The Relationship Maze

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Do you struggle with compromising in your relationship? Making compromises can be very challenging; it's not always easy to establish a middle ground between you and your partner's wishes and to create a win/win situation for both of you.

Regardless of how close you and your partner are you, are bound to experience differences of opinion which will lead to disagreements. Your mutual ability to compromise is a crucial factor in being able to bridge these differences.

For many couples compromising relates to a perceived power struggle in the relationship; partners often think of compromising as giving in to their partner's demands and giving up on their own wishes.  You may want to reflect on how you witnessed your parents' ability to compromise and what you have learned about compromising as a concept. Frequently, knowing how to compromise has not been learned.

Compromising entails trying to understand why your partner's position is so important.  Thinking your way into your partner's shoes and having an empathic stance helps you to go some way into meeting your partner's needs while not necessarily giving up on your own. Compromising does not entail giving up on your values.

Ideally both partners need to step into the direction of the other; you are not giving in or giving up but are open to finding a way forward that is acceptable or even pleasurable to both of you.

Conflict resolution often demands finding compromises where the solution may entail finding a 'third way': not 'your way' or 'my way' but 'our way', a co-created way forward.

The Relationship Maze courses:
What is your argument style? Find out in our short quiz. You can find a link on our website: https://therelationshipmaze.com.

Struggling with a lot of conflict and arguments in your relationship? Learn about communicating effectively and addressing common relationship problems in our Stop Arguing, Start Loving mini course:  https://therelationshipmaze.com/relationshipconflictvsl2.

Learn everything you always wanted to know about building and maintaining  loving relationships in our comprehensive course The Relationship Maze, starting with understanding yourself in relationships to understanding your partner and understanding what makes for a successful relationship.

We look at common causes of relationship problems and offer solutions. Learn how to address relationship problems and questions without breaking up.

Contact us for information about individual counselling/psychotherapy, couples therapy, clinical supervision or CPD training.
Tom's website
Angela's website

Struggling with a lot of conflict and arguments in your relationship? Learn about communicating effectively and addressing common relationship problems in our Stop Arguing, Start Loving mini course.

Learn everything you always wanted to know about building and maintaining  loving relationships in our comprehensive course The Relationship Maze, starting with understanding yourself in relationships to understanding your partner and understanding what makes for a successful relationship. We look at common causes of relationship problems and offer solutions. Learn how to address relationship problems and questions without breaking up.

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Do you struggle with decision making and often worry about making the right or wrong decision? In today's episode we talk about the challenge of being 'condemned to freedom' (Jean-Paul Sartre): because we world is not well structured, predictable and sometime groundless our existence is fundamentally not secure. We try to mitigate this lack of security through making  the 'right' kind of choices. However, every 'yes' that we make in one situation is always an automatic 'no' to another choice.

Freedom can be overwhelming, on a micro level this may mean struggling to chose the right kind of pasta on a shelf with 30 different offerings or on a bigger level, choosing the right partner when dating. Unless there is a clear structure in place that tells you what to do, you will have to make your own choices.

The decision making process for many people is very difficult because they often worry about the 'what ifs': 'what if I get this wrong and lose everything' or 'what if there is another potential partner who has more to offer?' Every action requires a decision and if you are chronically worried about making the 'right' decision this can be an agonising experience. At the more extreme end it can lead to compulsions which are a more rigid attempts to avoid imagined catastrophes. Compulsiveness can be an avoidance of the responsibilities for choices.

Freedom comes with responsibility: we take responsibility for our choices. This includes taking responsibilities for our actions and choices in relationships. And it also includes the acceptance that we have power to make our own best choices and need to learn to trust our own will.

The Relationship Maze courses:
What is your argument style? Find out in our short quiz. You can find a link on our website: https://therelationshipmaze.com.

Struggling with a lot of conflict and arguments in your relationship? Learn about communicating effectively and addressing common relationship problems in our Stop Arguing, Start Loving mini course:  https://therelationshipmaze.com/relationshipconflictvsl2.

Learn everything you always wanted to know about building and maintaining  loving relationships in our comprehensive course The Relationship Maze, starting with understanding yourself in relationships to understanding your partner and understanding what makes for a successful relationship.

We look at common causes of relationship problems and offer solutions. Learn how to address relationship problems and questions without breaking up.

