“I just want my husband home at night,” cried Diane. Why does he stay out so late? He never takes me anywhere anymore. When I do see him in the mornings, he is nice to me and gives me money to spend. But I feel so rejected and lonely!”

Every night after his restaurant closed, Stan went out on the town with his friends and returned early the next morning just to sleep. He avoided spending time with his wife and neglected the children as well. “The children are your job,” Stan continued to tell Diane. “My only responsibility is to make the money to support everyone.” This is the typical mistake many men make in relationships. They often learn by their father’s modeling that they have to give their loved ones money but not themselves.

A family session with the four children revealed their hurt. The son asked his Dad to play sports with him. The daughters wanted him to spend time with them too. They believed that they were not important to him. When Stan said they were, I reminded him that action speaks louder than words. The expression on his face showed me that he knew I was speaking the truth.

In a private session with Stan, I discovered that his father was always working and he rarely saw him. His mother often kicked him out of the house to play with his friends. He hated her for it and recalls wandering the streets with no place to go. When I asked Stan to imagine that his mother was in front of him and to tell her how he feels, he replied, “I feel nothing for my mother.” He had numbed his feelings to cope with them. Stan projected the negative feelings he had towards his mother onto his wife. This is a classic pattern that I have discovered in clients. We don’t even see our partners clearly until we heal our childhood wounds with our parents, and sometimes also our grandparents and siblings.

Ironically even though his wife wants him home, Stan is still living his life out of the house and playing with his peers. He felt so rejected by his parents that he shut down his heart in order to survive in his dysfunctional family. Unfortunately, this is a common defense mechanism that helps us survive but not live loving, fulfilling lives. A healthy relationship requires an open heart to express love and caring. But Stan could not because it hurt too much, even though he seemed to be very unhappy and extremely stressed.

To run away from his pain, the entrepreneur was a major workaholic. Being in his own home was painful for him because it reminded him of his childhood rejection. Unconsciously, he did not feel welcome there. His childhood was filled with years of running around outside the home and that is what he is still doing now as a 38-year-old husband and father. Stan is stuck with his childhood negative beliefs and behaviors. So are most people who are not behaving in constructive ways.

As was done to him, Stan is neglecting the emotional needs of his loved ones. Ironically, we often do to our children what we hated or resented when we were growing up. That is because we are programmed how to be by their modeling. We are not born knowing how to be a loving wife, mother, husband, or father. Our schools neglect helping us with our self-esteem, and teaching us the keys to successful relationships and parenting. That is a crime because it often leads to emotional and physical abuse and divorces.

In this case, as with all, it sure looks like Diane is the victim. Quite the contrary, Diane’s dysfunctional childhood wounded her too. In fact, as typically the case, her dysfunctional behavior fits perfectly with Stan’s. Diane’s parents were in their late 40’s when she was born. This was not a pregnancy they had planned.

Diane felt devastated when she was told that she was not wanted and sent to her older sister’s home. Her self-esteem was very low, and her hurt heart caused her to push away the man she loved. It was difficult for anyone to be around her negativity. That fed Stan’s desire to be away and seek pleasure from people who were positive. His absence caused her to be more negative. This pattern is a common vicious cycle.

To assist this family, I counseled the children to help them raise their self-esteem, and to realize that their parents never meant to hurt them. It was like they each had a broken leg and could not be expected to run. Emotionally their parents’ were “broken.” I also worked with Diane to heal her wounds from the past and she is becoming much more positive and sensitive to her children’s emotional needs. I pointed out how she was affecting the children by saying the same hurtful things that were expressed to her when she was growing up. I also encouraged her to do the things she loved and to stop depending on her husband for her happiness.

Unfortunately, Stan is still running away from his negative childhood experiences by spending most of his time with his business and friends. Until he is ready to release his emotional pain, his behavior is unlikely to change. As a Marriage and Family therapist, I can only help people who are ready to heal their issues so that they can be a loving partner and parent. It often takes a tragedy for people to wake up. Hopefully, Stan will find the courage to face and overcome his pain before that happens. His children at least now have some understanding of the causes of their parents’ problems. There is a possibility that they will be different with their spouses and children and have healthier and happier families.

