Ready to break the chains of relationship boredom? Have you been stuck in a rut for some time now, and haven’t known how to get out? It’s possible that, for some, that you didn’t even know you were in a rut in the first place, which makes things even more difficult to fix (when you can’t even diagnose it).

Here’s 4 quick tips to crawling out of the pit of a relationship that fell asleep:

1. Make yourself more interesting: It’s easy to look upon our spouse, or our relationship, as the problem, and then blame our boredom on those, because they’re convenient. It’s harder to take responsibility for our own boredom, and do something about it.

I propose doing something radically different. I invite you to take a look at your own individual life – aside from the relationship – and ask yourself, “What can I do to make myself more interesting – to myself?” When you can generate answers to this question, you’re starting to make something happen. Maybe it’s learning to communicate differently. Maybe it’s learning how to speak Portuguese. Maybe it’s taking up reading about topics that once interested you, that got pushed aside by a busy life. Or maybe it’s getting involved in volunteerism. But working to make yourself more interesting is by far a major step towards developing renewed interest in your relationship.

2. Talk about the boredom: Too often, couples who are bored make it worse by failing to call the elephant in the room what it is. If boredom is obviously a problem in your relationship, why you you keep contributing to it – because it’s easy? Quit having the same doldrum conversations, and say to your partner, “We need to talk about something that needs to change for me in the relationship.” Make it a priority, and have a conversation to get the ball rolling.

3. Come up with a list of boredom breakers together: Get together (even after the conversation above), and brainstorm about the things that you both enjoy doing together. The very act of brainstorming together will remind you both of the “getting to know you” process that you once enjoyed, before the stalemate set in. Coming up with activities that you both love to do is key. Bonus points: come up with right brained activities, or fun things to do to get you out of your head. Try indoor rock climbing, creating art or music together (there’s Taiko Drumming here in Phoenix – bash on those big old Japanese drums together), or doing something “non-intellectual” or for pure fun.

4. Talk about the anger: Often times, boredom is really anger that’s been frozen. If there is anger between you two, air it out. Talk about it, melt the anger or tension, and get back to spontaneity and fun. Boredom is an intellectual, or mental, way to express anger sometimes, and it’s a way (esp. for men), to distance themselves from their partners. Talk about anger if it’s a problem for you, and you may see boredom start to blow out of your relationship with that simple change.

I’ve polled a number of women friends of mine (both professional therapists and not) to find out the answers to three important questions about the differences between men and women in relationship. Here is the first question and the answers I got to it. A big thanks to my friends who were willing to participate in my unofficial survey. Parts 2 and 3 are coming soon.

1. What do you see as the three biggest problems men have in intimate relationships? What about the top three that women have?

My goal was to try to get better marketing information, but also to understand the issues that I work with from another perspective. I want to help men to understand what they are up against from the women they love, and how to better understand them and reach them.

For the first question, women answered communication several times as being one of the biggest problems that men have in relationships. They also reported that being vulnerable, being too analytical/thinking, honesty, letting go, and being afraid to show emotions for fear that their women will think that they are weak. Men, according to my friends, also want to fix everything instead of just validating.

As for the women themselves, women reported that the biggest problems women have in relationship include: nagging or repeating things to their man (which makes them not heard anymore), overly emotional, and impulsive reactions. Women also reported that their problems include being open and not afraid that they may scare their man away, creating an equal partnership and feeling misunderstood. Also, women reported that they try to force their partners into communicating instead of easing in to it. One of my friends talked about the idea of a “mythical mate,” a fantasy partner that women think will automatically read their minds without them needing to tell their man what they want and need.

Overall, some very interesting answers, both as a therapist and as a man in a relationship. I hope you can find some valuable ideas here, and maybe you see yourself in some of these answers.

We’ll look at questions 2 and 3 in future posts, so stay tuned.

Jason

The things that make us the men that we are are largely attributable to the relationships that we have with our fathers. Our intimate relationships, in some ways, are also results of the things that we learn from how to be in the world from our fathers, too. 

Too many men simply cannot be the fathers that they should to their sons, because they never got the right role modeling. Men go on to have imperfect relationships, and don’t know how to be effective intimate partners to their wives and girlfriends. Often times, it’s a combination of two problems.

First, men learn how to be emotionally withdrawn from their women. They learn, over time from the environment they grew up in, to shut down, stay in their heads and generally not be present to their feelings. This is the nucleus of the problem.

