How to Repair Relationship Ruptures with Your Teen or Young Adult

Parenting teens can sometimes feel like being on a roller coaster. An event of major conflict and defiance can cause a rupture in your relationship that feels like a game changer. Read more here…

How to Get Respect from Your Teenager or Young Adult

Respect is that critical ‘tool’ that all parents need to survive the adolescent parenting years. Virtually every piece of research confirms that teenagers who respect their parents have a greater chance of getting through the teen years with greater ease. When our kids are young, we can be very directive because they are more dependent on us and generally obey. Teenagers resist the directive approach. They call it control. They need to be influenced by us instead. Influence comes with respect. Read more here…

How Children Cope with Emotionally Immature Parents

Some parents consistently don’t engage with their children in an emotionally attuned and mature way. They have trouble regulating their own emotions, and show little affection and empathy to their children. The consequence is that their children develop a variety of ways to cope with what is missing. Children of emotionally immature parents typically feel an emotional void and often feel insecure and lonely. When these children become adults, it is important for them to stop these using childhood coping strategies and develop more healthy, mature emotional and relational habits in order to become content and emotionally secure. Read more here…

Are You Uncertain That Your Partner is a Grown Up?

All human beings share the primitive instinct that familiarity means safety and security, according to John Bowlby, the pioneering psychiatrist of attachment theory. Therefore, those children who were raised in families with an emotionally immature parent, will often be attracted subconsciously to an emotionally immature, egocentric partner, when they are older and start dating. Many girls may be attracted to ‘bad boys’ because the nice guys, who are considerate, seem a little boring. The same is true of guys who pursue the ‘wild girls’ because the nice girls were just not that fun. The intense familiarity that feels like strong chemistry, may set them on a roller coaster relationship that can eventually become emotionally or physically abusive. When you ask someone in an abusive adult relationship, to recall their dating period, they distinctly remember an event when they realized how self-centred their partner was. The instant chemistry they felt probably awakened the familiar experience of the emotionally immature parent, but it was not true secure love. Read more here…

How Emotionally Responsive are You?

Research over the past two decades about what is needed for a successful and enduring relationship has made some interesting findings. Unlike other animals on the planet, human being’s long-lasting mating relationships are not just a force to promote reproduction. Love is the important emotional force that is part of the social and psychological bond between humans. Researchers have discovered that love is an aspect of the human experience which is the pinnacle of evolution and the most compelling survival mechanism of the human species. Love drives us to attach emotionally with someone who will offer us psychological shelter from the storms of life. When we feel a loving attachment bond, we feel safe, confident and secure. Read more here…

How to Stop Your Destructive Conversations

All of us can get irritated and reactive with our partner when upset. When this happens, it can cause a chain reaction of volatility. If our relationship is insecure, these reactions turn into negative patterns of interactional behaviour. Some people typically criticize or blame, and others stone wall, avoid or shut down. We all need to defend or protect ourselves at times of distress, especially in an intimate relationship. However, when we feel secure in the relationship, the pattern is short-lived and overcome easily. When we are in a less secure relationship, the negative communication pattern can become habitual, toxic and undermining of the entire relationship. The destructive pattern can become so ingrained and overwhelming that we can feel hopeless about changing it.  When we don’t feel safe with our partner, we have to protect ourselves either by avoiding engagement by shutting down, or by becoming critical and fighting to be heard and understood. Read more here…

Do You Know What Your Relationship Raw Spots Are?

“For all of us, the person we love most in the world, the one who can send us soaring joyfully into space, is also the person who can send us crashing back to earth. All it takes is a slight turning of the head or flip, careless remark. There is no closeness without this sensitivity. If our connection with our mate is safe and strong, we can deal with these moments of sensitivity. Indeed, we can use them to bring our partners closer. But when we don’t feel safe and connected, these moments are like a spark in a tinder forest. They set fire to the whole relationship.”  Sue Johnson Therapist and Author of Hold Me Tight: Seven Conversations for a Lifetime of Love. Read more here…

Do You Know How to De-escalate Couple Conflict?

Almost all couples quarrel from time to time. Those few who don’t, may be afraid of conflict. Quarrelling is not bad for your relationship. In fact, conflict is a normal part of all relationships. It helps us understand different viewpoints and negotiate a compromise. Knowing how to resolve differences respectfully, without hurting your partner’s feelings, is a critical skill for a satisfying long lasting relationship. The first step in this learning process is how to de-escalate disrespectful conflict. Read more here…

Finding the Courage to Ask for the Love You Need

In every romantic Hollywood movie, there is that one critical scene in which we, the audience, can tell that the couple is falling in love.  At these well-crafted moments, the characters make some romantic gesture, a smile, a look or a dreamy gaze into each other’s eyes. We know instantly what has just happened. We can identify with the experience so well that no words are needed. Read more here…

Do you Really Love Your Partner

We are so engrossed in the need to assure our partner's feelings that we do not pay much attention to what we put in our hearts according to new insights toronto.

On the web you will find more articles on how to tell if he loves you. But what do you really feel about your partner?

When we're captured by someone, our senses are constantly alert to his characters. Is he in love? Is he sincere? Does he see in me his future wife and mother of his children?

How to Heal a Relationship Wound

Paul and Joan were doing quite well in couple therapy. They knew how to de-escalate conflict and have more engaged conversations. They were starting to feel more emotionally close again. However, I was not entirely sure that they had really discussed some of the deeper concerns that would lead to making permanent change in their relationship. So, I asked whether there was any issue or event of importance from the past that we had not yet discussed. Paul was quick to say ‘No, I don’t think so.’ But there was an uncomfortable silence from Joan. Read more here…

How to select the right couples counsellor?

It is not apt to just end the relationship without consulting the couples counsellor. They are professionals who will help you out in understanding the situation and taking the proper step without putting an end to the relation. It is an important decision of your life which should not be taken hastily. Of course, it is your own call whether to take divorce or not but Toronto couples counseling will help you in knowing the actual problem and solving it. There is no guarantee that the issues in your marital life would be solved completely by the professional. You definitely get some guidance in improving your marriage life with the professional’s marital therapy.

How to Deepen Your Relationship with Touch and Sex

“Passion comes easily in the early days of a relationship. it’s nature’s way of drawing us together. But after the captivating rush of desire, what is the place of sex in a relationship? Besides pulling us in, can sex also help to keep us together to build a lasting relationship? Emphatically, yes. In fact, good sex is a potent bonding experience. The passion of infatuation is just the hors d’oeuvre. Loving sex in a long-term relationship is the entree”, according to Dr. Sue Johnson in Hold Me Tight. Read more here…

How Do You Keep the Love Alive in Your Relationship?

There has never been a time in history when more is expected of marriage. Keeping a relationship loving, passionate and growing for a lifetime is a challenge that all couples face. The ‘spark’ grows dim, boredom or routine sets in, exhaustion from work and children leaving little time and energy available to keep the love fires burning. Read more here…