Isn’t this what we all dream of? A love that withstands anything and everything….but, as the song goes ‘Staying in Love Ain’t Easy’ (Wendell B.)

Our society creates a very romanticised, almost unrealistic image of what it is to be in love and it’s usually a lot quicker to fall in love than it is to fall out of love. That heady feeling can last a lifetime for many people but for many more it’s about recognising that people are unlikely to change what are their basic personality traits, much as we might want them to!

When I worked as a relationship counsellor and saw couples who felt that they were no longer in love,  I tried to emphasise that both partners have to be willing to keep their love alive – it’s pretty hard for one person to keep things going if the other one is ‘opting out’ emotionally and physically. But, if you’re both committed to keeping your love alive and your life together happy, what can you do, even if things are difficult?

Start with what attracted you to your partner which could be any number of things – their sense of humour, kindness, their academic achievements or, quite possibly, a raw attraction which was mainly physical. But if it was enough to bring you together, it can hopefully be enough to keep you together in the long-term.

Fun and the friendship that you hopefully have are one of the most important parts of love – that’s paying attention to your partner, asking about their day, doing things together that you both enjoy and going out as a couple and with other couples too.

You need connection too – trying new activities together, showing empathy for the challenges they might be facing, even if you’d deal with it differently, dreaming and talking about your future together.

Intimacy is important to most of us – starting the day with a kiss, always kissing goodnight at the end of the day, telling them what you love about sex with them, holding hands. All of these are connections that keep people together.

Then there are the arguments – most couples have them, sometimes almost daily! If this is part of your relationship try to take responsibility for some part of the problem, avoid swearing and yelling during arguments and try to be clear and direct. Face your challenges together and see what you can do differently, especially if you’ve been fighting a lot.

Finally, there’s gratitude – telling them what you like about them, thanking them for working hard, appreciating their quirks and funny little ways as well as doing a chore that you know they hate, cooking their favourite meal and picking up the slack when they’re really busy.

No-one said that relationships are easy (well, they probably did, but they weren’t being realistic!), but trying to keep things fresh and helping one another along when things are really tough is a good start and can keep your relationship a loving one, even when you’re facing a lot of different hurdles. It’s really worth trying….

You can see my blogs as soon as they are published (usually on Wednesdays) by pressing the ‘follow’ button and you can share them with your friends. You can also find me on LinkedIn, Instagram (samebutdifferent) and read my FB posts at Same But Different.                          #loss #depression #mentalhealth #anger #melancholy

One of the latest toxic behaviours to raise its head is ‘pocketing’ – the situation where you keep the person you’re dating unseen, not introducing them to your family or friends, or posting anything about them on social media, including them not showing up as one of your ‘friends’. It can include routinely cancelling plans if they involve other friends or refusing to go to family parties as a couple. In other words, your relationship seems non-existent to the outside world.

If you’re the person who’s being pocketed it’s usually confusing and makes you doubt yourself. Why doesn’t your partner want to acknowledge you to the outside world? It stops the relationship progressing as there’s no openness about the person you’re involved with.

There can be a number of reasons for this – if someone is gay and hasn’t come out yet, if they value their privacy above all else, if you come from different cultures and their family might disapprove or if they’re already involved with someone else. Concerns about commitment are often a big part of pocketing too – your partner may not want to be open about the relationship until he or she is fairly sure that it’s going to be long-term.

However, the difference between pocketing and waiting for a good time to be more open is transparency. Working out the right time to introduce someone to family and friends isn’t always easy and doing it too soon can be off-putting for some people but waiting too long makes the other person feel you’re not that serious. If someone doesn’t do any introductions at all, after months of dating, that’s pocketing. It’s about creating distance and space in the relationship.

There’s also the possibility that someone you’ve been dating has been presenting you with a false image of themselves – a façade that they’ve kept up but that will collapse if you meet their family or other friends. They may be scared that you’ll be disappointed if you know the ‘real’ person.

