Your relationships with your spouse, partner, children, family, friends, and colleagues are so critical to your happiness and success in life. Learn healthy communication and conflict resolution strategies and how to best nurture your relationships to help them thrive.
In your daily life, you encounter a variety of situations in which you need or want to know someone better.
You meet clients or customers at work.
You're introduced to a potential new friend.
Or you start dating someone new who might turn out to be a romantic partner.
In all of these situations, you'll need to ask some getting to know you questions to learn more about the person beyond the superficial chit-chat when you first meet.
Do you ever think about how the health of your relationship impacts the rest of your life?
When you are more intentional about your relationship, it becomes the learning laboratory for your personal evolution.
You learn relationship habits and skills that help you heal the past and move forward with more self-awareness, emotional maturity, and confidence.
As you both grow as individuals, your relationship will evolve past the heady intoxication of your early love to a more mature and satisfying intimacy.
But how do couples evolve past conflict, boredom, and disengagement to build a healthy relationship that stands the test of time?
You wonder why the bank account has gotten so low, only to discover your partner has been spending without telling you.
You overhear your spouse sharing your most private information with her best friend after she promised to keep it confidential.
Your partner lashes out at you in anger and threatens to leave you.
Couples can do and say thoughtless and unkind things to one another, things that erode intimacy and security in the relationship.
Once this happens, it can be hard to rebuild trust when you have been so deeply hurt or betrayed by your partner.
You can't believe you're in this situation.
How did it happen?
Everything was so great in the beginning. You were so in love. You were such a great couple together.
But then things started to change.
The cruel comments. The controlling behaviors. The subtle threats.
The one person in the world who is supposed to love you the most, who's supposed to have your back and be your closest confidant, is emotionally abusing you.
At first, you didn't know what was happening. Maybe you thought it was your fault. You hoped it was just an off week, or month, or year.
Sincerely apologizing is an advanced emotional skill.
It requires doing something most of us find extremely difficult — getting past the ego self.
The thought process leading to an apology is complex and involves pushing past many internal barriers. We must honestly examine ourselves, our behavior or words, the motivation behind the behavior or words, and the feelings of those we've injured or offended.