Copyright 2008 by Helene Rothschild, MS, MA, MFT, Marriage, Family Therapist, speaker, and author of “ALL YOU NEED IS HART! Create Love, Joy and Abundance~NOW.” A Unique Guide to Holistic And Rapid Transformation. She offers international phone sessions, books, e-books, MP3 audios, teleclasses, and a free MP3 Audio, “Healing Your Body,” E-book, “Truths Set You Free,” and newsletter.

http://www.lovetopeace.com – 1-888-639-6390.

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http://EzineArticles.com/?Why-We-Have-Dysfunctional-Relationships-and-Families&id=993062

Difficult or toxic relationships do not at first appear to be toxic because Pop Culture has taught us to mate based on the idea of love — people tend to see and believe what they want to see and believe about the other person and the relationship. In some cases, the people involved in these toxic relationships are in so deep that what to some would appear toxic feels normal to them.

See if you can relate to any of these types of toxic relationships:

1. The “Parent-Child” Relationship

People who get into parent-child relationships have an intense need to recreate or compensate for the relationship they had with their own parent. Regardless of the psychological reasons behind this kind of relationship, in most cases this substantial “re-parenting arrangement” tends to reinforce the dysfunctional behavior — enabling, fantasy, ambivalence, confusion, guilt projection, double-bind messages, hostility and chronic negativity. You know this is not how a healthy relationship should be, but you have no idea how to make it right — or even want to make it right. Something about the toxicity of the relationship feels so familiar, even safe in a twisted kind of way.

2. The “Martyr” Relationship

This is where someone sacrifices and gives up everything — including their mental/emotional well-being — in the name of love. In your craving to be loved, you give and give, and nurture and nurture to a degree where it’s controlling and unhealthy. Because you believe that being “a martyr to love” makes you a loveable person, you tell yourself your love is unconditional but actually it is very conditional and selfish. Even when the relationship is abusive, you feel that you must really love this person to sacrifice and give up everything, though you can’t understand why you’d love someone who treats you badly.

3. The “Change Agent” Relationship

Most people who get into these relationships are convinced on some level that they can really make the other person a “better” person. Even faced with the reality that the other person will not change, you can’t accept and break free of the illusions of the “power to change someone” that you have created. In some way you actually feel “responsible” for the other person, and see leaving as abandoning him or her. But as they say, a man who marries a woman to “educate” her falls a victim to the same fallacy as the woman who marries a man to “reform” him.

4. The “Sponsor” Relationship

In this relationship, one person provides a sense of financial security and the other person feels obligated to the person who pays the bills. The only reason you are still in the relationship is because you 1) have the obligation to support the other person, 2) have no other way to support yourself or 3) both of you feel entitled to the “investment” you have made in the relationship and won’t let the other person have it all. But because the relationship is not about love, rage attacks, lies, cheating etc. are the menu of the day. The only thing you seem to agree on is the colour of money.

5. The “Exotic” Relationship

People obsessed with “exoticness” and “foreignness” often confuse love with obsession. They seek out a man or woman specifically because he or she is from a certain race, religion or culture; or because they’re obsessed with a particular accent, look or other characteristic associated with someone from a particular race, religion or culture etc. Even though the relationship feels exciting in many ways, almost all of your fights are about race, religion or culture. It’s always about one or the other feeling lonely, isolated, unconfident, unloved, or like the “outsider” — especially around the other’s socio-cultural networks.

6. The “Rebel” Relationship

Rebel-type daters choose a partner, who is exactly the opposite of everything their families and friends would want for them. You may be merely angry with your parents, family or social network or attempting to establish a sense of your own identity. You get a kick from watching your parent’s, sibling’s or friend’s reaction to your partner more than you actually get from the relationship. The relationship is simply “entertainment” and your partner the pawn in your reality TV Show.

7. The “Social Network” Relationship

This is when one or both people get into a relationship to have access to the other’s social circle, widen their social circle, or advance themselves up the social ladder. At first glance, everything looks “picture perfect” yet digging deeper reveals that you are a mere extension of a calculated social equation. Though this is a touchy subject that neither of you necessarily wants to talk about, one or both of you somehow manages to never let the other person “forget” who is dating up or dating down, who married up or married down the social ladder.

