Sometimes life is far harder than you ever expected.

The Life-Long Conversation & The Actions Of Marriage

Some of the aliveness that you felt at the beginning of your marriage has faded into the background. Something is just different. The pressures and expectations you had of being the perfect spouse while marrying the perfect partner is starting to feel unbearable. You want relief from this pressure. You want your spouse to change. S/he wants you to change. You both are at odds with each others' feedback. You no longer know how you really feel. You are stuck in a gridlock of unmet expectations.

You may be surprised to hear that there is something going on here that is not about your partner nor about you: marriage, not your partner, is trying to teach you both lessons that you are refusing to consider and not committing to learn. The unique personal feedback system of marriage gives you far more specific, intense and and often accurate feedback about how you really behave when you are in a close, committed emotional relationship--that you nor anyone else but your partner can see.

The life-long conversation of marriage is trying to help you both see what direction you need to grow. But, you both resist it. "It isn't fair." "It isn't my fault." "If only they would." "It should not have to be this hard."

That is why the pressure is becoming so big and unbearable inside: you are refusing to learn what marriage is relentlessly trying to teach you. Are you ready to end your self-imposed resistance and open yourself to the relief and growth that your marriage is trying to give you?

This therapy can help you:

• Reset your course with respect, honesty and affection.

• Restore your lost "sense of self" in the relationship through being direct about how you really feel and listening for what is actually happening with your partner.

• Learn about the difference between perpetual problems and temporary problems and how to set realistic expectations and deal the two differing kinds of problems appropriately.

• Rapidly discover and begin working with your personal blind spot so you can interrupt a major cause of negative relationship sentiment and inability to have important conversations.

• Learn to question your own untested beliefs about yourself, your partner and marriage itself that have gotten you trapped in rounds and rounds of imaginary angry conversations in your head.

• Get your words and actions congruent with how you really feel and what actually matters most in ways that you also repect your sefl and your partner

• Practice calmly discussing and working through the many important conversations that have been put on hold--and stuck in your head--because of the gridlock of your relationship blind spots . . . and be friends again, on the same side.

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Stop the old behavior that needs stopping! Learn something significantly new that works.

The next chapter of your marriage awaits you.

I hope I have the privilege to work with you soon.

Sincerely,

Don

Policy and Directions
Don Elium, MA MFT practices individual and couple counseling in his office in Walnut Creek, CA,

San Francisco Bay Area

Don is currently working on his fifth book, Your Relationship Blind Spot ~ "Having a baby is natural. An alive loving marriage is NOT. It is not a pre-extistent knowledge that you remember. It is learned. Marriage seeks to change people for the better. However, an alive, loving marriage is only learned and a person only changes for the better while being in it." ~Don Elium, MA MFT

Don Elium, MA MFT

Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist MFC#28381

Individual & Couple Psychotherapy