[Ailist] a i and a struggling marriage: suggestions please

[Nick Heap]

Cheri,

You wrote "Interesting that you say it only takes one person to make a
relationship work.  How do you figure this?"

I'll answer this as clearly and briefly as I can. Thanks for your challenge.

I start with some basic positive assumptions about human beings. We are
fundamentally good, loving, flexible, enthusiastic, powerful, with enormous
ability to learn. You can see this if you watch a toddler (1 to 2 year old)
on a good day. I have a picture of what we are all really like here. Of
course when you see people every day, they don't look or behave like happy
two year-olds. The reason is we get hurt. When you get hurt it's very hard
to think straight and you may well do things that hurt yourself or other
people. When you are in a situation that reminds you of a time when you were
hurt, your thinking can shut down again which causes more hurts. So the
process continues. This leads to people behaving rigidly and their loving
nature being obscured.

As infants, we all had very effective ways to recover from our hurts. We
would find someone who would give us loving attention, say a parent and then
release the painful emotion directly by crying, laughing, shaking, sweating,
angry movements, talking etc. Then if we had enough attention, we would
recover completely and go away and play etc. Meanwhile Mum (UK Mom) is
exhausted! Unfortunately, this quality of attention is rare, distraction or
criticism is common. Cocounselling is a way for people to systematically
exchange time and attention so you recover from your hurts, using the above,
and learn to be more flexible, loving etc. The practice vastly improves your
ability to give loving attention.

When two people are in a relationship. Each person has their basic loving
and flexible nature and their hurts. When things go wrong, it is because one
person's rigid behaviour, caused by hurt, triggers the other's hurt and gets
a rigid response. Any one person can decide to act outside their hurts and
give the attention the other needs to help that persons emerge from his or
her hurts. It will be difficult and you will have many set backs but it is
possible. The more you have shifted your own hurts the easier it is to do.
As each of you emerge from your hurts, the relationship will get better and
better.

So, "It only takes one person to make a relationship work"

There is much more about this in the literature on re-evaluation counselling
which is available via the website www.rc.org

I hope this helps. Please ask for more clarification if you need it.

Best wishes,

Nick

+44 1707 886553 and Skype nickheap