Whenever two or more people are interacting, there's a power flow between them – we just don't know what's happening. 

While water is to fish, power is to people. It is the medium we swim in. But it's usually invisible to us. We don't really see it when someone powers up on you or you're made to feel small when someone's talking. Whether it’s in a parent-child relationship, in a work environment, or even between friends, there is a power flow that exists between two people.

What's important is how we manage the flow of power between us – because sometimes, the flow of power gets messed up in the way we communicate. When you have respectful power flowing from one person to another, it brings influence. But when there is disrespectful power, it exerts control. When you are in a controlling kind of relationship, then you're not able to sustain a sense of closeness and safety between people. It’s all about mutual submission – and mutual love.

Today, we are talking about power struggles, the #1 up and down struggle that all couples experience. We may not even be aware that we are in a power struggle because they are so ubiquitous in every negotiation we take on in our relationships. 

In this episode, you will hear:

• What is power?
• 3 ways to balance the power flow
• Useful scripts to help bring balance to the power flow in your relationship
• The 7 benefits of balancing power in your relationship

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Episode Credits

If you like this podcast and are thinking of creating your own, consider talking to my producer, Emerald City Productions. They helped me grow and produce the podcast you are listening to right now. Find out more at https://emeraldcitypro.com Let them know we sent you.

In many relationships, there seems to be that inflection point where you decide to go forward together, or you decide to go forward separately. But can you come back from years of unhappiness? 

Especially, when couples are getting to the empty nester stage, they are asking the question of whether they can come back from this long phase of unhappiness that they've had together. It's complex because there are a lot of things – kids, future grandkids, the house, money, friends, family members – that hold them together. 

But those things are not enough to generate happiness. They have to be able to find that together, and the only way that's going to happen is through something called the mutuality factor. In other words, there has to be a mutual interest in trying to make it work. One person cannot do the work of two to make a marriage happy. It requires both. 

In this episode, we will walk you through the five ways to cure years of unhappiness and effect change that you might want to see in your relationship. 

In this episode, you will hear:

• Shared humility and forgiveness
• Dismantling of walls
• Moving from disrespect to respect
• Persistent effort on the part of the couple
• Investment in good times together
• A quick script for getting back on the right track

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Episode Credits

If you like this podcast and are thinking of creating your own, consider talking to my producer, Emerald City Productions. They helped me grow and produce the podcast you are listening to right now. Find out more at https://emeraldcitypro.com Let them know we sent you.

Most of us are fairly good at working through minor problems, which are common in every relationship. But when we have those major conflicts, we often don't have the right kind of tools to communicate our way through them. 

What a lot of couples end up doing is stockpiling their problems instead of resolving them. And so, when future conflicts arise, what comes out are reruns from those stockpiled problems. If couples are not good at being able to resolve these things, then they just have more arguments stockpiled. They don't know how to work through things and start to avoid certain topics. This leads to resentment and some emotional drifting. 

Sometimes, too, people make major problems out of minor problems, and there are others who have major problems and they're minimizing them. So things could get pretty complicated. 

In this episode, we discuss how you can work through these major problems. We particularly illustrate a sample scenario and some language you could use in the event you find yourself in similar situations.

In this episode, you will hear:

• Focusing on the problem, not the person
• Keeping your emotions in check
• Using the "I" terminology to express your thoughts and feelings
• Giving mutual consideration to each other's input
• Validation is the most powerful element of communication.
• Collaborating to find a mutually satisfying resolution

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Supporting Resources:

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Episode Credits

If you like this podcast and are thinking of creating your own, consider talking to my producer, Emerald City Productions. They helped me grow and produce the podcast you are listening to right now. Find out more at https://emeraldcitypro.com Let them know we sent you.

What if you found out that your partner was having an affair? Can you still rebuild the marriage? How do you navigate getting through or getting past an affair?

There are some people that just cannot recover from that level of betrayal. It's just too much for them that they feel it's best to dissolve the relationship and move on from it. There are also couples who, while they may want to end the relationship, have many constraining factors that keep them in, whether it be their kids or a house and so many other factors. 

If you find yourself in this position and you’re confused about staying or moving on, just know that there is hope – and there is help available.

About 70% of couples who go through some form of affair or infidelity are able to recover and they stay married. And about 50% of those couples who did the work ended up having a healthier relationship than they did before the affair occurred. 

In this episode, you will hear:

• The impact of an affair on the marriage
• The tendency to act quickly to minimize the damage
• The impact of the affair on the injured partner
• The impact of the affair on the involved partner
• The 3-step recovery process
• A quick script for the involved spouse

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Episode 014: Five Things to Consider Before You Enter an Affair

https://www.donolund.com/trg014

Episode Credits

If you like this podcast and are thinking of creating your own, consider talking to my producer, Emerald City Productions. They helped me grow and produce the podcast you are listening to right now. Find out more at https://emeraldcitypro.com Let them know we sent you.

There are a lot of variables that contribute to why people enter an affair, and one of the most common reasons is that couples are not investing in the marriage. However, if you’re at this point of your life where you feel miserable in your marriage, or for whatever reason, you no longer think your marriage is working, having an affair should at least be the last thing in your mind, or perhaps, never at all. 

When the marriage gets neglected, couples can usually handle neglect for a short period of time. But when that neglect shifts into an emotional drift, the couple could experience some dissatisfaction on an emotional level, and on a romantic/sexual level. They're not spending time together and they're not going out on dates. They're not making love because they're too exhausted by the end of the day. Because they're busy talking about what's going on and what needs to be done, they get into more conflicts. 

Then they start to pull away from each other and get into an emotional drift. And because they want to feel the connection they once had, they are at risk of finding that outside the marriage. In this episode, we discuss the five things to consider before you even think of having an affair. Finally, we’re offering a quick script for self-talk related to this topic. 

