From the inside, relationships can seem like a competition. Who will get what they want, and who will have to sacrifice? Who's to blame for your problems? How can you get your partner to understand you, or agree with you? For better or worse, you can't win a relationship. The only way anyone wins is by getting closer. Intimacy is the prize, and one person can only get it if the other one does too.

From the outside, I don't see any of the things you see. I see relational dynamics that are always co-created. I see misinterpretations you've gotten attached to. I see attempts to get your needs met that are often clumsy. I see both people wanting to express love, and receive love, but not always knowing how. You want to learn to see yourself how I see you. That's why we all need support from outside our relationships.

We like to say, "I'm in a relationship", or "I have a relationship", but neither one is true. Most relationship problems begin with the myth that your relationship is a kind of thing that takes care of itself. When you look, however, it's not hard to discover that there is no ship! All that exists is relating. Relating is a process - something you do, not something you have. The quality of your relating determines everything.

How well do you listen? Can you attune and hear the feelings and needs beneath your partner's words? Do you assume good intent and listen for what's right about what they're saying? Are you able to hear them without defending or withdrawing? Does your partner feel like you really get them? Listening is only one of many relational skills we don't learn in school. Unless we grow up with relationally mature role models, we don't learn them at all.

Most couples counselors are too passive. That's the complaint I hear most from dissatisfied couples. I'll only ever let you fight momentarily, so I can watch and learn about what you do when I'm not around. But you don't need an audience, or a referee. You need a coach who can interrupt you and help you communicate more effectively.

Conflicts in relationship happen because change is needed. My job, however, is not to save your relationship. It is to help it become whatever it is trying to change into. Sometimes that means finding a conscious and loving way for the relationship to end. Other times it means helping you get closer, understand each other better, clear the residues of the past, and learn to be the partners you wish you could be.