Couples questioning their current relationship styles and seeking answers to the following questions will help them manage healthier relationships. Regarding these questions, Gerald R. Weeks&Larry Hof;
1-How do you deal with the issues of involvement, control and affect/intimacy in a relationship? The issues in this question (involvement, control, and affect) are emphasized by Schutz as three basic interpersonal needs. How involved are couples in each other's areas, fears, religious values, financial problems, child-rearing styles and interests? Couples' personal identities are very important when it comes to involvement. Unless the spouses put their personal identities and addictions into the relationship at a sufficient level; They will be reluctant to share their own pain, shame and similar feelings, or to try to change their behavior in case of any failure that will lead to fear of abandonment.
As for the basic questions regarding "control", which is another issue: How equal is the power in the relationship? is it falling apart? What is the satisfaction level with this power distribution? How are decisions made and roles decided? How does each spouse view himself and his partner in terms of responsibility? The struggle for control usually occurs when one of the spouses feels powerless in some way or resents their spouse making decisions alone. This struggle for control spreads to the sexual relationship of the couple as they inhibit their sexual desire. On the contrary, when both spouses believe that they and their spouses are strong and responsible, they will have the opportunity to achieve mutual and satisfactory problem solving, decision-making and role sharing in many areas, including sexual expression.
The other issue is “love.” Questions about "closeness" are: How close are the spouses to each other? How satisfied is each of them? Can the spouses touch each other, are there supportive, warm and caring expression changes? Spouses should ask these questions to themselves and complete the missing parts of their answers so that they can minimize their problems as a couple. Failure to meet intimacy needs and express them correctly increases the possibility of sexual problems.
2-For this relationship, How is the balance between emotions, logic and behavior established? For the relationship to progress at an optimal level, there must be a balance between emotion, logic and behavior. Just as pulling a boat with one oar causes it to rotate around its own axis, acting with only one person (emotion, logic, behavior) in a relationship will cause conflict in couples and the relationship will not progress. Couples should try to understand how aware they are of their individual and their partner's human emotions - joy, love, hurt, pain, anger, etc. - and examine how well they can convey these emotions to their partner. If it seems that the strengthening of the relationship is prevented by inappropriate expressions or lack of awareness, these skills need to be developed. For example, it is very important for couples experiencing sexual dysfunction to express pain, fear or anger effectively, to develop empathetic reactions, and to reduce defensive responses or passive-aggressive moves, so that these studies have the power to remove the obstacles to the sexual functions of couples.
In the field of logic, couples will provide the greatest benefit to their relationships by identifying cognitive distortions and irrational beliefs. Cognitive distortions can sometimes be destructive. These distortions are: overgeneralization (things like this always get to me), all-or-nothing thinking (if we have this problem, we need to divorce), magnifying the negative and ignoring the positive (these arguments make all the good things between us meaningless), personalization (doing this means me It means you don't like it). When these distorted thoughts enter into a relationship, they cause couples to distort the truth, take a defensive stance, increase arguments, and develop hurt and angry feelings. Additionally, between spouses, "my partner should know what I want, I don't need to tell him this", "if you loved me, you would know what I want", "if I knew what you felt, I would act accordingly", "I should fix everything that is wrong between us", a man should never be sensitive and weak". They have false beliefs such as, "If we get too close, we will lose control and this will end badly." Spouses, be careful, these are words and behaviors that have entered your relationship like a virus!
3-Spouses should be active with each other. Can he/she communicate in this way? If yes, how much? Couples should eliminate the deficiencies in their basic skills of expressing their feelings and thoughts clearly and effectively with the "I" language, using verbal and non-verbal communication tools, confirming or clarifying what they hear, giving selective and specific feedback in a timely manner, and making constructive and positive requests. In this way, they should compensate for their deficiencies in their basic skills. They can listen with their ears, eyes, and even touch, and allow their partner's thoughts, feelings, and actions to have an impact on them. In order to overcome their sexual problems, couples must be able to express their own wishes and needs effectively and respond to their partner's needs empathetically and willingly.
4-How effective are the couple's problem-solving and decision-making processes? Couples will solve their problems by effectively using their skills of defining the problem, finding different solutions and dwelling on the positive and negative consequences of each of them, reaching an effective decision, creating an action plan and implementing it and then evaluating it. Otherwise, unresolved issues will arise as uncertainties in chaos do not solve the problem. It will increase the couple's anger towards each other.
5-Can the spouses manage conflicts effectively? Couples should review how they deal with conflict, and the person should be able to own his own feelings and accept his partner's feelings without blaming him. In other words, they should be able to distinguish the real problem. They should be able to continue the existing situation without opening old books just to prove a point. When anger that cannot be controlled occurs, it would be good for the couple to distance themselves from each other just to think more clearly about how to handle the incident. During this distance, they must define the problem and come to terms with an effective problem-solving method. They should also congratulate each other when the conflict is resolved.
If the conflict is not dealt with successfully, anger and resentment remain unresolved. As long as the problems are solved constructively, hope and confidence will increase with such skills.
Couples increase the quality of communication between them with such questions and move away from the communication style they are used to and create a new one. They will start to experience things. They will increase their awareness by becoming aware of the approaches that individuals have experienced as a cycle in their lives for years, in terms of the communication or behavior they are accustomed to. While the individual is experiencing the cycle, his self and reality are incompatible and he has difficulty understanding the behavior of others as well as his own behavior. These inquiries will help to make sense of people's behavior and the behavior of others.
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