Search Results for: couples experiencing relationship trouble

How to Not Lose the "Me" When Becoming a "We"

…ting. In a fantasy bond, fantasy takes the place of reality. The form of a relationship is substituted for the substance of a relationship. Don’t get caught up in the role of being in a couple and lose track of each of your unique characteristics that went into making your relationship unique. Don’t use conventional symbols of love to take the place of genuine, personal expressions of love. Don’t get into the role of being either the parent or chi…

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Intimacy issues, alive to intimacy, the fantasy bond, Psychalive

Staying Compatible by Staying Yourself

…themselves so they are capable of more intimacy, love and passion in their relationship. The only way to stay yourself in a relationship Maintain your interests. When two people fall in love, they experience themselves and each other as separate individuals with distinct identities, and their own ideas, interests and friends. Their individuality makes them interesting to each other. * Maintain interests that were important to you before becoming i…

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How to Beat Boredom in Your Relationship: Drop into the Plane of Possibility

…ting that each experience we have is entirely new if we are in the moment, experiencing it as it is happening, no matter what. When people complain about being bored in their relationship, they often cite being stuck in a rut or routine. They may feel a sudden desire for novelty and assume that novelty can only come from a new partner. The truth is, every interaction we have with another person, even someone we’ve known for a long time, is a new p…

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how to move on

How to Move On

…d resolved toward moving on. Let go of fantasy Idealizing our partner or a relationship isn’t just something that happens after we split up. Often, couples enter into what Dr. Firestone calls a “fantasy bond,” an illusion of connection that replaces real relating and genuine acts of love and intimacy. Symptoms of a fantasy bond can include relating as a unit, valuing the form of being a couple over the substance of making contact, falling into rou…

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How to Bring "Vacation Sex" Home With You

…ship” sex, it is necessary to challenge the fantasy bond in one’s everyday relationship. Couples have to break out of the roles that they are playing out with each other and go back to living as the complete individual each of them once was. It is important for them to take the time to talk to one another, not about practicalities or kids or other people but to give themselves and each other a chance to pay attention to how they are feeling and wh…

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A Fine Romance: Secrets to Making Love Last a Lifetime

…air for the happy couple category. They are Royal Oak psychotherapists and relationship experts, offering couples therapy and workshops. Upon arriving at their office, it becomes clear they can’t keep their eyes off of each other. In light of our country’s divorce statistics, I was determined to discover their secret. As Jesse sits deep in the couch, legs loosely crossed, wearing a wool blazer, dark sweater and trousers with a smart crease, Melva…

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How Mindfulness Can Save Your Relationship

…2004 University of North Carolina study of “relative happy, nondistressed couples” showed that couples who practiced mindfulness saw improvements to their “relationship happiness.” In addition, they experienced healthier levels of “relationship stress, stress coping efficacy, and overall stress.” Mindfulness is a skill we can acquire, a compassionate practice we can integrate into our lives, allowing us to have an easy, always available, method t…

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Be Mine: Dealing with Possessiveness in a Relationship

…and surveillance behaviors we often associate with possessiveness lead to relationship dissatisfaction and destructive behavior. So how can you stop the possessive patterns in your relationship? The first step is to understand why you engage in controlling behavior, and the second step is to deal with the underlying feelings that drive you toward an unequal dynamic. Most of us have some degree of fear and insecurity surrounding our close relation…

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Why Am I Still Single? 8 Reasons People Often Stay Single

…Attractions When we act on our defenses, we tend to choose less-than-ideal relationship partners. We may establish an unsatisfying relationship by selecting a person who isn’t emotionally available. Because this process is largely unconscious, we often blame our partner for the relationship’s failed outcome. We tend to feel devastated or hurt by the repeated rejections without recognizing that we are actually seeking out this pattern. Why do we do…

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Why My Relationship Failed, a Fantasy Bond Story

…e happy. However, as you know, this story doesn’t have a happy ending. The trouble began a few months into our relationship. We had seen each other every single day since we had started dating, and by this point, we were extremely comfortable with each other. In fact, it was almost like we were just extensions of each other. I had stopped seeing us as individuals but more as a unit, like those celebrities with combined names, “Brangelina.” We stop…

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