Happily Ever After … Fact or Fantasy?

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Love is all I need to have a successful, happy relationship. Love is enough in the beginning, but after a while the relationship needs more. So there’s work to be done and if and your partner are unable to work together to grow and develop, the future can quickly become grim. Sure the songs we hear on the radio, televisions shows, and movies tell us that being blissfully in love is enough, but to be healthy, relationships in the longer term require much more than that.

Two people automatically grow closer with time. This is something that does in fact happen, but it’s not always a pleasant thing. When partners feel closer towards each another they are certainly going to come up against some rough spots and before ‘the wonderful’ comes, the challenges have to be conquered. Once you get over the challenges life is usually quite good ... at least for a while.

Children bring a couple together. The biggest challenge a marriage has to face is children. Wonderful and special as they are, they also bring pressure into the relationship and if something is not quite right, then children will really bring this to the surface. Its when the couple are able to resolve whatever it is, that they feel closer together. Statistically, couples with children have a slightly lower rate of divorce than childless couples.

I can change my partner. People change; however, the most accurate prediction of the kind of companion your partner will be in the future is the kind of companion he is right now. Those who marry a person with the intention of overhauling their personality or of converting them into something else invariably face serious disappointments. Great relationships are collaborative efforts in which both partners are dedicated to improving — as individuals and as a couple. The only person we can really change is our self.

It only takes one partner to wreck a relationship. The breakdown of any relationship is the responsibility of both partners. Healthy relationships serve the needs of both partners and it’s when this stops happening that the challenges begin. The relationship comes undone when both partners are unable to work together so that both partners have their needs met. Anything less than that is unacceptable in the longer-term and one or both partners are going to rebel in some way.

Being in a relationship will end loneliness. The fact is, many people in a relationship are still very lonely. Loneliness can also be the product of believing that no one understands you, so that you can have that "sick of being lonely" feeling even in a relationship. In fact, many married people describe themselves as lonely either because they are not emotionally close to their partner or because they depend on their partner for most or all social contacts.

A successful relationship is one where there is no conflict. Couples often enter a relationship believing that arguing is bad. They expect things to go smoothly, with maybe a few minor bumps along the way. Then they run into the familiar struggles over money, sex, children, or sharing responsibilities. If you don't recognise that all couples confront these problems, you may feel that something is wrong with your marriage. Quite possibly, the main problem has to do with harbouring unrealistic expectations and therefore feeling disappointed.

My partner should know what my needs are. In reality, most of us do rather poorly when we try to second guess someone else or try to “read their mind.” But the responsibility to let your spouse know what you need and want ultimately rests on you. Give your partner feedback and clues so he or she can have the information needed to make different choices.

Having a good relationship is just luck. The most common reasons couples have long-term marital success are commitment and companionship. They understand that their ‘happy’ marriage takes work, dedication and commitment to each other. The happiest couples are friends who share lives and have compatible interests and values.

Don’t fight in front of the children. It can be valuable for children to see their parents work through a disagreement with goodwill. Kids also need to learn the reality that even people who love each other don't always get along perfectly.

Penn't Up Anger

So Sean Penn is in the news again for an emotional outburst. The gossip has it that he had some sort of altercation with Greg Shapiro the current partner of his former wife, and new Oscar winner, at an Oscar after-party. I don’t think Penn’s behaviour is cool in any way and he would do well to do something about it!

Penn declined to attend the all important Governor’s Ball, held later in the evening. As a past Oscar winner, he would have been one of the chosen ‘elite’ to be there but again, chances of him running into Shaper at the ball was on the cards.

In February this year, Penn, 49, was charged with misdemeanour battery and vandalism following an incident involving the photographer in October last year.

What most people don’t realise is that with a bit of work, people can beat the outburst before they even happen. Penn has a history of violent confrontations with photographers and he is a person making some pretty poor decisions because of his emotions.

I think if I were to ask Sean Penn if his worst decisions were made during times of high emotions, he’d probably say yes and he is certainly paying a heavy price for his actions.

Emotions are a great resource when you have them under control. But when they take over, things can get very messy. The problem is that what seems to feel like a great idea at the time, too often turns out to be intellectually stupid when the dust settles. Once we ‘cool down’ we very quickly see the outburst for what it really was; an emotional expression of patterns of behaviour which we can trace all the way back to when we were developing children, so when our emotions take us, the adult, over we end up acting like a child.

Apart from being a bit embarrassing, out of control emotions are a very destructive way to live. The damage includes things like being passed over for higher positions at work, people not wanting to back you up, people impeding your progress, and the like, to name but a few.

People being run by their emotions are never fully trusted so when final decisions are made, these are the people most likely to miss out! Might not be fair, but that’s the way it happens.

The point is that in the real world, get your stuff handled and be in control of it and things will come your way.

Undercover Wife or Devious Trapper?

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Relationships and crisis go hand-in-hand. In a relationship crisis, it’s not about who is to blame, who was wrong, who hurt who. Finding blame actually makes it almost impossible to constructively deal with the crisis.

Relationships are the combined energy of all partners – warts and all. The ultimate connection (or disconnection) comes from the combined behaviours of the partners and breakdown is always a possibility at some time in all relationships.

In the early months, relationships usually feel effortless and exciting, but that’s not forever. Long-term success comes from the ongoing efforts of both partners, and to stay successful, relationships have to keep up with life’s changes as well as be the catalyst for even more change.

Because relationships, like everything else in the universe, are constantly changing, it’s inevitable that problems are going to occur. Unrealistic and unreasonable demands, unexplored expectations, unresolved issues, difficult patterns of behaviours and the like are the norm rather than the exception in every partnership.

And in every problem circumstance it is easy make someone wrong or right. The problem with doing so is that at the end of the day, it makes very little difference. Regardless of who or what is right or wrong, the relationship will do one of three things; it will progress forward, break down or stay stuck right where it is and go nowhere.

So when a suspicious wife creates a false ‘FaceBook’ identity, to catch out her husband and his cheating ways, what does she really achieve?

The morning radio discussions were as divided as they were varied.

“Because his behaviour was suspicious and the wife had seen an email from another female, her actions were warranted.”

“Because she falsely lured him with a fake ID and fake photos, having a good knowledge of how to seduce him, she was devious.”

“His wife should kick him out”

Everyone saw the cheating husband as being wrong and the wife’s actions as being vindicated given that her suspicions turned out to be correct.

Sadly, the outcome is a total marital breakdown and all this entails financially and emotionally for all members of the family. From now on, who was right and who was wrong no longer matters.

The family’s wealth is going to be used to fund one of the most emotionally devastating and financially destructive processes that our society today has to offer.

Wouldn’t it have been so much easier for this couple to sit down and have an emotionally honest discussion about what really matters? After all they were both in a relationship so lacking that it no longer served the emotional needs of either partner!

It’s possible that they were and still are ... Perfect Partners for each other!