8.Have a discussion with your husband during a quiet time about anger.

Anger is especially detrimental to men’s health. Contrary to popular opinion, it is NOT healthy to vent your anger, nor is it healthy to suppress it. Both of you need to work constantly on valuing being in relationship more than being right. When couples argue all time and create a toxic environment, no one wins, and no one’s “right”.

9. Don’t notice so much, listen FOR love with your OWN love, and be adamantly and relentlessly forgiving.

Under pressures of today’s lifestyle, we all say things we don’t mean. We get sloppy or we’re in a rush and blurt something out. We forget things. We get irritable.

Catch him doing something right and praise act. Don’t spend so much time on negatives or you’ll cause them to grow. Negotiate your “must haves” and “can’t stands,” and beyond that, be willing to overlook a lot.

If he brings you coffee in bed in morning, you can pick up his underwear off floor occasionally.

10.Express yourself very clearly and very often.

Don’t whine, beg, hint, guess, hope for best, or be tentative. This won’t work. Say specifically what you want, or what you don’t like, and nip it in bud. The longer you wait, more of an issue it becomes. This applies particularly to your sexual relationship. Don’t leave him guessing.

One bone of contention among many couples is that if you do it once, it becomes your job for rest of your life. So, if you’re adoring him so much one Sunday afternoon you decide to wait on him while he watches ball game – because kids are at Grannies, you’re caught up on your work and rested, you have some spare time, and you’re feeling like a temporary period of doting, explain what you’re doing.

Say, “I’m enjoying waiting on you this afternoon. Of course I can’t do it all time…”

Make your expectations clear, “I’m enjoying waiting on you this afternoon. Please do this for me some time when you feel like it.”

If he does assume this has now become new routine – and it’s only human nature to press for advantage when you have it – deal with it minute it comes up. Make it clear what your stand is.

Summary

Poor communication and low Emotional Intelligence lead to fighting. Fighting can slowly erode your relationship because it’s all too easy to let something slip you wish you hadn’t said, and can’t take back. Or you fail to say something, and then resentment builds.

Fighting is bad for your health, individually, as a couple, and as a family. Studies have shown that couples tend to get sick after a big fight, because fighting with a loved one lowers your immunity.

Did you need another reason to get along with man you loved enough to marry?

While Angie was not causing Richard to resist and Richard was not causing Angie to get angry and judgmental, they were each reacting to other’s learned protections with their own learned protections. Either one could shift system by learning to take care of themselves when their fears of rejection and engulfment surfaced.

For example, Angie can practice tuning into her feelings of rejection and reassuring herself that Richard’s behavior is coming from his fear of engulfment and is not a personal rejection of her. She can practice moving into compassion for herself and Richard, rather than going immediately into judgment.

Richard can practice speaking his truth and standing up for himself when Angie is angry and blaming, rather than going into automatic resistance. He can let Angie know that he is not available to being treated this way, and at same time stay open to caring about her feelings and understanding that his resistant behavior is painful to her.

While power struggle is showing up in sexual arena, it is actually taking place in whole relationship. Often sexual relationship is a barometer of what is happening in rest of relationship. With Angie and Richard, control and resistant behavior is most apparent in their sexual relationship. Sexuality is a vulnerable area, and it is easy to feel rejected in sexual arena. Because of this vulnerability, it is in this area that Angie is most controlling. It is in this arena where she feels most rejected when Richard is not fully present or prematurely ejaculates. Richard, on other hand, is most frightened of being controlled in sexual arena. Being told what to do and how he should perform sets off all his fears of engulfment. The anxiety he feels over performance as well as anger over Angie’s attempts to control him combine to make him too tense to be fully present. Without being present with his love for Angie, his body resists lovemaking.

Instead of working on sex, Angie and Richard are each working on their individual participation in control-resist system. Each are practicing staying open to honesty and caring and personal responsibility for their own feelings rather than just controlling and resisting control. As a result, their sex life is slowly improving.