Couples therapy

Most people want their partner to change, but real change emerges from an inner state in your self

Love is our most precious gift. To share it with each other is the pinnacle of happiness. We want our partner to complete our selves. And when it happens, we are at peace.

Most people want their partner to change, but real change emerges from an inner state in your self. Once you change your perception and find truth with in, the external will change too.

What you throw into the world will reflect back on you.

Most couples will at some point meet challenges, regardless of how perfect their starting point once was. Some will sort out their problems by them selves. Some give up and separate. Most people will benefit from professionally investigating what causes their troubled differences, regardless of what the outcome will be. Many couples that gave up and separated, are after a few year unable to remember what really went wrong, and others are in new relationships were the same problems arise once again.
The root cause of failed relationships is very often carried inside our selves as wounds from our childhood. We desperately want our partners to heal us, and when he or she fails, trouble begins. To our selves these wounds are mysteries that trigger behaviors or traits and often buried deep in our unconscious mind. I see couples therapy as a brilliant opportunity for personal growth, because healing a relationship is basically about finding the truth about your self.

When things get complicated we feel we can’t be our selves anymore. Our partner seem to request a certain behavior and we feel we must either adapt or fail. We are constantly misunderstood. And it all becomes a burden. Or we feel som kind of inequality, unfairness, mistrust or disgust. The one we loved has changed and now we regret a lot of things. The lack of rapport leads to detachment and miscommunication and there is no climate for understanding, empathy or love. A typical response would be to just stop talking. Create distance and demonstrate that neither needs the other one.

Traditional couples therapy aim to help the couple to understand each other and very often one side wants the other side to understand him or her and respond or change accordingly. How ever change will only happen as a consequence of how the parties are able to manifest change in them selves. Your output will be your partners input and they way you interpret your partner will determine your own response. You can’t expect your partner to heal you wounds. You must understand, expose and heal your self, thus become the complete person you are underneath.

But what wound needs to be healed?
– You might ask. The answer is often linked to what you demand of your partner. How he or she is supposed to complete you. And when that fails, and it will, problems arise. I is my strong belief that a permanent solution to heal a broken relationship will be obtained by how the parties gain knowledge of the self. That will in the next step increase insight into how you communicate and your partners response, and ultimately you will learn how to read and understand your partner correctly. Mots people try the reverse order, – and fail.

Couples therapy demands courage and the personal strength to show vulnerability. That can be demanding, since strong egos and mistrust or anxiety are present. We tend to put armor around us to protect our selves, and by that we close down our communication. Both in and out. My job is to assist in removing the armor. Remove fear, jealousy, anger, inequality, ignorance and negativity. From a different perspective you will acquire the ability to understand both you self and your partner, and above all, learn how to communicate as two grown individuals that respect each other, stop demanding each other, thus understanding that giving and receiving are two sides of the same coin.

Couples therapy is all about facilitating change. But change towards what? Very few share a vision in their relationship. They just fell in love and it all rambled along from there. To fall into love and develop mature love is very different. The initial attraction is based on appearance, intellect, humour or status, in other words external strengths, and some times weaknesses. All those things will at some point fall apart and the individual behind it will emerge. At that point we either fall out of love or we develop what can be named as a true and deeper relationship. A sign of a well working relationship with deep and mature love is an emergent process of giving instead for demanding. There are very few attachments and no one “needs” the other. From this point of self-knowledge true love and affection will grow extremely strong.

I only want to be my self!

In a relationship that don’t allow us to be our selves we develop an incongruence between our natural behavior and how we adopt to our partner. In this gap between personalities the ego will grow and establish the inevitable power struggle that most couples go through. It becomes more important to be right than to be in peace. And you have the right to be your self, what ever that means. The parties dig into their trenches and the battle can continue over years, raging high and low. The outcome will be separation or resignation where the couple still lives under the same roof, but more or less in parallel lives, out of touch with each other emotionally.

From the ashes of the power struggle a new born love can flourish..”

But sometimes the battle subsides as the couple realize their own mistakes, gain self-knowledge and a new, profound and deep love emerges. Mistrust will transform into respect. Jealousy turns to awareness and interest and ignorance transforms to empathy. You are your true self and allow your partner the same privilege. You can share everything with out any fear and nothing else is needed. It’s worth fighting for.