Related podcasts:
It's Got to be Perfect - Dealing with the fallout of perfectionism

Contact us for information about individual counselling/psychotherapy, couples therapy, clinical supervision or CPD training.
Tom's website
Angela's website

Struggling with a lot of conflict and arguments in your relationship? Learn about communicating effectively and addressing common relationship problems in our Stop Arguing, Start Loving mini course.

Learn everything you always wanted to know about building and maintaining  loving relationships in our comprehensive course The Relationship Maze, starting with understanding yourself in relationships to understanding your partner and understanding what makes for a successful relationship. We look at common causes of relationship problems and offer solutions. Learn how to address relationship problems and questions without breaking up.

Send us Fan Mail

In today's episode we discuss the underlying reasons for and challenges with keeping secrets. You may keep a secret for a number reasons: you feel that it's not the right time to talk about something, you want to surprise someone, you don't want to burden someone, you feel ashamed about an action or event in the past or you want to protect yourself from the potential responses of others.

Your secret may be a 'delicious' one, e.g. you are pregnant and delighted but want to wait three months with your announcement until you know the pregnancy is viable. Or your secret may be a shameful one, e.g. one of your earlier sexual experiences left you feel bad about yourself, a part of you may feel disgusting, unworthy or reprehensible.

'Shame is a soul eating emotion' (Carl Gustav Jung).  Keeping a secret means hiding away information. Often secrets are kept because a person is carrying a sense of shame about something that they (or a family member) has done in the past. They worry that this action reflects badly on them and that they won't be liked if the secret is revealed. Frequently, the very shameful thing that needs to be hidden away or concealed is significant, momentous and meaningful to the person who keeps the secret. When revealed it may not seem so momentous to another person.

When there is shame involved, secrets have to be treated with care.

Have any suggestion for podcast topics? Get in touch with us at [email protected].

The Relationship Maze courses:
What is your argument style? Find out in our short quiz. You can find a link on our website: https://therelationshipmaze.com.

Struggling with a lot of conflict and arguments in your relationship? Learn about communicating effectively and addressing common relationship problems in our Stop Arguing, Start Loving mini course:  https://therelationshipmaze.com/relationshipconflictvsl2.

Learn everything you always wanted to know about building and maintaining  loving relationships in our comprehensive course The Relationship Maze, starting with understanding yourself in relationships to understanding your partner and understanding what makes for a successful relationship.

We look at common causes of relationship problems and offer solutions. Learn how to address relationship problems and questions without breaking up.

Related podcasts:
Unfinished business - when you haven't said what needs saying

Contact us for information about individual counselling/psychotherapy, couples therapy, clinical supervision or CPD training.
Tom's website
Angela's website

Struggling with a lot of conflict and arguments in your relationship? Learn about communicating effectively and addressing common relationship problems in our Stop Arguing, Start Loving mini course.

Learn everything you always wanted to know about building and maintaining  loving relationships in our comprehensive course The Relationship Maze, starting with understanding yourself in relationships to understanding your partner and understanding what makes for a successful relationship. We look at common causes of relationship problems and offer solutions. Learn how to address relationship problems and questions without breaking up.

Send us Fan Mail

Is this you:  there are too many demands made on you, you have to juggle too many tasks, you don't know where to start? Is it all simply too much at times?
In today's episode we discuss what happens when you are overwhelmed and what you can do to address this situation.

When you are overwhelmed your body and mind are in state of threat. Your fight/flight/freeze responses kick in manifesting either in anger (fight), procrastination (freeze) or avoidance (flight). The challenge in this situation is that your thinking is short circuited: your body mobilises for survival. Your sympathetic nervous systems is activated and your brain's main function is to enable you to survive through instinctual behaviour.

When we are overwhelmed the threat is perceived rather than real. It feels real to us, of course, and it may well entail real consequences if tasks at work are not completed, however, we are not at risk of dying.

In the grip of overwhelm we have to learn to ride the tidal wave that washes over us rather than getting drowned by it. The task is to develop a new attitude towards our stressors: accepting that we experience them and learning to respond differently to them.

We discuss some ways in which you may address feelings of overwhelm more effectively.

The Relationship Maze courses:
What is your argument style? Find out in our short quiz. You can find a link on our website: https://therelationshipmaze.com.

Struggling with a lot of conflict and arguments in your relationship? Learn about communicating effectively and addressing common relationship problems in our Stop Arguing, Start Loving mini course:  https://therelationshipmaze.com/relationshipconflictvsl2.

Learn everything you always wanted to know about building and maintaining  loving relationships in our comprehensive course The Relationship Maze, starting with understanding yourself in relationships to understanding your partner and understanding what makes for a successful relationship.

