I had the honor to receive an email from a man who loves to write blogs on relationships and the more positive sides of these relationships. We always have those relationships we hear about that are negative and quite a lot of times our media is over taken by stories like this form the rich and the famous. But when we get a glimmer of a positive relationship between anyone, we cling to it and enjoy it for what it’s worth, doing our best to ditch the stereotypical negative relationships. We of course will fight our loved one in any relationship and those fights do make us stronger, but when we look at a negative situation and help turn it into a positive one, then maybe our relationships will grow even stronger than if we just concentrate on the negative parts. So I was pleased when he approached me through my email asking for a story of mine that is positive and will hopefully help others and in turn I asked him a couple of questions so that we can get a glimpse into his mind as to why he wants to have blogs based around positive stories on relationships and couples. Here are not only his answers but his website so that you may go and read is remarkable blogs on couples and their positive relationships and how they are growing together with one another’s help.
And to the blogger Inspireyourmarriage, thank you again for wanting me to be a part of your blogs and for being a part of mine. I truly appreciate it.
What gave you the idea of having stories that are more positive in relationships?
The idea of having stories that are more positive in relationships came from hearing so much negativity and complaining about relationships and marriage. We need positive ways to deal with how to overcome problems in our relationships and positive stories on how other have dealt with a problem in their relationship.
We hear a lot of people complaining about their partner. Then to solve the problem, they resort to negative action. They get mad at their partner, complain, make demands, try to guilt them into meeting a need and resenting certain things about their partner. This frustration is justified, but those actions by themselves rarely solve the problem.
Then they go to their friends about the issue. First, it’s often just to complain or vent to get it off your chest. This is well-intentioned but not often helpful to the relationship and to solving the problem. When you complain about your partner to your friends, you go back to your partner with a sub-conscious negativity about them. Even if you’re just joking to your friends, you still have little negative thoughts about your partner when you see them again. This does not create closeness to them.
Second, if it’s an issue that they want help with, they will ask their friends’ advice on the situation. Their friends may be well-meaning, but can also often hurt the relationship more than help it. The reason is because their friends naturally want to take their side to show they support them. Simply taking their side doesn’t solve the problem. Also, friends don’t see a key ingredient to the marriage – your partner’s actions may simply be reactions to your actions. If your actions change, your spouse’s actions could change.
A classic example of this came from a recent story a wife sent to me. She made a negative assumption about her husband and didn’t give him the benefit of the doubt about something. This led to resentment on her part and negative behavior toward him from her, which only pushed him further away, both emotionally and physically. She tried to talk to her friends for help, which only made things worse. Her friends meant well, but they only received half of the story and vented their own relationship frustrations by taking her side without offering any way to solve the problem.
However, it all changed when she let go of the resentment and started acting more positively toward her husband. His reaction was quick and decisive – he started acting more positively toward her. They finally opened up and talked about what they each need from each other. They tried talking in the past, but because they had not been meeting each other’s needs, they both weren’t willing to budge.
Was it fair that one partner had to take the first step? Maybe not. But you can either be fair and possibly lead to divorce, or you can do what’s unfair and start the process of fixing the relationship.
So we need more stories like this of how couples have fixed problems in their relationship, rather than just venting about how bad their relationship is. Venting is ok once in a while, but don’t confuse venting with actually solving the issue in the relationship.
What made you want to inspire others through gathering stories of others and their relationships?
My motivation of inspiring relationships was for my own marriage. For years, my wife and I struggled to have a really happy and content marriage. There were a lot of ups and downs. We talked to friends, family, we read books, we went to counseling, and we tried to focus on religious teachings. We did everything and nothing worked. We didn’t have a terrible marriage, but there was just a layer of unhappiness and dissatisfaction in it.
Then I started reading a lot of various internet message boards of people asking for relationship advice. What slowly started to strike me was how people couldn’t see how their own actions were negatively affecting their relationship and likely negatively affecting their partner. We couldn’t see what their partner had to say about the situation, but it was clear their own actions often weren’t helpful to the situation.
It took a while, but I slowly started to see that my actions also weren’t helping my own marital situation. So to understand my own marriage better, I started to try to follow what people’s frustrations were in their relationship. I saw patterns of what their frustrations were. They had different scenarios and wording, but the problems started falling into distinct categories. This became the basis for the 10 Needs I developed.
The next thing that became clear was that people’s frustrations fell into 2 distinct areas. Either there was a lack of stability in the relationship, meaning they were still highly attracted to their partner, but their partner’s actions/behaviors were very frustrating to them and very unreliable. Or there was a lack of stimulation in the relationship, meaning they felt their life was steady with their partner, but the passionate desire wasn’t there any longer.
This revelation of the 10 Needs and 2 main types of needs led me to do a lot of thinking about my own marriage. The more I focused on fulfilling her needs that she wasn’t getting from me, the more she focused on my needs. Our marriage isn’t perfect now, but a lot of the frustrations we felt for years have mostly gone away.
Hearing all of this is what ultimately lead me to want to inspire other relationships. I felt the best way to do that was to post stories from people who had overcome issues in their relationship. I wanted to be a source of showing people how to overcome their own problems in their relationship.
The interesting thing is that it’s very easy to correlate how they overcome an issue with the 10 Need I developed on my website and my book at https://www.inspireyourmarriage.com/.
