Tag Archives: Relationships

Have You Had A Recent Breakup?

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If you’ve broken up with your partner during the last month or two, you may be feeling miserable about Valentine’s Day on Friday.

Your relationship might have been heading in this direction anyway but the Christmas and New Year period might have made it clear to one or both of you that things weren’t working out. If you’d had problems with money or housing, these would have put another strain on your relationship and most of us deal with stress and a crisis in different ways. In the first days of falling in love, money might not have seemed important but things may have become a lot more strained if one or both of you were made redundant or were furloughed more recently. Housing, illness or aged parents might also have made things more difficult.

So, it’s important to work out how you actually feel about what’s happened and at first that may be anger and grief – if that’s the case, you need time to process the whole situation. You might feel denial at first as in ‘this isn’t really happening’ and ‘I’m not going to let this happen’ but if your partner is adamant that they want to separate, eventually you’ll need to adjust to the situation and start to accept it.

Talking to a friend whom you can trust is often a good idea as well as keeping a journal to write down all your feelings about what’s happened. Counselling could also help and although you might prefer face-to-face sessions this could be online or via video call if easier or more practical.

If possible, talk to your ex about whether you’ll have a ‘clean break’ or whether you’d like to check in with one another now and again. It may be that you’ll have to talk anyway, because if you have children together, communication is vital and in the same way, if you’re dividing up property you’ll need to speak sometimes. Try to keep it calm and to the point as there’s nothing to be gained by shouting at one another and you probably won’t feel that good afterwards.

Thinking about children, keeping to some sort of routine is important but if you can keep things amiable with your ex, that will help even more. It probably won’t be easy, but having the intention to do this is a start. If you can agree between the two of you what you’ll do if things get heated, it can help as you’ll know that there’s a way of stopping things getting out of control. For instance, you could have a code word if one of you thinks that a situation is getting too heated and then you can restart the conversation later. Deep breathing during these times can help a lot!

It’s difficult to hide from your feelings and although all the emotions are painful and uncomfortable, the pain can be a catalyst for something better as it makes you look at what you want in your life in the future and what you might want from a new relationship (even if that seems an impossible idea right now!).

If you can’t afford the time and money to go to a gym, try exercising at home and use meditation as a way to get through what is undoubtedly a very difficult time. There are lots of apps like Headspace to help you meditate and reflect on what’s happened and how you’re feeling about it.

As life begins to return to some sort of normality, you will hopefully find that you’ve come to a deeper understanding of yourself and how you will go forward in the future.

Hopefully you’ve found this blog helpful and interesting – if so, I’d love it if you bought me a coffee ☕ (see tab at top of page). Thank you so much.

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 every week at Same But Different #samebutdifferent #relationships # issues #bloggerforever #lovewriting #livingchange #makeitcount #canidothis #canyoudothis #ukblogger #femaleblogger #irishblogger

Trying To Deal With Difficult People?

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Make no mistake, interacting with difficult people can take its toll on most of us and if any of your family members, friends or colleagues have what I’ll call high-conflict personalities you’ll know exactly what I mean!

There are lots of reasons why some people have these sort of personalities – some are deep-seated personality characteristics, maybe from trauma in their earlier lives, but there can be many other reasons and also an element of people recognising early on that being in a mood, flying into a temper or sulking gets them what they want.

As with so many issues, there are three different ways of dealing with this – either you carry on putting up with unreasonable behaviour (along the lines of “if you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always got”), leave the situation which isn’t always easy, particularly if family is involved, or the option I prefer – dealing with the situation in a different way. Or, in a nutshell – same, leave, change.

If you’ve decided to carry on carrying on, fair enough and, let’s face it, a lot of us feel we have limited choices regarding leaving whether it’s in your workplace where you’re dealing with a difficult colleague or manager or in your family where you don’t want to ‘leave’ as it’s too drastic and you don’t want to lose contact with people you love.

So, first of all you have to work out what changes you want to make and then assess how emotionally mature the person you find difficult is – do they have the necessary characteristics to take responsibility for their actions? Are they emotionally mature? You have to take this into account before attempting any changes which will have to come from you – other people don’t necessarily want to change, but think about it like a game of dominoes where one domino has a slight push and it will activate a chain reaction and cause a shift in other peoples’ related behaviours.

So, how to make changes that will ultimately make a difference – by ‘ultimately’ I’m saying that this won’t happen overnight. Most people are resistant to change and will say things like “What’s wrong with you? You’ve always been okay with this before”.

The first thing is to put down boundaries – if someone’s taking advantage of you and have done so for a long time, they’ll almost certainly be surprised and annoyed if you choose not to do something that you’ve previously gone along with. You could start with putting a time limit on phone calls, not responding to text messages immediately and not replying to e.mails that add a lot of emotional pressure.

