Are You A Victim of Trauma?

Sadly, many people have witnessed horror on a major scale. You may have enlisted in a branch of the service looking to make a difference, to serve your country and maybe to find a career. Trauma, however, isn't limited to soldiers who witness unspeakable atrocities or suffer horrifific injuries. Those who watched friends die next to them in battle are traumatized, as well.

If you enlisted, you made a difference in this world and, hopefully, you found a career, but at what cost? Some soldiers come back home and put the fury and chaos behind them when they take off the uniform. Some aren't able to. A significant percentage of those who experience combat suffer from post-traumatic stress symptoms. For many, the emotional and physical symptoms dissipate awhile after returning home. They get back into their lives, go on with their relationships and move forward with their lives. For others, gripping, gut-wrenching symptoms hang on for years.

But trauma isn't limited to war zones. There are victims of industrial accidents, natural disasters--such as hurricanes and floods--who find themselves living daily with emotions they struggle to shake. We see trauma after trauma on the news every night. Dozens of them. Crimes and accidents and violence done by ones who were supposed to be safe. In each and every one of these, someone's life is changed forever. The effects can linger.

In what seems like a more mundane occurrence, our highways are the scene of traffic accidents that can also have profound physical, mental and emotional effects. One large study found as many as nine percent of individuals who survive significant motor vehicle accidents experience Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

A research and treatment organization, Child Trauma Academy, is studying the neurological effects of trauma in high-risk children. Victims who are exposed to traumatizing environments or situations at an early age will show changes in brain development. The good news is that these can be successfully addressed in many kids.

You may have experienced or witnessed an event in your life that you've never recognized or labeled as traumatic. Combat, natural disasters, motor vehicle accidents, physical and/or sexual abuse. If you've been exposed to these as a child or an adult, it is possibly still affecting you in ways you don't realize. Traumatic events can lead to emotional health difficulties and poor interpersonal relations.

If you or someone you love has experienced or witnessed a traumatic event, getting assistance makes sense. Don't struggle alone.

Keeping Your Mate Happy

It’s pure self-interest. If your mate is happy, you’ve got a better chance of being happy yourself. Relationships are complicated, but this much is just obvious.

There are two of you in this relationship and, of course, you want to be happy. That’s a given. You find a job that’s as fulfilling, satisfying and rewarding as possible. You engage in hobbies or play softball or play with a band or make quilts. You do the things you like to do. You hang out with friends and goof off on the weekends.

You'd like your significant other to be happy too, but things get murkier when we talk about placing his or her needs at a high priority. If you love him, you naturally care about his needs, but the question is whether or not you act like you value his needs. This can be tricky, particularly if you think he should have different needs, ones that fit more closely to yours or ones that make more sense to you. Needs that, at least, don’t conflict with yours, right?

In a less complicated world, yeah, but that’s not usually how it works. Relationships involve two separate people. Two individuals. That means you’ve got different needs, different tastes. Different ideas about how to have fun. This is true even if you’ve found a mate who shares many of your likes and dislikes. Some things are going to be not alike.

This isn’t a problem until something she wants isn’t what you want. Then we have conflict in the relationship and this is unavoidable. Talking about the differences openly can pave the way to healthy conflict resolution, but somewhere in here you have to want your mate to get what she needs. If she needs to go to medical school to get where she wants to go, this will involve sacrifice for you. If she wants to climb the corporate ladder, then you’ll be the corporate mate.

You may think, “This relationship ought to be easier.” Maybe, but if it was there’d be fewer break-ups and a much lower divorce rate. Staying together happily isn’t simple.

You can’t be in a relationship without being effected by one another’s needs and pursuits . From the most basic decision of what to have for dinner to what car to buy to more complicated choices about money, you sometimes see things differently. You want different things. If you’re in a relationship, you’re going to feel the impact of your mate’s decisions. This can be massively frustrating and is the reason why some people stay single. There are many folks who try to find a way around this by being in a relationship without living together. Some even prefer to live states apart, and this does keep conflicts to a minimum. If you’re not together, you have less chance of being impacted by one another’s decisions.

Of course, living thousands of miles apart tends to limit other aspects of relationships, too.

If you commit to a mate, you’re committing to her pursuit of the goals that are important to her. This goes for the goals you’re pursuing, too. Commitment means a shared life. If you find yourself—or he accuses you of—hindering your partner’s getting what he wants, you need to seriously examine your part in the relationship.

Some people choose to separate. If your partner wants something you don’t, like 18 kids or a job that takes her on the road six nights out of seven, you have to ask yourself if this is the relationship for you. But you also need to ask yourself the harder question about the more common conflicts—are you thinking about what’s best for your mate? Are you placing her needs at a high premium. When it comes to the place you live or the car you drive—basic life choices—you might need to ask yourself the hard questions.

