Sweet Pea Journey

Family, Friendship, Food, Fun and Everything in Between!

Tagged: Relationships

Life and random things

Relation Coach

If you know me, I rarely have strong emotions or feelings towards someone or opinion. It takes a lot to make me dislike someone. But, I had a quite strong opinion towards some relationship coach today.

I have been watching some relationship coaching videos and been working on myself. I am a firm believer of retrospection and don’t do anything that you don’t want your partner to do. Work on yourself, because your own behavior is the only thing you can control.

However, I have come across a couple of one of those “relationship coach”‘s videos. By using the quotes, you can probably guess my opinion of this guy. Let me put it this way, he claims to be a relationship coach for men. Absolutely nothing wrong with that, and I am sure there are a lot of men frustrated with their love life, relationships and desperately need help and advice, just like there are tons of women needing the same thing. I have listened to a few coaches for women, and more or less agreed to their approach, work on yourself, don’t be needy, build your own life, work on being comfortable in your own skin and learn to love yourself and Mr. Right will come along naturally. However, the very first video I heard about this men’s coach, I was so shocked, and I felt my blood pressure rising. I held myself together, listened through the entire video. When I was asked what I thought about the video, I said I do not like this guy’s point of view, and I do not agree to him one bit.

To summarize his point of view, women are either mentally unstable or are gold diggers. Women date up, meaning we look for men that are more successful, have more money, more power, whatever women are after. But when things don’t work out, women takes whatever and men get screwed over. All men should think twice before dating, don’t invest in much of your time, your money, be careful throughout a relationship so they don’t get hurt.

OK, if you are a guy reading this, you may laugh, you may say this is true. If you are a woman like me, you probably feel as insulted as I did. First of all, I do not agree that women are mentally unstable or gold diggers. If so, guys, you would be way better off just don’t date at all. The rest of his point of view is very biased. At the end of the day, it’s quite equal between genders. There is no need to bash one gender because you are “coaching” the other gender. Also, I feel what he is doing is catering to a specific group of men, who may have had rough relationships before. Maybe they dated the wrong women, maybe there is something seriously wrong that they have been doing but refused to look at their own behavior or always have endless excuses why their behavior was justified. His approach was quite clear to me, have you been hurt in a previous relationship? This is why, because women are evil, and they are after your money. You need to look out for these signs, because even the sweetest woman will eventually show her true color, and at that time, you will be happy that you listened to me that you protected yourself and never invested in too much emotionally or financially.

This approach is so wrong in so many different levels.

First off, he is teaching men to be in an unfair relationship. If the girl he is dating isn’t investing herself in the relationship, fine, neither one is probably well protected, no one would be hurt if things go south. But, is there actually a relationship? Both parties keep one foot in, one foot out, no trust, constantly calculating, watching. That is not a relationship, that is torture. I can safely conclude that this sort of relationship will not work.

Secondly, say the girl is invested, went all in emotionally, maybe even financially into this relationship. The guy is keeping his distance, looking at her under X-ray goggles, examining what’s going on in her head, what is she after really. It’s just a matter of time for this relationship to end. Maybe he is not going to hurt, but she certainly will be, hurt deeply. This is not a balanced relationship. I don’t think even this man would want to trade places with her. This kind of relationship will fail, and not in a good way. So what’s the point of getting into one like this in the first place?

Thirdly, since whatever relationship this man is getting into is doomed anyway, what happens when it does end? This man goes back to this coach, yes you are right, all women are evil, things never work out, teach me more, teach me what else women are going to do to me. Chi-ching, more money to the coach.

At the end of the day, what upset me wasn’t just that he was bashing women unfairly, and biased, but also, he is setting people up for failure. People listen to this kind of coaching will never find a good woman and a meaningful relationship that will last for life. The coach isn’t teaching the individual how to be a man, how to be a better self and naturally attract the higher quality women. These people will not look at their own weaknesses and flaws and they will bound to repeat the same course of relationships, because they still attract the same women.

I love some other coaches’ videos, because they either teach either gender how to work on themselves, what are the common flaws of certain gender and how to overcome them. Or they teach both sides to be open, honest, brave and discuss emotions and feelings, put themselves in their partner’s shoes and really look at what they could be doing instead to avoid or solve conflicts.

