The question is what are they doing that’s different? What is it that actually connects couples for life? The couples that are life long connectors all have created similar behaviours. In todays post I’m going to talk about some of these key areas.

I’m going to start with what I believe sits at the heart of a successful relationship and then add in a few key elements that keep the relationship alive year after year.

The heart of a great relationship is a great friendship. This is what Cloe and I have created together, it’s what I teach in my sessions and is what I see in couples that have gone from crisis to reconnection.

• Great friends can rely on each other. They are involved in each other lives, they catch-up regularly, they know things about each other that they would never share with others. They share their challenges they are honest with each other.
• Great friends build safe platforms to be able to experience the best out of life, they feel they are on the same page about life.
• Great friends create a unique world thats unique to them, it feels like an energy that’s self perpetuating.
• Great friends create a place where empathy, caring, kindness lives. These types of connections create foundations for energies like fun, humour, passion, adventure.

A great friendship is one of the core foundations I see in successful couples that is missing from couple with problems.

NOTE: It’s important to note that some couples do create great friendships, but they lose sexual connection. It is critical that the sexual attraction and desire is part of their dynamic. 

No couple lives in eternal bliss, so conflict is a normal part of how successful couples work. Successful couples know who to have conflict successfully.

Every couple is different and so is their style of interaction, but what’s important is that we avoid one or both people stacking resentments towards the other through the way they process their communication.

The couples that either grow closer from their conflicts, or they chose to not take them to heart, value the relationship more than the conflict, or being right.

Cloe and I are both passionate people and with that passion comes differences of opinion. Those opinions for us are never more important than our relationship.

What the top two processes creates is a foundation of trust where individuals can feel they are accepted for who they are and loved no matter what.

From these powerfully emotional connectors couples are able to look at each others needs from each others perspective. They want their partner to feel good they look for ways to help their partner to feel great about themselves.

All the above and more have the ability to pave the way to lasting passion and sexual connection.

When couples are looking for my help, I have to take into account their unique styles of interaction, the type of relationship they would like and the key areas of concern for that couple, this focus on what matter to them enables them to build a deeper friendship and connection that’s so safe it leads to a lasting passionate connection.

It is my goal to help couples discover if it’s possible to create the dynamic they both agree works. Do you want to learn what’s possible for your relationship? If so please book your initial consultation by clicking here.

As you scan through my words below you will see a snap shot of how this couple were guided out of this horrible situation.

This lady turned up with her husband. She told me she had lost her feelings for her husband.

She told me without those feelings of love she didn’t believe she could carry on the relationship. They had young children and I knew those children were the reason she was sat in front of me.

Her feelings had died and to help them I needed to know why? I also knew she didn’t know the answer to that question.

There was no affair, he was hard working, he loved the children, he had a successful business. On paper they had all the ingredients for a successful life.

What she could tell me was she no longer saw her husband the way she wanted to.

As we talked I could see the dynamic they had created as a couple had helped her shut down her feelings. Neither of them were aware of this and so without knowing they had been destroying the relationship a day at a time.

As I questioned their past and how they lived together I noticed they had slipped comfortably in to behaviours that felt right in the early days, but those distorted behaviours were going to be their downfall.

She had slipped into the role of protecting the relationship, her husband and herself. In essence her past challenges had helped her to feel she was safer if she was in control.

With no effective masculine model growing up the husband had slipped into letting her take control to please her. He felt this was what she needed to be happy.

Of course it was what she felt she needed, but it was being driven by her fears, so he was now responding to her fears and keeping them alive with her.

To help this couple breakthrough they needed to create a totally new dynamic that enabled her to feel safe to let go of her need to control. His role was take a much stronger masculine position.

Essentially she had become the man in the relationship and from this position she couldn’t connect sexually with what she saw as a weak husband.

The reality I saw that her husband was not weak he had just played weak to please her.

In response to this destructive dynamic I designed a process that step-by-step would help them to get to grips with their new roles. I spent some time alone with her husband helping him to understand how to step-up and bring a powerfully protective energy to his wife.

With his wife, I helped her to understand what she had done to herself that had blocked her feelings and how her past had played a significant part in generating her need to keep a tight hold of her life so she wouldn’t be hurt.

With these new roles in play and by both taking responsibility for their past actions they took their first steps into their relationship.

Over the coming weeks as each person understood their new roles and how to get the best out of themselves and each other, a few things started to happen.

The husband started to feel much happier independently of his wife. He noticed that he had more energy, he felt empowered and alive. By playing the role he thought his wife wanted him to be, he had lost himself.

It was critical for his wife to see this happiness within him because she knew his change of behaviour was likely to last if he was happier.

For the wife she had responded well to her husbands new energy. She felt her husband was starting to understand her and what was important to her. As she felt him step-up and understand her she felt she could start to let go.

This enabled her seemingly dead feelings to start to return.

What was great for him was he could see what he was doing was now actually working.

This couple learnt not only how important it was to create the emotional connection they both needed they also learnt how to protect the relationship moving forward.

This process was not just a journey to connected with each other it was a journey to connect with themselves and how to bring their best selves to their relationship, family and life…

For most couples in crisis the reason they feel incompatible is because that’s exactly what’s happened, they have created an incompatible dynamic. Their dynamic has changed for some reason.

This change of dynamic will create feelings that one or both people simply can’t live with.

The good news is for most couples this state is not permanent once we understand the underlying cause(s).

When I first meet couples in an initial consultation it’s not difficult to see that couples have created a combination of behaviours that would, and could never build and grow their relationship.

Important: These behaviours are going to be in reaction to some underlying cause that would be almost impossible for them to unpick by themselves, which is why couples can feel their problems are impossible to solve.

