more from a relationship. The good news is that your anger, no matter where it’s directed, is meant to empower you, whether you choose to see it that way or not. When anger becomes accessible to you, it can provide direction and create a feeling of aliveness in a world that’s become deadened by loss. It can also remind you that you deserve more. Anger really compel you to make proactive changes, if you are ready to let it.

6. Initial Acceptance:
This is the kind of acceptance that, when it happens early in the process, can feel more like surrender. You are holding up your end of the breakup because you have to, not because you want to. Either you or your ex has developed enough awareness and control at this point to recognize that you are not meant to be. Over time, this initial, often tenuous acceptance becomes more substantive, as both of you begin to recognize, independently, that there are boundaries that at least one of you must maintain in order for the breakup to stick, because it has to. You are finally grasping that’s it’s just not good for you to keep trying anymore.

7. Redirected Hope:
You were leveled by the breakup and have had difficulty letting go, in part because it shattered your relationship with hope. As acceptance deepens, moving forward requires redirecting your feelings of hope—from the belief that you can singlehandedly save a failing relationship to the possibility that you just might be okay without your ex. It’s jarring when forced to redirect your hope from the known entity of the relationship into the abyss of the unknown. But this is an opportunity to redirect the life force of hope. Regardless, hope is somewhere in your reserves and you will access it again as you continue to allow some meaningful distance between you and your ex.

P.S: The stages of grief that follow any trauma, breakups included, can happen over the course of minutes or even seconds, across days, months, or years, and then switch around without warning, leaving you feeling without foundation, especially in the beginning. You feel alien to yourself or cut off from the world. However, like any emotional amputation, continuing on in life means learning to live without that part of yourself, and finding ways to compensate for its loss. Furthermore, recognize that there is a method, and a structure of sorts to this chaotic grieving process. Knowing that you are not alone can help you ride it out. Your grieving is part of the human condition—without it, we would not be wired the way we are to handle the many pains and losses that occur in our lives. As the grieving process progresses you will begin to see your way through to a point at which you can let go in a more proactive and self-protective way—a way that you may eventually come to understand as a new beginning.

“The road to resilience relationships”

“Through resilience, comes hope. Keep going.”
– Rita Said

Resilient relationships persevere, even in times of adversity. Life can offer couples all sorts of challenges like—distance, conflict, infidelity, child or parent-related hardships, sickness and sometimes unimaginable number of possibilities that can wear down a relationship.

Now the question is how resilient is your relationship? And how
can we foster resilience in our relationships? Consider the following questions to help gauge your own relationship’s resilience:

Is destiny the anchor to your relationship?
It may seem romantic to think that destiny brought you together and that it will keep you together, but such beliefs may be obstacles to relationship resilience. When negative events happen in their relationships, people with strong destiny beliefs disengage more, withholding ways to support the relationship. Better to foster growth beliefs—the idea that relationships grow by working through tough times together. Growth beliefs predict active coping, planning, positivity, and focus during difficult times.

Do you give your partner the benefit of the doubt?
No relationship or person is perfect, but if you can come to see your partner’s quirky imperfections as positives, you may have the stuff that makes for a resilient relationship. Couples who view each other in idealized ways are happier and tend to have less conflict and more relationship stability.

How much self-control do you have?
When your partner does something that really annoys you, can you resist an impulsive response, or do you fly off the handle? Self-control is the ability to regulate one’s own reactions in these types of situations, forgoing the backlash in favor of a pro-relationship response. People who have high self-control are better able to resist impulsivity and constructively respond to potentially destructive partner behavior.

Are you grateful for the little things?
In resilient relationships, partners are oriented towards each other, appreciating each others’ efforts to be responsive and doing their best to be responsive themselves. This creates a wonderfully positive cycle of behaviors that help maintain a relationship ( like positivity, reassurance), and partner gratitude, which then encourages those behaviors that help relationships thrive.

Do you work continuously to maintain your relationship?
Resilient couples are flexible. They work to accommodate change by engaging in behaviors that help sustain the relationship. For example, resilient couples share tasks, offer positivity, and reassure their partners. Such behaviors are not one-time acts, but a pattern of work that can pay off with a healthy partnership.

Resilience in times of serious difficulty can come in many forms. The above questions highlight an important but limited set of individual traits such as self-control and growth beliefs, and partner dynamics such as gratitude that foster resilience. Commitment, investment, and on-going work promote relationship health, but no one recipe works for all couples, especially given the many diverse types and severities of stressors that we can encounter in our relationships.

