View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1e8PonLinm8 Communication Techniques: How To Save Your Marriage
How To Overcome The Power Struggle Stage In Your Relationship f you’re anything like me, when you fell in love, your relationship felt like a series of magical moments… …each one punctuated by your heart pounding and anervous excitement that set your spirit soaring and your stomach doing flip-flops just at the thought of seeing him or her? You felt alive and wanted to share every waking moment with your lover, right? Remember those moments of being joined at the hip? And then, a terrible thing happens to two people in love. The primal panic of the Power Struggle stage Somewhere between 2 months and 2 years into your relationship, the intoxicating feelings ofbeing in love begin to fade… …and are slowly replace with a primal panic inside as it dawns on us that we feel trapped orabandoned by the very person we thought would make us happy and look after our heart. This is the beginning of a relationship stage that all relationships face, called the Power Struggle stage. At this point, if you don’t run for the hills and try find a new relationship, you attempt to get your needs met by trying to change your partner to be more like you want them to be (like you) and more like when you first met. Or, you’ll try to punish them for not being who you thought they were. Of course, they do the same to you and before you know it, you begin to feel like you can’t be yourself around your partner anymore. You both walk on eggshells around each other, feeling scared, misunderstood and not knowing what to do to change it. After a while of this power struggle, even the smallest disagreements get blown out of proportion leaving you feeling alone, abandoned and totally disconnected from the one person you love most. Once you feel disconnected, you most likely become needy and demanding, desperately trying to reconnect with your lover… …or you become withdrawn and distant, shutting down to protect yourself and taking time alone to process how you’re feeling. Whatever the case, your relationship no longer feels safe. Does this sound kinda familiar? Am I close? Maybe you’re wondering if I’m psychic! Everything’s OK If you can relate to any of what I’ve just described, you’re normal. I’ll say that again: You are normal and it’s OK that you’re fighting. What I’ve described above is the inevitable journey from the Romance Stage of relationship to thePower Struggle stage of relationship. It’s not your fault – it’s designed by nature this way. To some degree you lost yourself in your relationship while falling in love and have become dependent on your partner. This is not actually a “bad” thing and is a necessary part of the bonding process that happens when we fall in love. However, it is not a sustainable way to live, so nature forces you to energetically separate and establish a new, more healthy shared power between you. If you succeed, you graduate with flying colors to the next stage of relationship – mature love. If you don’t, you break up. The Paradox of LOVE Paradoxically, it takes falling out of love to spark the next stage of your growth, both individually and as a couple. If you’re both willing to grow, you can get beyond the tug of war and learn how to share power between you in a fluid, productive way. Only then can you move beyond the Power Struggle stage of relationship into a deeper, more mature love that can be even more passionate, exciting and connected that what you’ve experienced in the Romance Stage. How to overcome the Power Struggle Stage and move into Mature Love The first step on any healing journey is acknowledging that you’ve got a problem and clearly defining what that problem is. The surface problem is that you’re no longer able to sustain a stable intimate connection between you and your loved one and that nothing you try is making it better. The deeper problem both of you face is that you are triggering each other’s deepest attachments fears – most likely the fear of being rejected or abandoned, or the fear of being trapped, controlled or smothered. Are you willing to acknowledge that you have a problem you don’t know how to solve? If you are, then you’ve taken the first step towards healing your relationship. The next steps in your journey will involve learning: Counter-intuitive communication skills that we weren’t taught at school, so that you can share your heart openly without rubbing each other’s emotional raw spots How to safely connect with each other in a way that makes you feel close How to end recurring conflict, so that you’re not repeating the same old destructive relationship patterns over and over How to heal and forgive past wounds so that trust is restored between you How to understand and appreciate each other’s differences so that both of you can be yourselves with each other and live an authentic life together, without needing to change to please your partner or keep the peace LoveAtFirstFight.com is designed for one purpose only: To help you take these next steps and overcome the Power Struggle stage of your relationship, so you get on with your lives together and be happy. If what you’ve read above resonates with you, and you’re ready to take these next steps to healing your relationship and getting past the Power Struggle stage, check out our online relationship skills training program, designed to end your power struggle. If you have any questions about the Power Struggle stage, please ask them below and I’ll do my best to answer them. How To Overcome The Power Struggle Stage In Your Relationship by Bruce Muzik http://www.loveatfirstfight.com/relationship-advice/conflict/overcome-power-struggle-stage/
