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How to Have and Handle Healthy Expectations in A Relationship

How to Have and Handle Healthy Expectations in A Relationship

Meluleki Ncube, Kate Motaung2024-11-14T12:33:25+00:00April 12th, 2024|Couples Counseling, Featured, Individual Counseling, Marriage Counseling, Premarital Counseling, Relationship Issues|

Building a healthy relationship takes time, care, and a lot of effort. One area where couples often struggle is in managing their expectations. Your expectations are about what kind of behavior or attitudes you desire to see come to pass in the future. Depending on the kinds of expectations you have, you can either nurture your relationship or put it under strain. Should you have expectations in a relationship? Depending on one’s experiences, some believe that you shouldn’t expect anything from a romantic partner in a relationship. There are several reasons for this, some of which are helpful, but others aren’t so much. One unhelpful reason to avoid expectations is to avoid being let down. Past experiences may lead to the conclusion that having expectations simply means leaving yourself vulnerable to disappointment. A potentially helpful reason to avoid expectations is that they can end up putting your partner under pressure and undermining the health of the relationship. Of course, one could say that sometimes people have unreasonable expectations, and those can cause serious problems in a relationship. We all have expectations - the question is whether your expectations are reasonable or not. Fear of disappointment shouldn’t lead you to ditch expectations altogether, especially if your expectations touch the needs you have. If your needs aren’t being met in the relationship, something isn’t right and should be addressed. Reasonable expectations, far from hindering a relationship, can help it thrive and help keep you both accountable. Clear and reasonable expectations help to support and nurture healthy relationships. No relationship is perfect, but if you aim for a relationship that’s “good enough,” one that keeps a good balance between reasonable and high expectations while being aware of unreasonable expectations, you can form a healthy and well-rounded partnership. Healthy expectations function to ensure [...]

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How to Talk About Intimacy Issues

How to Talk About Intimacy Issues

Meluleki Ncube, Kate Motaung2024-11-14T12:33:38+00:00March 22nd, 2024|Couples Counseling, Featured, Marriage Counseling, Premarital Counseling, Relationship Issues|

One of the hardest things to talk about in a relationship is intimacy issues. You can be the best of friends with your spouse, be open about everything else, and feel that you have no secrets. And yet, in the bedroom, people shut down. It becomes almost impossible to talk about what is going on. Even if there is mutual respect and a desire for both partners to find sex enjoyable, intimacy issues silence even the most attentive of partners. Is it because sex is just so intimate? It involves the core of who people are. It is not just an act of reproduction. If it were, why would there be so many nerve endings and emotions and heightened senses involved? God could have left the joy and fun out of sex, but He didn’t. Before the fall, man and woman were naked and unashamed, and that may well have included sex. Our country does not talk about sex. We treat it like a bad thing to be left in the bedroom. The church does not teach young people about their bodies, or how to approach intimacy openly. Premarital counseling often does not get into intimacy and how to figure out what makes both people tick. Men are left to porn to answer their questions. Women live in a culture rife with messaging that their needs don’t matter, sex is not about them, and their bodies are somehow bad things. Therefore, a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. – Genesis 2:24 God created sex to be the union of two people. The human body reacts and functions the way it does because God made it that way. He made the woman’s form to take time, [...]

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Help for When You are Overwhelmed by Feeling Insecure

Help for When You are Overwhelmed by Feeling Insecure

Kate Motaung2024-11-27T12:47:24+00:00March 8th, 2024|Coaching, Featured, Individual Counseling, Personal Development, Professional Development, Relationship Issues|

