In 2014 a group of artists in England asked thousands of people one question: “What is your happiest memory?” The responses were nearly always about relationships of one kind or another. There was a longing for relationship and home. Less than 1% mentioned material things.

“Not being seeing anyone for a long time. I feel fine about it. Is it my expectation or a societal pull for me to be in a relationship? Is it my choice or am I here by default? Is there more I should know? What if I need help to change my status or be more content with who I am?”

Do any of these issues have a bigger impact in your life than you desire?

• Being single …But not my choice
  • Not of my choosing
  • Unwanted gift – take it back
• Defining what it means to be “single” in this generation
• Some truths
• Shifting standards and moving the goal posts of acceptability
• Let’s look at some literature: What goes in…
  • Teens magazines and books
  • Women’s magazines and books
  • Men’s magazines and books
  • Cybernet and internet: (Chat rooms, blogging, webcam)
  • Pornography
• What am I digesting and how does it reverberate upon me?
• Defining sex in this generation: When is “sex”, sex?
• It’s an age thing: Life stages
• What is it with men and commitment anyway?
• Self-pleasuring: therapeutic or just wrong? A role or no role?
  • Can’t keep the promise not do it again
  • Self-condemnation worse than the act
• Intimacy:
  • How far is too far?
  • I want to know what love is
  • Me and my view, determining my relationship with others
  • Intimacy as a prelude to right intimacy with others
• The past living in the present and informing the future
• Family Scripts: Why do I do the things I don’t want to do?
  • “You’re just like your…” is reverberating in my mind
  • How did I turn out to be just like…when I tried so hard and swore I would never be.
• Developing Body, Mind and Spirit
  • Enhancing relationships through communication skills
  • Self-Concept

What would you like to achieve? Fix a relationship, fix a marriage, surviving marriage, surviving separation or surviving divorce. Help is available and it also available online, by webcam, telephone from anywhere in the world or face to face, including in groups

Maybe you want to learn to love again.

The Gottman Institute Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: Are divorce predictors. In Gottman’s research on marriages, he asked two questions:

1. What makes for a satisfying marriage?
2. What predicts divorce?

He found that not all negatives are alike. Four of them stood out as being the most destructive and biggest predictors of divorce and separation. Gottman dubbed these, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. They are Criticism, Defensiveness, Contempt and Stonewalling. While most relationships will have some of these, healthy relationships don’t use them nearly as often and do more to repair them when they are used.

If you are noticing any of the these styles of communicating increasing in your discussions, act now to learn safer and more effective ways to talk about your differences.…..

Criticism: When you criticize your partner you are basically implying that there is something wrong with them. You have taken a problem between you and put it inside your partner’s body. Using the words: “You always” or “you never” are common ways to criticize. Your partner is most likely to feel under attack and to respond defensively. This is a dangerous pattern…..

 Defensiveness: When you attempt to defend yourself from a perceived attack with a counter complaint you are being defensive.

 Contempt: Contempt is any statement or nonverbal behavior that puts yourself on a higher ground than your partner. Mocking your partner, calling them names, rolling your eyes and sneering in disgust are all examples of contempt…

 Stonewalling: Stonewalling happens when the listener withdraws from the conversation. The stonewaller might actually physically leave or they might just stop tracking the conversation and appear to shut down…….

Learn the antidotes to the Four Horsemen. Learn to love again. Maybe it is now about learning to break up amicably.

Relationship counselling with The Kairos Centre Team, is not about keeping couples together if they do not want to remain together. Even if you do not yet know what you want; whether you still love the other person or want to revive, refresh, regenerate or survive the relationship – the work focuses upon better understanding self; family scripts inherited and playing out in the relationship; core emotional needs not being met and we fight to get them met (in perhaps 90% plus of relationships that we see – which includes such core needs as needing to feel Secure, Respect, Approval, Acceptance, Affection, Appreciation, Attention, Comfort, Encouragement and support.

We will fight, flight and/or freeze to get depleted core needs met, since getting them met and keeping them topped up, is not negotiable. Ineffective communication skills may first need some work

Lost each other: Life stages maybe. I’m not the person I use to be. You’re not the person I fell in love with”.

Lost that loving feeling: I just don’t love you like I use to. I think that I love you, but I am not in love with you!

Constant arguing: “You say black, I say white. I say black you say white. What is going on? We use to agree on most things”.

Difficulties with Relationships: “Some make it seem so easy. Is there something wrong with me? My past may be living in my present and dictating my future”.

An Affair: “They understood me and my needs so much more than my partner. I felt an attraction…

Their mobile & PC play such a big role in their day to day that I feel second best.

Compatibility issues: “Have we changed too much and grown apart that we are trying to hold something together that has gone forever?”

Abuses: “Physical, Verbal, Spiritual, Emotional is that what is meant by domestic violence? Does it really affect a significant number of relationships, but is unnamed and under reported by men who also suffer at the hands of women partners”?

Sexuality, Sex & Sexual difficulties: What to do I do when it ain’t working any more?

Change motivation: “I find myself doing that which I don’t want to do or not doing that which I want to do! Why? How do I change from my ways, practices, habits, compulsions and addictions keeping me from change?”

Lost each other: Life stages maybe. I’m not the person I use to be. You’re not the person I fell in love with”.

Lost that loving feeling: I just don’t love you like I use to. I think that I love you, but I am not in love with you!

Constant arguing: “You say black, I say white. I say black you say white. What is going on? We use to agree on most things”.

Difficulties with Relationships: “Some make it seem so easy. Is there something wrong with me? My past may be living in my present and dictating my future”.

An Affair: “They understood me and my needs so much more than my partner. I felt an attraction…

Their mobile & PC play such a big role in their day to day that I feel second best.

Compatibility issues: “Have we changed too much and grown apart that we are trying to hold something together that has gone forever?”

Abuses: “Physical, Verbal, Spiritual, Emotional is that what is meant by domestic violence? Does it really affect a significant number of relationships, but is unnamed and under reported by men who also suffer at the hands of women partners”?

Sexuality, Sex & Sexual difficulties: What to do I do when it ain’t working any more?

Change motivation: “I find myself doing that which I don’t want to do or not doing that which I want to do! Why? How do I change from my ways, practices, habits, compulsions and addictions keeping me from change?”