Stay calm if the other person starts to get agitated – they will want to tell their story so, if there’s time, let them do that (and trust me, their story will be more important than yours! I speak from personal experience….) and then respond with brief responses if they become hostile. Try not to be emotionally threatening – it won’t help; instead, try to show them some empathy where you can.

However, it’s important not to agree or volunteer for anything in order to fix it. That’s not your job. If you have to distance yourself slightly, do so.

After that, if your sister-in-law asks you to look after her children for the umpteenth time, and for whatever reason, you’re finding it too much, think of a way that you can gently tell her that you can’t do it. (Maybe along the lines of “I’d like to be able to help, but I’m already doing something that day”). If she’s frosty or angry with you, so be it. You have to think about your own health and wellbeing as well as hers.

If the person you’re in conflict with is someone at work and you discover that they’ve given others misinformation or they’re angry when they speak to you, try to provide a firm but balanced, informative response using whatever method of communication that they used, whether this was verbal or by e.mail. Provide accurate up-to-date information and try to remain at arms’ length. Again, as with family members or friends, limit the time spent in discussions.

Although mindfulness and staying in the ‘here and now’ is hugely helpful, at times of conflict it’s also useful to focus on the future and how much better that might look if you can make small changes.

There will be some loss involved because there always is with change. Be prepared for that and let yourself grieve for the relationship(s) that you’d hoped to have.

None of this will be easy, but in some ways it’s an insurance for your future – a time when you don’t succumb to things you don’t want or like and where you can make boundaries and re-discover your own self-worth.

Hopefully you’ve found this blog helpful and interesting – if so, I’d love it if you bought me a coffee ☕ (see tab at top of page). Thank you so much.

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 every week at Same But Different #samebutdifferent #relationships # issues #bloggerforever #lovewriting #livingchange #makeitcount #canidothis #canyoudothis #ukblogger #femaleblogger #irishblogger

Can You Really ‘Future-Proof’ Your Relationship?

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Wouldn’t it be great if you could really do that? No worries about the future, no “will they always be faithful?”, just blissful in the knowledge that nothing could ever go wrong. But of course, there are no guarantees in any relationship, however long you’ve been together; that probably doesn’t sound very promising, but things happen, sometimes we have to face challenges we’d never even thought about and the future that looked certain can suddenly seem anything but.

Still, there are ways that we can help things along the road to ‘happy ever after’ and you might already be doing some of them:

  • The first, and almost essential one, is to be honest with yourself and work out what you want to discuss with your partner, what are your own goals and ambitions not only for yourself but for both of you as a couple? Really, it’s about communication and not burying your head in the sand if they’re doing something that really stresses you. I’m not talking leaving the top of the toothpaste either – more along the lines of how you’re equal partners, wanting the same things and working together on whatever those goals are.
  • That brings me onto the next part which is understanding how they communicate – everyone has different ways of saying how they feel and also, how they resolve arguments. Some of that is (I think) partly due to our upbringing, how we saw our parents resolve difficulties – if your father flew off the handle and your mother reacted by crying (or vice-versa), but you weren’t around when they seemed to ‘make up’ you’ll not have a great understanding of how that happened. Or maybe one of them sulked for days and then, eventually, things resolved. Whatever you learned from that, it’s good to find your own way with your partner and accept that people don’t always say sorry but show it in other ways, by cooking a nice dinner or taking out the bins when it’s not usually on their ‘to do’ list. Only you know what works best for both of you as a couple and figuring out how you’d like to resolve friction is a good way forward.
  • Make time to check in on one another – things can get very hectic with work, family, sport and friends. So many commitments, but checking in with your partner about how they’re feeling, is a good way of making sure that you’re both happy with the way things are. It’s also a good opportunity to let your partner know what you’re happy about, the things that you enjoy and your all-round appreciation of what you have.
  • Finally, as we become closer in our relationship, it’s easy to believe that your partner has the same feelings and thoughts as you do but don’t make assumptions. People change and understanding differences whilst respecting their opinions go a long way to making sure that things stay good.

So, there’s no absolute guarantee that you can future-proof your relationship, but hopefully you’ll find that the above go a long way to helping your partnership become, and stay, long-term.

Hopefully you’ve found this blog helpful and interesting – if so, I’d love it if you bought me a coffee ☕ (see tab at top of page). Thank you so much.

Anyway, let me know your thoughts on it. 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 every week at Same But Different #samebutdifferent #relationships # issues #bloggerforever #lovewriting #livingchange #makeitcount #canidothis #canyoudothis #ukblogger #femaleblogger #irishblogger