I hate the terms “sacrifices” and “compromise.” They too often involve resentment. If you’ve come to a resolution in a relationship, you want what benefits your partner and he wants what benefits you. The process of sorting this through—without resentment—is not short or simple. It can be very rewarding, though.

Know what you need. This isn’t as simple as it sounds. Know what you want from your life and be able to talk about these things with your mate. Find out what he needs. Believe it or not, in most relationships, these aren’t mutually exclusive, but getting to this point takes work. Don’t be afraid of it. If you put effort into this, you can craft a truly rewarding partnership.

Dating Down

Don’t pretend you’ve never heard of it. You might have done it yourself--gone out with a guy who has less money and less of a job than you have. Maybe the girl you’re seeing doesn’t have ambitions in life beyond what club she’s going to this evening and you’ve got the next ten years of your life mapped out. You’ve got goals. When you’re dating someone who hasn’t gone to college and you have a master’s degree or someone who lives paycheck to paycheck when you’re bankin’ it—then you’re dating down.

Sometimes this is a power issue. No judgment here, but some folks like feeling in control in relationships. You want the upper hand and earning more money than your partner or having more education can give you a sense of power. A you-need-me-more-than-I-need-you thing. This may sound crappy, but who hasn’t felt vulnerable in a relationship? The sense of possible loss and heartbreak is the risk that comes with love and it sucks.

So, guys with education or jobs that make a good income can be drawn to date girls who never graduated high school. Maybe these girls are younger or have hot bodies, but haven’t worked as hard to develop their work attainments. This is an almost classic trophy-wife scenario in which physical attributes become a commodity. The better a woman looks, the wealthier man she can attract. This goes for men, as well. As women rise in educational and financial skills, they get to choose mates for reasons other than provider potential. They get to date down, too. A successful and/or educated woman can get with a stud even if she’s not the most beautiful woman in the room.

Purchasing power, baby.

While there’s no inherent reason why people of different educational levels or different financial situations can’t work out a good relationship, dating down has some specific challenges attached. If there’s a gulf between your conditions in life, you may feel funny about introducing your current flame to potential clients or to your parents. How does your choice of lover reflect on you? It could make you look powerful and power typically equates to sexy. But when the power in a relationship isn’t shared 50/50, bad things can happen. The more-powerful partner can try to run the show and not listen to the less-powerful partner’s issues. Resentment is a real danger and this poison relationships.

But let’s not be harsh about this. We can’t all date doctors and lawyers. Maybe you’re not even interested in doing this. Sometimes you just want to go out with a guy who’s cute and fun and knows how to have a good time. Who cares what he makes or what your friends will think of him? This might mean dating down or not (doctors can be cute and know how to have fun).

Dating down is a phenomena, though, that some people use to deal with possible relationship issues. This might be a resolution of sorts to your conflict when you’re not sure you can win the hottie you really want, so you settle for someone who’s just okay. It’s one way to deal with a lack of self-confidence. Rejection isn’t fun. By dating down, you can hedge your bets. You take what comes to you, even if it’s not really what you want.

Maybe you’re just out of a bad relationship break-up or your life is in professional crisis. If you think you’re messed up, you might not want to get with someone you really like. You’re too messed up, right now! Later, when you get your crap together, you’ll maybe think about asking out the person you’re really interested in.

Dating down is part of the I-don’t-want-to-be-alone thing. You find a “sub-standard” mate while you recover from a break-up or while you and your ex work out custody of the kids or while you cope with an addiction. The problem here is that how you handle power differentials in any relationship are a reflection of what’s going on with you. Heck, maybe you need to accept being alone for awhile. Maybe you need the silence to be able to hear what's in your head.

Down dating has the possibility of conceiving unintended pregnancies, which makes everything much more complicated.

Maybe who you’re dating is a reflection of your lack of belief in yourself. Or of your desire to make yourself feel better about you, but this sort of situation only brings bigger complications. Dating down doesn’t solve problems. It has it’s own set of issues.

Think about why you’re with who you’re with. It pays to be self-aware.

No Such Thing as "Happily Ever After"

This is a hard fantasy to give up. We want to believe if we just find the right person, then our relationships will be easy and we’ll magically be happy. Don’t delude yourself. Relationships are a lot like working out. It’s not supposed to be easy.

The point is getting healthy and learning to deal with your own stuff. Learning to give up behaviors that don’t bring you good things is part of growing up, part of getting healthy. Doesn’t your relationship partner need to help you make good choices?

You may be one of those folks who buy the infomercial promises of losing weight without exercising or limiting your food intake. It’s easy! So not true. This is similar to thinking and telling yourself that your relationship should also be easy…that it shouldn’t require changes on your part.

