I just found this really good article about how to fight fairly and communicate with your spouse. I thought I would share this!

A Couple’s Guide to Fighting

It is amazing how much I can talk and still have trouble communicating. I am extremely bad at communicating my needs and wants. It may come from the fact that I don’t even know what I want! I just hate that people assume they know what I want all the time.

I try to communicate with people the best I can. But how do you tell people what you need so that they understand. And what if they never do? What do you do then? I am always oscillating between trying so hard not to hurt anyone’s feelings and blowing up because I don’t feel heard.

I am currently reading Eat Pray Love, and I just finished the first section of the book where she goes to Italy in search of pleasure. What is that exactly? Just like the woman in the book, I think I am at a point in my life where I am trying to figure that out. I just don’t have the money to go to Italy for months an figure it out. So I’ll have to keep going and figure this out while living my life and doing what I have to do.

Hopefully once I figure it out, I’ll be able to express myself better. This may help my various relationships immensely!

I am seriously guilty of this. I too often argue for the sake of being right but never actually gain anything from the argument. Me and D. often leave arguments both frustrated. I will work at being happy and not being right. I will try to let go of arguments and try to listen more… in all my life’s situations! This article found on http://charlottekamman.com/ really made me think and I will try to apply this as much as I can!

Counter-Values are things you just can’t stand. Things that make your life miserable when it happens. Things that you try to avoid at all cost in your life. Just like the values I mentionned in a previous blog entry, counter-values need to be respected if you want to be happy and live a life you are comfortable with. Of course, there are moments in our lives where we must do things that don’t necessarily please us. But if your life is full of your counter-values, you will be extremely miserable!

Here are my counter values according to the book by Isabelle Nazare-Aga titled: Je suis comme je suis (it’s a French book, the title means I am who I am)

Counter-Value #1: Boredom

I hate being bored. I simply can’t stand it. I agonize over events where I know I will be bored. I try to carry stuff with me at all times to keep me occupied: magazines, books etc. I can’t even eat alone… I find it boring. So I read or watch TV if I have to be alone. When I feel boredom, I have to find something to do. Even if it’s just going to the store to get milk. Weekends where I have no plans are awful. I need to see people, do things… anything!

Counter-Value #2:Uselessness

I don’t like feeling useless and I don’t like things I consider useless. I like helping other and being attentive to the needs of others. I will often offer my help to people. I also don’t like meetings where people talk and talk but don’t come up with any action. Being proactive is important to me.

Counter-Value #3: Lack of trust

I need to trust people. When I buy for a company I need to trust it. My first reaction to new places or people is to be careful before I trust them. I have a hard time with change because once I trust a place or a person, I don’t want anything to change.

Counter-Value #4: Lack of recognition

I am very sensitive when it comes to compliments or even thank yous. I feel really offended and hurt when people don’t thank me or recognize the work I have done. Sometimes I do expect to much though, and I am often dissapointed. I like when people recognize me as a good person or a good worker.

Counter-Value #5: Break-ups or loss

I get very anxious if I lose someone or when someone leaves. I am often very sad, even if that person has just left for a trip.  In love, every single fight or conflict brings up the fear of a break up. Thinking of anybody I love dying terrifies me. I also have a hard time moving or changing something major in my life.

Counter-Value #6: Solitude

I feel awful when I have to spend a weekend night alone at home, especially on a Saturday! I try to have people around me. When I am alone I feel anxious, sad or even depressed. I try to plan my weekends so I always have something to do. I like doing things with other people, not alone. If I am alone one nigh, I will call someone and chat. In love, I am very dependant, I don’t want to be alone. It scares me immensely to think that I might end up alone when I’m older.

Ouch… reading this I realize I have a lot of stuff to work on. Counter-Values are not all necessarily positive. They are just what I need right now to feel fulfilled. But some of those I’ll have to change. Especially the being alone one. With the situation with D. I will have to get used to being alone… I need to find a way to appreciate it or I will go crazy!

