…to them? What are the factors that determine whether partners will end up experiencing love and fulfillment in their relationship or suffering pain and distress? This Webinar helps answer these questions by providing participants with a theoretical model that integrates psychodynamic, existential, and family systems frameworks in a manner that can increase clinicians’ understanding of and ability to assist individuals in developing and maintainin…
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…someone who is expressing interest in us and may prevent us from forming a relationship that could really make us happy. 6. Relationships can break your connection to your family. Relationships can be the ultimate symbol of growing up. They represent starting our own lives as independent, autonomous individuals. This development can also represent a parting from our family. Much like breaking from an old identity, this separation isn’t physical. I…
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…nt to yourself, mindful of today, the easier you can learn to form healthy relationships. A relationship with someone where you learn to share your feelings, be vulnerable, and who can hold your feelings can help you heal. Often, this first healing relationship is with a therapist. A trauma-informed therapist focuses on helping you feel safe. Teaching you about building safety in relationships through consistency and compassion. Then you can find…
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…s by looking at three contributing factors that can limit our capacity for experiencing love in our relationships: our attachment patterns, psychological defenses, and the concept of the fantasy bond. Attachment Patterns Our attachment patterns are established in our early childhood relationships, and they continue to function as working models for relationships throughout our lives. Our early attachments shape how we expect other people to behave…
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…found that more arguments correlated with poorer health and concluded that couples who don’t argue live longer. While a happy relationship has been connected to good health, these pesky arguments could be taking a serious toll. So, what if there was a technique that could help resolve conflicts between you and your partner? Would you try it? Even if it meant temporarily dropping your side of the fight? What if it meant letting go of all that pent…
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…— misinterpreting their actions to fit an old feeling about ourselves. Lastly, we can then be careful not to provoke our partners to act out in ways that hurt us, them and naturally, the relationship. By remaining wary of these negative influences, we give our relationships the best chance possible of lasting long and making us happy….
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…tive to their closest relationships. By comparing interactions in an ideal relationship with interactions in a relationship under the influence of a Fantasy Bond, a person can begin to act against their own limiting tendencies and dramatically improve their relationship. Non-defensive and Open Vs Angry and Closed Off Our reactions to feedback are good indicators of our potential to resolve problems in our relationships. When we are closed to criti…
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…fe. Later, the original fantasy bond in the family is extended to romantic relationships and negatively impacts most couples. The process of forming an imagination of love or connection reduces the possibility of achieving genuine intimacy and lasting personal ties. The Formation of the Fantasy Bond in Couple Relationships As romantic attachments evolve, partners tend to progress through different phases of relating. Initially, during the falling…
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…al distance. Destructive fantasy bonds, which exist in a large majority of relationships, greatly reduce the possibility couples achieving intimacy. The nature of a fantasy bond is the central concept of my theory as explained in my book The Fantasy Bond. It explains people’s compulsion to relive the past with new relationships i.e., to form illusory connections that invariably lead to a reenactment of defensive styles of interacting developed in…
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…our partner in ways that fit our past. For instance, a woman in a serious relationship recently complained that she’d always wind up with women who were “cold and rigid.” Even in her current relationship with someone who seemed “different” and more “laid back,” she complained of her girlfriend being dismissive and not forthcoming with compliments and affection. When she explored these feelings further, she realized she was often scanning for crit…
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