Couples and Self-Esteem. How it Effects Communication in our Relationships.

Couples self-esteem effects all aspects of their relationship. As I have said before, self-esteem effects everything we say and do. Especially in a close relationship, how we feel about ourselves effects our communication.

In all relationships, communications are the most important thing. If we are able to say what we want and express how we feel with each other, it makes for a loving and respectful union.

Our ego plays a large part in the behavior we exhibit. It is the part of us that thinks it is protecting us from the hurtful truth." I don't want to hurt his feelings." " What would he think if he knew how I felt?" " I am so disappointed in myself, I can't say a thing." " I know how mad she would get if she knew."

We need to have relationships that are equal, open and respectful. We need to feel safe within them; safe to be who we are, to make mistakes, to laugh at ourselves, to express ourselves and to enjoy each other.

As a womens fitness coach, I learned a lot about how couples grow apart because of ego and lack of communication. Whenever I was able to get a woman to confide in why she really wanted to shape-up, I got answers like " so that I don't have to get dressed in the closet and my husband won't see me". Our feelings of inadequacy are so vigilant!

What is Love?

There are many definitions of love. The dictionary says it's a strong feeling of affection. How inadequate that is.

There is love for your children, love for your friends, love for your spouse, love for humanity and love for God. They are all different kinds of love.

Love is not something that you are in, it's something that you do.

Falling in love is wonderful. We all need to experience it. It is infatuation. It is passion. It is lust. We don't want to believe that it fades, but eventually it does. What can replace it is something far more lasting and fulfilling. This is when it takes the doing.

Friendship is an important part of a great couples relationship. We need to be friends. Friends accept each other so much easier than couples often do.

We can't teach couples to be friends but we can teach communication and out of that can come a deeper knowledge of each other and a respect that eventually translates to friendship and enjoyment.

Our children need us to accept ourselves, feel good about ourselves, and love and respect each other.

How do we attract one another?

It seems that today's experts agree on the answer to this. We unconsciously attract partners that have behavioral and thought patterns which align with the ones that we grew up with. In our efforts to heal the injured inner child, we seek out people who demonstrate the behavior of our early caregivers. The other option we sometimes choose is to find a partner that reflects back to us the lost part of ourselves.

Deepak Chopra in his book The Way of The Wizard writes "to some extent we all fall in love with images. We carry these images around inside ourselves, waiting until we find a match for them in the external world. Usually we are searching for someone either to reflect our own self-images or to repair them."

If you want to feel love as God feels it, you must fill all your voids, for God can love only from the state of fullness."--Deepak Chopra

As I mentioned before, we need to always work on being a loving and gentle person to our partners. Sometimes it is difficult because we often have expectations of one another that are not articulated and often not reasonable. We need to accept one another for who we are and 'be the way we want them to be'.

One of the subjects that is seldom explored and often considered too embarrassing to talk about is sex. Interestingly, it is an aspect of life that plays an important role all around the world. If you think not, take a look at the population statistics.

Every thought that we have, every feeling that follows, every decision we make, every action we take and every result we see is the result of what we believe about ourselves. Having said that, it only follows that how we interact with our sexual partners would be affected by how we feel about ourselves (our self-esteem).

As a women’s fitness instructor, one of the main questions I asked was, other that looking good and feeling good, why do you want to shape up? The answers were often superficial but every once in a while I would get the real story. One woman actually said that she felt fat and ugly and would only dress in the closet where her husband couldn’t see her. Another one said that she wanted to look good in her new nightgown so her husband would be attracted to her again.

What we don’t like about ourselves, we think that everyone who knows us doesn’t like, also. That is so untrue. We all have feelings of inadequacy. I think that very few people have grown up with a completely whole sense of themselves. It is the nature of life. Our purpose in life is to grow and learn to accept ourselves and accept the world for the nurturing place that it is, that it was meant to be.

If we are not feeling good about ourselves, we cannot give ourselves to others. We can perform the sex act, but that is all it is, if we are inhibited. If we are not being vulnerable to the people we love, we are missing so much of what life with each other has to offer.

Here Are Five Tips to Improve Your Sex Life:

1. Take care of yourself. Do the things, everyday that help you to be fit and healthy.

2. Find out what works in your life and what doesn’t. When we are living our life outside of what inspires us, we are out of integrity with ourselves, and our self-esteem suffers.

3. Work at living a stress-free life. Slow down your pace and be in the moment more often.

4. Get to know your partner. Leave the sex out of it for a while and romance the one you love. Talk to each other and listen to each other. Just be together.

5. Walk together. Hold hands. Touch each other. Do thoughtful things for each other. Respect each other.

Love is Not Something We are In, It Is Something That We Do.

Is this Relationship Worth Saving? What are you prepared to do?

Healthy relationships take work. That’s the way of life. But when you have worked and talked and worked and sacrificed, it’s time to take a look at what is not working.

It is well known that over 85% of families are dysfunctional. This means that most families learn or adapt behavior patterns that work against the members being in integrity with what is important to them. Being in integrity with what is important means having healthy boundaries to protect your needs and feelings.

Since the percentage of dysfunctional families is so high, I would have to say that it is normal to have relationships that are challenging. So we are normal but possibly not as joyful and fulfilled as we need to be. We always learn something when things aren’t going the way we plan. That is pretty much the only way we learn. If things are going right, we don’t know what wrong looks or feels like. And when things are wrong, we really feel it. Our feelings are our sign post for when something is not right.

So if you are in a relationship that doesn’t feel good to you, you know that something is wrong and something needs to change. Often, you are not able to be yourself within the relationship. Our self-esteem suffers when we are in a bad relationship.Here are five points to ponder when you are at the threshold of abandoning a relationship:

1. What is it that does not work for you in this relationship? Try to answer this question with an objective point of view. Remember what is important to you in your life and write down the answer in a calm and collected way. It is ok for you to ask for what you want and you do deserve to orchestrate your own life.

2. What would it look like if your relationship with this person worked for you? What is it that you want for this relationship?

3. This point is the most important of all and a concept that is sometimes hard to grasp. Go on the assumption that nothing will change outside of yourself. We can’t change other people and we can’t fix them. We can only be the way we want them to be. Waiting for someone to change to make your life work is letting go of all responsibility for yourself. My favorite quote on this subject is: “ If it is to be, it’s up to me” Knowing that gives you back your power.

4. Now based on the last point, what will you have to do, to stay in this relationship and are you prepared to do it. This means that something has to change. You either have to let go of the fantasy that the person will change and do whatever it will take to live with the circumstances, or you have to let the relationship go and move on. This will not be an easy decision. It will be life-changing whichever choice you make.

5. Remember that if this relationship is not working for you, it definitely is not working for the other person, no matter what they say. So it will probably be a favor to them to end it.

Change is hard. People are reluctant to change because they are afraid of the unknown. But sometimes, our pain is so strong that the unknown is the best option. Sometimes we just have to let our relationships go to make way for new, healthy ones.

Return from Couples to Mens Self-Esteem



Return from Couples to Womens Self-Esteem