Don’t believe it.

This relationship thing is hugely complicated and some patterns of conflict can be unhealthy. Sometimes your partner will ask for unreasonable things from you. You might be asked to participate in a lifestyle that makes you uncomfortable or activities that torpedo your self-esteem. So what then? If you’re supposed to tough out relationship issues and try to be open to growing and changing yourself, doesn’t that mean pretty much doing what your partner wants?

No, that’s not what I’m saying. We’re not just talking about going along.

Values—your beliefs about right and wrong, your spiritual beliefs, even your money behaviors—are probably best shared. Generally, couples who have similar values have a better chance of success in their relationships. But sometimes your values aren’t good for you and reflect personal issues you’ve not successfully addressed. This is where you want a partner to challenge you. You want your partner to help you deal with issues that are getting in your way.

There are some couples whose highest priority seems to be financial success and the conspicuous consumption that can accompany it. This can include everything from workaholism to projecting your need for appearing successful on your children. Is little Mikayla’s SAT score or what colleges she gets into really about you? Yes, you as her parent have a lot of impact, but do her achievements seem more about you than her?

Values sometimes need to be reevaluated. Relationship conflict can lead you right up to the issues you need to confront. Sadly, some couples choose mates because there appears to be little or no conflict. The healthiest couples with the best shot at long-term happiness have similar values, but not necessarily similar personalities. When people don’t want to deal with conflict, they can choose mates with a similar life perspective. After all, the thinking goes, if we think alike, we won’t argue. We won’t fight or have conflict.

So not true. The tendency to conflict is part of human nature. We just need to deal with it in a healthy, constructive way. Relationships are like playing on a see-saw; both people sitting on the same side is both boring and unproductive.

Conflict doesn’t have to be expressed in yelling, screaming fits or in physical violence. We engage in these behaviors when we don’t know how to resolve our differences. When we don’t know how to listen without believing we’re being personally attacked. Taking other points-of-view into account can open up your world and help you consider new ways of looking at yourself and others. The other guy can be right about some things without it meaning that you’re wrong. You both may have pieces of the puzzle.

But that involves everyone being able to talk about the way they see things. This is the only way we grow. If we're exchanging different perspectives, we sometimes going to disagree and we need to work this through.

“Happily Ever After” should be re-written to include healthy, constructive conflict.

Leaving is Hard

Falling in love is fun, even when it’s scary. The end of love, though, sucks. So, what do you do when you think you may need to leave?

If this person didn’t have some good qualities, you wouldn’t have gotten involved in the first place. Only now, the happy times are few and far between. You don’t feel loved—at all or not frequently enough. Even if the person you’re with loves you—or says he does—you’re not having much fun. The relationship isn’t working for you. Shouldn’t you leave?

Leaving is never easy. Even people who find someone new as quickly as they can, so there’s never a gap between lovers, still struggle with the leaving. One break-up after another can leave you wondering if there’s something wrong with you. It’s easy to say you’re picking the wrong people, but inside you find yourself wondering if you’re the problem. Why are you attracted to all these wrong people? Why do you have multiple broken relationships in your past?

You might also worry about the one you’re leaving. It may seem like she won’t be able to make it unless you’re there helping her. Even with a really dysfunctional relationship, you might feel that leaving your struggling, self-destructive, messed-up lover will mean she self-destructs even more. Shouldn’t you stay to help keep her stabilized? Even if you’re miserable?

If you’re married, there’s even the “for better or worse” clause. You’re supposed to stay through the rough times even when it seems like all you have are rough times.

Then, there’s always the question of whether this relationship can be salvaged. Of whether you’re bailing out too quickly. Relationships don’t come with an instruction manual that indicates when they’re too bad to revive. There’s no kill switch that gets thrown and it’s clearly all over. Wouldn’t that be simple? Knowing when it’s too late is an incredibly personal, typically frustrating thing and you may find yourself flip-flopping several times on whether to stay or go.

Leaving is hard. It doesn’t feel good, even when we feel relieved. We want relationships that always work and are always clearly valuable. Relationships sometimes don’t work.

The thing about any interaction of two separate people is that it takes both of you. If one is choosing to leave the relationship, then it’s over. Just like that. Maybe it shouldn’t be, but it is. Guilting a partner into staying in a relationship never works. They may stay for awhile, but guilt is a poor foundation for any relationship.

Staying for the children is also a tricky thing. For some couples, the basic relationship is so flawed, the kids would be happier if you separate. You may not argue openly, but your kids will know if you’re mad at dad. Even little kids know. If your relationship is unhappy most of the time or if you’re unhappy most of the time, staying doesn’t help your kids.

