Couple Separation Crises - Do's And Don'ts

Sometimes it happens to us that we are being divorced or want a divorce. In response to this reality, a marriage counselor gives us a series of precepts as guidance in processing a separation situation. Having a realistic perspective on love separations can make all the difference in how we further love in life. This article is good for ourselves and for friends we know going through a relating crisis. From studying this list you can make your own list for handling a love crisis. Or simply take this list and discuss it with a partner or friend for insights into your reality.

Dear Concerned, As the professional that I am supposed to be, you cannot get an answer from me whether to divorce or not? Yet, you have stated your issues very clearly. So I give some observations, which I offer in general from experience in working with myself and others, and many couples.

List - Handling Couple Crises And Separations - Do's And Don'ts'

• First almost on this list is the realization that we as humans prefer the happy times and dynamics of intimate relating, yet there comes a time where a relationship falls into suffering. Suffering is the emotional effect of human bonding going through a stretching and breakup process. Just as we unite for wholeness and unity, so do we also separate for differentiation of ourselves from others, so that we may the more find our true selves, and prepare for new unity experiences that may come our way.

• Separate out from unconsciousness within in order to build new unities of strength and being within, from which to reenter the outer world of relating, bonding and cooperative achievement.

• Inner is prior to outer. Even with outer relating, always look for and deal with inner dynamics being evoked.

• Talk more about yourself and what you are experiencing, rather than defining your own reactions and actions in terms of the other person. Why? Less confusing and more respectful to talk in terms of yourself. No one is to blame. Talk about yourself and let the other person talk about themselves. Don't attack.

• Couples should be honest and realistic about relating. This means don't play games. Don't relate to anyone you don't want to relate to.

• If a relationship takes more energy than it gives, why stay in the relationship? Relationships are for enhancing and building the life force together. We should gain more value and energy than we give in having a love relationship.

• Divorcing or separating seems like a big deal at the time but in terms of reality and change, humans do it all the time.

• The choice to divorce or stay with someone should be made by the individual. The individual is one hundred percent responsible for their own lives. Couples do not make decisions. Individuals do.

• We have one life to live. No one else is responsible for us. We make our own decisions and take the consequences. This is reality. This is life.

• Don't love somebody because they need your love. This simply does not work in reality. Love because you feel the desire to love. Love comes from yourself, not because of the other person.

• Don't manipulate to try and get love. Don't respond to another person's manipulation to try and get you to love them.

• Present love is not an obligation to love someone based on the past. What we each gain from loving someone must be in the satisfaction and sharing of that moment. You cannot defer to the future reward for present action.

• We owe no one for what they have done for us in the past. Why? Because we live one hundred percent in the present moment. The present moment is who we are now and what we are now. If a relationship is not working now to our satisfaction, for whatever reason, then it is not working for us. Make the decision to either create a crisis and challenge in the relationship, or simply end it.

• We choose to love, for whatever reasons. If we don't choose to love someone, then don't fake it. Let the person know the truth that we are unwilling or unable to love that person.

• Reality is healing. No matter how much we fear another person will suffer it is our responsibility to let them know the truth of our perception of them and our ability to currently love or not love them. Thus, give the other person your perception of yourself first and stay with that.

• Reality is healing. If you don't love someone, tell them, and let them and you get on with your lives.

• One usually chooses for both in a relationship. If you are certain about what you should really choose because of your own feelings and values, then choose what is right for you and take the consequences.

• There are always consequences for every choice. When we choose regarding another person we also are choosing for them to handle their own consequences for the choices we make, just as we have to handle the consequences from others for the choices we make.

• Learn to choose strongly in life following inner guidance. When you know a truth for yourself and life, follow it, act upon it. This will change your life and make you a strong, inner-directed person.

• Act when the moment is ripe.

• When possible, rededicate to the present relationship, or end it, based on what you already know and experience about it for yourself. While humans often use falling in love with someone else to end the relationship with the present partner, this usually clouds the issue. Make yourself single first before seeking to love another. Then you will be dealing with only your present partner and relationship.

• If you find that it takes falling in love with someone else to end the present relationship, then face the following: Are you using the new person to make yourself strong enough to end the relationship with your present partner? If so, make sure you are clear on why the present partner relationship is not working and cannot work for you.

• If you are using falling in love with a new person to end the relationship with your present partner, make sure you have talked about this issue with your new love partner so that you are both dealing with the issue realistically.

