A Seven- Step
Strategy for Reconnecting with Your Partner
Phillip C.
McGraw. PH.D.
5
star must reading.
[The following is what I
highlighted during my read of this excellent book -- I recommend it on my List
of Peace resources. My purpose in providing them is to interest you, the
reader, and hope that you will obtain and read the complete work. To
properly understand the highlights, you need to read the book to put them in the
proper context.]
Prologue
Get Real:
Reconnecting with Your Core
·
…there is a serious and outcome-determinative precondition.
·
You have to get real about you.
·
…reconnect with yourself first.
·
You have to take your power back and become the kind the person who
commands quality, inspires respect, and settles for nothing less than active and
abiding love.
·
You’ve lost touch with that part of you that I call your core of
consciousness – that place where you are absolutely defined, the place within
you where your greatest strengths, instincts, values, talents, and wisdom are
centered.
·
…scrape away all of life’s layers of distortion, negative input, and
doubt-inducing messages, and get back in touch with your own core of
consciousness…..
·
It’s about the power to give and to lift up those around you. What
I’m talking about is the power that comes from depth and conviction – the
power to inspire, the power to create, the power to experience your life and
relationship at a totally different level. It is the quiet, calm power of
dignity and worth.
It’s Your
Time: It’s Your Turn
·
Research shows that over two-thirds of couples, married or otherwise,
who attend relationship counselling are worse or at least no better after one
year.
·
People needed a solid, practical, way to reframe their lives and their
lifestyles in order to create a healthy relationship rather than live in such a
way as to maintain and support a bad one.
·
I want to shake you back to your very core, to wake you up, and then
help you start designing a memorable life and a memorable relationship.
·
…strip away all your defences and fears,……break through the
clutter of your past,…raise your standards of personal excellence,….stay
diligently on course…
·
Relationships in general, and marriages, and families in particular,
continue to disintegrate before our eyes.
·
…you are not inadequate or incompetent when it comes to a
relationship. The brutal and sad
fact is that the deck has been stacked overwhelmingly against you.
·
…society… ..never bothered to teach you how….
·
….techniques and realities for creating and managing a healthy
relationship.
·
…the truth is that your relationship is in trouble because you set it
up that way.
·
You set it up that way by actively, consistently, and efficiently
designing, programming, and choreographing your entire lifestyle to generate and
then support a bad relationship.…a lifestyle to….
·
…if you are living in a dysfunctional relationship with another
person, it’s because you have a dysfunctional relationship with yourself.
·
You can’t control your partner…
·
But you can inspire your partner……start living a new way…
·
..constructive……start choosing differently…
·
..“move your position”. I ….change the way you think, feel, and
act in relationship to yourself and your partner…First: it is not too
late….Second: you are not alone…
·
You are closer to success than you could ever imagine if you just have
the courage to get real with yourself.
·
The strategy for rescuing your relationship involves seven major steps.
·
First, we will focus on defining and diagnosing where your relationship
is now….
·
…define specifically, precisely,
what is wrong with you – as well as what is wrong in your relationship
– will you be able to set reasonable goals for change.….get to what is
structurally, behaviorally, philosophically, and emotionally not
working.…match a solution to it….…power…knowledge…..
·
Second, we must rid you of wrong thinking…
·
..you haven’t suffered just an absence of information; you have
suffered a poisoning of your thinking by an infusion of wrong
information…..”myths”.
·
Third, it will be important to blow the whistle on your own negative attitudes
and behaviors and the specific ways you do irreparable harm to your own
relationship.
·
…you can control you !…
·
…the fourth step, which is to internalize a set of what I call
“Personal Relationship Values”.…give your partner positive things to
respond to….
·
..the fifth step, ….the specific formula for a successful
relationship.
·
….sixth step, we begin the reconnection process.…reopen
negotiations, to work through a series of critical steps in order to learn how
to deal with your own needs and your partner’s needs in a way that sets you up
for success…fourteen – day program….
·
Seventh step, you will learn how to manage your relationship once you
have reconnected with your partner.…you must consciously decide to actively,
purposefully work on improving your situation each and every day.…make the
time needed to work on the relationship.….it becomes of great conscious
importance to you.
·
Be committed, do what it takes, and you will have what you want.
Stay committed to facilitating that change.
You have to be committed to the long –term development of an entirely
new lifestyle of thought, feeling and action.
·
You must take a stand that you are going to defy the odds, defy your own
insecurities, and defy the conventional wisdom that has failed you so miserably.
