Elephant in the Room

I’m working with a handful of clients at the moment with relationship issues. Ranging from inability to communicate well, to dealing with repairing the relationship after trust has been broken, to simply having drifted apart over time. And despite what situation is being addressed, there is one thing in common in all of these cases.

They are looking at the elephant in the room and nothing but the great big elephant.

In each situation the couple are determined to talk about The Problem, how it happened, when it happened, why is happened…

“Let’s talk about what happened?”

“How you feel? Are you ok?”. Problem, problem, problem!!

Okay, I admit a little of that is important, but please don’t make it every single conversation. That’s insane. You’re just going over the problem again and again. You’re looking for where the blame lies and it just keeps creating more hurt. What you focus on magnifies.

Instead, I direct my clients to design what they do want. I ask both of them, when this is resolved how do you want things to be?

What kind of relationship do you deeply desire?

What’s the room like without the elephant? How do you WANT the room to be when you have freed the elephant?

Your relationship need not be what it was before, but can become something far better. Why go backwards when you have so much unexplored territory to discover together? Rebuild something stronger, more passionate and more enjoyable.

Then realign these wants with each other. Share what each of you desires to experience in a relationship.

Start looking at what the solution looks like.

As you both start to focus on the future relationship that you can have together, you need to consider who do you need to be to create that relationship. What do you need to focus on within yourself, and in your behaviour, to have this?

No one needs to love you for who you are… they love you for who you are becoming. We change through our lives and having someone to grow with is much more fun and fulfilling. Besides nothing in nature stops growing. If it’s not growing it’s dying.

Stop revisiting places you have been to and do not enjoy or that hurt. Start mapping out new places to go and new memories to make together. Stop starring at the problematic elephant and start to see the room and and its potential.