8. The “Neutered” Relationship

This kind of relationship is usually based on a great friendship; a close and mutual bond cemented by many years of being each other’s best friend. The sexual attraction/chemistry may or may not have been there in the initial stages, but you feel obligated to stay with each other because you see eye to eye in almost all areas of your lives. Though there is no sexual attraction between the two of you and you are not even physically sexually intimate, one or both of you feels jealous and rejected if the other is sexually attracted to someone else and feels betrayed and hurt if the other even mentions that he or she has sexual urges. You feel that if you don’t feel like having any or can’t have any, neither should he or she!

Bottom line: When we have toxic or dysfunctional relationships with others, it means we have a toxic relationship with ourselves. Remove what you view to be a toxic person from the relationship, and you are left on your own with only the mirror to look at.

About Author: Internationally renowned Dating & Relationships Coach, Christine Akiteng has devoted years of her life re-uniting couples and has seen over and over again first hand what works. She has woven together solid-gold advice on just about every stage of getting back together with your ex to help you make the process less scary and shaky and more exciting and smooth as possible.

Christine’s main website: http://www.torontosnumber1datedoctor.com

eBook: http://www.datingyourex.com

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http://EzineArticles.com/?Strange-Bedfellows—8-Types-of-Toxic-and-Dysfunctional-Relationships&id=2413299

Dysfunctional relationships are relationships that create more emotional turmoil than satisfaction. Relationships are part of the human experience. But what happens if one or both partners have never been involved in a happy relationship, or had one modeled for them as a child? Chances are they will participate in a dysfunctional relationship.

A dysfunctional or an about-to-be dysfunctional relationship always has warning signs. These must be identified and confronted in a timely fashion to prevent complete disintegration of he relationship. Here is a list of some warning signs of dysfunctional relationships:

1. Addictive/obsessive attitude: When one of the partners develops addictive or obsessive attitude and all the time seems overly focused on themselves or the other, it is time to reevaluate your relationship because this is the beginning of dysfunctional. You ‘lose yourself’ in the chaos.

2. Imbalance of power: You always feel that you are working much harder than your partner at making the relationship work. When your partner seems to make no effort at that, your relationship is probably going dysfunctional. Relationships are supposed to be a 50/50 partnership. If it has evolved into a 90/10 split with you doing all the giving and very little return, or vice versa a bad relationship scenario is developing.

3. Tensions show up regularly: Little things that cause tension are always present. These may related to money, friends, love, work or anything else, but they seem to take on disproportional importance.

4. Feeling cornered: In such relationships, either of the partners can get a feeling of being cornered or trapped into a situation that s/he would not like to have got into in the first place. If this feeling of being trapped and hapless keeps recurring, and is not a one-off incident, then it shows there’s something wrong in the relationship.

5. Inferiority/superiority complex: If any one of the partners in a relationship begins developing an inferiority/superiority complex, then there is something that’s going wrong. Relationships are based on equality and trust no partner should consider himself superior or inferior in comparison to the other.

6. The feeling of frustration: Every relationship has little frustrations, but when they persist and just keep cropping up as soon as one is dealt with, something is certainly wrong.

7. Constant unhappiness: Are you happy? If not, what happened? This is a fundamental question that needs to be answered. If you are constantly unhappy or mentally bogged down, because there is a nagging doubt or a feeling that something is not going right, it is time to evaluate the situation. This can happen when you just cannot reconcile your desires, your feelings and your needs with your partner’s and neither can he, with yours.

8. Being unsure and insecure: You are so unsure of yourself that you hesitate to do things, thinking about what if it would end up causing a rift in your relationship. In other words, when you go from being spontaneous to overcautious about doing things you like to do. Being unsure brings with it a feeling of insecurity and that is another sign to watch out for.

9. Emotional blocks: Fear, jealousy, obsession, non-involvement, manipulation, distrust, suspicion, disrespect and an uncaring attitude are the usual suspects. If there is continuity in any of these behavioral traits, then your relationship is on its way to being past history.

These are some warning signs of a dysfunctional relationship. If you happen to notice any of these, take preventive measures immediately and address the situation. And remember, band-aid measures won’t work, look for long-term solutions.

Perhaps the most commonly used and least effective solution to problems in relationships is to ignore them and hope they go away. Here is wishing you all the best in your relationship.

Tell your story! Pick up tips and tricks to help in addiction recovery and enhance your life free of addictions. Join our growing community. The author, Bill Urell MA.CAAP-II, is an addictions therapist at a leading drug addiction treatment center. He teaches healthy life styles and life skills. Visit us at: http://www.AddictionRecoveryBasics.com

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