In this episode, you will hear:

• Why the adventure is not worth the risk
• How the adventure turns into anxiety
• Living in two dimensions and managing two sets of expectations
• Compromising your core values
• A safer approach to confront the problems in your marriage
• Factors that contribute to an affair
• Putting an end to the relationship
• Two questions to ask yourself before you consider entering an affair

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We’d love it even more if you could drop a review or 5-star rating over on Apple Podcasts. Simply select “Ratings and Reviews” and “Write a Review” then a quick line with your favorite part of the episode. It only takes a second and it helps spread the word about the podcast.

Supporting Resources:

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Episode Credits

If you like this podcast and are thinking of creating your own, consider talking to my producer, Emerald City Productions. They helped me grow and produce the podcast you are listening to right now. Find out more at https://emeraldcitypro.com Let them know we sent you.

Letting go – whether of a loved one you've lost or of your resentment towards someone – is an act of self-care. When you hold on to the hurt or resentment, it's actually harming you more than it's harming the other person.

The process of letting go is just that – it's a process. It's a practice that you have to come back to over and over again. Sometimes when we're holding on, all we can feel is our own pain and hurt. And we really have a hard time looking at the other person from a different lens. 

The longer you have resentment and bitterness, you’re giving the other person some poison. But you end up drinking it, instead of them drinking it. When you get to a place of letting go, you can start looking at the person with less sense of anger and bitterness and see them in a more positive light. 

Letting go is a normal process every human being will have to encounter in the course of life. Today, we’re sharing some suggestions or recommendations to help you begin the process of letting go. 

In this episode, you will hear:

• What makes letting go difficult for many people
• How holding on is getting in the way of your life
• Deciding it’s time to let go
• How to begin the process of letting go
• A quick script to talk yourself through the process of letting go
• How letting go can coincide with holding on

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We’d love it even more if you could drop a review or 5-star rating over on Apple Podcasts. Simply select “Ratings and Reviews” and “Write a Review” then a quick line with your favorite part of the episode. It only takes a second and it helps spread the word about the podcast.

Supporting Resources:

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Episode Credits

If you like this podcast and are thinking of creating your own, consider talking to my producer, Emerald City Productions. They helped me grow and produce the podcast you are listening to right now. Find out more at https://emeraldcitypro.com Let them know we sent you.

Are you feeling the need to change something about your spouse or partner? Or perhaps it’s the other way around where you feel the pressure from your partner to change something that has always been a part of you?

When couples come together in a wholesome way where they balance their independence with interdependence, they're going to have a solid relationship. As the relationship starts to form, you may start to see subtle signs where this person starts to show displeasure, unhappiness, or discomfort. They start to make requests or complaints and the other person starts to feel a sense of pressure to change. 

One of the common perceptions about relationships is that you should both meld as this one unit, being part of a "we" now. But that shouldn’t be the case.

In this episode, we outline the five things that you should never have to give up for your partner. What does it take to create a successful relationship while acknowledging there are things on which you need to stand your ground?

We’re also sharing some quick scripts that are assertive and straightforward yet calm and respectful, which are very important for your partner to hear and digest. 

In this episode, you will hear:

• Never giving up your personal boundaries
• How self-respect is your monitor for boundaries
• Never giving up your personal interests
• Never giving up your personality
• The concept of projection
• Never giving up your close relationships
• Never giving up your personal values

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We’d love it even more if you could drop a review or 5-star rating over on Apple Podcasts. Simply select “Ratings and Reviews” and “Write a Review” then a quick line with your favorite part of the episode. It only takes a second and it helps spread the word about the podcast.

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Episode Credits

If you like this podcast and are thinking of creating your own, consider talking to my producer, Emerald City Productions. They helped me grow and produce the podcast you are listening to right now. Find out more at https://emeraldcitypro.com Let them know we sent you.

Whether you’re in a romantic relationship or any personal relationship, there are definitely things that can trigger you that cause you to become reactive. Therefore, it’s important to be able to dial down your emotions before they make you say or do things you will regret later. 

The next time you find yourself on the verge of another conflict, here is a powerful tool that you can use to avoid stepping on a landmine that explodes into a blowout situation.

GO CALM is an acronym and tool you can use in the midst of a conflict to help you ground yourself and avoid making a bad situation worse. This is not about ignoring your emotions or trying to push them down. Instead, this is a process that you can engage to help you channel them effectively.

Remember, all it needs is just one person to go calm to create an atmosphere for both people to go calm. When one person is going calm, very likely, the other person will join them in that space, and this is backed by science and studies. 

By taking control of yourself in the middle of that conflict, you're going to have a much better way of controlling your reactions and responses. And so you're not in that reactive mode, and instead, you become more responsive to what's going on. And GO CALM works to get you in that space.

In this episode, you will hear:

• Understanding the triggers you carry and where they come from
• Gauge what is going on.
• Observe what your body is saying.
• Concentrate on your breathing.
• Ask the other person to calm down.
• Listen first. 
• Measure your words carefully.
• How it only takes one person to go calm.

Subscribe and Review

Have you subscribed to our podcast? We’d love for you to subscribe if you haven’t yet. 

We’d love it even more if you could drop a review or 5-star rating over on Apple Podcasts. Simply select “Ratings and Reviews” and “Write a Review” then a quick line with your favorite part of the episode. It only takes a second and it helps spread the word about the podcast.

Supporting Resources:

https://gudlife.com/ 

Episode Credits

If you like this podcast and are thinking of creating your own, consider talking to my producer, Emerald City Productions. They helped me grow and produce the podcast you are listening to right now. Find out more at https://emeraldcitypro.com Let them know we sent you.