Should you stay with your partner or leave them? Is all the pain you suffer in your relationship worth it for the good times you have together? Will it really be worth all the pain of leaving them or is it better to stay and stick it out?

In most relationships there comes a point when you have to decide whether your partner really has the qualities you need to stay together. Making the decision to stay or go is almost always a very painful and confusing time as there generally isn’t a quick fix or an easy answer to your questions.

I have a friend in a fantastic relationship who taught me that if it’s hard work it’s probably not working. This was an alien concept to me. I come from a therapeutic background which can sometimes promote the feeling that if it’s not hard work it’s not worthwhile. Years ago I made it my mission to figure out what made relationships work; there seem to be two approaches – one more successful than the other!

Two Approaches to Relationships

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There may be many reasons why you haven’t found your perfect partner yet. Here’s one of the main reasons many of my clients haven’t found theirs, and how you can eliminate it as a problem from your life.

BTN Relationships

BTN? Better than nothing.

That may sound cruel, but you can spend months certainly and often years going out with men that, deep down, you know aren’t the one.

What you have in these relationships is partial compatibility. Sometimes you’ll meet someone who ticks most of the boxes on your checklist but not all of them. At this point you have a choice to make, do you move on immediately or not?

Most of us have at some point been in a relationship that was almost it. It’s easily possible to spend years trying to get a relationship to work when it isn’t really what you want. In itself that isn’t necessarily bad, we learn amazing things about ourselves in any relationship and we’re generally going to grow through the experience. However if your long term goal is to get married and set up home or to have kids then you might want to do a better job of protecting your time.

There is a saying within time management philosophy which states that ‘the great should never be at the mercy of the good.’

So how do you prevent yourself from getting stuck in a relationship with just the good? How do you ensure you don’t get stuck in BTNs over and over again, spending years of your life in relationships that aren’t going to last?

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Lately I’ve had a run of clients having a very hard time getting over the end of a relationship, so let me share some secrets with you about how to heal.

I have a client called Dorothy who’s struggling to let go of a relationship with a guy who she’d initially thought was perfect for her. When we first started working together Dorothy was really angry and frustrated that, yet again, she was going to have to re-build her love life. The one good thing about those feelings was that they removed any temptation to get straight back into dating.

The first step for any client I work with in this situation is to have them feel their feelings which is an essential part of the healing process.

Some people really struggle with feeling certain feelings. Some of us are easier with anger, others with grief. Dorothy was more than comfortable with being angry but was very reluctant to admit that her anger was masking her feelings of hurt and loneliness. Those feelings made her feel vulnerable in a way she resisted furiously. I encouraged her to explore all of her feelings by writing a ‘grief letter’ to her ex.

The Grief Letter

To write your letter take the time to explore what you are going to miss and what you aren’t going to miss.

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Nothing is impossible!

All of us, at some stage, have dreamed of being somebody special, somebody famous, a celebrity. Who hasn’t imagined about being the player scoring the game-winning touchdown? Who hasn’t dreamed of being the next miss universe? And how many times have we dreamed of being a millionaire, or successful, or happy with our love life?

Generally, we dream huge dreams and have big aspirations. Mostly however, our dreams remain only that – dreams. Eventually our hopes are just get forgotten.

This is sad.

Instead of experiencing life as an exciting adventure, we get caught up in the humdrum of daily living, barely existing.

But you know what?

Life can be so much better, if only we learned to aim higher, aim for the stars and you might end up on the moon.

The word impossible stuck in our mind, is probably the biggest culprit. We honestly believe that what we desire is just “impossible” to achieve. You get hung up on this belief, so you don’t even try anymore. You believe that no-one could possibly do this.

You’re wrong.

The world is full of examples of impossible things.

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A wedding saying……….

Something borrowed, something blue is probably what popped into your head as you read the above.

This is how your mind works!

We store complete pictures or phrases in our memory. Calling up one part thereof, brings the whole item back into our consciousness.

Discover how this impacts on our relationships and can lead to a breakthrough technique for achieving relationship happiness.

Let me explain:

First you need to understand that you are who you are and do what you do because of the mental pictures in the front of your mind right now. Just remember, that we all do the best we know how at any point in time. That knowingness, is created directly from the most dominant picture in your mind at that time.

Here’s an example.

Think of when you and your partner met, there was that special feeling, maybe butterflies in your stomach, maybe a sense of security, maybe.. you know, whatever it was for you at the time, you equated that feeling with a picture of togetherness with your partner. Then everytime you thought of your partner, those feelings come back and you feel good.

Now progress 5 years down the road from now. You see a beer can standing next to the sofa, and a picture of a lazy smelling coach potatoe flashes into your mind. This picture does not make you feel good anymore! All of a sudden the question “What happened to us” comes to mind.

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