Ep43 Marriage Problems and Solutions

Please share your thoughts, feedback, and questions. I would love to hear from you.

In episode 43 of the Better Relationships Podcast, Dr. Dar Hawks, the relationship healer, delves into the common marriage problems and effective solutions to address them. Dr. Dar emphasizes the importance of becoming aware of problematic relationship behaviors and cultivating self-awareness to foster healthier interactions with your partner.

Dr. Dar discusses a range of destructive behaviors that compassionate women may unknowingly engage in, such as assuming what their partner thinks, interrupting, reacting defensively, and more. She provides practical strategies to replace these behaviors with healthier ones, such as identifying dissimilarities, focusing on self-improvement, healing negative communication, and learning compassionate communication skills.

Dr. Dar also explores various alternatives to traditional therapy, including experiential methods like marriage enrichment programs, holistic methods such as mindfulness and meditation, and creative approaches like relationship check-ins and date nights with a twist. She highlights the importance of support groups, online resources, and mentorship, cautioning listeners to choose facilitators who offer structured transformation and customized support.

If you'd like to learn more about these strategies and alternatives, or if you want to have a conversation with Dr. Dar, you can schedule a chat with her at drdarhawks.com by clicking the contact link at the top right. She looks forward to connecting with you in the next podcast.

Welcome to the Better Relationships Podcast where Dr. Dar Hawks shares relationship tips and advice to help you be seen, heard, understood, and supported in your relationships.  Taking on tough topics and giving you hope, inspiration, and ideas to experiment with, Dr. Dar Hawks is passionate about creating healthier, happier, and harmonious relationships... 
Because when you are happy in your relationship, the world becomes a better place for all of us.

Welcome to the Better Relationships Podcast where Dr. Dar Hawks shares relationship tips and advice to help you be seen, heard, understood, and supported in your relationships.  Taking on tough topics and giving you hope, inspiration, and ideas to experiment with, Dr. Dar Hawks is passionate about creating healthier, happier, and harmonious relationships... 
Because when you are happy in your relationship, the world becomes a better place for all of us.