Second, as children we model behavioral patterns from our parents. As boys, we model the ways of being in a relationship from our fathers (and mothers). Many times, our fathers never got it right, so we simply take from them what we see, because unconsciously, if we do what they did, we just might get our needs met after all. This is child’s logic, and somewhere down the road, we fail to drop those tools when they don’t work for us anymore. As kids, they might have had some basic effectiveness. But as adults, we continue to use outdated tools to create similarly neurotic and ineffective relationships today.

The key is to understand these behavioral patterns, and the emotions that we avoid buried underneath. In seeing these, often for the first time, and experiencing them in the present moment unconditionally, they begin to transform themselves and set us free from the patterns that keep us stuck in conflict and unsatisfying relationships. We can work towards freedom from these blocks if we can first see them. Our fathers might not have been able to do it for themselves, but we can for ourselves.

I think one of the reasons that we avoid our feelings, and, consequently, avoid our lives, is because what our minds think they will find when they get to the “darkness” of our emotions is much worse that the actual experience of having our emotional experience – as it comes up in the present moment.

The present moment is an enemy of the mind. The mind continues to elude and avoid the present moment (read any of Eckhart Tolle’s books for more clarification on this). The mind’s fuel for all this is provided early on, when, as children, we learn the tools that we never let go of to navigate issues and problems. We are trying to solve adult problems with children’s tools. They just don’t work.
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So, is it true? Is your self-critic running your life? 

I’ve found that one of the biggest problems that smart, successful men deal with is their own self-critic. Guys with loud self critics never feel satisfied, need to feel in control most of the time, and in their hearts, don’t feel good enough or like they measure up to others’ standards. Even though they have accomplished a lot in their lives and in their professions, they still somehow feel like they fall short.

The self-critic is critical of self and others, always strives for perfection and unreasonable accomplishment, and is never at ease and satisfied with itself. It needs to keep pushing, and getting to “more.”

Consequently, it can be the source of a lot of stress, anger and insecurity, which will inevitably create problems on the job, in relationships, and in our own skin. It is the epicenter of a lot of the problems that you may be experiencing.

So, how can I help you to quiet this overly aggressive self-critic? Together, we’ll:

• Learn about your unique self-critic, and see how it works and runs parts of your life
• Figure out how to stop feeling less successful than other people
• Learn how to still accomplish and get stuff done, without the loud self-critic making it worse
• Understand the role of anger in your self-critic, and use it to better transform your critic
• Feel more in control, and stop feeling out of control
• Get less feedback from your woman about being controlling of her and the things that she does
• Create easier and deeper relationships for yourself

I invite you to make an appointment with me to work on your self-critic. Call me now at 602.309.0568.

- Jason

I wanted to post about a topic that I hold pretty dear, which is the relationship between your mental functioning and your mood – two things that are probably affecting your well-being, and possibly your relationship.

How you eat and take care of yourself is a reflection of the way that you respect yourself (or not), and take interest in the quality of you life. Failing to eat the right foods and not exercise will lead to obesity, other cardiovascular problems, and depression, anxiety and more stress.

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One of the things that I have been thinking about is how we play games to avoid the fear of being rejected by women. I notice this with some friends I have, and with some clients. The one way in which this seems to be most apparent to me is by displaying the opposite behavior: rejecting the woman or potential relationship partner first. 

It happens less that people actually own up to being afraid of rejection, because a lot of the time, they don’t know it’s there. Honestly, I think we’re afraid of the fear. We are afraid that if this person gets to pierce through our facade, they will find someone that they didn’t bargain for, someone less adequate than the initial facade that was show to them through the dating process. Sex is used in this way, to speed up the intimacy process and to bypass the getting to know you process.

Some men that I know reject women after sleeping with them, over and over again. Not only do I feel ashamed as a guy, but feel bad for the female rejectees who are probably relationship-minded and are seeking something else during the act of sex with this person. Women are more intimacy and relationship minded; when we reject them after sex, or soon thereafter, we give them them messages that they are not good enough or unworthy or our affections. In effect, we are displacing (or projecting) our inadequacies onto them through the very act of rejecting them. 

Men have a notoriously difficult time opening up to their feelings, and opening up to fear of rejection is by no means any exception to that rule. It gets transformed into a socially acceptable thing – to bed women and conquer them, which creates an endless cycle of loneliness and misery. It’s very difficult to create a satisfying relationship under these conditions, and a lot of guys are left to do this cycle over and over again.

I can help you with these types of problems if you suspect that you are a guy (or girl) who creates this “rejection cycle” for him (or herself). It’s hard to break this cycle on one’s one, and as a Counselor for Men, I know the inner workings of this cycle to help you break the cycle once and for all. Call me at 602.309.0568 to set up a free consultation to talk about this with me.

- Jason