Me and D. had a bit of a fight yesterday. It’s a bit difficult to see where our relationship is going. We do love each other but I don’t know what he has to offer… He can’t be WITH me. All I get is time here and there, as much as he can because he does make the effort, but only time here or there anyhow…

And he asked me a question yesterday. He asked me what I wanted. I just heard this song on the radio and that’s what I would like… A home, a family, happy children and parents in love. Enjoying the little things from daily life. Seeing my children grow up and enjoying every moment of it… and a home I can’t wait to get home to!

Oh yeah
Yeah oh yeah

The only ground I ever owned was sticking to my shoes
Now I look at my front porch and this panoramic view
I can sit and watch the fields fill up
With rays of glowing sun
Or watch the moon lay on the fences
Like that’s where it was hung
My blessings are in front of me
It’s not about the land
I’ll never beat the view
From my front porch looking in

There’s a carrot top who can barely walk
With a sippy cup of milk
A little blue eyed blonde with shoes on wrong
‘Cause she likes to dress herself
And the most beautiful girl holding both of them
And the view I love the most
Is my front porch looking in, yeah

I’ve traveled here and everywhere
Following my job
I’ve seen the paintings from the air
Brushed by the hand of God
The mountains and the canyons reach from sea to shining sea
But I can’t wait to get back home
To the one he made for me
It’s anywhere I’ll ever go and everywhere I’ve been
Nothing takes my breath away
Like my front porch looking in

There’s a carrot top who can barely walk
With a sippy cup of milk
A little blue eyed blonde with shoes on wrong
‘Cause she likes to dress herself
And the most beautiful girl holding both of them
Yeah the view I love the most
Is my front porch looking in

I see what beautiful is about
When I’m looking in
Not when I’m looking out

There’s a carrot top who can barely walk
With a sippy cup of milk
A little blue eyed blonde with shoes on wrong
‘Cause she likes to dress herself
And the most beautiful girl holding both of them
Yeah the view I love the most

Oh, the view I love the most
Is my front porch looking in
Yeah
Oh, there’s a carrot top who can barely walk
(From my front porch looking in)
A little blue eyed blonde with shoes on wrong, yeah
And the most beautiful girl
(Beautiful girl
From my front porch looking in)
Holding both of them
Oh, yeah

See the video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-HtiZcHUmE

My life is pretty weird right now. I spend one week with D. and the other one alone, like a single mom. It’s very bizarre.

I grew up switching from one house to another. I always hated it. As much as I don’t enjoy routine, I really hated having a double life. What’s really ironic is I’m living the same situation as an adult!

When we lived together, each week would be different. When my stepson would show up, life would be completely different… D. would be completely different. Now it’s different because we don’t live together, but I still lead this double life. Kind of like a superhero, but no heroic gestures and no superpowers…

D. seems happy with this new situation. He has been able to throw himself into work and become what he considers a success in his field. He can also throw himself in his role as a father, being 100% present at all times and devote himself entirely to his son that week. We have very different views of what it means to be a success and what it means to be a parent.

For me, being a success does not just mean being successful at your job. It’s being able to balance your life so that you have a job you enjoy, having a family, being in a relationship and having great friends. And all of that needs to be balanced. I don’t think D. can do that. He seems to see a family, friends and a relationship as something he cannot fit in his life and still be the type of father he believes he needs to be and be successful at work…

I don’t know where this relationship is going. I don’t know what this means for my life. I’m happy when I’m with D…. but what kind of life is this? How can I be two people. I don’t believe in this. I’m not at easy like D. is with this double life. I’m one person, whole and full of love and life… both weeks. Right now I feel as if someone is telling me that one week I get to eat great meals but the second week I get soup and maybe some bread and I need to wait for the following week to eat properly!

I don’t understand why there can’t be balance in our lives. I have found balance with him. I don’t feel like I’m neglecting anything or anyone. Yet, when he was with me , that’s how he felt.

