Reading Corner

Links related to the weekly posts.

 

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In this week’s blog, we wrote about how to stay connected by accepting your partner. These links give a variety of thoughts about this topic.

Marriage Help: Do You Accept Or Tolerate Your Partner? “When your partner tolerates you (or, more accurately, tolerates something about you), s/he has to continuously expend energy in order to suppress feelings of judgment and criticism. In short, when you tolerate your partner, you will find that you’re frequently biting your tongue and sooner or later, you’ll erupt in frustration or anger. Acceptance, on the other hand, implies an openness to the other person, an openness to the differences that exist between you and your partner. When you accept your partner, you see and appreciate his/her uniqueness, and there is no need for emotional resistance—there is no withholding, no need to emotionally hide from one another.”

A Lasting Romance Is Built on Flaws: 6 Tips for a Strong Relationship “It’s human nature to size up a potential partner by drawing from past experience. There are so many ways to catalog the possible flaws: He’s too short. She’s too tall. Too fat. Too thin. Not enough education. Too much education. Or you become judgmental about how much your date eats or drinks or how they interact with other people. The perceived flaws get in the way of making a connection. It’s like the three bears’ approach to dating, looking for that partner who is “just right.” Too often we make the mistake of looking for a mirror of ourselves in a partner.”

Emotional Connection: What it is and how to get it “What is emotional connection? It’s an overused term that means many things. In this context, emotional connection is not just affection, terms of endearment, or closeness in day-to-day living. Rather, it is the knowledge that your partner empathizes with you and will turn toward you when you need them. Emotional connection is the kind of primal safety you get from knowing that you are seen, valued, and comforted in your most vulnerable moments.”

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In this week’s blog, we wrote about how to handle anger in your relationship. These links discuss how to deal with both your anger and that of your partner.

Anger in Relationships: Owning Yours, Softening Your Partner’s “Anger is not a sign that your relationship is doomed to fail. Anger is an emotion that we all experience, and it signifies that something has to be done. Anger makes you aware that there is a problem. How you deal with your anger can become a big part of the problem. For some couples, anger can make it nearly impossible to figure out what the problem is and how to fix it. For most couples, anger itself is not the problem. What becomes problematic is how partners deal with their anger and how well they deal with their partner’s.”

Dealing with Anger in a Relationship “Most days, we can conceal our anger from people at work or at school. But this “beast within” is practically impossible to hide from our significant other. Some of us respond to this vulnerability by lashing out at our partner. Others retreat and coil tight emotionally. Neither of these reactions, however, leads to a healthy relationship. The appropriate response is more human … and requires more courage.”

How to Deal With an Angry Partner “The biggest challenge of living with a resentful or angry person is to keep from becoming one yourself—or else, the high contagion and reactivity of resentment and anger are likely to make you into someone you are not. The second biggest challenge in staying in a relationship with a resentful or angry person is trying to get him or her to change.”

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In this week’s blog, we asked what overlooked things are important in a successful relationship. Here are some good posts offering their answers.

Ten Elements of Effective Relationships “The other day, a friend pointed out that I very often write from the perspective of what people are doing wrong, as opposed to what they are doing right. Well, here are some things that I have found to be effective elements in a successful relationship; the right stuff.”

What Research Tells Us About the Most Successful Relationships “There’s no single ‘formula’ to a perfect relationship. However, we’ve studied an awful lot about what successful couples do. Everyone’s relationships are a bit different, but we can take away a lot from what we know works. While a perfect relationship might be beyond the grasp of science, studies on what makes a relationship successful are everywhere. Over the years, these studies have come up with some trends that help us better understand what sets a long lasting relationship apart from one that ends quickly.”

Relationships – tips for success “A ‘good relationship’ means different things to different people. However, good adult relationships generally involve two people who respect each other, can communicate, and have equal rights, opportunities and responsibilities. Most people would also expect their relationship with their partner to include love, intimacy, sexual expression, commitment, compatibility and companionship.”

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In this week’s blog, we discuss how being intolerant keeps your relationship in balance. Here are some postings on balance in relationships.

How to Balance a Healthy Love Relationship “Life’s emotional ups and downs can cause conflict in a relationship. Recognize that your partner may react to and solve her problems in a different manner than you do. Avoid taking your stress out on each other. Remain open to change and confront problems as they arise.”

The Happy Couple Cheat Sheet: 15 Steps to a Balanced and Happy Marriage (Relationship) “I would like to share my experience of a happy and balanced marriage. I hope that maybe these tips will help some couples to live happily ever after.”

Relationship Advice: How to Have a More Balanced Relationship “Lately I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about relationships. Specifically, I’ve been trying to figure out how to have more balance in all my relationships. Because even when you think everything is fine, you may find out that people you care about or work with (or both) feel otherwise.”

 

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I, Phil, wrote about how to reach union in your relationship in this week’s blog, and found it hard to find good links. Maude is the link-finding expert! A couple of these are on consciousness, which is for me a perennial fascination.

Healing Relationships Through Compassion and Connection “When we choose to make our relationship with our partner a spiritual practice, we enter a sacred journey of ever-deepening love and freedom. The path is challenging, yet with purity of intention and clear attention, the very circumstances that threaten to drive us apart can open the gateway to the blessings of communion.”

Consciousness: Who’s at the Wheel? is one of a series of conversations; here they discuss the idea that our sensory experience is necessarily coupled with the world: “You’re leaving something rather large out of the equation. In the case of pressing the button, for example, you’ve forgotten the button. In the case of John’s kiss, you’ve forgotten Mary’s lips. You are speaking as if the brain were entirely separate from what is outside our bodies.”

How Does The Human Brain Create Consciousness? “Does the brain create consciousness? I’m not so sure. At the very least, I know that no neuroscientist has caught the brain “red-handed” in the act of creating consciousness. The standard materialist position is that consciousness is tied up with the brain. There is plenty of evidence that the brain influences consciousness (and vice versa!), ranging from studies of brain damage to the well-known effects of mind-altering chemicals. The problem with going any further than this correlational fact is that no one knows how to define consciousness from an objective, third-person perspective. We only have access to one consciousness: our own.”

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