We look at common causes of relationship problems and offer solutions. Learn how to address relationship problems and questions without breaking up.

Related podcasts:
What happens when you 'lose your mind'? - How understanding the structure of your brain helps in conflict situations

Contact us for information about individual counselling/psychotherapy, couples therapy, clinical supervision or CPD training.
Tom's website
Angela's website

Struggling with a lot of conflict and arguments in your relationship? Learn about communicating effectively and addressing common relationship problems in our Stop Arguing, Start Loving mini course.

Learn everything you always wanted to know about building and maintaining  loving relationships in our comprehensive course The Relationship Maze, starting with understanding yourself in relationships to understanding your partner and understanding what makes for a successful relationship. We look at common causes of relationship problems and offer solutions. Learn how to address relationship problems and questions without breaking up.

Send us Fan Mail

In today's episode we look at some of the signs or indicators that your partner or the person you are dating has a secure attachment style. Why does it matter that your partner has a secure attachment? Research shows that it only takes one secure partner in the relationship to make the relationship overall stable.

We discuss what a secure or insecure attachment looks like. A person with a secure attachment style is likely to have had previous experiences of relationships, primarily in their family of origin, where they were loved and cared for as well being encouraged to stand on their own two feet and explore the world independently.

Indicators that someone has a secure attachment include for example that they are able to be trusting of others, they can express themselves emotionally,  they are open to others and can make adjustments based on their experiences, they can assess whether a relationship 'feels' right and whether another person is trustworthy.

In a secure relationship there is closeness and connection as well as the capacity to be separate from each other and to remain two individuals. If you are with a secure partner they are more likely to tolerate and cherish your differences.

The Relationship Maze courses:
What is your argument style? Find out in our short quiz. You can find a link on our website: https://therelationshipmaze.com.

Struggling with a lot of conflict and arguments in your relationship? Learn about communicating effectively in our Stop Arguing, Start Loving mini course:  https://therelationshipmaze.com/relationshipconflictvsl2.

Learn everything you always wanted to know about building and maintaining  loving relationships in our comprehensive course The Relationship Maze, starting with understanding yourself in relationships to understanding your partner and understanding what makes for a successful relationship.

Related podcasts:
Mentalization and attachment- how to create a secure relationship
How does your attachment style influence your mindset? - Security, insecurity and rigidity in relationships and dating
How learning about attachment styles can help you understand your relationship

Contact us for information about individual counselling/psychotherapy, couples therapy, clinical supervision or CPD training.
Tom's website
Angela's website

Struggling with a lot of conflict and arguments in your relationship? Learn about communicating effectively and addressing common relationship problems in our Stop Arguing, Start Loving mini course.

Learn everything you always wanted to know about building and maintaining  loving relationships in our comprehensive course The Relationship Maze, starting with understanding yourself in relationships to understanding your partner and understanding what makes for a successful relationship. We look at common causes of relationship problems and offer solutions. Learn how to address relationship problems and questions without breaking up.

Send us Fan Mail

In today's episode we discuss how feelings of low self worth and self esteem may influence your partner choice and your relationships. Often people are attracted to partners who seem confident or have high levels of self esteem as a way of compensation for your own feelings of not being worthy. You may choose a confident partner in order to have higher self esteem by proxy.

When your self esteem is low you are likely to experience deep seated feelings of shame. Often these feeling stop people from looking for a partner in the first place.

While relationships can offer a healing experience where you learn that you are loveable, feelings of low self worth or self esteem are usually deep rooted and may resurface again and again. Thinking and feeling  that you are not good enough is usually learned through earlier experiences. These beliefs need to be brought into awareness, reviewed and can then be challenged and changed.

The Relationship Maze courses:
What is your argument style? Find out in our short quiz. You can find a link on our website: https://therelationshipmaze.com.

Struggling with a lot of conflict and arguments in your relationship? Learn about communicating effectively in our Stop Arguing, Start Loving mini course:  https://therelationshipmaze.com/relationshipconflictvsl2.

Learn everything you always wanted to know about building and maintaining  loving relationships in our comprehensive course The Relationship Maze, starting with understanding yourself in relationships to understanding your partner and understanding what makes for a successful relationship.

Related podcast:
Social Anxiety - what you experience and how to address it

Contact us for information about individual counselling/psychotherapy, couples therapy, clinical supervision or CPD training.
Tom's website
Angela's website

Struggling with a lot of conflict and arguments in your relationship? Learn about communicating effectively and addressing common relationship problems in our Stop Arguing, Start Loving mini course.