WHY DO WE NEED A POWER STRUGGLE PHASE IN OUR RELATIONSHIP? By Lynne Foote Some people say that a relationship doesn't begin until after the falling-in-love bubble bursts. I disagree. While not all viable and healthy relationships begin by falling in love (think arranged marriages or long term friendships that suddenly bloom), I feel strongly that an important bonding happens when two people fall in love. This bond, which shows us the vast potential for connection that is possible, and which fulfills a deep Soul need in us, can carry a couple through the troubled waters of the inevitable next stage, the Power Struggle. What, essentially, is this state of falling in love? It is a time when our ego boundaries expand and we move beyond our limited sense of self to taste the Divine. We are at One with our partner and open to Life's Mysteries. Pleasure is heightened. The heart is open and receptive. We are curious, engaged, and alive in the moment. Our boundaries have also opened and what we "love" about our partner is now felt as part of our own makeup. Words like bliss, ecstasy,wholeness, and ultimate happiness capture the essence of this condition. While it lasts, we are at peace with all that is arising in the moment and we don't need anything to be other than it is. But this state, this Heaven Realm, can't last. We need to also live in this human world with all of its limitations, disappointments and difficulties. We need to balance the expansiveness of our Bliss with the grounding of the Earth Realm. This often comes in a shocking way as the Power Struggle Stage. This stage begins when our partner begins to disappoint us, when he/she begins to not be who I thought they were and needed them to be. Slowly, and not so subtly, the human frailties, the neurotic tendencies, and the very qualities that we fell in love with become annoyances. The bubble of our union has popped and we are face to face with a person who has needs, is not perfect, and threatens our sense of security and happiness. For the longest time, I struggled to understand why we needed this power struggle stage which can be so painful, so deeply challenging. One day the answer became clear … it is only through the friction of this power struggle dynamic that we can LEARN to love and accept the other person for who they truly are. It is not going to happen when we are dwelling in the flow of our symbiotic union, rather it comes from the repeated baptisms-by-fire that arise naturally when two people are trying to co-create a life together with their different temperaments, life experiences, values, and family of origin rules of relationship. It is here that we grow. We learn, through the raw conflicts of daily life, the loose toothpaste cap, the dishes left on the counter, the bad breath, to stay. In staying, we repeatedly confront our fears, those conditions that make us want to run from our beloved, and perhaps more importantly, from ourselves. This is relationship as a Sacred Path, our opportunity through the love in our hearts, to wake up. But sometime we choose to leave, to run away with the next promise of Paradise. We find ourselves in the addictive pattern of chasing an Ideal Dream. In this state, we have lost our freedom and are hostage to our longing, our passion, our changing fancies. Our culture, which teaches us to throw things away and to move on, externally reinforces our unquenchable longing. We have only to stand in a grocery store line to see over and over again the dramas of this infidelity. Sometimes we stay, but the price we pay is we deaden our aliveness and we cross paths with our partner only in that small corner of connection that does not stir up differences. We live superficially, behind armor that protects our hearts and vulnerability. We may be comfortable but this is only a half-life. David Whyte closes his poignant poem "Sweet Darkness" by saying: You must learn one thing. The world was made to be free in. Give up all the other worlds except the one to which you belong. Sometime it takes darkness and the sweet confinement of your aloneness to learn anything or anyone that does not bring you alive is too small for you. Some essential questions arise here: Is my beloved truly too small for me? Perhaps. Or does he/she feel too small because my heart is shut down? What responsibility do I have in the discord and unhappiness of my relationship? How am I encrusted in a point of view that sees my partner, not as my ally, but as the enemy? What am I doing every day that shuts the door of my heart and pushes my beloved out? Carl Jung says that love and the will to power are mutually exclusive. Where there is power and control, love is absent. One of the most difficult tasks of our lifetime is finding our way through our fears, our need to control, our tendency to find fault and to blame, the narcissism of our own needs, to come to a place of innocence and surrender where abiding Love can arise. Intimacy, as the poet Rilke noted, "Calls us to vast things." It is in this Power Struggle Phase that we forge a strong, enduring connection with our partner. We come face to face with our tendency to fight, flee, or submit. It is through these commonplace struggles that we can mature beyond our instinctive reaction and come to a conscious loving. It is in learning to stay, when we open to a dimension greater than the limits of our small egoic self, and when we foster a love and compassion for both our partner and our Self, that we are transformed and our relationship becomes sacred. Your feedback and ideas are welcome. Contact Lynne Foote Phone: 303-447-2987 Email: Lynne@LynneFoote.com http://www.lynnefoote.com/art-power-struggle-phase.php