Transcript

1:00

welcome to episode 43 of the Better Relationships podcast. Today I'm talking about marriage problems and solutions, and I'm Doctor Dara, the relationship healer. I want you to know that addressing marriage problems and being able to choose the best solution for yourself really starts with becoming aware of problematic relationship behaviors. As compassionate women, we prefer to keep our relationships private, so it can be challenging to admit that things aren't going well. You might feel as if you can't talk to anyone about it out of embarrassment or thinking you should know what to do or fear that someone in your community is going to find out. Or you may feel as if you've done everything you could, but nothing seems to make a difference or changes don't stick. It's really disheartening when you think you're on your own. Creating healthier, happier, and harmonious behaviors starts with having awareness of what the destructive behaviors are and a healthy dose of self awareness so that you know whether or not you are using those behaviors in your relationship. Once you're aware of what you or your partner may be doing that's not helpful or healthy for your relationship, you can then choose to work with a couples or marriage focused relationship coach to help you identify how did you learn that behavior? What did you gain out of starting to use that behavior? How is that behavior affecting your current relationship, affecting you and your partner? And are you getting the results that you used to get by having this behavior in place? What to do to change the behavior and still get your needs met and to build strategies and develop strategies to build a healthier, happier relationship with your partner. And that would be true whether you choose to stay or not. It's really good to have completion and closure if you do decide to leave the relationship as well. I firmly believe that working on the issues in the current relationship or shortly thereafter is really a way to improve yourself, make yourself a better person and a better partner in the current relationship or your next one? I want to now make you aware of some destructive behaviors that compassionate women do engage in, believe it or not, that are absolutely destructive to your partner and your relationship and ultimately to you. Assuming or thinking you know what your partner thinks, wants or needs. Cutting off or interrupting your partner mid sentence reacting negatively, critically or defensively versus neutrally or openly when your partner tells you something and managing your emotions and reactions in the process of listening. Snooping through your partner's things, getting overly upset when they pay attention to others and not you. Not being yourself around your partner, pretending to be who you think they want you to be instead of showing up as who you actually are. Insisting that your partner does or says something they don't want to do or say criticizing your partner for the way they help with day to day activities rather than accepting the way they do things not allowing your partner to love you the way they show, say and express love, which could be very different from the way you show, express and say that you love them. M keeping quiet to keep the peace when things your partner does bothers you. Concealing or withholding things from your partner making agreements only to break them afterwards pushing your partner to change so that you can make them fit into a mold that suits you. Stonewalling, which means shutting down during arguments or refusing to communicate at all withholding affection, which means using affection as a bargaining tool. Reward or punishment. Passive aggressiveness, which is expressing negative feelings indirectly rather than openly discussing them. M with your partner that could show up as sarcasm or cynicism as well. Constantly comparing yourself with others retreating in silence during conflict or refusing to speak. Also known as the silent treatment. Blaming always pointing the finger at your partner instead of taking responsibility for your own actions and needs. Possessiveness continually suspecting your partner is untrustworthy without any basis. Neglect of self care disregarding your own emotional and physical well being while also complaining about it to your partner. Overdependence. You rely so much on your partner such that he or she becomes your only support system crossing borders not respecting your partner's personal space and boundaries unresolved issues from past relationships that are spilling into your current relationship and creating problems and not recognizing what your partner does for you and instead hyper focusing on what they're not doing. By recognizing these behaviors and replacing them with new, healthier ones and actually transforming them, you can address the core problems in your relationship and work toward building a healthier and happier one with your partner. I want to share a few practical strategies that you can use to help improve your relationship. Coming from me as a compassionate relationship coach, identify dissimilarities. I want you to note down everything that you don't agree with regarding your partner, including the things you don't want to acknowledge or that you explain away because of the good times or things they do for you or for others. Identify what is working in your relationship next, rather than hyper focusing on what's not working, could you identify all the things that do work for you, your partner, and your relationship? I often find in my work with couples, their focus is mostly oriented on the problems in their relationship. As we unpack the issues, I usually find a whole lot more of the good in the relationship than the problems. The problems end up only being about ten or 20% at most when you look at the whole of the relationship. Instead of trying to change your partner as a person, focus on self improvement by asking yourself, what more can I do to honor myself? Change my destructive behaviors, work on getting my own needs met, being clear when I communicate, and communicate in an empowering way to become a better person and partner. Heal negative communication stop blaming, criticizing, nagging, or complaining about yourself or your partner's actions towards you, or use sarcasm to make a point instead. Learn compassionate communication skills I have a toolkit that can help you learn compassionate communication skills in a very simple way, with conversation scripts and worksheets for you to practice with. You can get your toolkit at toolkit dot drdarhawks.com another strategy is to get out of gridlock. At times, you both may find that you're fighting over the same thing. Learning how to express your feelings in a healthy way can help you acknowledge that you're on the same page with the issue. That could then lead you towards being able to establish some common grounds and mutually work on finding solutions that work for both of you. Decide together determine what categories in your lives require you to decide together. I, want you to work with your partner and identify what categories in your lives together require that you both collaborate on decision making versus making decisions on your own. Including your partner in their perspectives when you make decisions shows that you are including them. Even if you end up not moving