Everyone feels insecure now and again. It could happen before a big event or a presentation at work, starting a new job, or entering a room full of strangers. We can feel insecure after we make a mistake. We might not feel assured in raising our children, interacting with our partners, or in our vocation. For some of us, feeling insecure is how we feel most of the time. Insecure feelings may permeate much of our daily activities and relationships. At times, we might even feel like we never fit into any situation or like we have “imposter” stamped on our foreheads. We see how everyone else does things better, faster, and smarter. We never believe that what we do, or who we are, is enough. We spend our days rebuking our decisions, questioning if we have done enough, and feeling like the least qualified person in every room. We might feel afraid to put ourselves out there in relationships because the amount of insecurity we experience inhibits us from taking risks or being vulnerable. Feeling insecure and anxious Insecurity is something we can feel in big or small ways. It can be related to how we see ourselves, how we experience our relationships, and how we show up in the working or productive parts of our lives. It can force us to pull back from relationships, say no to opportunities we would love to accept, and live in regret. Feeling insecure makes us retreat further into ourselves, where we often don’t like what we find there either. Constantly feeling insecure can lead to anxiety. We scan the horizon, cultivate the worst case in our heads, and wait for the other shoe to drop. When we feel insecure about who we are and our choices, we often feel anxious [...]

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The Impact of Childhood Emotional Neglect On Adult Relationships

The Impact of Childhood Emotional Neglect On Adult Relationships

Kate Motaung2024-11-27T12:47:42+00:00February 27th, 2024|Abandonment and Neglect, Featured, Individual Counseling, Relationship Issues|

When you’re a child, you’re at your most vulnerable. You depend on the people around you to meet your needs, including your need for food, shelter, attention, and nurture. Children cannot provide for these themselves. Having caregivers who are attentive to your needs and capable of meeting them is essential. Whether or not we flourish in life greatly depends on how much and how well our needs were met or whether we've suffered emotional neglect. Unfortunately, one of the harsh realities of living in a broken world is that one’s needs aren’t always met for various reasons. Many parents are well-intentioned but without the means or the knowledge for how to best meet children’s needs, they can go unmet. Even more harmful is when one sees a need and deliberately decides not to meet it. In either case, whether intentionally or not, childhood emotional neglect is a reality many children face. What is childhood emotional neglect? Childhood emotional neglect is when a parent or caregiver doesn’t respond adequately to a child’s emotional needs. Emotional neglect can be intentional, but it may also be the result of a parent overlooking this one area of a child’s needs. For instance, a parent or caregiver may fulfill a child’s need for food, shelter, education, and medical treatment, but fail to pay attention to the child’s expressed concerns. Mishandling this one area of a child’s needs is neglectful, even though it may be entirely unintentional. It may be helpful to provide an example of childhood emotional neglect. A child may express the fact that they are sad or anxious about going to school, and the parent responds by brushing them off or ignoring the concerns the child expressed. A parent may be thinking that the child isn’t serious, or the situation isn’t serious [...]

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7 Causes of Resentment in Marriage

7 Causes of Resentment in Marriage

Angela Yoon, Kate Motaung2024-11-14T12:31:50+00:00January 17th, 2024|Couples Counseling, Featured, Infidelity and Affairs, Marriage Counseling, Relationship Issues|

Most couples get married with the hope of a, “happily ever after” etched deeply in their hearts and minds. In the early days of marriage, husbands and wives proclaim undying love for each other, telling each other how they couldn’t imagine living a life without the other. Passion, romance, affection, and sharing of hopes and dreams are probably the most common and expected characteristics of the early stages of marriage. It is in these early stages that most people experience the cliched marital bliss and unfortunately, it is also in these same years that the tone is set for whether a marriage will survive the inevitable ups and downs common in marriages. The early years of marriage, particularly the first year, often come with a lot of changes and adjustments as couples settle into their new roles as husbands or wives. Conflict management, shared financial responsibilities, different beliefs on certain topics, and division of chores around the home are some of the issues newly married couples must navigate. Marriage requires a lot of give-and-take and sometimes spouses give up certain parts of themselves to accommodate their new lives for real or perceived reasons. All this is done in the hope of making their relationship as smooth as possible. It is also at this point – when people start living together as husband and wife – that they tend to discover not only the true nature of the person they married but a new version of themselves that must share a home and a life with another person. Often, it is these discoveries, compromises, and adjustments that make the early days of marriage the most difficult stage of the relationship for many. What causes resentment in marriage? The Cambridge Dictionary defines resentment as “a feeling of anger because you have [...]