The 5 Stages Of Relationship: Which Relationship Stage Is Yours At? Why do some relationships break up and others last a lifetime? One reason is that relationships go through 5 predictablerelationship stages, each building on the last. By understanding the 5 stages of relationship, you can be better prepared to navigate through each stage successfully and not get “stuck” in any of them. Here are the 5 stages of relationship (as identified by Dr. Susan Campbell during a study of hundreds of couples): The Romance Stage The Power Struggle Stage The Stability Stage The Commitment Stage The Co-Creation or Bliss Stage I’ll spend more time on the first 2 stages, because those are the relationship stages that most couples never get past. 1. The Romance Stage (drug addiction phase) Nature designed the Romance Stage to have us fall in love. In fact, nature forces us to fall in love, but not with just anyone… Nature’s bias is towards survival of the species. Adaptation and growth are nature’s way of ensuring survival. The real reason you fell in love… So how does nature ensure that we adapt and grow? Nature makes sure we fall in love with the most incompatible person in the entire universe… …the person least capable of meeting our needs and most capable of making our worst nightmares come true. Yet they are the PERFECT person to push our every button and force us out of our comfort zone to ADAPT and GROW. But of course, when we fall in love, we don’t see our partner’s flaws. If we knew about them, we’d run like hell in the opposite direction… Which is exactly why nature has to DRUG us! The Chemistry Of The Love When you fall in love, your brain releases a cocktail of chemicals(including Oxytocin, Phenylethylamine and Dopamine) designed to set your heart thumping and of course, light a fire in your loins. In fact, the only difference between being in love and being (an addict) high on drugs is that being in love is legal. Just like getting high, falling in love allows you to see the world through beautiful rose colored glasses – only seeing what makes you feel good and ignoring what makes you feel bad. Your drug induced haze forces you to only see where you are similar to your lover, hiding you partner’s flaws and making you say and do anything to get along and please each other. Until the high wears off. That can take anywhere from 2 months to 2 years. At this point, your brain stops producing chemicals of love and you wake up one morning with what I call a “Love Hangover”, laying next to the most incompatible person in the world. The Romance stage has ended and the Power Struggle stage begins (cue JAWS music here). TIP: Hollywood has glamorized the Romance Stage, making it out as the pinnacle of romantic achievement. As a result, when our relationship hits the Power Struggle stage, we panic and incorrectly assume that because our relationship doesn’t look all starry-eyed like in the movies, it must be flawed. Couples who hit the Power Struggle stage often break up and look for more compatible mates, only to discover that the same thing happens in their next relationship all over again… and again… and again. 2. The Power Struggle Stage (the love hangover) The highest percentage of first marriage divorces happen here – around the 3 to 4 year mark. This is such a painful time for most couples as the illusion that ‘romantic love will last forever’ falls away and is replaced with feelings of disappointment and anger. Instead of seeing your similarities (like you did in the Romance stage), you begin focusing on your differences and your partner’s flaws. So, you get to work trying to change your partner back into the person you thought they were, or punish them for not being that way, or both. Often one partner pulls away and withdraws, needing space… and the other partner needily chases them feeling emotionally deserted. If you can relate to any of this in your own relationship, then your relationship is likely stuck in the Power Struggle Stage. The goal of this stage of relationship is to establish your autonomy inside your relationship, without destroying the love connection between you. This stage can last anywhere from a few months to years and years, depending on the support and guidance you have and your willingness to grow. INTERESTING FACT: Without the skills to navigate the Power Struggle stage and resolve your differences, you’ll keep returning to this painful stage over and over again throughout your relationship. There are 2 ways most couples deal with the Power Struggle stage. THEY BREAK UP: They take the nearest exit and break up. Very often these people are serial daters, never fully committing, always looking for love, but finding disappointment instead. THEY SURVIVE: They continue along their journey together, surviving through the pain and frustration of a relationship that is stuck in the past and no longer growing. People who have chosen this option typically think that good relationships involve sacrifice and compromise. Their relationship eventually emotionally flatlines, along with their sex life. Overcoming The Power Struggle Stage The other alternative