If you have any issues going on in your relationship (and let’s face it, most of us do) I REALLY want you to watch this video. After being a divorce attorney for 20 years and working with couples here at Sedona Soul Adventures for over 17 years, I know that the #1 problem that most couples have is not communication – it’s the lack of nurturing each other…of getting what you need and giving what the other one needs. Watch this and you’ll see what I’m talking about.
Let us help you get back into the Nurturing Zone. Come to Sedona and do a Couples Retreat. Can you imagine how good it would feel to come back into the love and connection that brought you together in the first place?
Call us and connect with one of our Retreat Guides. They’ll connect with both of you separately and really dig deep to discover what’s keeping you out of the Nurturing Zone.
Then they’ll put together a retreat that’s custom designed for exactly what you need and want, and to bring you back into the love, connection and sizzle that you crave.
Or if you’d prefer, call us toll-free at 1-877-204-3664 (US and Canada). For our friends outside the US and Canada, call 01 928-204-5988 or click here and one of our Retreat Guides will call you.
You might also like to download your free copy of our “Sedona Guide to Couples Retreats.” That will give you a real idea of what we do and how it works. But please — for the sake of your relationship, do something to get yourself back into the Nurturing Zone.
Sherri completes her 4th Retreat (!) her 2nd Couples Retreat, and says, “Every experience has been unique and special, and worth every penny!!!”
Today I’m going to talk to you about How to get what you want in your relationship. If you’ve been following me for a while, you probably already know that I was a divorce attorney in Omaha, Nebraska for over 20 years. And then in 2002, I started Sedona Soul Adventures, where we do retreats for individuals and couples. So I spent 20 years divorcing people, and now I’ve spent almost 20 years helping people stay together.
Our record for helping people with their relationships is absolutely stunning and it’s because we’re able to dig deep to get at the root of the problem, and sometimes the problem is not what either person thinks it is. A big piece of this is finding out what each of you need in your relationship and deciding if you are willing to give it to the other person?
We had a couple here last year and it was stunning. The husband had an affair and on the surface it looked like just one of the usual situations that sadly we see a lot of. They had grown apart and the husband, I’ll call him Mike, had an affair. Even though he said he loved his wife, I’ll call her Linda, and he adored their two children, the affair had happened and it had gone on longer than Mike had originally told Linda. Linda, of course, was devastated and really, really angry and felt like she could never trust him again. And of course, those reactions are completely natural.
Mike’s father was a womanizer and his mother left his father when he was very young. He and his mother went to live with relatives in a household that was basically full of men-hating women. Mike grew up hearing about how terrible men are, how you can’t trust them and they’re all womanizers, and he grew up afraid that he would be like that too. But he wasn’t, he’d been married for 20 years, had never had the urge to have an affair and was even saying to us over and over again, “I can’t believe I did that, I can’t believe I jeopardized my whole life” like that.
Linda grew up in a family where her mother constantly criticized her father and so Linda thought that’s how you communicate with a husband. You get him to do what you want by criticizing him.
We discovered through our process that the needs that Mike has are Words of Praise and Gifts.
At this point, this might sound to some of you like the Love Languages work that is out there, which I like, but what we do is very different and very specific for each person.
We discovered through our process that the needs that Linda has are Listening, Conversation and Protection.
Which also made sense because Linda’s mother also criticized Linda and her father would never stand up for her with her mother, so Linda grew up believing, “I have no one to protect me.”
So Linda needs a man who will talk to her and protect her. And we quickly discovered that Mike just simply wasn’t talking to her and really hadn’t been throughout their marriage and she was, quite understandably, upset about it. And of course, the affair was the ultimate betrayal, how could anyone feel protected by someone who had betrayed them?
Mike didn’t want to have a lot of conversations with Linda because she was constantly criticizing him. She thought she was “helping him” by telling him what to do and how to do it, but it all just felt like criticism to him and Linda got it, how it would feel like that to him.
So here we have a man whose most basic relationship need is Words of Praise and all he’s getting is Criticism. We have a woman whose most basic relationship need is Conversation and we have a man who won’t talk to her.
But then here’s the kicker:
When we discovered that Mike’s other need was Gifts, we asked him about that. He started tearing up as he told us that he never got gifts when he was growing up, not even for his birthday.
And guess who gives him gifts? The woman that he had an affair with. And guess what else she gave him? Words of Praise. His other deepest need. It wasn’t about sex, it was about him feeling valued.
When Mike and Linda realized they were living in this crazy, vicious cycle of he needs Words of Praise and she’s criticizing him, and she needs Conversation and he doesn’t want to talk to her because he doesn’t want to get criticized…and how this had much more to do with their childhoods than with what is going on now…and it’s just this crazy thing that keeps on happening and keeps on going back and forth until someone finally says, “STOP! Wait a minute. He needs Words of Praise and Gifts, are you willing to give that to him?”
And we say to him, “She needs conversation and protection, are you willing to give that to her?” It was harder for him to say yes, because they had 20 years of not really talking to each other. But when she saw him tear up over the gifts thing, her heart just melted. When he got that she was just doing what her mother had taught her to do, he got it. They both got it — that you have to give the other one what they need, not what you think they need, but what they need and want, you have to nurture them in what they need.
If you’re not willing to do that, you don’t have a relationship. And you certainly don’t have a relationship that’s going to last for very much longer.
Now understand, I’m not saying that what Mike did was okay, far from it. Having an affair is simply not okay, but when Linda understood all this, she really got it, her heart opened and she was able to forgive him and love him again.
So How about you?
Do you know what you want in a relationship? I’ve been surprised to discover that most people don’t.
Do you know (really) what your partner wants?
Do you care? That’s actually the most important one, because if you aren’t willing to give your partner what they want, things aren’t going to work.
Have you spent any time thinking about how your parents were with each other because that can be really telling.
Were they happy?
Were they loving with each other?
Did they talk?
Did they fight?
What did they teach you? (Even though they probably didn’t think they were teaching you.)
But even more deeply, how was your childhood?
Did you feel loved?
Did you feel valued?
Were you criticized?
Did you grow up believing there’s something wrong with you?
Sadly, for many of us, things happen to make us believe that we’re not enough, that we don’t deserve love and then we bring all that into our relationships and it comes out in all kinds of crazy ways, like having affairs and mistreating the person we’re supposed to love.
What do you really want?
What do you crave?
What do you need?
Come to Sedona and we’ll help you discover that and help move out the blocks that are keeping you from the loving relationship you desire. That’s what we do all day, every day with our custom-designed retreats.
What you need is probably different than what your partner needs. The blocks that have happened for you are the result of different things that caused the blocks for your partner. We’ll dig all that out and bring you into the love that’s waiting for you.
Go to SedonaRetreatGuide.com and get your complimentary copy of The Sedona Guide to Couples Retreats today.
Or even better, if you’d like to talk to someone about doing a retreat that’s custom designed for exactly what the two of you need, call us at 928/204-5988.
I hope this helped, and if you got value from this video, please take the time to like it, share it with someone in your life who think might get something out of it and subscribe to our channel.
You can have the life AND the relationship you want – I know it!