Your partner is NOT going to change just because you want a healthier relationship.  All humans are predominantly driven by an element of WIIFM.  What’s In It For Me?

The first step has to start with you.

When you make changes in your attitude, perspectives, awareness, and behaviour, that’s when the dynamics in your relationship start to change.

Your partner may make not one jot of change!  But still your relationship is different.  It may improve just because you are in a different head space.  Even if it doesn’t shift your partner’s attitudes, perspectives, awareness, or behaviour, you are still better informed about your relationship.  You’re in a better place to make informed decisions.

That’s why I regularly work with just one party in a couple relationship.  Because it’s amazing what can happen if you take back some sense of control or even if you “let go”.

... like ripples in a pool ...

Thanks to Karen Wallace from The Calm Space‘s recommendation, I was reading a simple blog post by Miki De Vivo of  The Still Space.

She wrote about how she made one change in her life and how it created a little win for her as a parent.  I loved how she sat with this little tiny win that perhaps only she would notice, and felt satisfied.  She knew it wasn’t world-shaking, but it just might shake HER world!

Wouldn’t you like that to happen in your world?   How much of a difference would it make if that little change was in your relationship?  How would that impact your happiness and contentment?

Like ripples in a pool, a  tiny attitudinal change can help you become less stressed about how your relationship is being shaken up by parenting, money woes, your sex life, sharing the chores, or even that intrusive Mother-In-Law!

Would you like to try it and see?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Chris Owen of Pink Apple

I’m a Melbourne-based Relationship Advisor for couples who fear that their second marriage could fall apart just like their first did.

I help them by reskilling them, in effective relationship behaviours, so they can be confident they won’t go back to old patterns!

Why not follow me on Facebook where I share my own and all sorts of other resources?

Warm regards

Chris Owen

Knowing I needed to write about the theme, my mind was instantly drawn to the fact that I haven’t yet sat down with SweetP this year and done our annual review of our relationship.

It’s a bit of an evaluation and an opportunity to talk about joys and sorrows, excitements and pain.

It’s certainly one of the ways we take our relationship seriously, and also how we can take a proactive stance at maintaining a healthy relationship, and making it a better relationship as well.

I t would be even more important if ours was a Second Marriage, like some of my clients and readers are currently experiencing.

So what will we be talking about?

There’s a whole pile of questions I created over at The Calm Space, but I’ll let you in, dear reader, on what SweetP and I will be talking about.

There’s no question our first big overseas adventure will be up there on the list.  We learned a lot more about being together, as we were forced by anonymity (and at times language) to rely on each other through that journey.  So, there’s much to talk about there.

SweetP is the money-worrier in our family, so I’m sure there’ll be fuel for discussion there too.

Retirement is nearer, so both our financial management and our conflicts around financial management, will be part of the discussion.

With retirement comes the issue of spending more time with each other.  SweetP is currently transitioning to retirement by now working part-time.  So how we manage spending 24 hours a day in each others’ company will be on the list as well.

And of course there’s more things, grandchildren, our adult children, our ailing parents etc etc.

So I think that our annual review will be part of this coming weekend.

Perhaps we’ll go out and have some yummy brekky, then go somewhere beautiful, perhaps beside a river, and talk together.

What did/will you do for your annual review?

Oh?  Not been there before?  Well why not head over to The Calm Space and have a read of my article so you can plan a review too.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Chris Owen of Pink Apple

I’m a Melbourne-based Relationship Advisor for couples who fear that their second marriage could fall apart just like their first did.

I help them by reskilling them, in effective relationship behaviours, so they can be confident they won’t go back to old patterns!

Why not follow me on Facebook where I share my own and all sorts of other resources?

Warm regards

Chris Owen

Sometimes Karen’s selected theme is so resonant that my contribution practically writes itself.  But I wasn’t feeling very wonderous, wonderful or even wondering.

There were sad and unsettling things happening in my life, and those of some of my closest friends.  Wonder didn’t sit well at all!

Totally barren in the ideas department, I struggled to find how wonder and better relationships might fit and how I could authentically write about it.

And then I read an article about fighting and I knew!

I knew heaps about fighting from bitter experience, and still now SweetP and I will have the odd fight that strikes like a whirlwind and leaves us wondering what happened to us.