is that you overcome the Power Struggle, either on your own, or with professional guidance. You graduate from the Power Struggle stage when you: accept and appreciate each other’s differences learn to share power, and realize that using force will never get you what you want in love realize who you are and what you have (as a couple) give up your fantasies of harmony without struggle surrender to life just the way it is As simple as that sounds, actually getting through the power struggle stage is not an easy ride for most couples. It’s all too easy for one person to quit half way along the journey and end the relationship, because it just too much hard work. In reality, when one partner quits the relationship midway through the Power Struggle, they’re usually unwilling to face aspects of themselves that feel too scary to face confront. I believe it’s so important to get someone who knows the lay of the land to guide you through the Power Struggle. The only reason my partner and I are together today is because we sought professional help. If you’d like me to hold your hand and help you navigate through the rough seas of your power struggle, let’s chat about how relationship coaching can help you. Alternatively, if you’d rather learn from the comfort and privacy of your own home, the Love At First Fight online training program is designed to help you get past the Power Struggle. So what can you look forward to beyond the Power Struggle? 3. The Stability Stage Once you’ve learned how to fight in a way that both of you win, you move to the Stability stage. The thrill of being in love returns and if you’ve completed the Power Struggle stage, it returns in an even deeper, more mature form than in the Romance stage. In this stage, it finally becomes very clear that you’re never ever going to succeed in changing your partner and you’ve given up the desire to. You’re OK with your partner being different from you. You both have clear boundaries and you need to learn mutual respect. If you don’t, you go back to the Power Struggle. TIP: You can get stuck in this stage if you get too attached the peace and stability that comes with it. Remember that all growth requires change and getting outside your comfort zone. 4. The Commitment Stage In the commitment stage, you fully surrender to the reality that you and your partner are human and that your relationship has shortcomings as a result. You have learned to love each other having to like each other and youchoose each other consciously. You can honestly say to your partner, “I don’t need you. I choose you knowing all I know about you, good and bad.” You begin to experience a beautiful of balance of love, belonging, fun, power and freedom. The trap in this stage is thinking that all your work is done. While this may be somewhat true on an individual level, your work in the world a couple is just beginning. TIP: This is the only stage where you’re actually ready to be married. However, being married does not mean that you’re in the Commitment stage. Most people get married in the Romance stage when they are high on drugs, and before they have learned to navigate conflict. Pretty crazy, huh? 5. The Bliss / Co-Creation Stage In this stage you become two people who have chosen to be a team moving out into the world. You move beyond the relationship and your relationship becomes a gift to the world. Often, couple in this stage work on a project together – some kind of shared creative work that is intended to contribute to the world in some way e.g. a business, a charity or a family. TIP: If you’ve been together many years and are in the Bliss stage, be careful not to invest so much energy into the outside world that you forget to nurture your relationship. These stages are not a linear process; they are more like spiral, circling upwards. You retain the lessons you learned at each stage and bring them forward as you grow – you are in one stage or another at any given time with bits of the others thrown in for good measure. You’ll keep coming back to the Power Struggle stage until you learn to love each other’s differences and fight in a way that deepens your intimacy and connection instead of eroding it. If you’ve ever wondered why you and your partner keep arguing over the same things over and over, it’s probably because you’ve not completed your Power Struggle stage yet. If you’d like some one-on-one support with completing your Power Struggle stage, get in touch with me to find out more about how my programs can help you fix your troubled relationship or marriage. Lastly, please leave me a comment below and let me know which of the 5 relationship stages your relationship is in… and if you’re not on my mailing list yet, enter your email below and I’ll send you a free video training on how to stop fighting and start being happy. http://www.loveatfirstfight.com/relationship-advice/relationship-stages/