Learn everything you always wanted to know about building and maintaining  loving relationships in our comprehensive course The Relationship Maze, starting with understanding yourself in relationships to understanding your partner and understanding what makes for a successful relationship. We look at common causes of relationship problems and offer solutions. Learn how to address relationship problems and questions without breaking up.

Send us Fan Mail

Today we are talking about boredom in your relationship, a sense of sameness, predictability, dullness and flatness. You may ask yourself: is it normal to be bored in a relationship or marriage?

Boredom as a symptom can have different root causes: it may be a sign that feelings are suppressed in the relationship or it may simply be down to having completely different interests.

You may want to ask how you bore yourself. If you feel bored or that the relationship is not bringing enough excitement, you may want to reflect on your contribution to this situation. How can you bring more life into your relationship?

Do you have an expectation that relationships are exciting all the time? Do you crave the drama of conflict? For some people, having a relatively stable relationship can be experienced as boring.

If you are dating and think of lots people as boring you may reflect on your expectations of relationships and partners.

Boredom can be an anxious response; you may feel stuck and struggle to generate new impulses in your life. Often we numb our senses in order to avoid dealing with the very things that we find challenging.

We discuss some ways in which you can get out of boredom in your relationship.

The Relationship Maze courses:
What is your argument style? Find out in our short quiz. You can find a link on our website: https://therelationshipmaze.com.

Struggling with a lot of conflict and arguments in your relationship? Learn about communicating effectively in our Stop Arguing, Start Loving mini course:  https://therelationshipmaze.com/relationshipconflictvsl2.

Learn everything you always wanted to know about building and maintaining  loving relationships in our comprehensive course The Relationship Maze, starting with understanding yourself in relationships to understanding your partner and understanding what makes for a successful relationship.

Contact us for information about individual counselling/psychotherapy, couples therapy, clinical supervision or CPD training.
Tom's website
Angela's website

Struggling with a lot of conflict and arguments in your relationship? Learn about communicating effectively and addressing common relationship problems in our Stop Arguing, Start Loving mini course.

Learn everything you always wanted to know about building and maintaining  loving relationships in our comprehensive course The Relationship Maze, starting with understanding yourself in relationships to understanding your partner and understanding what makes for a successful relationship. We look at common causes of relationship problems and offer solutions. Learn how to address relationship problems and questions without breaking up.

Send us Fan Mail

In today's episode we talk about dissatisfaction. What causes low or high level frustration in your relationship? Do you often think that your partner does not quite offer you what you want? Chronic dissatisfaction that does not get addressed can lead to resentment, constant bickering and possibly to the end of the relationship.

We discuss where the dissatisfaction comes from. Causes can be manifold and are not often pinpointed. It's helpful to identify whether this feeling is something that originates in us, our partners or in the dynamic of the relationship.

Dissatisfaction can be a manifestation of an insecure attachment style; we discuss how either an avoidant-dismissive or anxious-preoccupied can lead to dissatisfaction in the relationship. There is an underlying anxiety that your partner is not quite giving you what you need or that your partner is not trustworthy.

When both partners are frequently dissatisfied they might have got into a particular pattern and cycle together. This is true especially if one partner is anxious and the other avoidant.

Often dissatisfaction does not get addressed appropriately. One or both partners blame each other rather than looking at the underlying issues and at the relational patterns that have been established together. We discuss what action needs to be taken to voice your frustrations in a way that your partner can engage and hear what you have to say.

The Relationship Maze courses:
What is your argument style? Find out in our short quiz. You can find a link on our website: https://therelationshipmaze.com.

Struggling with a lot of conflict and arguments in your relationship? Learn about communicating effectively in our Stop Arguing, Start Loving mini course:  https://therelationshipmaze.com/relationshipconflictvsl2.

Learn everything you always wanted to know about building and maintaining  loving relationships in our comprehensive course The Relationship Maze, starting with understanding yourself in relationships to understanding your partner and understanding what makes for a successful relationship.

Related podcasts:
Conflict - Do you argue effectively with others?
How learning about attachment styles can help you understand your relationship

Contact us for information about individual counselling/psychotherapy, couples therapy, clinical supervision or CPD training.
Tom's website
Angela's website

Struggling with a lot of conflict and arguments in your relationship? Learn about communicating effectively and addressing common relationship problems in our Stop Arguing, Start Loving mini course.