forward with what they said you wanted, even if you end up not moving forward with what they said they wanted, you can still follow through on what you're wanting and communicate that in a healthy way so that your partner accepts that it's ultimately your choice. But having a pre determined agreement as to which topics require you both to make the decision together versus not is a really healthy thing to have. For example, maybe you and your partner have, an agreement that if either of you is going to spend more than dollar 300, that you discuss it with each other first and make a healthy financial decision for your family. Or you might decide that a job change is something that you have to discuss with your partner and collaborate on what the best decision is holistically. The next strategy is for you to validate emotions, understand that what you and your partner feels is right for them in that moment, and frankly, is in that moment. It stays in that moment. This is true for you too, because emotions aren't static, they're fluid. So it's good to check in with them to see if anything has changed. This will create room for better understanding. Going forward will allow both of you to have time to process things and be able to support each other where needed. When things are shared in the m moment, giving you and your partner the opportunity to process it and to adjust your perspectives after the fact is a very healthy thing to do. Avoid competing against one another. Couples who have power as their dominant primary relationship need can engage in competitive behaviors and communication that can cause issues in their relationship later on. Always competing and trying to one up each other can exhaust your partner and create division in your relationship. If you want to learn what your dominant primary relationship need is and what your partner's in, you can both go and take my quiz at needs dot drdarhawks.com. the next strategy is having different viewpoints and knowing and accepting that different viewpoints matter. Learn how to recognize and value each other's perspectives and views. You don't have to agree with each other on everything. Having alignment on your core values, relationship goals and lifestyle does create a solid foundation for your relationship, which can then allow for accepting, not necessarily agreeing to varying viewpoints. The last strategy that I have for you today is to give each other space in a respectful way when you or your partner needs their own independence, freedom and space. Whether they've asked for it or they are showing they need space by being quiet, withdrawing or they start doing things on their own is important. Also, if you or your partner has the dominant primary relationship need of freedom, then giving each other space is going to be essential. You can take the quiz to learn whether freedom is your dominant primary relationship need at needs dot drdarhawks.com invite your partner to take the quiz as well. Here are some alternatives to therapy or marriage counseling for solving marriage problems. There are many alternatives and many ways to solve problems in your marriage without traditional therapy, which I'm finding is becoming increasingly unappealing to couples for various reasons. Most couples who hire me have tried couples therapy but complained of bias towards their partner, an ideology or religion or homogeneous cultural, tribal or societal approaches to what a marriage should be. Instead of respecting each partner's perspective and finding ways to mediate and facilitate common ground and solutions that benefit both partners based on who they are, their backgrounds and their lifestyle, the way they think, their personalities, and what their preferences are, and what their primary relationship needs are, there are experiential methods that you can try. Experiential methods involve marriage enrichment programs which consist of structured sets of activities, workshops or retreats designed to strengthen and improve existing marital relationships, oftentimes in a group setting with some individual time, these programs typically focus on enhancing communication, conflict resolution, intimacy, and relationship satisfaction. Key components of a marriage enrichment program might include workshops and seminars to learn new skills and strategies for improving your relationship. Couples retreats are immersive experiences that allow couples to focus on their relationship without distractions. It's kind of like a vacation to work on your relationship. Be sure when you're looking at workshops and seminars or couples retreats that you align with the message of the person, putting the person responsible for delivering the content and the material. Make sure you align with their values and their belief systems, and make sure that you're comfortable with how much group work there is versus individual versus couples work and how much interaction you will have with the instructor and also, frankly, any distraction type activities. So if you're on a retreat, maybe there are some excursions where you're going to see the country that you're in or an outdoor adventure of some sort so that you're not 100% totally focused on working on the relationship, because that can create an issue. If all you're doing all weekend long or all week long is focusing on your relationship and its problems and making them better, that is not going to be a fun experience experience for either of you. Enrichment programs can also consist of outdoor adventures where you do things in nature that builds connection and helps you both problem solve through guided, shared group experiences. But you're not necessarily working on the relationship. You're working on how to build connection and how to solve problems and make decisions together through activities out in nature, which is really a great way to create connection. Caution, though, for you, is that this can also amplify problems that you're having in your relationship, and the facilitators may not be equipped to help you navigate that conflict while it's happening during the outdoor adventure. Also, some programs do incorporate couples counseling, therapy, or coaching. The goal of these programs is to help couples build a stronger, more fulfilling partnership. I can tell you that couples who really, want to give their relationship a last ditch effort to save it have found that those options, the marriage enrichment programs, while they helped them individually, they didn't necessarily help them and their relationship get better. It actually amplified the issues that they were already happening. So the marriage enrichment programs, I think, are for couples that just want to have different activities to build a stronger relationship, or who have some minor issues that they want to work through, or who want to learn new skills and strategies for building a healthier relationship. There are also holistic methods, mindfulness and meditation where you learn techniques and practices to help reduce stress levels, manage anger issues and improve emotional control. Those are really great activities to do together as a couple. Sharing that quiet, silent, sacred space is, believe it or not, a wonderful way to create connection with you and your partner. We m don't have to talk all the time couples or marriage relationship coaching involves personalized