·
Adopt a philosophy of passion that says, “I will not quit”.
I will not allow my hopes and dreams to be pushed aside.…don’t forget
about the importance of your relationship with yourself.
You must tell yourself that it is not wrong to want it all.
Defining The
Problem
·
…articulate the underlying problem that’s causing the friction.
·
..where you are in your relationship and why.
You need to know your relationship’s assets and liabilities, the things
that work well and the things that don’t .
·
The worst thing you can do is to draw faulty conclusions about the
cause-and- effect aspects of the problems in your relationship.
·
…be excruciatingly honest about this relationship and the part that
you play in it.
·
…you are the agent of change.
·
…list of characteristics that describe a problem relationship…
·
…this is about winning for the relationship…
·
…you must approach your relationship with a willingness to own your
part of the problem.
·
You teach your partner how to treat you…by the way you respond…
·
You must identify what it is in your lifestyle as a couple that is
eliciting, maintaining, or allowing a bad relationship.
·
You negotiated your relationship into its current
condition…….That’s where you will stay until you develop a lifestyle that
creates healthier behavior.
·
…your partner – the person who is supposed to be the most
significant and trusted person in your life.
Just how dark are your feelings about your relationship, and just how
negatively do you think about yourself and your partner? Under no circumstances
should you share these answers with your partner.
·
The only thing worse than having a relationship in trouble is to have a
relationship in trouble and be in denial about it.
·
…one definition of love is that the security and well-being of your
partner is as significant to you as your own security and well-being…
·
…you can deal with anything as long as you know what it is.
·
I have made this judgement call
using one simple criterion: results.
Based on results, these myths don’t have one whit to do with whether
your relationship is successful.
·
…you are so totally different from your partner.
·
Different is okay.
·
It doesn’t work because of something called instinctual drift.
·
Instinctual drift is the tendency for all organisms, when under
pressure, to resort to and exhibit their natural tendencies.
·
..a relationship is far more enjoyable when you’re with someone who
enriches your life, not simple reflects it.
·
..most people don’t know how to measure success in a relationship.
Most people have a distorted view of what love is…
·
Inevitably, with all couples, that initial wild passion transmutes into
a deep and abiding commitment – still rewarding, but not always so dizzying.
·
The answer…. Learning how to move to the next stage of love.
·
…most of the key issues
that create real conflict within a relationship never gets resolved.
·
….simply agree to
disagree.
·
They decide to reconnect at a feeling level rather than disconnecting at
an issue level.
·
…place the relationship above the conflict..
·
It’s not what you do, it’s how you do it.
·
…the nature of the way you argue, and by how you deal with the
argument once it has run its course.
·
You must get emotional closure at the end of your arguments
·
…get your mind and heart in balance and allow your partner to do the
same.
·
..in order to meet the criteria of being open and honest to know if
what you’re about to say is going to be said in the most apropriate
manner, and that may take more deliberation.
·
If you have a good sexual relationship, it registers about ten percent
on the “important scale”.
·
If you do not have a good
sexual relationship, that registers about ninety percent on the “important
scale”.
·
Sex can be enormous symbolic importance…
·
…destructive behaviors can begin to emerge…
·
…there must be a sexual bond between the two of you, a kind of
chemistry that makes you two
recognize that you are more than friends who share a life.
You are mates.
·
…“you say the most when you say nothing at all”.
·
If we learn our partner’s language instead of demanding that they
adopt our language, we may find that we have far more of what we want than we
think we do it.
Myth 10: Your relationship can become great only when you get your partner straightened out
·
The more important person for you to influence is yourself.
·
You are the most important person in this relationship, and you must be
the focus of your beginning efforts to change this relationship.
·
You must rediscover your own dignity and self-esteem – your own
personal power.
·
…mature into a more healthy relationship
·
….make the choice to be self-directed
and start
working for real change.
·
I guarantee you by the end the book, you will inspire your partner to
behave and think and feel in different ways.
But never think you can control your partner.
And never think that’s it’s up to your partner to make your life
better.
·
You are in change of yourself.
Eliminating
Your Bad Spirit
·
There’s an even more insidious technique that you use to harm……
·
That’s when you approach your relationship with what I call your
“Bad Spirit”.
·
…immature, selfish, controlling, and power seeking.
·
…your dark side…
·
When your bad spirit comes roaring out, you are the most disconnected
from your core of consciousness that you can get.
·
…you can’t afford to be defensive about it or pretend that it
doesn’t exist in hopes that it will go away.