Learn everything you always wanted to know about building and maintaining  loving relationships in our comprehensive course The Relationship Maze, starting with understanding yourself in relationships to understanding your partner and understanding what makes for a successful relationship. We look at common causes of relationship problems and offer solutions. Learn how to address relationship problems and questions without breaking up.

Send us Fan Mail

In today's episode we discuss anger in relationships: how it affects you and your partner. Anger can of course be a significant problem in your relationship if it is out of control.

Anger can take many forms; it can be outer or inner directed. Unexpressed anger that is always held in can manifest as depression or self harm.

In relationships where partner A is always angry it may also be the case that their role is to hold the anger in the relationship; they may express their partner B's anger on their behalf.

Anger is a threat response in the wider sense; you are in fight mode and are responding to a perceived threat. You will anger in your body: your heart rate increases, you breathing may become more shallow, you may have sweaty palms, you have tunnel vision and many other symptoms. 

If you can find the triggers for your anger you can address it more effectively: e.g. it might be your partner's tone of voice that sets you off. Our memories are emotional state dependent. A situation in the present can trigger memories of past situations where you felt slighted or undermined.

We discuss how you may manage your anger more effectively, for example by learning to control your breathing or by practicing visualisations.

The Relationship Maze courses:
What is your argument style? Find out in our short quiz. You can find a link on our website: https://therelationshipmaze.com.

Struggling with a lot of conflict and arguments in your relationship? Learn about communicating effectively in our Stop Arguing, Start Loving mini course:  https://therelationshipmaze.com/relationshipconflictvsl2.

Learn everything you always wanted to know about building and maintaining  loving relationships in our comprehensive course The Relationship Maze, starting with understanding yourself in relationships to understanding your partner and understanding what makes for a successful relationship.

Related podcasts:
How to use Transactional Analysis to communicate better.

Contact us for information about individual counselling/psychotherapy, couples therapy, clinical supervision or CPD training.
Tom's website
Angela's website

Struggling with a lot of conflict and arguments in your relationship? Learn about communicating effectively and addressing common relationship problems in our Stop Arguing, Start Loving mini course.

Learn everything you always wanted to know about building and maintaining  loving relationships in our comprehensive course The Relationship Maze, starting with understanding yourself in relationships to understanding your partner and understanding what makes for a successful relationship. We look at common causes of relationship problems and offer solutions. Learn how to address relationship problems and questions without breaking up.

Send us Fan Mail

In today's episode we talk about the difficulty of not being able to express 'negative' feelings, behaviour or experiences in your relationship as one of the main relationship problems. This lack of expression is often driven by a fear of upsetting your partner or and ultimately losing your partner, in particular if you regard conflict as dangerous.

Sitting on your frustrations can lead to resentment. Often frustrations find expressions in low level attacks which may be described as bickering, as passive aggressive attacks or sulking.  This can be particularly hard for children who frequently get triangulated to take pressure out of the system.

People come to couples counselling often when these patterns are very set in. Ideally it would be a good idea to learn to communicate your frustrations early on in the relationship. This can be learned. Expressing frustrations in your relationship in a way that enables your partner to listen will create more closeness and intimacy in your relationship.

If you are currently single and looking for a relationship this is a good time to start thinking about your communication style.

The Relationship Maze courses:
What is your argument style? Find out in our short quiz. You can find a link on our website: https://therelationshipmaze.com.

Struggling with a lot of conflict and arguments in your relationship? Learn about communicating effectively in our Stop Arguing, Start Loving mini course:  https://therelationshipmaze.com/relationshipconflictvsl2.

Learn everything you always wanted to know about building and maintaining  loving relationships in our comprehensive course The Relationship Maze, starting with understanding yourself in relationships to understanding your partner and understanding what makes for a successful relationship.

Related Relationship Maze podcasts:
Conflict - Do you argue effectively with others?
Do you get drawn into other people’s relationship struggles? Or do you draw someone in to yours?

Contact us for information about individual counselling/psychotherapy, couples therapy, clinical supervision or CPD training.
Tom's website
Angela's website

Struggling with a lot of conflict and arguments in your relationship? Learn about communicating effectively and addressing common relationship problems in our Stop Arguing, Start Loving mini course.

Learn everything you always wanted to know about building and maintaining  loving relationships in our comprehensive course The Relationship Maze, starting with understanding yourself in relationships to understanding your partner and understanding what makes for a successful relationship. We look at common causes of relationship problems and offer solutions. Learn how to address relationship problems and questions without breaking up.