guidance and support customized to you and your partner, provided by a trained professional relationship coach like me who actually has training and practice to work with couples as opposed to individuals. Relationship coaches and couples coaches as well as marriage coaches have vast experiences, background education and methodologies they use to support their clients. It's a good idea to learn what those experiences, education and methodologies are and to step out of your comfort zone and try some new approaches. There's so much available out there that traditional therapy or coaching doesn't offer. Sex therapy professional sex therapists provide solutions if sex, romance and intimacy is found to be the main or soul issue in your relationship. Once again, make sure that you hire someone that you absolutely trust with your life and your sacred thoughts and feelings, and who facilitates connectedness, trust and safety for you and your partner and who communicates in a way that you understand and appreciate and feel nurtured. That would be true for all three of the holistic methods if I were to be completely honest with you. There are also creative approaches which I tend to enjoy as well. An employee in my coaching company and business relationship check ins are the first one. They're structured, regular conversations that you schedule with your partner and that are designed to prevent situations from escalating further. My better relationships toolkit or my relationship vitality plan for couples, it will help you do that in a structured, non invasive, non conflict generating way. You can get the toolkit at toolkit dot drdarhawks.com or the vitality plan at vitality dot drdarhawks.com and learn more about them. Another creative approach is the primary relationship needs quiz. This is about understanding each other deeper by knowing how best each of you communicates love towards each other so that connection between you grows stronger and how to get your needs met. There is an underlying dominant need that each of you have and if conflicts are happening. I have found in my work with couples over the last two decades that their needs are in conflict with each other and so understanding that takes the edge out of the conflict and allows you both to say, I didn't understand that. About that underlying need you have, I see that I need to communicate differently so that you hear and understand me and you do the same for me. It is a magical, miraculous approach that's very simple to implement regardless of where you are in your relationship. The third one is date nights with a twist. It involves doing new activities with your partner on a date because that can bring shared interest in each other. And a new activity that neither have participated in brings some newness into your relationship that, frankly, you used to do during the initial stages of dating each other. Learning something new is a great thing to do together doesn't mean you've got to do it every, you know, every week as a hobby. But trying new things, learning new things, taking a class together, those things help draw you closer. Even taking classes that require thinking and dialogue will help you draw closer. the other thing also is showing an interest in each other's careers and getting into conversations to deepen the understanding of what it is your partner does and them as to what you do for a career, what your day's like. Those conversations can get real boring if we don't share a lot of information about it. Instead of just saying it was fine, share more about you. Share that. You know what? I was outside and I saw this beautiful hummingbird come to me right in my face, and I watched it for a few seconds, and then I watched it fly away into the palm tree or the pine tree. Those are conversations couples stop having because they think it's not important, but it truly is important. What you're experiencing in your day is important, and sharing your day with your partner is important. It draws connection, it creates connection, it creates understanding. The third category of options for solutions is around support. Support groups create the space for sharing with others who are going through similar issues that can offer you empathy as well as solutions that worked for them too. Be sure that they're facilitated by a professional therapist or a couple's relationship coach, both of whom have training to facilitate support groups. One caution about support groups. Couples who have come to me that have used support groups in the past have stated that they kept them stuck because the support groups ended up just talking about the same issues over and over again without a format or structure for transformation being offered by the therapist or the relationship coach or facilitator. So be sure you vet support groups very well for your own needs if you're going to look at that as an option. There are also many online resources, websites, forums and blogs that give information plus moral support when it's needed most, especially during tough times. Note that these online resources tend to be more generic, even if it's related to a specific problem. And so you're not going to get a customized solution where a person or a service provider is getting to know you and your partner and they're getting to observe your interactions. They're observing how you communicate or don't communicate and can offer you customized support. Mentorship involves getting guidance from someone you trust implicitly, and that helps because they've already been there and done it themselves. They know what worked for them and they can potentially guide you towards what works best based on their own experience. I have another caution there. Some, couples that have come to me have had wonderful mentors, but they came away realizing that they didn't feel comfortable sharing exactly what was going on with their mentor and they felt like there were pieces missing that weren't customized to their partner or their own mindset, behaviors and needs. Making a decision for a solution that will work for you individually and for your partner, and for both of you does require collaboration and alignment. You could also hire a coach to help you figure out what the right solution is for both you and your partner and your relationship. It does take time to find the right person to work with you, one that you're both comfortable, that nurtures you both and nurtures your relationship, uses clear listening and communication that has a positive, proven track record in their own relationships and demonstrates that they care about you. A lot of providers sell a service and they don't have a stake or a care as to the results that you and your partner get as a result of working with them. Make a list of your priorities, goals, and even the qualities and values you are looking for from a solution provider, and above all, ensure you feel completely comfortable with them, respect them and trust them and feel safe with them before hiring them to help you with the most important relationship of your life. I hope this has been helpful to you and if you'd like to have a conversation with me about any of these marriage problems and solutions, you can schedule a chat with me@drdarhawks.com and click the contact link at the top right. I look forward to connecting with you either via, chat or in the next podcast.