·
…the only thing worse than having terrible things happen to you in one
phase of your life is mentally and emotionally carrying those terrible events
and feelings into the next phase of your life.
·
You must be willing to meet your bad spirit face-to-face, recognize how
it manifests itself in your behavior, and then quickly get yourself out of that
mind-set before it does even greater damage.…know this self-defeating nature
so….…and stop it….
·
A healthy relationship is clearly a partnership.
Partners cooperate, they support one another, and they depend on one
another.
·
They do not compete.
·
In any relationship, you are either a giver or a taker.
Takers keep score to justify the taking.
How can you possibly be a winner if it is at the expense of making the
person you supposedly love a loser?
·
…fighting for leverage, power and control? Solid relationships are
built on sacrifice and caring, not power and control.….competitiveness between
partners is an ill wind that can blow through an otherwise healthy relationship.
·
Your bank points….
·
…for too many of you, criticizing and blaming and disparaging have
become your stock in trade. Because
you no doubt feel a lack of satisfaction with your own life, you attempt to
“level” your partner.
·
The terms “always” and “never” are judgmental and argumentative.
·
…self-righteous….
·
You are obsessed with control..
·
The message to your partner is clear:
“I am better than you”.
·
Your objective is not just to dominate, to manage your partner with
condescension and intimidation, but to stake out the moral highground.
·
…you cannot serve two masters…
·
…control.. ..Eventually, you will compromise and sacrifice the
relationship rather than admit ownership in a problem.
I cannot imagine a more self-defeating spirit than this one, for you are
putting your own ego above the welfare of the relationship.
You will let the relationship go down in flames rather than be honest
about your own shortcomings.
·
…passive aggression…
·
If you turn to passive aggression in a relationship, you are not only a
master of gutlessly avoiding accountalibility, you are also a master tactician
at undercutting your partner and all that he or she seeks to achieve.
·
….you guarantee failure and frustration because the standard you seem
to be looking for is so terribly unrealistic.
·
Bitterness and anger are such powerful forces that once they enter your
heart, they change everything about you.
·
…you’ll explode..…pessimistic view of life…
·
Your body feels so physically unbalanced.
·
You do have the power to forgive. You
have the power to say to your partner, “You cannot hurt me and then control
me. I am the one who makes the
choices”.
·
By forgiving you, I am releasing me! This is one of the most important
things you can learn from this book. You forgive for yourself.
·
…the spirit of insecurity..
·
…too needy..
·
…there is never enough of anything…
·
More than sabotaging yourself, you are sabotaging your partner.
·
We all want reassurance from our partners.
That is perfectly healthy. But
there is also a point at which it becomes toxic….
·
….tell me I’m okay because I am unconvinced.
With the insecure spirit, eighty percent of all questions are statements
in disguise.
·
What’s more, those questions are demands in disguise.
·
…break from your old inhibiting mind-set and free yourself from the
internalized sense of inadequacy and from the accusatory voices from within you
that tell you not to be too demanding or to want too much…
·
Here, you become so passive that you get nestled in a “comfort zone”
where the name of your game is to play it safe, not to reach, and maintain the
status quo.
·
..you are cheating your partner and yourself.
·
If you’re in a comfort zone, you are failing to meet your
responsibilities in the relationship. You
aren’t contributing, you aren’t stimulating, you’re not energizing,
you’re simply not carrying your end of the
deal.
·
Whatever it is for you, you have a more intimate relationship with that
than with your partner.
·
..stagnate…
·
“learned helplessness”.
·
You have shut down.
·
..stopped entertaining the notion that improvements can be made to
whatever has happened between you and your partner.
You have stopped learning or gathering new information.
·
“My partner will never change”.
·
..you’re killing your spirit.
·
People do change, and so can you and so can your partner.
·
You can hear such a message, and you can reconsider your situation.
·
…rebuild your best kind of spirit, that spirit that lets you believe
in yourself and in your partner.
·
…change attitudes and feel hope.
·
At this point you’re ready to move forward, to proclaim, “No, I will
not do this anymore. I will not let
my competitiveness cause me to drive a wedge between me and my partner.
I will not let my self-righteous attitude control me.
·
I will not give in to my tendency to be dishonest and hide what I really
think and feel. I will not become vicious and alienate my partner. I will not
lose my self-esteem, and I will not be helpless.
Reclaiming Your
Core: The Personal Relationship
Values
·
There is no middle ground. If
you aren’t constructively, contributing to the relationship, then you are
destructively contaminating it…
·
…activate the positives.