So, this is my single mom week. I don’t mind being alone. I have a pretty good life, lots of things to do. I write, I study, I see friends and I like my life… but I don’t like this double life…So how do I fix this? Only D. could fix this but I don’t know how he could… I can’t offer any suggestions. So we will stay this way for now and I’ll try to adapt to this double life and see how it goes… but I don’t really have high hopes and dreams for this relationship…

I jsut finished reading this interview with a woman who decided that in order to save her marriage, she had to do… well, nothing! She decided to think of herself first and let her husband deal with his own issues. Talk about a choice! When I said that everything we do in life is a choice, this is a great example. She chose not to get involved in his issues, to let him work it out. She chose not let it affect her.

Now, I don’t know that I would be able to be as serene as this woman. Knowing my husband spent months somewhere out there, maybe with other women would be too much for me to bear… and that would be my choice, that would be respecting myself. But I like this woman’s guts for not letting it get to her, choosing to not become part of the problem!

Here is an excerpt and the link to read about this woman’s choice:

Out of the blue, Montana writer Laura Munson’s husband told her he wanted to leave, that he didn’t love her. She calmly replied that she didn’t buy it, sat back and let him figure it out. Four months later, following all the signs of a mid-life crisis, he changed his mind and returned home. After Munson wrote about her story in the New York Times, she was inundated with requests for her secrets, which she reveals in her new book, This Is Not the Story You Think It Is. Munson spoke to TIME about how she saved her marriage — and her sanity — by refusing to be her husband’s problem.

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1978903,00.html#ixzz0kbzpUN5d

This is something I always try to do in my life, although not always successfully. D. has LOADS of issues with this and I know lots of people around me who struggle with time debt! This article really makes a whole lot of sense! We spend so much time worrying about money, we should spend some time worrying about how we spend our time. This is also a good way to teach our kids not to be stressed out, going from one activity to another. To learn to say no sometimes and have time to do the real important stuff: develop relationships and take care of ourselves!

Struggling with Time-Debt

I recently found myself, late one night, staring at my computer screen with a sinking, hard feeling in my stomach and a bad taste in my mouth. A familiar bad taste. The taste of debt. But I wasn’t looking at my bank statement — I was looking at my calendar. 

I’d borrowed a few hours from my normal work routine to do something special with my kids, and then cancelled a date with my husband to make up the work hours, and then tried to reschedule with him but ran into a doctor’s appointment I’d forgotten about. 

Time-management coach Thekla Richter says I’m not alone. “Everybody has that problem,” she says. “No matter how good we are at time managment. We want to do more things than we have time to do. It just means that we have lots of desire and lots of imagination.” 

Once I’d had that rock-bottom moment of insight, the pattern that led to it was clear. 

Running out of time
Looking back, I could see how over the past six months I’ve taken on more and more freelance work without letting any of my other commitments go. To make it all work, I started borrowing. It was just a few hours here and there at first: saying I’d do the laundry tomorrow instead of right now, asking my husband to drive for gymnastics this week and promising to do it next time. 

Pretty soon, I needed to start repaying some of that borrowed time. Deadlines I’d gotten extensions on came due like dreaded tax bills, chores I’d postponed piled up around the house. I ran into the same problems I’m familiar with from money-based debt: I owed more than I could pay. There were simply not enough hours in the day for all the commitments I had. 

Richter says the biggest consequence for perennial time borrowers is losing joy in life. You’re constantly rushing around, and even the things you love become no fun anymore. I’ll add health problems, sleep deprivation, short-tempered fights with my family and making expensive mistakes to that list. 

Being out of time is not unlike living under clutter in that sense. When you always need to be in two places at once, you can’t be your best at anything. You make mistakes, lose things, miss deadlines. That can start costing you real money, as well as lowering your quality of life. 

Time wasn’t always in such short supply for me. As a stay-at-home mom managing a household of five people on one salary, I’d adopted the adage, “I have more time than money” as my personal motto. 

For years, the best solution to any problem I faced was the time-intensive DIY approach. I learned a lot of money-saving skills during that period, and spent many hours gardening, baking, mending, doing bike repair and bartering goods and services. 