From the start of the relationship it’s very common that the individuals do not notice this shift of dynamic because life is busy. Careers, children, lack of time, life changes, stress can all mask the reality of the couples real connection, or lack of it.

Couples do not realise soon enough that their relationship becomes disconnected and transactional until a trigger of some kind wakes one person up and they realise they have had enough…

The question is why has the dynamic changed and is it possible to create a new one that works for both people.

I say a new dynamic because all relationships change over time and the skill of creating a successful relationship for life, is understanding how to grow the relationship so the couple remain emotionally connected through all of life’s key stages.

So when I’m working with couples who have clearly created a dynamic that doesn’t work I have two jobs.

The first one is to understand how this unhealthy dynamic was formed and the second is to understand what would equal a dynamic that both people could happily invest in for life.

So what kind of behaviours can cause an unhealthy dynamic?

• Not understanding what it really takes to build a life long connection.
• Not growing a deeper connection past the initial attraction.
• It’s all about me dynamic.
• Not understanding what your partner really needs and vice versa.
• Everything becomes more important than your relationship.
• Stress, depression, anxiety.
• Past emotional traumas.
• Lack of honest communication.
• Loss of kindness and care.

Of course this list could go on…

All of these kinds of behaviours can result in disconnection and so the relationship becomes vulnerable to symptoms that can cloud the real issues.

Example of symptoms: An affair, temporary loss of love that feels permanent, never ending conflict.

So feelings of incompatibility is due to a loss of a healthy dynamic. The good news here is to fix this problem we only have two jobs, understand why the dynamic has really become unhealthy (find the hidden problems) and understand how to build a dynamic both people want to be part of for life.

All couples attend just one meeting with me so I can assess their compatibility before I agree to work with them. I’m interested in helping the couple achieve the lasting results that they want.

If this has struck a chord and you would like that one meeting with me to assess if working on your relationship is a good idea then please click here to book that initial consultation.

• If your partners needs are different from yours and you don’t know what those differences are, how difficult would it be to connect to each other?
• What if your partners primary needs change as they go through different life stages how confusing would that be?
• What if a person needs are not being met, they don’t know what their needs are, or how to share them?
• What if a person expects their partner to know what they need because they assume their partner has the exact same needs as them?

If you want to have a meaningful connection with anyone in your family then understanding and respecting what they need is critical to maintain a connection that works.

Not understand each others needs is potentially devastating for families so it’s really important to know what really going on.

I’m going to share a two scenarios to help you understand more.

Husband and wife

A very confusing situation is when a person changes their primary need without knowing. The person can share their unhappiness, but not understand why they are really unhappy.

One lady felt an overwhelming need to escape her relationship. She felt her husband was a good man, but he was controlling and to protect the family and the relationship she said nothing for years. We discovered that she felt the only way she could grow as a person was to leave her husband.

By helping her and her husband learn how her needs had shifted from a need to protect herself by not saying how she felt about his controlling behaviours. They both understood she needed to grow. So they became a team and helped her to feel free and safe to grow from within the relationship by giving her a voice that he would hear so she could feel free to be herself.

Mother and daughter

Not understand how different needs can create situations of stress and anxiety.

Earlier this year I learnt from a couple I was working with that mother and daughter were constantly fighting. As I listen to mum speak about her daughters behaviour I could hear that although mum deeply loved her daughter she didn’t understand her primary need. This created fear in her daughter because she didn’t feel connected to her mum.

The more fear the daughter experienced the worse her behaviour became. I told mum her daughter was crying out for help, she was lost and alone.

Mum understandably was very shocked at her own defensive and judgemental behaviour and her anger at her daughter shifted instantly to empathy as she knew what it was like to not feel understood because that’s what she was feeling with her husband.

By helping mum understand her daughters core need they were able to reconnect and rebuild a loving connection.

So if you don’t understand what drives your loved ones thats different to you, then a gap will form between you.

If you feel disconnected from your partner then one of the big challenges will be someones needs are not understood.

Personally I would not have such a loving and connected relationship with Cloe if I didn’t understand what drove her and what she needed most.

Many people create negative feelings within them and then attach those feelings to their relationship.

Too many people practice these relationship eroding behaviours and are not aware they are part of the problem they are complaining about.

The saddest part is too many couples are parting not because their relationship is wrong for them, but because they simply don’t understand how to create a relationship that works. The result is they build fear through resentments.

Any of these behaviours below will hurt your relationship

1. Assuming your partner is trying to hurt you.
2. Being right is more important than anything.
3. Becoming your partners judge.
4. Expect more from your partner than you do of yourself.
5. Assume your partner thinks the same way you do.
6. Assume the way you think is the way your partner should think.
7. Assume your partner can mind read what you need.
8. Mind reading your partners thoughts.
9. Create an assumption of your partner behaviours and make them responsible for your translation.
10. Bury your problems and hope they will go away.
11. Agree to have a life together with no plan or purpose of being together.
12. Know that something isn’t working such as circular arguments, but do them anyway.
13. Holding back – Love, truth, openness.
14. Create beliefs and hold onto them as if they were facts.
15. Ignore what you value and then wonder why you feel so bad.
16. Feel bad and assume that your relationship is the cause.
17. Assume that holding back in your relationship will protect you – it won’t!
18. Lose love for your partner and assume your relationship is dead.
19. Protect yourself from your partner.
20. Add no to little value to your partner and expect them to want to stay.
21. Assume your partner should know what you need.
22. Think that what you’re saying is clear to your partner.
23. Looking for someone to blame.

If you can see any of the above in your relationship know that it’s designed to meet a critical need for that person. When the need can be established then the person can be helped to meet that need in a way which is constructive for that person and can grow the relationship.