·
…get your mind and your attitude right.
·
To start the reconnection process with your partner, you must
passionately adopt the proper spirit.
·
I can bring out the best of who I am, my mind, and my heart – and I
have the passion and power to use them..
·
In essence, the ten Personal Relationship Values will reprogram you for
success.
·
…You choose.
·
It’s about you creating a different lifestyle that will enhance your
relationship.
·
…stop seeing yourself as a victim.
·
…your opportunity to use
your power.
·
When there is something unfulfilling in your relationship, your very
first step…
·
…should be to evaluate what you specifically are doing to cause that
lack of fulfilment.
·
By looking at yourself, instead of your partner, you’re focusing on
something you control instead of on something that you cannot.
·
The time has come for you to take charge, to find a new level of
personal power.
·
…an agent of change.
·
…start being honest.
·
When you do, you will start making permanent, healthy change-not only
within your relationship, but within yourself.
·
..it’s to be expected that some longstanding fears and anxieties will
emerge. The tendency is natural, but
it will not serve you here. You must
take some risk and remember you are not alone.
·
…resolve to trust yourself to be able to handle whatever your partner
may do concerning this relationship.
·
…do not let fear paralyze your life at this moment …
·
There should be no higher calling your for you than to meet your
partner’s need for acceptance.
·
…things are still okay, we’re going to get along right now, and most
important , we are going to feel safe with each other.
·
…despite our differences.
·
…the bottom line is that I accept you for you who are, and will always
be there for you.
·
..you will be a safe, loving place for your partner to fall onto.
·
…approachable. By having
two partners who are moving toward each other, rather than both trying to seek
safety from pain, the chances of reconciliation are dramatically improved.
·
Bottom line: if people feel
better about themselves after having been around you, you will find that they
value your company.
·
You must strive to help your mate maintain the feeling of worth and
empowerment, the desire to operate at the highest level, to overcome
self-defeating behavior, and to design a life full of happiness and fulfilment.
·
…you want your partner to feel “honored”.
·
..reflecting back his or her virtues rather than short-comings.
·
You want your partner to know that the two of you can work it out
without either one of you having to be pounded down.
·
..the greatest stress that can be visited upon and individual is that which
is associated with holding that person responsible for something he or she does
not control.
·
..stop using your mate as a dumping ground.
·
…you will equally damage the relationship by keeping from your partner
your most meaningful and honest feelings.
·
..lying to.…we must be responsible stewards of those feelings and
emotions.
·
To own your relationship means to also own your feelings.
By being honest about your emotions, you base your relationship upon
integrity rather than lies and deception.
·
…in the vast majority of cases, anger is a sham, a superficial
covering for something else.…hurt, fear, and frustration.
For your mind-set to be defined by emotional forthrightness, you will
need to do a fair amount of introspection.
·
Bottom line: give yourself
permission to feel the way you feel, and require yourself to have the courage to
give those feelings and apropriate voice.
·
…neither should you allow your partner to misdirect you.
·
The real measure
·
…whether it is working or not working
·
…destroying their relationship over a fight for control.
·
If you and your partner have a forgiving spirit and allow each other
some measure of grace when one or the other of seeks to reduce hostilities, your
future will be bright.
·
…no longer use threats as
a lever to manipulate and control your partner.
·
..do not make your
relationship the stakes for which you are playing.
·
There is a great feeling of liberation that comes with the commitment to
treat your relationship as something sacred.
It’s not an extra burden. All
you’re doing really, is getting rid of false sense of urgency.
·
..start operating out of a calmer, more secure position.
·
…set a clear limit.
·
..create an environment in which anything less from your partner just
doesn’t seem to fit.
·
You can no longer settle for living a second-class life with your
partner. Ambivalence is no longer in
your vocabulary. Passivity is no
longer on your list of emotional choices. You
must set the bar of excellence for yourself at an unprecedented high level, and
then with tenacious determination strive to leap over it.
·
..after losing at love, these relationship refugees had taken stock of
themselves and decided they’d better clean up their act.
·
..if those people had made those changes while still in their
relationships, they would probably still be
there. All they had to do was
replace their stagnation with action, their apathy with interest.
·
…being proud, about taking great pride in your actions around your
partner.
·
My great desire is for these Personal relationship Values to rise to the
level of what I call life decisions…most important things that define who you
are.
·
Life decisions occur in your heart, and carry a much deeper level of
conviction….