Marriage breakdown signs

As lack of trust has increased in the world, many people have become more entrenched in their own viewpoints, and more unable to listen to any that might be different. That increasingly divisive outlook has sadly begun to infiltrate many intimate relationships, making it harder for couples to successfully negotiate when they disagree.

Reasonable and fair negotiations cannot succeed when partners are locked into an individual viewpoint that erases any other.

Opinions can rapidly become threats. Flexible thoughts become hard-and-fast beliefs that are cast in stone. The other partner is no longer someone who simply thinks or believes differently but is a threat and their opinion invalidated.

I’ve been working with relationship partners now for more than four decades, helping them to communicate more effectively as they learn the skills of listening and accepting the realities of each other’s thoughts and feelings.

Those skills required flexibility and the willingness to incorporate the other’s point of view.

Recall the early battles over role definition and the power struggles tha

when communication breaks down