8 Positive Ways to Balance Responsibility and Communication in Your Relationship
By: Brian Murray, LMHC, NCC Relationships are dynamically complex. Many of the issues people experience within them are unknowingly interrelated. In other words, both partners do not realize that they are doing the exact same thing to each other. They spend hours in counseling trying to deconstruct these conflicts only to realize that the problems are mutual with no real solutions. Feeling discouraged and hopeless, the couple will begin to question if the relationship will survive, leading to an impasse in counseling with no outcomes. To overcome this impasse, the focus and direction in the relationship must change to reconcile their differences. A problem-focused counseling session is based on past behavior. A change in direction becomes focused on future behavior. By focusing on the future, fairness in the relationship is introduced leading to a level playing field. From here, the couple can now operate on equal terms. Equality eliminates a host of problems s...