“Stop Being Bullied”

Generally we expect every on-going relation to be more equal in power, and to benefit the well-being of both people. But, we often forget that it’s a two-way process. You may have had experiences in family, school, at workplace and even in relationships being bullied by someone bigger or stronger who was trying to exert power over you. People who are willing to use sarcasm, yelling, name-calling, threats, intimidation, withdrawal of love, and even physical attacks on you when you won’t do, think, or feel what they want are bullies. It is not just that they are frustrated, hurt, or angry—it is the fact that they choose to try to make you have the response that they want by doing something that hurts you, scares you, or makes you feel coerced. When someone threatens your self-esteem, your emotional well-being, or your personal safety, they are bullying you. That’s when the bullying begins.

When someone is bullying you, they are trying to make you feel small, weak, and powerless. The bully’s demands are designed to gain power over you, so you will do exactly as he or she wants. We know from studies of bullies that every time you give in, you lose power and are put yourself in the situation of being bullied again. That is the same thing that happens in a relationship with the borderline or narcissist. Every time you allow or accept their bullying, you are creating a worse situation for yourself—and reinforcing the bullying behavior.

Caretakers often think that they are giving in to the bullying behavior to keep the peace, or to let things blow over, or because it just doesn’t matter enough to have a fight about it. But this never really works. The bullying behavior may stop for that moment, but it has been reinforced and will return, stronger than before. That is partly why trivial issues keep coming up and never get resolved. Bullies know you will eventually give in, so they just keep nagging and nagging until you do.

Caretakers often feel powerless in such situations, but you actually have quite a lot of power. You have the power to say No, to walk away, to refuse to discuss it, to keep yourself calm and not engage, to talk to someone else about the problem, to go to a friend’s house, to take action to protect yourself. Would you tell your child at school to give in to a bully? Probably not—but at the same time, you probably wouldn’t want him or her to get into a fight with a bully either. You would most likely tell your child to get help from a teacher, the principal, or from you—all people outside the situation with more power. Bullies try to cut their victims off from outside sources of power and protection. Who are your outside sources? Tell them that you’re being bullied. Get their help and support. Use their insight and understanding to increase your self-esteem—and learn the skills you need to stand up for yourself or to protect yourself.

Seeing the bigger picture can help you get out of reacting in the moment. It will help you stay out of bigger fights and give you insight about how to stop reinforcing the behavior that is hurting you. That lays the groundwork for changing a relationship so that you can have healthier, happier, and more loving connections.

“Rebound Relationships”

“A human band-aid is a rebound. Their function is to cover a wound to help the wounded get over and forget about it.”
– Anonymous

A rebound relationship simply is one that occurs shortly after the break-up of a significant love relationship. People usually break up for a reason, and so the chances of getting back together with an ex depend on whether the issues that led to the breakup have been resolved. Researches on on-again/off-again couples—those that break up and get back together multiple times—indicates that some of the most common reasons for getting back together with an ex include things like improved communication (getting along better, working through issues together), or improvements with the self or partner (being more understanding or supportive, working on flaws that bothered the partner).

Now the question is – How long do rebound relationships last? I guess the answer really depends on two factors: How good the rebound relationship is; and how attached the person is to their ex.

After break up, when a person starts dating someone new, their success in having found another appealing person to date can help them feel better about their romantic prospects.This can make people feel less dependent on their exes for meeting their emotional needs—a key step to getting over past relationships. Moreover, if the rebound relationship is with a rewarding, high-quality partner, then that partner can gradually replace the ex in their lives. Rebound relationships can often help people stop missing their exes. But if however, the new relationship is not particularly rewarding, then the rebound relationship can backfire.
Unrewarding rebound relationships can actually lead people to feel more attached to their ex-partners, rather than less. This association appears to go the other way as well—if, for some reason, a person is having a difficult time letting go of their ex, they’re not going to be able to invest in a new relationship as fully, making that relationship less rewarding. Basically, our emotional and attachment needs are hydraulic: The more we rely on one individual to meet these needs ( an ex-partner), the less we tend to rely on another individual to meet these same needs ( a new partner).

In terms of how rebounds might play a role, again, it really depends on how rewarding those rebound relationships are. New rewarding dating experiences can help to lower attachment to an ex-partner, making it less likely that the person will want to get back with their ex. On the other hand, bad dates can indeed motivate people to go back to their exes. It seems that after people break up, unrewarding dating experiences can make them feel like their other dating options aren’t as good as they thought, making their exes more appealing by comparison.

In addition, Exciting new dating prospects can trump past worn-out relationships and help people get over their exes so they can better focus on their new, more compatible partners. On the other hand, when people fail to connect with new partners, it can make them long powerfully for the familiarity of an ex, particularly if they found the ex to be deeply rewarding in the past. Under these circumstances, people sometimes do decide to give their old flame another go—assuming the ex is also willing, of course.

