Rebuilding Your Relationship

02/27/2012

Is your partner "screwing around" on the Internet?

February 21, 2012

It’s important for therapists to keep up to date. The trouble is, one indicator of the vast literature on “couple therapy” produced over 300,000 hits today. As troublesome as it is to keep up to date, it is possible for therapists to read a few key journals that focus on their areas of interest. Being that couple therapy is my most favorite focal point, I read the widely referenced Journal of Marital and Family Therapy.

Well over a billion people now use the internet worldwide. As a result, more and more partners are complaining of internet infidelity. I keep my eyes open for new research concerning this key topic in couples therapy.

When I saw a study of Internet infidelity in the Journal of Marital and Family Therapy published as recently as February 9, 2012, my interest was sparked....

Happy Valentine's Day!

Tuesday, 14 February 2012

What better time than Valentine's Day to invest at least a few minutes - better yet a few hours or even the whole day - rebuilding your relationship!

After a few years together, many couples find themselves getting caught in a bit of a rut - not a sexual rutt, but a boring or frustrating rut. Basically, after being together for a while - could be a month, a year, or a number of years - the novelty just wears off.

This is quite natural and consistent with the notion of habituation or tolerance - like needing more to get the same effect. But when the romance, intimacy, and sexual arousal of the relationship starts to dwindle, it can get pretty frustrating. The temptation to seek novelty outside the relationship can be expected to accompany this shift.

It might seem paradoxical to suggest that spending more time with your romantic partner - even if it's been a while since you were intimate - could bring back a feeling of chemistry between you. But clearly, if...

What blog is this?

This blog is intended to:

how understanding relationships can help us live a more fulfilled life,

suggest ways to improve the health, fulfilment, and emotional connection in relationships,

explore difficulties that couples generally face and to provide some ways I understand these problems,

provide some general recommendations and resources that will hopefully help readers,

more about my approach to counselling than is already provided on dawsonpsychologicalservices.com.

This blog is also intended to provide information about the new Home Study resources available on the website, and to hopefully make them easier to use.

Getting stressed out?

Tuesday, 16 August 2011

Couples come to me to help them improve their relationships before they get married or a few years after they're married, or many years after they're married. When I see these couples, I don't assume that they will be fixed in a specific period of time, by a specific amount, or that they even need to be "fixed".

Instead, what I do assume is this. Individuals encounter stressors in many areas of life. These areas may include juggling demands of looking after the needs of aging parents, supporting oneself, ensuring visits with children or dealing with a spouse from a past relationship, and still somehow eaking out some time to get enough exercise and enjoy hobbies and personal interests.

When two individuals, each with their ongoing demands, decide they like or love each other enough to hang around each other a lot, or even decide to live together or get married, their personal stressors overlap. They overlap "big time"!