Do you feel stuck in your relationship? Going nowhere? Frustrated and hurt by your spouse's behavior?

All couples go through periods where their relationship is strained. Stress, sleep-deprivation, demands from family and work can starve your marriage of the positive energy it needs and deserves. Soon, you find yourselves arguing more often, making up with less enthusiasm and becoming someone even you yourself don’t like.

If this sounds like you, or someone you love, it’s time to do something about it!

All couples disagree and argue. All couples feel annoyed and frustrated by the spouse at times.

It's easy to fall into destructive patterns of relating but it doesn't have to be that way.

Read on to learn about one of our strategies to break the relationship gridlock. ... TaNGo!!

The 'T' in TaNGo stands for 'Time out'.

You owe it to yourself and to your marriage to step out of the hot zone to regain your calm.

But 'Time Out' is not about stewing it over or rehearsing your attack... It's about connecting with the best part of you, the part that is true and loving.

So take a few deep breaths ... and let the tension go.

'N' is for 'Needs & Emotions'

Now that you're calmer, reflect on what's happening for you.

Name your emotions, acknowledge them... What do they tell you about the needs that are being frustrated in this situation?

Perhaps you are angry because your spouse has broken a promise and it's caused you inconvenience and worry. Your emotions might be telling you that you need reliability in order to trust your spouse. Or maybe you're upset because your spouse has criticized you. Do your emotions tell you that you need to feel respected and admired by your spouse?

'G' is for gratitude.

When we're hurt, it's easy to get overwhelmed by the negatives about our spouse. Soon we are remembering all the little ways he/she has let us down. What started as a single disappointment soon grows to become a major character flaw in our spouse.

Hope evaporates and we become reactive and critical.

Gratitude can be consciously chosen and is a powerful technique for taming those runaway negative thoughts and bringing our focus onto the goodness in our spouse. Gratitude helps us keep our spouse and the situation in perspective.

TaNGo helps you move out of that gridlocked hopelessness into a space of optimism and opportunity.

It helps you move from condemnation to curiosity... A state of mind that has a spacious generosity for your spouse, a mindset that allows for an alternative interpretation of your spouse's actions to the one you tend to assume and condemn.

SmartLoving BreakThrough workshop.

The SmartLoving BreakThrough Workshop is a practical, solution-focussed event for all stages of marriage. Drawing on contemporary research and Catholic theology, this workshop will arm you with skills and insights to transform your relationship into the thriving, joy-filled encounter that it is meant to be.

For information and dates visit
https://smartloving.org/breakthrough/