So this month’s Relationship Space Wondering What You Could Do For A Better Relationship? is devoted to a reflection on fighting and changing how we do it.

I’m wondering if anyone will try the technique and let us all know how it goes!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

If you’d rather, we can meet up on Facebook. All you need to do is become a Fan of Pink Apple on FaceBook.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Chris Owen is Pink Apple and a bubbly Aussie Relationship Expert.

If you want a better relationship, but don’t know how to get it, then why not follow the beating heart in sidebar of this blog and take the Relationship Mojo Test?  You’ll receive Chris’ free E-Book  Your Relationship: From Mojo to Marvellous to help you improve your relationship.   Oh and there are other bonuses to be found on the other side of that beating heart!

Every month The Calm Space has a theme.  Each week, 3 or 4 of the contributors add some more food for thought on the month’s theme. As the month progresses, the roots of the theme get tickled and tackled. Opinions arise, stories develop, and sometimes controversy takes the stage!

This month’s theme is “purpose”.

Now, I’d argue that purpose is a bit of a new-age, coach-induced phenomenon.

And I’m a coach – kind of!

If the Calm Space is about moving “from stress serenity one step at a time” then I reckon purpose should be given a good kick in the backside!

So I’m reluctant to add having a purpose to the relationship “shoulds” that hang like boulders around our necks.

I figure that just like you learn to pick your battles with your adolescent children, there are other more important relationship “battles” to attack, than having a purpose! [more]

What do you think?

Oh by the way, Karen offers an excellent e-course to get you helping yourself.  Called A Month of Me Time it’s an excellent freebie.  I suggest you try it!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

If you’d rather, we can meet up on Facebook. All you need to do is become a Fan of Pink Apple on FaceBook.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Chris Owen is Pink Apple and a bubbly Aussie Relationship Expert.

If you want a better relationship, but don’t know how to get it, then why not follow the beating heart in sidebar of this blog and take the Relationship Mojo Test?  You’ll receive Chris’ free E-Book  Your Relationship: From Mojo to Marvellous to help you improve your relationship.   Oh and there are other bonuses to be found on the other side of that beating heart!

(I'd love to finish off that sentence with "of parties" but unfortunately my life is far too boring for that!)

But let's not get distracted by my lack of social life!

As I was saying, when my own thoughts so rudely interrupted me, my life seems to be whirling along at a pace that I'd rather put some brakes on.

How often do YOU feel like that?

Fortunately each month Karen Wallace takes pity on us all and brings us The Calm Space.

Before I go on I must confess my bias.  I am a contributor each month with my musings on the
Relationship Space.  (This month – Truth and Lies in Relationships: Are You Perpetrator Victim Or Both?)

However I'm telling you about it, because I get heaps out of reading the online mag's
other great articles.   

Karen describes her little virtual haven like this:

The Calm Space is an online magazine that is like a
virtual day-spa for your senses… decadent, informative, relaxing, a
real no-mobile-phones-allowed kind of escape where you can chill for a
minute or an hour and emerge refreshed and ready to face anything your
day throws at you!

It’s a rare woman who doesn’t succumb to chaos and madness at some
stage during her busy week. Whatever your particular life situation,
and no matter how your day is going, you will find respite within the
spaces here.

What I love is:

• the great themes for each month's articles.  July = Truth, June = Kindness May = Work  April = Conversations
• zeroing in on Karen's (@karenwallace) own infectious Calm in the Serenity Space
• getting some insights into organising from Angela Esnouf (@creatingorder) of Creating Order from Chaos on the Organising Space
• tapping into my spiritual side with Annie Hutton's challenges on the Spiritual Space
• pampering myself (well at least in my dreams) at the Spa Space
• Reading the most exquisite prose about all things Nature from Amy Palko (@amypalko) at the Nature Space 
• Filling my books wishlist from the fabuloso Marj's Lim's (@SlimInkMarjorie) suggestions on the latest good books in the Reading Space
• Swallowing my dose of financial medicine from the gorgeous Grant Wallace on Money Space (Alright I confess sometimes I'm a bit scared to go there, but always end up glad I did.)
• There's even monthly prizes (tho i don't get to be in that prize draw for obvious reasons!)

So when I need a bit of chillin' I go to The Calm Space.

Does it help you like that?