But when I didn’t drop my DIY ways after I started working for money again, it quickly became apparent that I no longer had more time than money. 

I was sleeping four or five hours a night trying to make my temporal ends meet, and still falling further behind. It seemed like I was working every waking hour to keep a commitment for someone else. My kids were feeling it, too. They wanted more downtime, and were showing it through frequent tantrums and poor sleep. 

Something had to give. 

Finding time
First, I did the time equivalent of declaring bankruptcy: I quit everything. No more writer’s group, no more swim lessons, no more gymnastics classes, no more weekly library story hour. 

I turned my suddenly-much-happier kids loose to play with their neighborhood friends, watch Sesame Street and bake cookies with me in the afternoons. I spent my evenings at home, not running around town trying to keep up with a social life that suited my 25-year-old self better than my mom-self. 

After quitting (almost) everything, here are a few techniques I used to bring my time debt under control: 

• I prioritized. Just as the first step with money management is to know where your money is going, you need to know where your time is going. “You need some kind of system where you know big picture what are your priorities and values and what are all the projects that are on your plate,” Thekla says. “That’s really like a budget.”

 

• I paid myself first. To get out of debt, you need to pay yourself first. Just like saving money, I needed to put time for myself ahead of the time I give to others if I wanted to make any headway on my ‘time debt’. I started insisting on ten minutes alone in the bathroom each morning to take a quick shower. That ten minutes of private time has grown into hours of personal time each week as my whole family gets used to the idea that Mommy needs time to herself.

 

• I practiced saying “no”. Richter told me that the key to time management is being willing to say ‘no’ to yourself and other people. “It all comes down to having to make some really tough and really proactive choices,” she said. Just as you can’t spend the same dollar twice, each minutes can only be lived once. Whatever you choose to do with it means not doing something else.

Unlike money, you can’t get more time. Sure, you can become more efficient up to a point, but eventually you just have to say no to something you really want to do, because you want something else more. Time management is all about tough choices. 

Richter suggests asking yourself these questions when choosing to make a time commitment: 

• “What am I giving up to do this?”
• “How am I going to feel about this decision later?”
• “How will I feel about this in a month, in a year, in ten years?”

She also suggests making time commitments for now instead of later. Like money, time we commit to spend in the future seems easier to handle than time we have to spend right now. But like money, it really isn’t. You won’t have 20 free hours in six months that you don’t have now. 

Take time for yourself
Speaking of free hours, be sure to leave yourself some as you plan your time. Keep a bank of unscheduled time in your day is like having an emergency fund. Things will crop up unexpectedly that demand your time. Having resources to put towards them will save you from breaking other commitments or stressing yourself out. 

I’m still far from perfect at this. The great time management tips Thekla gave me I got during a phone interview at 1 a.m. But I took a break while writing this article to have a romantic dinner with my husband. I’m bringing things back into balance. 

That doesn’t mean I’ll never be busy again, just like managing my finances doesn’t mean I’ll never have a broke week again. But the overall picture is healthier and more joyful. 

J.D.’s note: I so relate to this article. I, too, have been struggling with time-debt, and have been trying to find ways to beat it. One method that seems to be working for me is to put first things first. (If you’ve got a copy of my book, turn to page 20. See that sidebar? That’s what I’ve been reminding myself of as I work to make time for the important stuff.) 

This article is about Self-Improvement  Thursday, 8th April 2010 (by Sierra Black)  

 http://www.getrichslowly.org/blog/2010/04/08/struggling-with-time-debt/

Since I moved out, I find that I have more energy. I don’t sleep as much or at all during the day and I am actually making plans, keeping myself busy and taking care of myself. Could distancing myself from my relationship have caused that? The article also mentions the importance of communication though, and in that sense, we are absolutely horrible, me and D. with this. We don’t really talk. We never solve problems. Everything I say is always seen as a critique and it only helps to keep us apart more and more. We actually seem happier when we DON’T spend time together… could that mean something? Here the article that caused this reflection.