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Some Old, Some New: 12 Causes of Resentment in Marriage

Some Old, Some New: 12 Causes of Resentment in Marriage

Meluleki Ncube, Kate Motaung2024-11-14T12:34:02+00:00December 15th, 2023|Couples Counseling, Featured, Marriage Counseling, Relationship Issues|

Take a read through this article and see how many of these causes for resentment in marriage you identify with. While this may not be a checklist you want to score well on it may be useful to know what specifically needs work from you as well as your spouse. One contributes more than the other. Between household chores, time with the children, the school run, and the financial contribution to running a household, there are many areas in a marriage where one may feel that they are doing more than their fair share and the other is not pulling their weight. There are also times when one partner feels they are actively building the marriage more intentionally than the other. When partners do not have the time, words, or emotional reserves to clearly explain how they are feeling in their relationship this type of resentment slowly accumulates and builds on itself. Try this: Sit down once a week with a weekly planner and discuss the plans and expectations each of you has for the week. Talk about when you will spend time together doing things you enjoy. Allowing the phone to suck up your time. Are there any rules or understandings in your home on what happens with phones around dinner time? Always having your phone, in your hand or at the table, ready to divert your attention away from your marriage with every notification can be a problem. Also, if you find yourself regularly checking it throughout times that are set aside for personal relationships between you, the message to your spouse is clear: They are not as important as whatever is on your phone. Try this: Create a phone bowl or box where the muted phones are placed once family time starts in the evening. Some [...]

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How to Cultivate Healthier Relationships Through Effective Listening

How to Cultivate Healthier Relationships Through Effective Listening

Meluleki Ncube, Kate Motaung2024-11-14T12:34:12+00:00November 1st, 2023|Featured, Individual Counseling, Personal Development, Relationship Issues|

Therese and Steven are a young couple that’s been happily married for three and a half years, but the past six months have been quite difficult. Therese’s job has steadily required more from her, especially as her company had to downsize during the pandemic and they aren’t able to hire new people just yet. She’s often home quite late, and leaves early to get her day started. When she’s home, she feels tired and finds it hard to go out and have fun like she and Steven used to. Steven is in graduate school, and his studies consume much of his time. He struggles to maintain boundaries, so he often finds himself helping others in his cohort with their work. The effect of that is that he sometimes falls behind and has to work extra hard to meet deadlines, and that puts pressure on any plans he may have made with Therese. The last few months, it feels like they’ve been living alongside one another, and they both feel disconnected - emotionally, mentally, and physically. They had a big fight the other day because Steven had to cancel their date to submit an overdue assignment. What angered Therese even more was that when she tried to talk to Steven about it, he was distracted and wasn’t paying attention to what she was saying. In that way, what started as a tiff about the canceled date escalated and became a bigger conversation about their relationship and how they had lost their intimacy as a couple. Situations like that of Steven and Therese are quite common, even if the particulars differ somewhat. Couples and friends can find themselves feeling disconnected, and it’s not necessarily because they don’t care about one another. When life gets busy and you find yourself under pressure, [...]

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Sex in Marriage: Keeping and Maintaining Intimacy

Sex in Marriage: Keeping and Maintaining Intimacy

Dr. Gary Bell, Kate Motaung2024-11-14T12:36:45+00:00July 5th, 2022|Couples Counseling, Featured, Marriage Counseling, Relationship Issues|

