The Relationship Gym

When I was younger, and didn’t understand how much fun relationship problems could be, I wanted to be a dolphin trainer. As a result I used to do a little work at a dolphinarium. At that point I had absolutely no idea the lessons my fish eating friends were teaching me that we could all apply to our relationship problems.

If you’ve ever had, or think you may ever have, relationship problems or even challenges, please read on

If you need marriage help (that you could actually refer to as true marriage help!) then I’d be very careful about who you choose to work with.

Why?

Because as a conservative estimate 50% of all marriages fail. I say conservative because lots of couples continue to live in relationships that just don’t work, I’d call that a failure, wouldn’t you?

This has been true for the last 55 years. People have been getting marriage help from counsellors and therapist specialising in this area for the last 40 years and shockingly, there has been no movement in that 50% failure rate. In the same way that we can now safely say that dieting will make you fat, traditional help with your marriage just isn’t going to fix it.

I have a client who is dealing with heartbreak. She recently broke up with someone she considered to be the love of her life. It happened very recently and as a result Christine* is feeling really raw. She wrote me a very pained email detailing just how totally overwhelmed she felt by her grief.

As often happens in these times Christine was feeling totally depressed and had talked herself into believing that her life was pointless, that she was useless and that she would never find anyone to love her. Added to which she's heaped on a bunch of financial pain due to some cash flow problems she was having. Christine had started to seriously consider taking a walk to the beach, leaving her trainers at the sea's edge and just swimming out**. If  you'd like to know how to get yourself out of that kind of pain, should it ever happen to you, then please read on.

I was recently talking with a client looking for dating advice who expressed great frustration with the amount of stress she was experiencing whilst looking for her Mr. Right. I know it can be a real challenge but I like my dating advice clients to keep the whole thing very simple. In fact I think even talking about dating is a major mistake as it implies something far heavier than what you are actually doing initially. I've got some dating advice for you that others have used to great effect when it comes to meeting up with someone for the first time and how to make it more fun for you. As always this is useful for everyone that ever has to meet anyone. If you want to know how to enjoy meeting strangers then please read on.

Love and Affection Guaranteed

Would you like to know a quick and easy-to-master skill that will make you more attractive overnight? Are you ready to give out doses of love and affection guaranteed to make you and those around you feel even better about life?  One of my 'How to Talk to Women' clients, Robert, was complaining that he wasn't getting much in the way of compliments or affection from his friends. Beneath the shell of being fine, it had him wondering if he was doing something wrong or whether they even liked him.

How to Ask Questions

I've been working with a client on what to say when someone asks about her relationship history. This is a bit of a sticky subject for Suzy as she's now 28 and, aside from a relationship she had through University, she's never been in a serious relationship. She had a couple of dates recently. When this question came up on both of them she was left feeling like she handled it very badly, got totally self conscious and went home early.

Do you have a 'Warm, Feminine and Available' Look?

I was out at a party last week and a female friend of mine told me that she only seemed to ever attract the deeply desperate male or players that were `only interested in one thing'. Shefali went on to say that she did her best to protect herself by never really engaging with men she didn't know. I know Shefali pretty well and was surprised to hear she was having any difficulty attracting what she'd call `nice' men. I suggested that she worked harder at cultivating what Leil Lowndes terms a `warm, feminine and available' look. The results astounded her and frankly even I was a little surprised.