Healthy Relationships Create Healthy Life!

Is your relationship with your significant other, mother, father, or friend making you sick? Believe it or not, there’s scientific evidence to suggest that our relationships can actually contribute to illness. Therefore, in order to achieve a healthy life, it is important to make our relationships healthy.

There have been studies to suggest that people who are married often tend to live longer. Experts reason that marriage provides a nurturing environment for individuals, enabling them to better fight off disease. The support of a loving spouse can make all the difference in the world, especially when one is facing a serious illness.

Maintaining healthy relationships can help to lower our stress. Stress is considered to be an important contributing factor for illness. By improving our relationships with other peopleparticularly with family memberswe can cut down on the stress which can sap our strength, making it difficult for us to ward off infections.

But it is not enough to know that healthy relationships can make us healthier. It is also critically important to know exactly how we can ensure that our relationships are healthy. Psychologists contend that the key ingredient of a healthy relationship is communication. Unless we feel safe to communicate our feelings, we will be unable to thrive in our relationships. If you don’t like to confront people, you might find it more difficult to communicate. Therefore, you must learn effective communication skills.

Before you can communicate in your relationships, you must know your goals and desires. In other words, you have to know what you want before you can articulate it to another person. You should try to keep an open mind, listening carefully to what the other person has to say. If you are bothered by a person’s behavior, try to avoid saying something like, “You are always late.” Instead, say something to the effect that, “When you are out and I don’t hear back from you, I worry.” That way, you are telling the other person how his or her behavior makes you feel. It is also vitally important that you admit your mistakes and apologize for them. Such a simple action shows that you are really concerned about the other person’s feelings.

Healthy relationships also depend upon setting limits for yourself, and respecting the limits of other people. You should never tolerate abuse in a relationship, whether it is emotional abuse or physical abuse. At the first warning signs, you should seek distance from the abuser. Such distance is critical for your emotional well-being and long-term health.

Ray Kelly is an Exercise Scientist with 15 years experience in the health and fitness industry. Check out his Biggest Loser Australia Review or http://www.free-online-health.com

I’ve been feeling very guilty this weekend after a conversation with D. I felt like an awful person after what he shared with me. Basically, he told me that being with me had changed his life negatively. He let go of projects, friends and so on. Many of his sentences make me feel guilty. Things he does with his son are always accompanied by: it was nice, it had been a long time. As if my being around meant he could not be himself.

I felt awful. Felt like an awful person and tried to figure out where I went wrong. I understood what he said.  A long time ago, with my daughter’s father, I did the same thing. I stopped seing my friends, stopped doing the things I like and concentrated on that relationship. It was just simpler than the fighting. For a long time I blamed him. He was a jerk. He ruined my life. He only brought negative things in my life. After some time, I stopped being so angry and decided to take a look at my choices and my responsiblilty in all of it. It makes no sense to keep on blaming someone else. I could not help him, I could not change his behavior. I could only take a look at myself.

I CHOSE to let go of friends. I thought it was what was needed for him to be happy. I CHOSE the easy way instead of discussing with him and seeing what it was he really wanted and finding some sort of compromise. I CHOSE to let go of my projects because I thought I needed to follow in his projects for him to be happy. I CHOSE to put myself aside, to forget who I was for that relationship. Most of all I CHOSE to stay with him even though this was a bad and violent relationship.

Now, don’t get me wrong. What he did and how he treated me is unnaceptable and nobody should treat another human being this way. He CHOSE to solve his problems with violence. He can only blame himself on that one. I CHOSE to stay and I have myself to blame for this.

I hope D. starts looking inside himself and figure out why HE CHOSE the things he chose to do. What made him do it? Why would he think this is what I wanted? Why was he in this relationship if it made him unhappy? He CHOSE to stay. He CHOSE to make those changes in his life. And I am done feeling guilty about this.

Instead, I’m reflecting on my own choices… Reflecting on the choices I have made in this relationship and continue to make…

Choices… Everything is a choice!