If you’re the ex in this situation, what does all this mean for you?
If you find yourself “on the rebound” from one relationship (having just broken up) and are jumping into a new one, you must consider and act on important points. Like, you must judge your new partner as a whole person, not in contrast to your ex. Tell your new partner that your old relationship is over and mean it. Emphasize that the breakup is final, you believe it is for the best, and you are ready to move on. Be respectful and discreet when talking about your ex. Realize that you will have a tendency to dive in faster than usual, while she/he will have the tendency to hold back more than usual. Use the time you have by yourself to take personal responsibility for your part in the dissolution of your past relationship, and work toward developing qualities and skills that will help you to be a better partner. And finally, if needed, Get feedback from people you trust.

“Healthy Relationship”

If you want to know what a truly healthy relationship is, it’s one where both people wake up every morning and say, “I choose to be with this person.”
– Robert Morrow

Relationships are complex, and their success is influenced by each individual, their interaction, and their social context. All relationships are different and on the basis of scientific researches it has been noticed that certain patterns tend to emerge in healthy, stable, successful partnerships. Now the question is how do we know if a romantic relationship is thriving and has lasting potential? Take a look at this evidence to evaluate your own relationship or to gain some tips on how to foster happiness, attachment, love, and satisfaction in your partnership:

1. People in thriving relationships take on their partner’s habits, interests, and mannerisms:
Have you ever noticed how people can change when they’re in a relationship? After dating for a little while, they pick up new goals and interests. All of these changes, if they reflect habits of a new partner, are signs of self-other overlap, the process of integrating a romantic partner into the self. Self-other overlap is a sign of cognitive interdependence and predicts closeness, love, and relationship maintenance behaviors. (All characteristics of a thriving relationship).

2. In thriving relationships, partners support each others’ opportunities for growth:
People are more satisfied in their relationships when their partners actively support their efforts to expand their own horizons like poetry, photography, writing, painting, music etc. And this not only benefit the person experiencing self-growth, but also boost the relationship.

3. Couples in thriving relationships share their emotions:
It’s not enough just to talk with a partner; couples in thriving relationships engage in emotional self-disclosure—the communication of thoughts and ideas with another person. People might easily reveal facts about themselves to others, but sharing private thoughts, reactions, and feelings is a pathway to a deeper connection with a romantic partner, especially when that partner is an engaged listener. Emotional self-disclosure to a responsive partner simply generates intimacy, an important component of healthy relationships.

4. Partners in thriving relationships engage in frequent non-sexual touch:
Apart from sex, physical touch can take many forms, but the importance of affectionate touch outside of sexual intimacy is often overlooked, despite its active role in supporting relationship health. It had been found that couples who engage in frequent physical affection—hugging, kissing or cuddling tend to be happier and more satisfied with their relationship.

5. Individuals in thriving relationships pay less attention to other attractive people:
It’s fascinating to know commitment that appears in thriving relationships activates an implicit attentional block against the allure of attractive alternative partners. Love, it seems, provides an automatic defense system that helps keep people attentive to their current romantic partner.

6. In thriving relationships, couples see the positive sides of commitment:
Romantic commitment is multifaceted, reflecting positive, negative, and constraining elements, and how people view their commitment predicts the quality of their romantic relationship. People who tend to perceive their relationship as rich with positive commitment (joy, fulfillment, belonging) tend to perceive less negative commitment (worry, irritation, hurt) and less constraint commitment (feeling tied down, stuck, stifled)—and they tend to be much more satisfied in their relationships overall. These people see their relationship as something they want to be in, not something they should or have to be in. Fostering positive views of commitment is a sure sign of a thriving relationship.

P.S: He or She must feel that you choose to be with them, not that you need to be with them.

“Take control of your Life”

“If you can see your path laid out in front of you step by step, you know it’s not your path. Your own path you make with every step you take. That’s why it’s your path.”
– Joseph Campbell

Living life is can be very challenging at times. Getting the hang of what works for you and what doesn’t may take a very long time. Sometimes you get confused and frustrated by what you’re doing, or where you’re going. You may try to follow your own wisdom, but there are times we trust other people more than ourselves, accepting another’s opinions and views as more valid than our own. Somehow, we think they know what’s better for us than we do—or we’ve been told that so often that we come to believe it. It’s frequently the early influence of our family that sets this scenario in motion. Sometimes, confusion about who we are and what is best for us involves a deep-seated conflict focusing on allegiances to and boundaries with people who we deemed vitally important to our lives. Unchecked, this same familiar pattern may find its way into future relationships with spouses, bosses, mentors, or friends. The bottom line is that by not taking responsibility for ourselves, we too often allow others to take responsibility for us. And in doing this we are essentially giving them permission to take charge of our lives. In addition, this is like an enormous price to pay for giving your life away in this way. It’s simply not your life any longer; rather, it’s someone else’s projection of what your life should be. If this seems familiar to you, if you’re passively drifting through life, barely participating in actively creating what happens to you, consider these suggestions because you ought to take charge of our life simply by focusing on some important aspects of self-awareness.