As with many things, husbands and wives differ on when or how often to have sex in marriage. Men rarely see impediments to love-making and most think it is a good idea at almost any time. The condition of their marriage doesn’t interfere, nor do other issues with which they are coping. That’s possibly because men tend to be good at compartmentalizing; the circumstances in one part of their lives won’t necessarily spill over into the other parts. If they have financial problems, face difficulties in their jobs, or are angry at their wives, sex can still be a viable option. In fact, many husbands will gauge the overall quality of their marriage by how often they do it. For women, sex in marriage is often a welcome relief. However, if a man does not cherish his wife or make sure to look out for her needs she may withdraw from sex and make it a battleground. People can inflict consequences in marriage, punishing in the bedroom when disrespect, stress, and conflict are not worked out. Communication is the key to healing. Men and women might also differ in how their self-image affects their sexual appetite. Most men aren’t pre-occupied with their body image, but if a wife is dissatisfied with her figure, sex can be something that makes her uncomfortable. However, some wives are more critical of their appearance than are their husbands – they are generally happy with how their wives look. While in the middle of making love, a self-conscious woman might think about all the things that are wrong (“This sags, I’m too fat, my hips are too big, etc.”). Her husband, on the other hand, is consumed with one idea: “Hurray! She’s naked!” From a wife’s perspective, if her husband volunteers that he thinks she is sexy or attractive, [...]

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Children of Divorce: How to Help Them Cope

Children of Divorce: How to Help Them Cope

Lisa Velin, Kate Motaung2024-11-14T12:37:48+00:00July 5th, 2022|Christian Counseling for Children, Christian Counseling For Teens, Family Counseling, Featured, Relationship Issues|

Divorce is hard. Sometimes in an effort to protect ourselves from the hurt and pain, we inadvertently dismiss what the children of divorce think or feel. Or, we believe them when they say they don’t want to talk about the divorce or that they don’t care. We want to believe that they will come out of this all right. The truth is that divorce affects every member of the family. It’s important to be open and honest with your child, but also watch out for any signs that they are having difficulty accepting the new living arrangements. If your child is having trouble, it might be time to enlist the help of a professional therapist. Speaking to Children of Divorce There can be multiple reasons why the communication breaks down between parents and children amid a divorce. It could be that talking about the divorce is too upsetting to the parent, so they simply tell their child in a brief statement about divorce. It could be that the child is hurt about the divorce but doesn’t want to admit it. Children of divorce sometimes shrug off the situation to keep their emotions at arm’s length. They may feel betrayed and decide that it is better to distance themselves to keep from getting hurt again. Other children may blame themselves for their parents’ inability to cohabitate. Whatever the reason, you can prevent miscommunication by talking openly to your child about the forthcoming changes before the separation, if possible. If you can, schedule a time when both parents can sit down with the child and explain the new arrangements. There is no need to go into detail about why the decision was made, but reiterate that both parents love the child. Of course, sitting down with the other parent before the [...]

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Resentment in Relationships: The Endless Cost

Resentment in Relationships: The Endless Cost

Dr. Gary Bell, Kate Motaung2024-11-14T12:37:10+00:00June 28th, 2022|Anger Issues, Featured, Individual Counseling, Relationship Issues|

Resenting somebody is not as simple as disliking them or finding them annoying; rather, it's a feeling that is related to the repetition of painful patterns relating to unaddressed difficulties. Yep, I know that may sound hideously complex, but it's a relatively simple concept once you unpack it. And you should take the time to unpack it – because the truth is that resenting your partner (even if you don't realize that you're doing it) is not great for your love life. But there is a bright side: Your relationship is not doomed if you realize that you've been feeling resentful; you can notice and resolve your resentment. Make a list of all your resentments and communicate them to your partner. Also, come to the conversation with what solutions would look like. You must explore resentment because it impacts every area of your relationship and does not allow both of you to thrive. They must be revealed and discussed constructively with action steps. This show comes with many of the tools to do this. So what is to be done if you’ve been in a relationship for some time, and hurts have built up and led to resentment and unresolved anger and pain? Is there hope for empathy to regain a foothold in your relationship, so that true intimacy can begin flourishing once again? What is the way forward when it feels like there is too much toxic water under the bridge, too much wreckage, to find your way back to a loving relationship? When the past is a minefield, can the present become peaceful? If there’s hope for empathy to re-emerge in your relationship, even when resentment abounds, the answer is: probably. But if you asked me whether there are ways to try and rebuild the empathic bond in your relationship, I would answer with [...]

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