• The basis for relating to some one is that the relationship is mutually beneficial to both of you in an ongoing way. Use the relationship crisis to face honestly and thoroughly what you have and need in loving relating, as well as what you don't have. Keep clearing up love and life issues with anyone you are relating to. Don't let them pile up.

• Don't live in fear. It takes courage to truly love. Live in fear and you are already dead.

• Consider keeping relating to both your new lover and your present lover, but be open about both, so that the three of you are under the fierce challenge of being rivals to each other. This kind of testing will break each of you down to your core levels of being, and show the real values that each of you live by.

• Keep relating to both love persons to the extent that each and all of you have your say about what is being evoked in the love relating. Yet, don't try and help or make it easy for anyone else involved with you. Let them handle themselves as best they can. You must stay focused on your own values and desires in the situation.

• Risk all in the relating happening during a love crisis. Risk giving up, or having taken from you, the possibility of relating to one or either of your current lovers. Be able and ready to have a lean period yourself in which you relate to nobody but yourself as you get your new life together.

• Recognize that building your new life at the present stage of living might mean that you are changing and now must focus all or most of your energy on yourself and not on a relationship with another person. Make this clear to each person who wants to relate to you that you need your time, energy and space for yourself right now, and not for deep relating with another person.

• You have a right to your own life. You have a right to your own decisions. You have a right to your own desires for fulfillment in life. You have a right to live in whatever way reality lets you live. Affirm this right for yourself. Don't resist these rights also for the other person.

• Don't live your life anymore for taking care of another person. You live and die alone. You alone can can your life yourself. You need your primary energy and love for yourself, not for taking care of another person. This is reality.

• Affirm your right to love and relate to whomever you choose is right for you according to your own desires and values and life stage.

• Don't condemn others for not being right for you. No one needs to be made bad by you so that you can justify to yourself and them your own decision to no longer relate to them.

• Don't make somebody else wrong so you can feel right about your decisions. Choice is the one absolute. There is no right and wrong choice. There are only choices and their consequences. You make your own choices in life and live with the consequences.

• Be a bit careful, yet be honest, in how you tell a love partner that you don't choose to relate to them anymore. Don't make them bad. Put your reasons in terms of differences and choices. You don't have to justify yourself to anyone.

• Talk in terms of choices, rather than reasons. Reasons do not justify choices. Outcomes only justify choices.

• There are ultimately no reasons why people separate or stay together. Reasons why do not justify anything, or make a choice right or wrong.

• People either relate to each other in the present or they do not. Make this reality position clear to yourself and others. Deal with what is happening a lot more than with what is not happening.

• If the meal does not feed you, get up from the table and find another.

• You don't have to justify yourself and your actions to anyone else. No one else can be you, can be in your shoes. Even though they may judge you, talk about you, no one else can live what you are going through or know your situation as you experience it.

• Thus, all stories and opinions about you are false. Don't believe a word anyone else says. You must learn to believe in yourself. The more you have integrity and are real about how you live your own life, the more you will believe in yourself and live your life powerfully from your own core values.

• No one can make your choices for you or suffer the consequences of your actions. You alone make your own choices in life. Accept that and choose for what fits you in life the best.

• When the separation crisis happens, some couples do divorce and never relate again. They either cannot deal with their issues, or one or both just gives up on the relationship, for whatever reason, justified or not.

• Recognize that the suffering of separation is partially the realization in oneself, and the other, that that part of life you both lived together is over. This is a partial death. Part of your life is dead. This creates grief. Honor it but also make new choices for new life.

• Other couples clear the air of past repressed feelings and issues, and choose to go on relating, but with much more honest and real relating.

• These couples who choose to stay together often do appreciate each other in real terms. Also, both of a couple that stay together are willing to make changes in themselves and their attitudes and behavior so that they can relate better in fulfilling themselves and the other person.

• Change is in the air. Change is the spice of life. Development is destiny.

• If you have strong dreams about your present relationship, as well as future relating, even though everything in the dreams may not be true, or the same, as in outer life, take seriously the issues the dreams indicate. Dreams do not give answers, but they sure often raise the right questions.

• We often dream of what we do not have in outer life that would fulfill us.

• Do we follow our dreams or not? The core question is, do we follow superior guidance in life to what may be the personal, egocentric desires of ourselves or another? What we live by is what we live and die by. The guidance we follow needs to be realistic, of direct experience, and purposeful, that it fits our values and what we want to do with our lives, and destiny, that the guidance really fits us down to our core selves.

