What if the protectiveness and concern that you thought your partner was showing is actually coercive control?  Here are 5 signs that you are in a controlling relationship that needs help:

Your relationship started with an explosion of emotion and “lovin’ feelings,” but somewhere along the line the lost that spark and you don’t know how to get it back.  The good news is that it is possible to rekindle the spark in your relationship.  But first, let’s understand what that spark is.

You seek, you prod, you plead, you poke, you push, you have “come to Jesus” meetings, but the more you do, the more your partner shuts down and withdraws. How can you help your emotionally unavailable partner to come out of that shell?

If you have had thoughts of divorce recently about your own marriage, there is some good news.  While those thoughts do signal that your marriage has problems, they can also be a strong motivator to do something about those problems and take the necessary steps to save your marriage.

Here are seven relationship skills that you and your partner can learn to build that strong, loving, supportive relationship you each seek.

No one in a relationship wants it to fail.  Obviously, couples want their relationship to work and last a lifetime.  But how?  What is the secret to making a relationship work?  It clearly doesn’t happen all by itself just because they love each other.  What are the relationship skills that make a relationship work for life?

The couples I see in marriage counseling have one dance and it’s all they know.  I call it “The Dance of Disconnection.”  But using Emotionally Focused Therapy, I have taught hundreds of couples a new dance, “The Dance Of Connection.”  And you can learn it too.

Sometimes we intend to, sometimes we don’t; sometimes the injuries are small like emotional paper cuts and heal quickly, sometimes the wounds fester and stay open for years.  The latter type of injury is the subject of this blog, injuries to the level of trust between two partners. Therapists call these type of injuries “attachment injuries.”  What is an attachment injury and how can it be repaired?

The research on EFT is impressive.  90% of couples who go through EFT significantly improve their relationship and 70-75% move out of relationships distress after treatment.  Compare that to the next leading couples therapy at a 35% success rate.  So, doing couples counseling with a counselor trained in Emotionally Focused Therapy gives your relationship a huge advantage, but here are some tips for getting the most out of the EFT process.

You are married, yet you feel alone both physically and emotionally.  You and your spouse are gone from sunup to sundown.  When you are both at home, you eat dinner while watching television.  On the weekends, one of you goes to the mall and the other goes to the golf course.  You are together all alone.  This is not what you signed up for when you said “I do.”  What happened?

Your brain instantly assigns meaning to everything your significant relationships do or say and then tells you what to do to get or keep your connection safe and secure. These are called “Attachment Messages.” What are your attachment messages and are they right?

You love your partner, right? And it’s mutual, right? Yet, you fight. Sometimes you fight a lot and the fights can get intense and leave you wondering, “If we love one another, why do we fight so much?” The movies, TV shows, and books we read tell us that people in love don’t fight, and if you do, you must have fallen out of love. That’s the rationale for too many divorces. But it’s not true. You haven’t fallen out of love, but you have fallen into a negative cycle.

Every mother knows the pain of labor and childbirth. There are ladies who would give anything to experience that pain. Instead, they live with the pain of infertility. It is a quiet but constant pain that comes every time they see another minus sign on their pregnancy test, every time they go to a friend’s baby shower, every time they hold their new nephew or niece, and every time they hear that well-meaning but devastating question: “When are you two going to start a family?”

Of course, men are not all carbon copies of one another. There are exceptions, but typically because of biology and environment, boys and men tend to be withdrawers emotionally. Women can also be withdrawers, but it’s more common in men. And it drives the women in their lives crazy. Why do men check out emotionally? Here are some reasons why most men are not emotionally present:

The state licensure exam determines whether counselor-associates will be licensed for the career they earned a master’s degree and served a 3000-hour internship for. Typically, to prepare for this exam, one will study for a couple of months. That’s a long time to study something, but Harvard University has been studying one subject for 75 years. What subject is that? Happiness.

There is a great book about marriage preparation titled, “Before You Say I Do.” This blog could be titled, “Before You Say I No longer Do.” If you are experiencing marital distress and considering divorce, there are some things to think through before you take that step.

One of the worst things that can happen to any marriage is an affair. We see it all the time in marriage counseling, a relationship in tatters from infidelity. The good news is that, after an affair the relationship wound can be repaired, but the bad news is that the scar will always be there. The best healing is prevention, and one way to prevent an affair is to understand the subtle way it can start.

Over my many years as a marriage therapist, I’ve seen marriages destroyed by affairs, but I have also seen many marriages repair, reconnect, and recover to become stronger than before. While the betrayal of an affair of any kind creates terrible damage to a relationship, it is not irreparable.

Whether you are starting your marriage or are an “old married couple,” every couple wants to be in love and stay in love. But how do you keep the flame of your love and closeness alive for the long run?

In childhood, the game of hide and seek was fun. One person hid and the other tried to find him or her. Great fun. But in marriage, hide and seek is definitely not fun.