Andrew G Marshall - Are You Right for Me?: Seven Steps to Getting Clarity and Commitment in Your Relationship

Andrew G. Marshall is a marital therapist and the author of I Love You But Im Not In Love With You: Seven Steps to Saving Your Relationship , The Single Trap: The Two-step Guide to Escaping It and Finding Lasting Love and How Can I Ever Trust You Again?: Infidelity: From Discovery to Recovery in Seven Steps . He writes for The Times , the Mail on Sunday , the Guardian , Psychologies and womens magazines around the world. His work has been translated into over fifteen languages. Andrew trained with RELATE and has a private practice offering counselling, workshops, training days and inspirational talks.

www.andrewgmarshall.com

1. Take Stock

Being stuck in limbo is bad for your relationship and undermines your self-confidence:

• Before deciding whether to stay and fight for your relationship or leave with good grace, look at your underlying attitudes and whether they are clouding your thinking.
• Are you confusing good sex with love, holding out for a soul partner or expecting to just know if someone is right?
• Be reassured that you are not alone in finding it hard to decide; modern life and increased choice are making us more likely to be dissatisfied and worried that something better was amongst the discarded options.

Checkpoint: Make a commitment to change. Look at the following five questions: Have you convinced yourself you were in love when it was really lust? Have you had a relationship that was wrong for you but only accepted the truth months or even years after it finished? Have you mistaken tension and drama for love? Have you questioned a healthy relationship because you didnt feel head over heels in love all the time? Have you felt powerful chemistry and assumed it must be love?

If you answered yes to any one of these questions, promise yourself that you will avoid these unhelpful myths in the future.

2. Look at Your Partner

Love is not enough on its own for a relationship you also need to be compatible:

• Have you believed that true love will conquer all and therefore ignored potentially fatal flaws in either your partner (such as being overly possessive, refusing to talk about problems or having a terrible temper) or your circumstances (such as conflicting religions, living long distances away, toxic stepchildren or your partner being still enmeshed with his or her ex-spouse)?
• Have you confused sympathy with love or put a higher premium on your partners willingness to commit than overall compatibility?
• Does your partner put you down or deliberately undermine your self-esteem?
• Have you expected too much from your partner and are angry because he or she has not met some need even though you have not or cannot properly explain it?

Checkpoint: Watch the movie of your relationship. Close your eyes and think back to when you first met, picture everything happening and listen to what is being said. Every time your partner says or does anything that makes you uncomfortable or anxious, open your eyes and write it down. Afterwards, go back to the movie and keep watching until the next problem. When youve finished, go back over your notes. What warning signs did you ignore? How does this more balanced picture of your relationship change things?

3. Look at Yourself

We learn about relationships by watching how our parents argue, fall out and, hopefully, make up. Until we are old enough to go to school, and discover other possibilities, we imagine our familys way is the only option. Therefore our parents relationship becomes the template for our own or something that we consciously react against:

• Have you tended to choose people who are like your father or your mother? Maybe youve gone for lovers who seem different at the start but later you realise behave in similar ways?
• When looking back at recent relationships, have you played the same role for example: rescuing your partner or being rescued; punishing your partner or soaking up his or her attacks; using controlling behaviour or being controlled?
• What links can you make between today and the past? To what extent are the issues between you and your partner a reflection of those witnessed when you were a child?
• Until we make peace with the past, we are doomed to repeat it.

Checkpoint: Do the fifty/fifty test. Instead of blaming your partner or taking all the blame yourself, find a balanced approach by dividing a piece of paper down the middle. On one side put all your partners contributions to the problem and on the other put your own. Keep going until both sides have as many items as possible. If you cant find much for your side, look at how doing nothing contributed: I allowed him to take charge or I opted out of family decisions and let her make all the decisions. Generally, most problems are fifty/fifty. Finally, look at the items on your side of the divide: what changes would you like to make?

4. Understanding Intimacy

Without commitment, there is ultimately no relationship. So understanding if either you or your partner is frightened of commitment is vital for establishing the health of your relationship:

• Could your quest for the elusive someone who ticks all the boxes actually be a way of avoiding commitment?
• As the wit and author Quentin Crisp (19081999) said: There is no great dark man. However, there are lots of good people with whom we can rub along very nicely, and in the process lose some of our, and their, rough edges.
• So dont mistake the momentary discomfort of growing together as a fundamental flaw.
• If you consistently commit to inappropriate or unavailable people, understanding the pattern is the first step to making better choices in the future.

Checkpoint: What happens if you change your steps in the intimacy dance? If you tend to pull away from commitment, what happens if you take a step closer and, for example, stay until supper on Sunday night rather than leave after lunch? You might fear that your partner will overwhelm you with further demands for intimacy but what actually happens? If you are responsible for all the closeness, step back and let your partner make the moves. You might fear that he or she will drift further away but give it some time like a couple of weeks and your partner will probably take up the slack.

5. Get the Timing Right

Although wed like to think that problems ignored will somehow get better of their own accord, unfortunately, they normally grow bigger and multiply:

• The best time to face a problem is now.
• Even if it is not possible to find a solution straight away, putting all the issues on the table will take the edge off a crisis.
• Remove the ticking clock. In most cases, there is no immediate hurry.
• Good decisions are seldom made under pressure.
• What splits up most couples is not the size of the problem but a feeling that one partner is not prepared to face up to it.

Checkpoint: Break the problem down into smaller parts. By taking small steps, you will sail calmly past obstacles that previously frightened or defeated you. Even better, it creates an appetite for more change and continuous success. So, for example, instead of worrying about how youll deal with an empty house after years of bringing up children, focus on organising the perfect weekend away together.

6. Decision Time

You should be ready to move forward but if you are still stuck, look at whats holding you back.

• If only thinking. This is when you are overloaded with regrets: If only Id not made that call or If only we hadnt lost that baby.
• While you are thinking about possible imaginary pasts, you are not living in the present with all its real possibilities.
• Some people are held back by guilt and fear of hurting their partner, their friends or their children.