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You’ve fought so much that your wounds haven’t had time to heal before being onslaught with a whole new round of ammunition. How do you save a relationship that seems to have lost the magic that once existed between you?
Bill Ferguson, a divorce lawyer from Houston with 30 years of experience, and an author of two books, How to Heal a Painful Relationship and Get Your Power Back, and a featured guest on Oprah got his optimistic approach on relationships from his parent’s amicable divorce when he was young. Over the years, he has counseled so many couples that he has become an expert at identifying the key reason why couples break up or get a divorce. In fact, based on his counseling skills, Ferguson claims 15% of his clients ended up not getting divorced, and those who did, parted as friends.
In his book, How to Heal a Painful Relationship, Ferguson cites that it only take one person to heal a painful relationship. He further states that the problems of a relationship are never the real problem, they are the symptom of something deeper. Here, Ferguson offers 10 ways to heal a troubled relationship or marriage:
1. Give Up Being Right: You can be right or you can have love, but you can never have them both. When you are being right, you invalidate the other person, which destroys love. Being right also keeps you stuck in a single point of view. This keeps you from finding solutions. Rule #1: When you have love, it doesn’t matter who is right.
2. Be Willing to Feel Your Hurt: When you avoid feeling your hurt, anything that triggers it will be perceived as a threat. You then fight, resist, hang on and withdraw, which magnifies the problem. The more willing you are to feel your hurt, the more you can flow with life. You see your situation clearly and can find solutions.
3. Accept the Other Person Just As They Are: Acceptance is nothing more than surrendering to the truth; that person is the way that person is whether you like it or not. If you can’t be at peace with the truth of the way someone is, you are guaranteed to communicate non-acceptance and destroy the love. The other person will then get hurt and give it back to you.
4. Let Go of All Resentment: Resentment is a subconscious tool we use to avoid our hurt. It destroys love, effectiveness and well being. It keeps you from healing and it sabotages all your other relationships. To let it go, be willing to feel your hurt. Dive into it and feel it willingly like a child. Then notice that the other person is doing the very best that person can with that person’s extremely limited experience and ability.
5. See Your Role in the Problem: If there is a problem in your relationship, you are guaranteed to have something to do with it. As long as you blame the other person, you give that person all the power. You make yourself a victim and stay stuck. Once you see your role in the problem, you can do something about it.
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6. Ask for Forgiveness: Take responsibility for your role in the problem and ask for forgiveness. This is very humbling and can remove a lot of the other person’s resistance towards you. If the person refuses to forgive you, that’s okay. Just by your asking, you bring the person one step closer.
7. Communicate Your Hurt: If you are upset at someone, there will be distance in your relationship. If you can communicate your upset and get it off your chest, the upset loses power and the distance goes away. The best way to do this is to communicate the hurt that is under the upset: You did what you did, and I feel hurt.
8. Be a Good Listener: When you are a good listener, you create an environment of love. It becomes impossible to argue. Disputes get resolved, conflict ends, distance (from emotions) grows and the other person feels empowered. So listen. You don’t have to like what the other person is saying or agree with it. Just hear what the person has to say.
9. Be Willing to Lose the Person: The more you need someone for your happiness, the more you will push the person away. You will be defensive, get upset easy and hang on. Instead of creating an environment where the other person will want to be with you, you create an environment where the person will want to avoid you.
10. Make Sure the Person Feels Loved: If you want to have a great relationship, it’s up to you. The key is to make sure the other person always feel loved, accepted and appreciated just the way the person is. The more the other person feels empowered, the more he/she will be interested in your happiness and will empower you in return. It all goes back to the maxim that love begets love.
Follow these 10 steps and you may be one of Ferguson's new lucky 15%!
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