A bed of roses and nailsWith St. Valentine’s Day over with for another year, is your relationship still feeling like a bed of roses, or is it more like a bed of nails?

Any long term relationship or marriage will have periods of highs, moments that take our breath away, moments when we live and breathe for our partner. These are the golden moments any relationship needs to make us feel good and wanted, valued and desired.

Any long term relationship or marriage will also include time when quite frankly we cannot bare the sight of the person we used to have so much love for, so what happened? Well, life happened. Maybe struggles financially, which are very common in today’s world. Maybe personal issues have made it difficult to connect in a relationship, or to sustain it in the longer term. Maybe it started out so good, but the cracks have started to appear, maybe the cracks are more like an abyss and you feel you cannot bridge that gap anymore.

Well although it can feel like the divide is so big and you have little faith or hope that it can get back to where it was, working on your couple problems or your personal individual issues will help you to know if the relationship can be improved or whether it is best for you to look at the best way to move forward with your future.

A good counsellor always wants the best for his client, whether that is reconciliation and working towards improving the relationship, of course he will help you with strategies to do that, tried and tested relationship tools to help you reconnect.

If it becomes clear during the course of your counselling or coaching that the relationship is not right for you, or it does not meet your needs emotionally as well as physically, then a good counsellor will support and help you with working towards an alternative which may include separation or divorce. These can be stressful decisions and not subjects most people feel they can talk to close friends or family about.

In the early stages of exploring what is best for us as an individual, we need someone who will listen with an open mind, someone who knows about relationships and can stay focused  someone who will not be emotionally connected to the situation, so that the right solution can be explored openly.

A counsellor with knowledge of relationships and how people function (attachment) will help you explore all of the options in complete confidence, you don’t even need to share your name if you don’t want to, and that’s how anonymous online counselling is.

  • Maybe you are scared of opening up to the possibility to a new relationship
  • Maybe you have had a string of relationships that were not good for you.
  • Maybe you have lost hope that you can be in a good relationship again
  • Maybe you feel that you can’t trust anyone

These are all common issues after we have been hurt, talking about what happened and what your needs are will help you feel much more in control of how you start future new relationships and how to reduce the impact of the past baggage which we all inevitably pick up after negative relationship experiences.