Low self-esteem and your relationship

People with low self-esteem need to have “perfect” relationships and compete for control in order to make their relationship be the way they think it should be. This results in healthy relationships deteriorating

http://www.heartspiritmind.com/relationships/low-self-esteem-and-your-relationship

How Your Self-Esteem Impacts Relationships

Suzanne Phillips, PsyD

Yup that's a factor too...

http://www.pbs.org/thisemotionallife/blogs/how-your-self-esteem-impacts-relationships

The Secret of Success

Why moving on, or moving up, or moving out isn’t always the answer

Published on October 24, 2014 by Galen Guengerich, Ph.D. in The Search for Meaning

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-search-meaning/201410/the-secret-success

Choose to Love

Love is more about us being loving than about other people being lovable.

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/your-wise-brain/201410/choose-love

Do This to Feel Emotionally Safer in Your Relationship

The valuable role you play in creating emotional safety with the one you love

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/liking-the-child-you-love/201410/do-feel-emotionally-safer-in-your-relationship

Taking Your Lover for Granted

Yes, exactly.

I hope to someday be taken for granted and to feel safe taking someone for granted, to be free from the usual neurosis.



http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/in-the-name-love/201410/taking-your-lover-granted

Happier Couples Do This and You Can Too!

Happier Couples

Tuning yourself in to what really brings true relationship happiness
Published on October 10, 2014 by Jeffrey Bernstein, Ph.D. in Liking the Child You Love

4 Myths About Marriage You Probably Believe

The science of intimate connections

Published on July 9, 2014 by Peg Streep in Tech Support

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/tech-support/201407/4-myths-about-marriage-you-probably-believe

When Less Is More

Sometimes it's what you don't say that really makes a difference.

Published on July 9, 2014 by Linda and Charlie Bloom, in Stronger at the Broken Places

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/stronger-the-broken-places/201407/when-less-is-more

The Trouble With Modern Marriage

How our high expectations might be setting us up for intense disappointments

Published on July 7, 2014 by Erica B. Slotter, Ph.D. in Me, You, & Us

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/me-you-us/201407/the-trouble-modern-marriage

What It Means to Be Real

Two essential aspects of authenticity

Published on May 29, 2014 by John Amodeo, PhD, MFT in Intimacy, A Path Toward Spirituality

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/intimacy-path-toward-spirituality/201405/what-it-means-be-real

Alone Together

Surprising people don't know what they mean when they get married.


http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/career-commitment/201404/alone-together

Diagnosing Your Spouse

Diagnosing one's partner can be very tempting but it can cause a lot of unnecessary pain.  Chances are that he does exhibit characteristics consistent with diagnosis x, y, or z.  But it must be more productive to uncover the experience under the behaviors and develop compassion for the experience than to simply identify it as a defective trait. Diagnoses or not, the work is the same.

Diagnosing Your Spouse

			Diagnosing Your Spouse How Mad are We?
			View on www.psychologytoda...	Preview by Yahoo

Anger, Love Courage

"You show me a couple that's not having sex and I'll show you a couple who's angry.  They may say, 'oh no, we love each other so much; it's so deep!'.  But somewhere in there, there's that resentment: 'I'm not gonna be vulnerable to you'."
...
"Many men and women feel really dependent on each other.  When they can't live without a man or a woman, they turn their neediness into conquest.  They seduce people.  If you somebody you seduce them, and then you hold them, you trap them and then you reject them.  That's what womanizing and manizing is all about: find them, conquer them and get rid of them.  Don't depend on them.  The reason you wanna have a lot of women is because you'd be too vulnerable to just one."
...
"Taking control of everything is a form of anger."


-Armand DiMele, from The Positive Mind

http://digital-magic.tv/digitalplanet/thepositivemind/audio-frame_new.php?movie=tpm_20140408&tK=ded1475e3affab95e7b302eacaa5a1b4&size=large

The Epitomy of Insanity?

What an incredible story.  I don't know when I've heard anything so incongruously honest and fucked up. Oh; maybe once.

http://player.fm/series/the-moth-podcast-7142/james-braly-finally-we-agree

Looking for Trust in All the Wrong Places

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/stronger-the-broken-places/201404/looking-trust-in-all-the-wrong-places

Your Emotionally Abusive Ex

This really resonated for me:

http://mentalpod.com/Loneliness-Dr-Guy-Winch-Podcast 4:30 – 6:42  

“Understand, when you’re with somebody who is emotionally abusive, the game they get you to play is to constantly try to be somebody that you’re not.  That’s how they derive their power from you.  Guys like him are afraid of emotional intimacy and to avoid having to look at that in themselves, they project their anger and their dislike of themselves onto other people and they have you running laps around them, tap dancing, trying to be everything you can be, so they don’t have to look at themselves.  It’s a drug.  It’s a drug to the person who’s being manipulated and to the person who’s doing the abusing.”

"People with the Bad Luck", In The Dark With You, Greg Brown

Maybe someone you thought was
very kind and true
turned around and did something
just plain mean to you

and it might make you cry and it
might make you real mad and it
might get you to thinkin about
the kind of luck you both had.

Commitment Can Set You Free

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/stronger-the-broken-places/201403/commitment-can-set-you-free

Wow they seem to really get it.

The Mental Illness Happy Hour – “Rejection” with Dr. Guy Winch

So many people cannot respond once they know that you can see them.  They’re love avoidant.  And that is completely their-own issue.  They may be into you at first because they love the attention but then they realize, ‘Oh, now it’s the point where there is something required of me.  There’s intimacy.  I might be devoured by this person.’  And they want to pull away.  I see that so many times in people I correspond with and in experiences I had in my twenties when all of a sudden it was like a switch turning off and I couldn’t stand to be around a girl that wanted more.  And I wanted to run.  And it breaks my heart that I didn’t have the words to express to her then, ‘you don’t understand the reason I changed is because you’re present and you’re healthy and you’re whole and this is scaring the shit out of me.’

-Paul Gilmartin

http://mentalpod.com/Rejection-Dr-Guy-Winch

Maybe It's Them, Not You: How to Handle a Crazymaker

"http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/counseling-keys/201403/maybe-its-them-not-you-how-handle-crazymaker

Crazymaking is when a person sets you up to lose. Much like the example above—you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t. You’re in a lose-lose situation, but too many games are being played to help you reason yourself out of it. There is no rhyme, reason, or emotional-understanding with a crazy-maker. Worse, when the behavior is stealth and so confusing, it becomes easy to feel crazy. It feels like you’re caught in a whirlwind of chaos with the life force being sucked from you as you are manipulated with nonstop crazy-making tactics."

The Secret to a Happy Relationship

Lofty Title for this article but I think it's true.

Jeffrey Bernstein also authored this very helpful book:  Why Can't You Read My Mind?  It helped me recognize that I have a fear of strong emotions, which has been detrimental in relationships.

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/liking-the-child-you-love/201403/the-secret-happy-relationship

A Buddhist Valentine

The definition of love from the Dhammaloka Buddhist Centre:

http://www.dhammaloka.org.au/home/item/1624-a-buddhist-valentine.html

One of my favorites by one of my favorites.

JONNY LANG

THANKFUL

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CaZIG2I_0k

7 Reasons Most People are Afraid of Love

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/compassion-matters/201401/7-reasons-most-people-are-afraid-love

Whether we know it or not, most of us are afraid of really being in love. We all harbor defenses that we believe on some level will protect us from getting hurt. So what drives our fears of intimacy? What keeps us from finding and keeping the love we say we want?