Why Confrontation Can Be Good For Relationships

How can confrontation and conflict be good for relationships?

A lot of people in relationships believe that confronting your partner, especially when it is about things that you are uncomfortable with in your relationship, will only bring negativity. No one can see how it can be good for relationships. And the thing that most people would say is that “I don’t want to hurt him or her.” There are a lot of reasons why people avoid confrontation, but there are two that are common to most.

Confrontation doesn’t always have to be done in a hurtful or aggressive manner. There are ways that you could confront your partner and it would bring about understanding and reconciliation about whatever it is that you are having issues or problems with.

Confrontation doesn’t always have to be done in an argumentative or fighting manner. You can tell your partner the truth about the things that are bothering you in normal everyday conversation. You should not be afraid to tell your partner the truth. You should never see it as something that will destroy your relationship, but as something that will help your relationship grow. Telling the truth is good for relationships.

One more common reason why you may be avoiding confrontation in your relationship is that you don’t think your partner will be able to deal with the things you are going to say. Trust in your partner’s strength. Never doubt in his or her ability to cope with whatever it is that you may throw his or her way.

Holding back and hiding your issues will sooner or later come to the surface and your partner will most likely see or feel that your trust in him or her is limited, which will create mistrust in your partner as well. Do not doubt in your partner’s strength. Confront him or her and trust that he or she will be able to handle it.

Trust Building: Focusing on Your Needs and Not Your Partner’s

Trust building  in relationships is very tricky to do especially when something wrong has been done in the relationship by either of the partners. When this happens,  what do you do to earn trust back and make it stronger than before?

Do not be afraid to let your needs be known. This is especially true in situations where one person in the relationship feels the other backing or pulling away from him. Most of the  time, in cases like this, the person who doesn’t feel like his partner is paying attention to him or the marriage goes on an all out crusade to win his partner back.

He does everything he can, everything he thinks his partner wants from him, providing her every need, all in the hopes that she will come back to him. But what usually happens is that she starts to feel smothered by all the attention, or even resentful that he is only doing this now that she doesn’t want to have anything to do with him, and his efforts to try to win her back backfires. It doesn’t work. Because his motive, whether consciously done or not, of meeting her every need in the hopes that she will return the favor and meet his, doesn’t work. At the end of the day, this kind of tactic is still manipulation. And manipulation is not how you go about in trust building.

The thing is, she avoids or prevents herself from confronting him about this because he is being so nice and caring. And all this avoiding and pretending destroys the trust in the relationship.

So rather than focusing all the attention on your partner, focus on you instead and assess what your needs are that you want your partner to meet. This is one of the ways you can start re-developing the trust you lost in your marriage. Let your needs be known clearly and directly, but always be open to hear out your partner’s needs as well. Be self-centered, but not selfish.

The Truth About Infidelity Websites and Unhappy Relationships

Just how popular are infidelity websites among those who are in unhappy relationships?

A recent story published by USA today said that websites that offer free membership to married individuals who want to look for other married individuals for purposes of “hooking up” record their highest profits of the year the day after Valentine’s Day. Why?

A person who runs such a website said that, “People are disappointed by their spouse’s lack of effort, and they feel especially undervalued when there is a societal expectation of romance. Certain days of the year act as litmus tests for many people in relationships.”

We tend to force romance into our relationships most of the time just to prove to ourselves that we can be romantic just like everyone else, but it usually doesn’t work and only ends up emphasizing our unhappy relationships. What’s more is, your partner could very well be one of the people who register on infidelity websites without your knowledge.

There are two possible concepts that trigger and increase the disappointment we feel during this particular day:

First being that romance gets too hyped up and it somehow makes us kind of self-centered.

Romantic movies and novels as well as love songs that come out describe romance generally as something between two people where each others’ thoughts and feelings, wants and needs are mirrored back to each other, where you begin to feel like you’re something special and you lose sight of the fact that you are just like everyone else going through the motions of life.
One more reason is because we concentrate on our personal needs. We focus on us – our need for constant attention, our need to be adored, our need to be listened to. And when our partners don’t meet our needs, or don’t do what we expect, we start to become resentful or frustrated towards them, whether we do it consciously or not.

On Valentine’s Day, there is an exaggerated expectation for romance in general. And even when we say that we don’t care whether or husbands or wives do anything special on that particular day, we get swept up in it along with everyone else. So when nothing happens, we become more convinced that our is an unhappy relationship compared to others.