So, if your partner

• Never makes plans to see you and meet up with other people
• You always meet at secluded out of the way places, never in their own neighbourhood
• Makes excuses why you can’t meet their family or friends
• Doesn’t introduce you if you run into people they know
• Doesn’t talk about people in their social circle and no-one in their family has even heard of you

you’re probably being pocketed!

If you recognise all of this, what can you do? The first thing is not to become confrontational, tempting though that might be. Try to have a conversation where you give them an opportunity to talk about why you haven’t met anyone else significant in their life. See whether you have different expectations about how a relationship looks and whether your ideas about that are compatible.

It may be that it’s this conversation that prompts your partner to confide about family issues that they’ve been trying to keep under wraps – it can even be a relief for them to talk about it and a chance to find the right time and place for you to be introduced.

But, there’s also the possibility that your partner, the pocketer, will be clear about their true intentions regarding your relationship. If you have very different ideas, you then have a choice about whether you decide to stay and see if things change, that they become more open about their relationship with you, or whether you decide to cut your losses and leave before you become even more involved. Remember, you deserve to be valued for who you are and for your relationships to be out in the open.

Check out my blogs as soon as they are published (usually on Wednesdays) by pressing the ‘follow’ button – you can share them with your friends too. You can also find me on LinkedIn, Instagram (samebutdifferent) and read my FB posts at Same But Different.                          #loss #depression #mentalhealth #anger #melancholy

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In theory, it’s possible to stay friendly with your ex and, in some cases, it’s very reasonable – after all, if he or she was someone that you have a lot in common with, have shared different experiences with and hold the same values, why not? If you have children together, it can be especially beneficial as it helps with the flow of information and when you’re managing your different schedules (in theory at least).

But whether it actually works in practice is another thing altogether because sometimes it can make it harder to successfully put that relationship behind you if one of you starts dating other people. In an ideal world, if it’s what you both want, you’ll both find new partners and everyone will get on really well, even holidaying together and spending birthdays and Christmases together in some cases.

So this is when it can work:

• You’ve both accepted that the relationship is well and truly over.
• You both understand why you broke up.
• Your relationship with one another is no longer full of emotion – it feels similar to your other friendships.
• You can both handle appropriate boundaries and, more importantly, manage any nostalgic feelings that might come up without getting any deeper than that.
• You’re both comfortable and happy dating other people and it’s what you want for one another.

But, maybe it’s time to cut ties if:

• One of you is still secretly hoping you’ll get back together.
• You know that, really, your ex isn’t fully over you.
• You’re holding onto what you once had because you’re scared to separate your lives and start to live independently of one another.
• If you’re the one who ended it and you feel guilty about that, sensing that somehow you ‘owe’ them some attention.
• Your ex actually still occupies a lot of your time, energy and thoughts.
• The thought of them with someone else makes you feel upset.
• Being friends with them just doesn’t seem to work.

So, although you might decide that you can’t be friends at the moment, that doesn’t mean that things can’t or won’t change in the future. You might eventually come together in a new sort of friendship but that might take time, whether it be months or years ahead.

A key thing is to set some boundaries if you are hoping to be friends, such as how much information you share about your personal lives, how much time you spend alone together and how you emotionally rely on one another.

So, to sum up, give it time before you hurtle into a friendship that you’re not actually ready for, make sure you’re actually over one other and remember that any friendship will need to be different from the relationship you once had. And, it’s alright if you decide that it’s too emotionally complicated for you and hopefully you can explain that you need more time before you can be true friends. A friendship isn’t always possible and accepting that in itself is a big step forward.

You can see my blogs as soon as they are published (usually on Wednesdays) by pressing the ‘follow’ button and you can share them with your friends. You can also find me on LinkedIn, Instagram (samebutdifferent) and read my FB posts at Same But Different.                          #loss #depression #mentalhealth #anger #melancholy

Maybe your family doesn’t have a lot of conflict – in which case, lucky you – but if you often find that there’s friction, falling-out and shouting in your immediate or wider family, read on.