Take back ownership of yourself: This is much easier said than done since this involves extricating yourself from a relationship where you’ve really been a passive participant. There may be a lot of protest and challenges from others who like things just the way they are and wish to keep the status quo. You may have to put up with this for a while before you learn to stand your ground. But before you can fully take your life back you may need to acknowledge regret for time lost. The only way to move forward is to acknowledge what has happened to you—how you got there, and what you need to do that’s different from what you’ve done so far. You need to begin to identify and shift your attention to your own needs and goals. From a practical perspective, prioritize what’s most important to you, regardless of what others think and feel about it.

Create a healthy space between yourself and your relationships: Admittedly, this is a hard thing to do since so much of who we are as individuals is tied up with and dependent upon our most significant relationships. But creating enough room, a kind of psychic space between yourself and others, allows for enough personal expression while minimizing emotional and psychological entanglement. The goal is to gain a healthy perspective of others, without creating conflict within yourself.
Recognize and acknowledge your own worth. We all have specific abilities, talents, and skills but need validation, which at times we don’t get from those we most want it from. When someone you count on for support refuses to acknowledge your positive qualities and abilities, it can undermine self-esteem and confidence. Beyond manipulative, this withholding behavior is often designed to keep a person dependent and needy. This is not someone who really cares about you.

Learn to recognize those individuals who have their own agenda:
Limit especially your involvement with those who insist that you live in their shadow rather than shine on your own. This is not a hard thing to recognize since there is usually nothing subtle about other people trying to organize your life around theirs and their agenda. As a corollary, don’t undertake anything that serves the good of someone else when it’s at your expense or hardship.

Heed the warning signs:
Watch out for individuals who don’t have the time or inclination to work on the relationship they have with you—or on themselves, for that matter. Be wary of those who make you feel inadequate or “lless than,nor put you down, instead placing the burden on you to clean up your act so that the relationship can stay on course. Don’t accept a relationship that is one-sided, limiting, and subtly undermining; where there is simply no room for you in the equation. Existing in an environment fraught with unhealthy undercurrents, threats both subtle and overt; jealousy; and one-sided conditions are potentially hazardous to your health and well-being.

Don’t try to fix people: Although fixing others may seem like a good idea it usually doesn’t work because, from the other’s perspective, there’s nothing that needs to be fixed; there’s nothing wrong with them—it’s you that’s the problem. Inevitably, these people will want not accept the fact that you’ve changed and will try to convince you to return to the way things once were. Don’t do it. And if they continue along the same course, unable to accept who you’ve become apart from them, let them go.
Good Luck!

“Just Friends or Something More” ?

“Just friends” Yeah, that phrase kills me every time. Many people think that if an attraction between a man and a woman doesn’t lead to courtship or sex, then it’s a thwarted or delusional love. But the reality is that in today’s world, different kinds of attraction can, and do, develop between men and women. Psychology on the basis of hundreds of interview transcripts and surveys of men and women reflecting on their closest other-sex friend, has found that there are 4 ways attraction is experienced. These can both overlap and change with time and just because you have one type of attraction for your friend doesn’t mean he or she has the same type of attraction for you.

The 4 types of attraction are:
1. Friendship attraction
2. Romantic attraction
3. Subjective physical/sexual attraction
4. Objective physical/sexual attraction.

“Friendship attraction” is not romantic or sexual in nature, but is the kind of attraction you feel when drawn to someone because you like that person and enjoy being with him or her. It’s the type of attraction that most heterosexuals presumably feel for their same-sex friends. This was by far the most common type of attraction between cross-sex friends and this friendship attraction mostly increases over time.

Next is “Romantic attraction”. It’s important not to confuse this with physical or sexual attraction. While the two can go together, it’s certainly possible to find someone physically attractive but have no desire to be in a romantic relationship with them. Romantic attraction is about the desire to alter the friendship into a couple relationship. As, very few people feel romantic attraction for their friends and that’s why, Interestingly, almost half of such friends says that they used to feel more romantic attraction, at an earlier stage in the friendship, than they do now.

“Subjective physical/sexual attraction” refers to feeling drawn to the other person physically, and perhaps wanting to make sex a part of the relationship. Not all, but there are some people who feel this form of attraction for their friends, but this feeling can change over time, and is more likely to decrease.

The last form of attraction is the one most interesting – “Objective physical/sexual attraction”. It refers to thinking that one’s friend is physically attractive in general terms (I can see why others would find him attractive), but not feeling the attraction yourself.

Now decide Where Do You Stand?
Friendship attraction is by far the most common type of attraction, followed by objective physical/sexual attraction; subjective physical/sexual attraction; and, finally, the least reported—romantic attraction which, even when it did occur, tended to decrease over time.

P.S: The next time you notice a man and woman together, challenge yourself to remember that men and women can connect in a variety of ways, and one of them—an extremely common one—is plain and simple friendship.