Women engage into relationships differently. Women often say that they seem to be the ones who work to keep their relationship going. They feel that their partner does not invest much into the relationship. Women often desire that their partners be more proactive, rather than sitting back and only discussing the relationship when the woman brings up a concern. Even then, women feel that their partner gets defensive to their concerns so that she feels like the “bad guy” even though she is trying to do something that she hopes would benefit the relationship.
To help a relationship, your counselor must understand how women perceive their role in their relationship. For many women, their relationship is absolutely the most important thing in their life. Job, friends and other interests are secondary. For many men, while their relationship is very important, it is not the major defining factor in their lives. They may see themselves first as an accountant, pilot, or athlete, who also happens to be married. When they’re at work, they focus on work. If there is a problem in the relationship, they are often able to put it on the back burner while they attend to other things.
Women, on the other hand, may allow the relationship to serve as a kind of emotional barometer. If things are going well at home, they can be happy and productive in their job, with friends, or in mothering their children. When things are not going well with their partner, daily life can feel like a real struggle. If there’s a fight in the morning, she’ll brood about it all day. When he comes home, and she asks what he has to say about the morning’s episode, he may reply that he really didn’t have time to think about it. Women can hardly believe this, and think he’s being cool or distant, or totally uncaring, but truthfully, he may well switch into a different gear when he leaves the house.
For a relationship to be healthy, both partners must feel as though their needs are being met, even if there must be some compromise. If you need more communication, more sharing of feelings to feel satisfied, then work needs to be done in the relationship. If your partner is closed to the idea of talking about this, or gets angry or defensive when you try to talk about feelings, and shows no willingness to work on it, seek counseling for yourself.
If just one person in the relationship learns to communicate better the relationship can improve. Destiny can teach you communication strategies, problem solving strategies, stress and anger management techniques, how to respect and honor your partner and yourself, and how to build a solid foundation of trust and love between you and your partner.