Fix the relationship or end it. This may seem harsh, but it is a reality of couple-dom. Relationship repair can be complicated and painful. That doesn’t mean it’s impossible. And just because some relationships can be repaired, doesn’t mean you should stay in yours.

Leaving is hard. Sometimes you need to leave.

Relationship Blame

It’s all her fault…No, it’s all his fault. Okay, the problems are mostly her fault.

Actually, you're both responsible for what goes on in your relationship. This can be hard to swallow if one of you does something really bad, like cheating or running up big joint financial debt in secret. The wounded party is typically indignant about sharing any responsibility, but it’s true. The blame for what happens in a relationship has to be equally shared.

The actual cheating or financial shenanigans—that choice was the act of one person and has to be the responsibility of one person. But the nature of this relationship…that’s both of you. In every case, whether it’s adultery or bankruptcy or lying, you have the power to impact the relationship—what you do in it, whether you stay or not. What you do matters to the interaction. You have some responsibility.

In reality, fault (responsibility) and power go hand in hand. You can’t have one without the other and everyone has power in the relationship. This doesn’t mean that you feel powerful—you may not be getting what you want—but you do have power, regardless.

Knowing how to use this power, that’s where it gets trickier.

People want to argue with me all the time about this. The real truth is that you have both power and responsibility. You have choices in this relationship, maybe just not the choices you want. You may want your partner to be a certain way—talk about his feelings more, be on time if he’s usually late, get a better paying job—whatever. You’ve probably tried telling your partner what you want and your partner may have not seen things the way you see them or not wanted to do the things you asked. Heck, he may not have seen the point.

You feel powerless to get what you want, which is to have your partner hear what you’re saying, understand and change, of course. What most people don’t understand is that this involves you changing how you act in the relationship. Not just words, but behavior. You have to do your part. Maybe what you've contributed to the relationship is just that you've stayed to tolerate bad behavior from your partner. That's still you contributing to how things are between you. And you don't get to say that your partner caused your behavior. It never works to do annoying, destructive things in the relationship because she does the same thing. That’s a dead-end street and a quick path to a break-up.

You contribute half of what goes on in the relationship. So, part of this is your responsibility.

Of course, the ultimate power you have in a relationship is the power to leave. Knowing when to do this can be the hard part, but never forget that you have this power.

No Second Chances

There’s trouble in Relationship-land and you’d like to hope it’ll just go away. After all, you guys have fought before and things always get better. You tell yourself, you just have to let it rest. Not talk everything to death. Not keep harping at each other.

It’ll blow over, you say.

Sadly, you may be right. It may be over. In relationship land, you might not get your “second chance”. Sometimes, one partner complains and the other one tunes him or her out. After a while, the vocal one gets tired of trying to get his partner to hear his issues. He may stop talking about what bothers him. The ignoring partner may even think there is no problem.

He’d be wrong.

It’s dangerous to ignore the one you love, even when it seems she’s just bitching. This is the way to make small issues blossom into big, ugly relationship-breaking problems. Trouble grows in the dark. What you don't look at can hurt you. The kicker is that you won’t even know what hit you. You’ll be tootling along, thinking things are good, and out-of-nowhere, she’ll tell you she’s leaving.

Or you might get to the place that you know things are strained some, but it’s not that bad, you tell yourself. After all, it's still good most of the time. For you. Then, there are some individuals who talk to their partners about problems, but they don’t really tell them how much it’s bothering them. Maybe there was one or two, brief conversations about the conflict. Then, having your partner tell you that he thinks you need a break from the relationship and he’s moving out for awhile, can be startling.

Relationship trouble can seem to go from zero to eighty in a very short time. But it was brewing under the surface for awhile. This is another one of those tend your own garden situations. If you want your relationship to prosper and grow strong, you need to actually hear what’s going on with your partner. You also need a clue about your own feelings. If you’re upset or don’t feel listened to and valued, you won’t keep loving your partner. It’s human nature. Someone else is likely to come along and stir your emotions. Suddenly, the grass on the other side of the fence looks a lot greener.

So, you need to talk about things that are bothering you. Really talk. And you need to listen when he talks. This is the only way to build a solid relationship.

Some couples work hard to avoid dealing with conflicts they don’t know how to resolve. Some party hard, build large friend networks or work all the time. Others invest more in their parenting—T ball, soccer, Girl Scouts, gymnastics—than in the relationship that forms the foundation for the family.

Don’t wait until it’s too late. It really could be over and it could happen much faster than you want to believe. While you may find it comforting to tell yourself that this relationship will last forever, you need to know that there’s a real possibility of it not. You and your partner need to function each day to show each other that you are both of the highest priority to one another.

Don’t take this for granted. It could be over before you know it.