Although it’s normal to disagree with family members at times, if there are often arguments it can become very stressful and sometimes damaging too. Because people have different beliefs and values, it stands to reason that we won’t always agree with other people in the family. But, it’s how we deal with those differences that’s the key to calmer times.

Some families are very good at smoothing over differences and agreeing to differ on certain things, but for others it becomes almost impossible to agree to differ on certain subjects and there are often family members who become intentionally aggressive and hurtful.

It can be quite disconcerting to find that people growing up in the same family have such opposing beliefs and values, especially when it comes to disciplining children, experiencing a health crisis or being redundant. Basically, we want members of our own families to understand us and our needs, but they too have needs that might not be met during difficult times.

So, what can you do if you find this often happens in your family?

Well, one thing is that it’s better not to label people in your family – see my last blog published on 1 June regarding this very subject! If you find yourself saying things like “Well, that’s the way Joe is – he’s always been selfish”, try to think about whether that’s actually true or it’s just a shortcut to glossing over what’s happening.

That’s another point though – some people want to gloss over contentious subjects and not look any deeper into them and sometimes that’s more difficult to deal with than someone who gets into arguments very quickly.

If you can stand back from a situation, it can help enormously – it’s more likely that you’ll find some sort of resolution then. If you take the view “mine’s the right way and yours is the wrong way” it immediately polarises people, as well as irritating them. Of course, we all think that we’re right but trying to understand the other person or people is the first step towards a resolution. To understand, we have to really listen to what they’re saying and even if it sounds preposterous don’t write it off immediately. There’s a reason why they think that, even you feel that it’s an uninformed opinion.

If you find that you’re too angry to listen to them, suggest walking away and cooling down before resuming a conversation. That doesn’t mean ‘sweeping it under the carpet’, but coming back with clearer ideas of what you might say in future discussion. A conversation might begin with “I felt really upset when we talked before, but I really want to understand where you’re coming from. Could you start again and tell me what it is that you like/dislike about this?”

Some stages that families find difficult to negotiate are:

• Birth of a baby – a reason to celebrate but it’s then that people realise that they have very different ideas about the whole process from breast feeding to education (and a million things in between!).
• A young person becoming an adult
• Separation and divorce – a big source of conflict in most families as people tend to ‘take sides’ and feel very strongly about what’s happened.
• Changes in financial circumstances – other family members often have opinions about what you should do if you’re poorer or wealthier, for whatever reason, than previously. More money can cause envy, less can escalate people into resentments or, if they’re lucky enough not to be in that position, they often have an opinion about the person whose finances have changed. Unfortunately, they often feel the need to express that opinion, even if it’s unasked for!
• A new job – if this means longer travelling time to work, this in itself can cause conflict as that person may not be so available for family get-togethers or to help out in ways that they used to.

So, the list is endless, but ultimately it comes down to trying to understand what’s happening and then navigating through it.

So, work out if an issue is really worth fighting over and then, if you feel that it is, keep in mind that the idea is to resolve the conflict, not necessarily win the argument.

Then (and this can be a hard one!), remember that other people aren’t obliged to agree with you about everything. They’re allowed their own opinions so try to respect what they’re saying and stick to the topic, not bring in other things from the past that are no longer relevant.

After that, try to find some common ground and work on that rather than the differences but ultimately recognise that you might have to agree to disagree.

If you can find some peace within your family and find some resolutions to any conflict that’s occurred, that’s priceless really – a happy family life is to be treasured, especially when things are particularly hard going.

You can see my blogs as soon as they are published (usually on Wednesdays) by pressing the ‘follow’ button and you can share them with your friends. You can also find me on LinkedIn, Instagram (samebutdifferent) and read my FB posts at Same But Different.                          #loss #depression #mentalhealth #anger #melancholy