Maybe, we should start to learn to pay more attention to how our partners receive love and learn to give the love our partners want to be loved. In the meantime, we also learn to ask or teach our partner how we want to be loved.
When we ask for the support from our significant other, especially when it relates to our partners’ behaviors, we want to be as specific as his/her behaviors as possible to avoid it to become a personal attack and so that our partners can understand how we feel.
crucial questions to maintain “I am OK and You are OK”:
What is the current situation? Be matter of the fact.
2. What are your feelings about the situation? Not your judgment of the people involved but your emotions.
3. What’re your preferences of the solution if any? Why does that solution make sense to you based on the situation?
4. What are you needs to be fulfilled in the situation?
Do you feel regularly lock into a specific role and still unable to get out of it?
If the answer is yes, please seek professional help. You deserve to live a satisfied and fulfilled life, and you do not need to figure this out alone.
We all play victims, persecutors, and/or rescuers, in our daily life. The goal of any of us is not to lock into any of the roles ALL THE TIME and to maintain an “I am OK. You are OK” relationship in different relationships. When we unconsciously play the same role over and over again in our daily lives in the interpersonal relationships, especially in the meaningful relationships, we lose the flexibility of the interpersonal relationships. In the critical relationship such as couple relationship, that’s when a person starts to accumulate resentment and dissatisfaction towards the partner.
“No one loses anyone, because no one owns anyone. That is the true experience of freedom: having the most important thing in the world without owning it.” – Paulo Coelho
“When we love, we always strive to become better than we are. When we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better too.” – Paulo Coelho
We all know that personality is generally pretty stable even though the recent studies have shown that personality does change over time for the better (but a slow and gradual process). One of the main reasons the personality change happens when a person chooses to do so to live a meaningful and successful life. So, if no choice is made and no action is taken, a person’s personality can stay the same or change slow and gradually throughout the years.
So, the bottom line is: if you want the change, you are the one who has to make up your mind and to take action.
This theory tremendously helpful to understand the couples’ relationship history. It helps to see how the couples transit from one stage to another and whether they made the transition successfully. If not, it helps me and the couple to evaluate how have they tried to cope with the issues successfully or destructively. Even in the “complicated situation” such as divorce or blended family, the theory also helps me and the couple to see what are the needs for them to cope with being different stages in their relationship.
“Later, because of their daughters. Dan and Grace had tried hard to make their marriage work……Dan deeply loved his daughters. Grace never questions his devotion to them, but she seriously doubted he was still in love with her.”~ Grace Sherman, “16 Lighthouse Road”
I am Dr. Grace Chen, a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist.
Heal Trauma, Change Pattern, Find Purpose and Fulfillment, Transform Life Path & Relationship
Copyright © 2024 Dr Grace Chen LMFT | All rights reserved.