• Remember that in a separation or crisis process in relating, we cannot any of us know the future. To ground things, act now to problem-solve present difficulties. Deal with what is happening now and the future will take care of itself.

• You cannot know what kind of a relationship you will have with a certain person in the future. Have the most conscious and real relationship possible in the present with a person. Bring the relationship into direct experience, if important enough to you, and from that see what you two are to do together.

• We do not live in the past. The past is dead. We do not live in the future. The future is just potential. We live now through choice and circumstance. Live now consciously and the future will take care of itself.

Strephon Kaplan-Williams invites you to better deal with your couple situation using his professional experience as a former licensed relationships counselor in California, USA, now retired, as well as a dreamwork psychologist. He is the author of many books in psychology with over 350,000 books in circulation. You will find all the above concepts emerging from the full seven hour audiobook by Strephon called Loving Laurie. Listening to Loving Laurie, even a number of times, can help you gain perspective for your own love relating, and thus help you develop your life significantly. If you want the Reality Approach, you own it to yourself and your friends and lovers to get Loving Laurie and listen to it even several times. Its great with audio books that you can fit in listening to them when you are doing other things, and when you need to refresh your insights. Loving Laurie is story-telling art and commentary in podcast style. Strephon emphasizes insights and values in relating.

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Cultural Similarities in Wedding Gift Practices

As an interesting glimpse into the differences and similarities that exist among different cultures, the practices surrounding Tibetan wedding gifts can serve to demonstrate some of the universals that underlie surface differences among wedding traditions.

Within our own culture, we tend to have a sort of unquestioning acceptance of the traditions and practices surrounding weddings. True, we may need to check out specific points of wedding etiquette to be sure we don't transgress or forget some important rule, but we rarely think about the source and reasons that can underlie these traditions and rules.

Tibet is a country so far from the usual in the minds of most westerners that they might expect bizarre and unusual practices to surround wedding gifts. In reality, while Tibetan wedding gifts are still very strongly embedded in the past traditions, they are a hardly a surprise to anyone familiar with how western marriage customs have evolved.

Tibetan wedding gift practices begin when the marriage is first proposed. In general marriages are still arranged by the young persons' parents and may be proposed by either the potential bride's or groom's family. After the "Democratic Reform" in 1959, the extremely strict rules requiring equal social and economic status of the two families were substantially relaxed, though great disparities in status, quite naturally remain rare. Equally, the young couple may have met and fallen in love well before one of families makes the proposal. Usually, the family with whom the couple will live makes the proposal and today there is much less social concern about which family the couple will live with.

At the time of the proposal, gifts are provided by the proposing family to each member of the other family. These gifts, with the exception of the hada, a strip of silk or linen, are utilitarian, but also symbolic, items including clothes and cloth, wheat, butter, mutton and wine as well as what is called "milk" and "apron" money for the mother as an expression of thanks for the raising of the child. It is customary for the proposing family to provide the day's food and at the end of the day, assuming the proposal is accepted, which is the usual case, they will be given hadas and other gifts.

A dowry or betrothal gift is also traditionally presented by the family marrying off their child. The specific nature of the dowry gifts depend on the financial conditions of the family and can range from jewels and so on to more typical and utilitarian gifts such as cloth, clothes, quilts and food. Wedding gifts from guests are again dependent on economic conditions but are generally similar to previous gifts - clothes, cloth, food, wine, money and, today, domestic appliances as well.

While the custom of the dowry is no longer common in the west, the tradition of the bride's family paying for the wedding still is. Curiously, Tibetan customs appear to be ahead of the west in providing a more egalitarian approach to this. In the west, gifts often begin with the engagement which is equivalent to the proposal in Tibet. While the specific gifts vary, they are generally also utilitarian and designed to aid the future couple in establishing their household. In the west also, economic conditions of the giver will affect the specific gifts and the cost.

Aside from the use of marriage as a way to reinforce social ties and bonding and to integrate the new couple into the community, it seems quite obvious that cultures everywhere use the wedding gift process associated with marriage both to confirm that the new union will have a reasonable chance at economic success and, once that is established, to provide specific items that directly support the new couple in establishing their household and a new life. Looking just slightly beyond the surface, we can see that we all, regardless of culture, have common needs and problems involved in major life changes and surprisingly similar methods of responding to and resolving them. In a very real sense, cultural factors and belief structures which often seem to create huge barriers to understanding, are an overlay on our basic human condition and as we learn to see beneath the surface, the world becomes a less confusing place filled with people much like ourselves instead of distant and incomprehensible aliens.

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