Four pernicious phases that can kill a relationship. By identifying them, we can immediately intervene and eliminate problems before they balloon into destructive patterns that threaten the relationship itself.
Stage One, Resistance: The rst phase of challenges in a relationship is when you begin to feelresistance. Virtually anyone who’s ever been in a relationship has had times when
they felt resistance toward something their partner said or did. Resistance occurs when you takeexception or feel annoyed or a bit separate from this person. Maybe at a party they tell a joke thatbothers you and you wish they hadn’t. The challenge, of course, is that most people don’t communicatewhen they’re feeling a sense of resistance, and as a result, this emotion continues to grow until itbecomes . . .
Stage Two, Resentment: If resistance is not handled, it grows into resentment. Now you’re not just annoyed; you’re angry with your partner. you begin to separate yourself from them and erect an emotional barrier. Resentment destroys the emotion of intimacy, and this is a destructive pattern within a relationship that, if unchecked, will only gain speed. If it is not transformed or communicated, it turns into...
Stage Three, Rejection: This is the point when you have so much resentment built up that you yourself looking for ways to make your partner wrong, to verbally or nonverbally attack them. In this phase, you begin to see everything they do as irritating or annoying. It’s here that not only emotional separation occurs, but also physical separation as well. If rejection is allowed to continue, to lessen our pain, we move to ...
Stage Four, Repression: When you are tired of coping with the anger that comes with the rejection phase, you try to reduce your pain by creating emotional numbness. you avoid feeling any pain, but you also avoid passion and excitement. This is the most dangerous phase of a relationship because this is the point at which lovers become roommates—no one else knows the couple has any problems because they never fight, but there’s no relationship left.
What’s the key to preventing these “Four R’s”? The answer is simple: communicate clearly up front.Make sure your rules are known and can be met. To avoid blowing things out of proportion, use Transformational Vocabulary. Talk in terms of preferences: instead of saying, “I can’t stand it when you do that!,” say, “I’d prefer it if you did this instead.” develop pattern interrupts to prevent the type of argument where you can’t even remember what it’s about anymore, only that you’ve got to win.
4. Make your relationships one of the highest priorities in your life; otherwise they will take a back seatto any or all of the other things that are more urgent that happen during your day. gradually, the level of emotional intensity and passion will drift away. We don’t want to lose the power of our relationships simply because we got caught up in the law of familiarity, or we let neglect habituate us to the intense excitement and passion we have for a person.
5. Focus each day on making it better, rather than focusing on what might happen if it ended. We must remember that whatever we focus on we’ll experience. If we constantly focus on our fear of a relationship being over, we’ll begin to do things unconsciously to sabotage it so that we can extract ourselves before we get too entwined and true pain results. a corollary to this principle is that if you want your relationship to last, never, never, never, ever, ever threaten the relationship itself. In other words, don’t ever say, “If you do that, then I’m leaving.” just making this statement alone creates the possibility. It also induces a destabilizing fear in both partners.
every couple that I’ve ever interviewed with a lasting relationship has made it their rule, no matter how angry or hurt they felt, never to question whether or not the relationship would last and never to threaten to leave it. Just remember the racing school metaphor of the skid car and the wall. you want to focus on where you want to go in a relationship, not on what you fear.
6. Each day, reassociate to what you love about this person you’re in a relationship with. Reinforce your feelings of connection and renew your feelings of intimacy and attraction by consistently asking the question, “How did I get so lucky to have you in my life?” Become fully associated to the privilege of sharing your life with this person; feel the pleasure intensely, and continuously anchor it into your nervous system. engage in a never-ending quest to new ways to surprise each other. If you don’t, habituation will set in, and you will take each other for granted. so and create those special moments that can make your relationship a role model—one that’s legendary!