The Stages of Committed Relationships When attempting to create a loving, healthy intimate relationship, it is important to have an accurate roadmap for the journey. Most of our culture's roadmaps have emphasized fantasy, illusion and denial, and those who follow those maps will tend to have unhappy, conflict-ridden relationships. What follows is a reality-based roadmap which comes from research into couples' actual experiences of being in long-term relationships. While theorists disagree on the exact name and number of the stages couples progress through, there is a general consensus that couples go through some version of the following stages. Not everyone goes through all the stages and some couples may go through them in a different sequence, but for most couples this is the normative experience in a long-term committed relationship. 1. ROMANTIC LOVE This is the love that Hollywood loves to promote as the only kind of love. Romantic love is wonderful, easy, and effortless. It is very spontaneous and alive. The feelings and perceptions that go through both people are that we are one; we are the same. You are perfect. I can give and receive love with little or no effort required. There is a tremendous emphasis on maximizing similarities and minimizing differences. There is a belief and expectation that you will provide most or all of my wants, needs, desires. There is generally a high degree of passion and feelings and expressions of romance come easily and often. The partners think about each other constantly, and make much eye contact and are very affectionate when they are together. Many people experience this as living in a state of near-constant bliss and infatuation. There is a belief that these feelings and experiences will go on forever, that 'we will never disagree on anything', and that somehow fate or forces larger than themselves have brought them together. This stage generally lasts from six months to two years, and is the SHORTEST stage of any of the stages of long-term committed relationships. 2. ADJUSTING TO REALITY Ah, reality. Inevitably, predictably, eventually, reality rears its (ugly?) head and the bubble bursts on the Romantic stage. Sometimes it is a slow leak, other times a sudden and complete blowout. But either way, something happens which causes a minor or major conflict in the new relationship. Sometimes the trigger is living together and having to share household chores and experiencing personal habits up close. Sometimes it is an act of deception which is discovered. Sometimes it is planning a wedding, buying a house, or sharing finances. Whatever the cause, after the conflict occurs, it becomes impossible to continue the fantasy that this person and this relationship are immune from struggle, from effort, from reality. Differences which were previously obscured suddenly become visible. Conflicts, anxieties, disappointment and hurt replace the effortless flow of the Romantic stage. There is a sense that this person is not living up your hopes and dreams, and there is an accompanying loss of closeness. Gradually each person is forced to relinquish some of their most cherished romantic fantasies, or to cling to them desperately in a state of denial. In this stage, it is common to feel as if someone or something or even Life itself has cheated you or robbed you of something precious, almost like a stage of grieving the loss of something innocent and wonderful. There is a desire to be close again but confusion as how to create that. It is the first time that fears of intimacy begin to arise. Suddenly the couple must learn how to deal with very real differences, how to deal with conflict, and how to integrate being an independent person as well as someone in an intimate relationship. In short, Adjusting to Reality is the stage where the Real Relationship begins. 3. THE POWER STRUGGLE As the disillusionment of the Adjusting to Reality stage deepens, the couple tends to have more disagreements. Minor issues blow up into larger arguments. Yelling appears for the first time, if it ever will. Both partners dig in their heels and defend their positions on issues fiercely. Each person digs in their heels and protects their turf. This once-tender effortless loving relationship has become a battleground and evolved into a daily Power Struggle. This is a typical stage in the development of a long-term committed relationship. For the first time in the relationship, there are occasional or frequent thoughts of leaving the relationship. This person who only recently appeared to be the embodiment of pure love and joy in your eyes suddenly seems self-centered and not to be trusted. Doubts arise as to whether the other person really loves you. There are consistent feelings of ambivalence and anger. Blaming and accusing becomes the most common form of interaction. Each partner is afraid of giving in, and wants the other to change. This is where deep resentments begin to form, which if left unchecked, become the cancer that eventually eats away at all the love and tenderness that has come before. Sarcasm and hostility enter into daily conversations. This does not have to be the end of the relationship. The tasks for the couple here are to develop problem-solving, conflict resolution and negotiating skills. The conflicts will clearly not go away on their own. Each person much learn to listen respectfully to their partner's position, even if they don't agree with it. They must learn to support their partner's own growth, even if they feel it compromises their own. They may see the origins of the patterns of their conflicts (and their dysfunctional ways of resolving them) in their family of origin. 