Are You Grounded Enough In Your Relationship? Are you grounded enough to even be in a relationship? Groundedness is about stability. It’s about being in your functional adult, rather than the “adaptive child” (aka your inner child) who reacts emotionally. Groundedness means that your functional adult is able to be neutral in terms of opinions and perspective when it comes to both yourself and others. Groundedness comes from knowing who you are and what you want. That comes from being fair, not critical, having good judgment, and listening calmly to the other side. True groundedness offers stability, equality, and neutrality.
Are You Grounded Enough In Your Relationship?
Do you know what you want? Often when I ask my clients what they want, they say they don’t know. I’m not surprised to hear this. I’ve been in their shoes, thinking the same way. Concentrating on yourself develops your sense of “me.” Without a good sense of “me” you may not ab able to find the “we” that best suits you. The world is full of all kinds of people we can love, but not all align well with your “me.”
Alex (30 y.o.) and Andrea (31 y.o) together since they were 22 years old, come in for affair recovery only to find out that the affair is a symptom of the underlying problems. Those underlying problems stem from Alex’s low self-esteem and confidence. In counseling we determine the affair represented attention-seeking behavior. The woman he was seeing gave him much attention that stroked his ego. Albeit, during any honeymoon stage, attention is a given and the “high” from that when you aren’t receiving it from your partner is addicting.
Are You Grounded Enough In Your Relationship?
Alex is struggling with career and developmental issues. In life we individuate and differentiate developing a sense of self. The developmental stages help with that process. If you don’t meet emotional and psychological milestones you could be stuck in a younger developmental stage despite your chronological age. So as you grow old, your emotional where with all may not be congruent with your chronological age. Meaning you can be a man of 30 years old and feel like a child or teenager when trying to figure out what to do in life. This is the case for Alex. He states he loves his wife but doesn’t feel much intimacy. They are great friends with so much in common.
Rather than continue in marriage counseling they are now doing individual work with me. I explain their relationship is like the cart in front of the horse. For Alex, the cart represents his poor sense of self and needed work developmentally to understand he needs to meet his needs first and not the needs of other. In doing so he will become the individual he is to become and be more differentiated in healthy ways from his relationships.
In doing the individual work a healthy relationship can be yours. In my book entitled, Happy Me Happy We: Six Steps To Know Yourself So You Know What You Want In A Relationship is utilized to guide Alex and Andrea as they give themselves the opportunity to learn and understand that knowing what you want will get you the relationship of your dreams. You won’t have to settle.
For more information about my services in working with couples please contact me at (858) 735-1139 or visit my website CouplesCounselorSanDiego.com
