{"id":750,"date":"2022-01-12T07:20:29","date_gmt":"2022-01-12T07:20:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.onelifeonly.net\/?p=750"},"modified":"2022-01-12T09:22:50","modified_gmt":"2022-01-12T09:22:50","slug":"how-to-start-marriage-relationship-number-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/onelifeonly.net\/how-to-start-marriage-relationship-number-2\/","title":{"rendered":"How to start Marriage\/Relationship Number 2"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>by Nathan Chua<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">New year, new dear?\u00a0 Yes, you can, as a couple, start your relationship all over again!\u00a0 You might be wondering how in the world can I, as a counselor, help you change your partner?\u00a0 Oh he\u2019s been like that for a good part of two decades now!\u00a0 What gives me the audacity to claim I can change your partner?\u00a0 Well, there is a way my friends!\u00a0 And the wonderful thing about it, is it\u2019s up to you, not your partner.\u00a0 Let me tell you how to curtail your long wait.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I don\u2019t want to be the bearer of bad news, but paradoxically, the best way to change your partner is to accept him!\u00a0 Of course I\u2019d be lying if I told you that this was guaranteed.\u00a0 But chances are, if you\u2019re reading this, you\u2019ve already tried many, many ways to change your partner, and they all haven\u2019t worked.\u00a0 In fact, the more you try to change your partner, the more rigid he becomes.\u00a0 Most of the time, you find yourselves stuck in a verbal skirmish that could put to shame some lawyers you know, in terms of the tenacity and adroit argumentation that both you and your partner display.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Let me explain what I mean with an example.\u00a0 If let\u2019s say your partner is not as neat and tidy as you are.\u00a0 You are now exhausted with all the cleaning up to do and the reminders you have to make to help your partner remember to do her side of the bargain.\u00a0 You then come to therapy and learn that these things are better off accepted and can take a long time to change, especially with the way you have been heretofore dealing with the problem.\u00a0 Based on this new understanding or awareness that what you have been doing is part of what keeps you stuck, you start laying off on the reminders and become more accepting of the fact that your partner will be hard-pressed to turn into the neat and tidy person that you want.\u00a0 There is a likelihood that your partner will notice the change in your attitude.\u00a0 You no longer holler and complain as much as you used to.\u00a0 She may notice that and begin to see how hard it is for you to be left alone taking care of house chores.\u00a0 Pretty soon you see her performing some of the chores to please you, precisely because you have accepted her with these differences she brings into the relationship.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Another tip is also to be more noticing of your partner\u2019s efforts to change.\u00a0 If you notice that she has started doing some unexpected cleaning, be mindful enough to show her your appreciation.\u00a0 Give her a smile or a hug or say some encouraging words of appreciation.\u00a0 You\u2019d know more than I do what makes your partner happy.\u00a0 Show her that you\u2019re not missing the forest for the tree\u2026maybe for the first time in a long long while.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Now, do you notice also that in both of these pieces of advice that I just enumerated, who is in control?\u00a0 Is it your partner or you?\u00a0 It is you.\u00a0 You have control over your actions of whether to accept your partner\u2019s differences in the way she keeps her place tidy.\u00a0 You also have control over your behaviors that involve encouraging her by your appreciation.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So creating marriage number two is not about changing your partner, it\u2019s more about changing you!\u00a0 And the most accessible parts of you that can be changed, are those that involve your choices to act.\u00a0 You may feel frustrated and uncomfortable, but in the end you have the option to keep whining and complaining and criticizing your partner, or start the process by coming to accept that certain things are hard to change.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">As a summary of what you can keep in mind to help you change the way you have been approaching your relationship or marital concerns, here are some immortal words from Albert Einstein, \u201cWe cannot solve problems with the same thinking that we used to create them.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Listen to this blogpost on <a href=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/episode\/1f2KIszANS6EBhwM2LnGBg?si=CmOmMMbJRXuQ_oy3UyY26Q\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Spotify<\/a>! Click <a href=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/episode\/1f2KIszANS6EBhwM2LnGBg?si=CmOmMMbJRXuQ_oy3UyY26Q\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">here<\/a>!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>by Nathan Chua New year, new dear?\u00a0 Yes, you can, as a couple, start your relationship all over again!\u00a0 You might be wondering how in the world can I, as a counselor, help you change your partner?\u00a0 Oh he\u2019s been like that for a good part of two decades now!\u00a0 What gives me the audacity … <a href=\"https:\/\/onelifeonly.net\/how-to-start-marriage-relationship-number-2\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">How to start Marriage\/Relationship Number 2<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":752,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[3,8,6,7,10,38,43,11,39,9,59],"class_list":["post-750","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","tag-counseling","tag-counseling-manila","tag-counseling-philippines","tag-counseling-quezon-city","tag-couples-counseling","tag-couples-therapy","tag-face-to-face-counseling","tag-marital-counseling","tag-marital-therapy","tag-marriage-counseling","tag-marriage-counselor"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/onelifeonly.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/750","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/onelifeonly.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/onelifeonly.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onelifeonly.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onelifeonly.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=750"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/onelifeonly.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/750\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":756,"href":"https:\/\/onelifeonly.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/750\/revisions\/756"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onelifeonly.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/752"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/onelifeonly.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=750"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onelifeonly.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=750"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onelifeonly.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=750"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}