4. RE-EVALUATION The Power Struggle is physically and emotionally draining, and if the couple can survive, they move into the next stage, of a conscious Re-Evaluation of the relationship. Whereas the original commitment one makes is typically based on projections of fantasy, this Re-Evaluation takes into account the reality and fears and defenses of each person. Do I really want to stay with this person? You know who this person is now, you know their limitations, and you know the range of which they are capable of improving or getting better. Knowing all that, do you still want to stay? That is the question that gets answered during this stage. Both people tend to turn outward to resolve their issues, instead of toward each other. As a result, fears of abandonment come up strongly here. Can I make by myself? Am I really okay the way I am? Will anyone else find me attractive or appealing? Both people emotionally (and sometimes physically) disengage and withdraw during this stage, which makes it the stage in which separation, divorce and/or an affair are most likely to occur. Feelings of resentment are less intense in this stage, as the affect in the relationship is likely to be very flat and empty. The sexual relationship sporadic at best and more likely non-existent. Things are ripe for an affair to burst on the scene, and often a person in this stage will begin to confide in someone of the opposite sex. This confidante will take on more and more importance in the person's life, due to their neediness and vulnerability, and they will often get emotionally very involved without consciously realizing it. At this point even the slightest affection is like throwing a match in the forest on a hot summer day, and a passionate, intense affair will begin. The danger is that when an affair begins at this stage, it is almost impossible for the relationship to recover. The primary relationship has too little going for it in the way of gratification on either side, and the inevitable comparisons between the affair and the relationship seem like night and day. A separation can be useful here to help each person gain perspective, due that too can lead to the demise of the relationship if outside gratifications seem to dwarf the emptiness of the relationship. The task for each person here is to stay present and honor their commitment, develop individually and be able to see their partner as a separate person. This is the only way the relationship can survive and move into the next stage. 5. RECONCILIATION In this stage, after the distance of the Re-evaluation, if the relationship has survived, there is a re-awakening of interest in getting closer and connecting again. Knowing all that they know, coming from reality and not fantasy, there is a decision to have the willingness to try once again. There is an open acceptance of the conflicts and differences in the relationship, but they are approached with a different attitude: they are used as opportunities for learning about oneself and the other person. They are catalysts for growth and change. There is a recognition that the differences are real and won't go away, and that neither person can really change the other. Thus begins a process of struggling to create an honest, genuine intimate relationship. The people connect again and the relationship again begins to produce ongoing satisfaction for both partners. In this stage there is also a deeper sense of taking responsibility for one's part in conflict and in lack of satisfaction. Each person may recognize the link between what they learned as children in their families of origin and how they approach intimate relationships. They own their distortions and projections onto their partners. They begin to see their partner as they see themselves, as a somewhat flawed yet decent person who is making a sincere effort to love and be close and still take care of their own needs. There is a deeper acceptance in this stage that any relationship cannot and will not save you in any sense. You still have your own individual needs and issues and they does not go away just because you are in a relationship. But the part of your life that can be nurtured and shared in a loving, accepting relationship is also real and in this stage each person looks to the other for that connection. The war is over, the conflicts are accepted, and there is a sincere desire to learn how to work through the issues to a satisfying resolution. 6. ACCEPTANCE The final stage in a committed relationship, which researchers estimate less than 5% of couples ever reach, is one of complete Acceptance. There is an integration of the need of the self and the needs of the relationship. Each person takes responsibility for their own needs, for their own individual lives, and also for providing support for their partner. A high level of warmth is present. The couple is able to maintain a balance between autonomy and union. Conflicts still arise on occasion, but as a result of the struggles of the previous stage, the couple has figured out how to resolve most conflicts relatively quickly. Resentments are few. There are few surprises: these are people who know one another and know what to expect. They accept what they are getting, with no denial or fantasy involved. They work together as a team to stay connected and also maintain their own identities. These are the six stages that most couples go through during a long-term committed relationship. While not every couple goes through every stage or in that exact sequence, nonetheless this roadmap, based on the research on actual couples' experiences of intimate relationship, still provides the best roadmap we have available for charting the most likely path of an long-term committed relationship. And if we have a roadmap, we can chart the healthiest and least disruptive path to the goal of a fulfilling, intimate relationship. http://relationship-institute.com/freearticles_detail.cfm@article_ID=153.html