A healthy relationship has to be a balanced and equal relationship. If only one person retrospect their behavior and improves themselves, it is just a matter of time for the two to fall apart. I really hope everyone to be able to say, from the bottom of their heart, if I traded place with my partner, I would want her / him to do the same thing to me.

Life and random things

Arguments

If you are or have been any sort of relationships, you have argued. I too, have had my fair share of arguments. It’s not until recent years, I have really started looking into myself, what could I have done differently so little things, some times stupid small things wouldn’t blow up like the end of the world? I know it’s hard to dig into ourselves, it almost feel like admitting that you were at fault, and you were wrong, you were losing the argument. But at the end of the day, what is your end goal? Is it to win the argument, or to prevent small disagreement from blowing up again and hurt your loved ones?

I have read so many articles, watched so many videos, even been to therapy trying to find out what I could do to change things. Ironically, according to my therapist, I did everything I could for that particular relationship… but that will not stop me from looking within myself for the future. When frustration and anger ceases a person, the mind can easily go wild and emphasizes and even exaggerates and pulls all negative conclusions. I have been there too. For months, I have been practicing chilling my emotions. It’s hard, I have to admit. I still cry, still want to curl up under the blanket at times, still wet my pillow with tears. But the goal is to reduce this, calmly examine the argument and find out the root cause and come up with a solution to resolve it peacefully and really fix the issue, rather than masking the problem. I learned my lesson, masking the problem or pretend it’s not really an issue is not an option, it will blow up in your face another time, but way stronger.

I am not a relationship expert by any means, but I have a few tips that I think may be helpful in your relationship and resolve arguments based on my own experience and people around me, if you are not already doing so:

  1. Identify your own emotions, and what triggers them. Really, this is the only way to understand and control your emotions and prevent it from going out of control. Do this with your significant other, so it’s clearly understood between the two of you what’s off the limits. This is going to be a brave move. It requires courage and trust, and completely put yourself out there. This can prevent each other accidentally “push the buttons” during an argument, this can also end a relationship quickly. To me, if you can’t put yourself out there and dive into a relationship fully, if you have to hold back a little, constantly thinking “what ifs”, you might as well don’t get into this relationship. It will not last. No one wants to be with someone one foot in, one foot out. Hence, no matter how much I was hurt before, I will not hold myself back. One can argue that I am not learning my lessons. The truth is, no two people are the same. It’s not fair to keep a distance from person #2 because you got burned by person #1. The lessons you really should learn is to be able to identify the red flags at an earlier stage, before your heart is all poured out. Easily said than done, I know, but I am willing to take the risk. Just like Lady Antebellum’s song Need You Now goes, “guess I’d rather hurt than feel nothing at all”, nailed it. After all, why stay in a half dead relationship while you don’t know how love and being loved feels like?
  2. Listen before talking. A lot of the times, arguments are really because of misunderstanding. Misunderstandings are quite often, that’s why there are so many tips and tricks on how to communicate clearly and effectively. However, if you are not even given a chance to clarify things, how can you clear anything up? I feel this is one of the leading cause of distance, at least in my experience. Misunderstanding went way too far and ridiculous before I was given a chance to speak, to the point I didn’t even feel like explaining anything any more.
  3. Keep your emotion in control, take a step back if needed. It’s so easy to draw a conclusion prematurely, in a negative way when a person is upset. For example, if the two of you planned to have lunch together at noon at your favorite restaurant. Your significant other is running late. It’s so easy to think that you are less important than whatever made him or her late. It almost feels natural to be upset because he or she broke the plan the two of you made hours ago. But instead of blowing up and accusing him or her not taking you seriously, take a step back, find out what made him or her late, calmly put yourself in his or her shoes and it may be a lot easier to understand the situation.
  4. Focus on the issue, not person. Personal attacks are the worst during an argument. Pay attention to how you approach an issue, instead of attacking your significant other as a person, such as irresponsible, not trust worthy, liar, lazy… try focus on what the actual matter is that is upsetting. If he or she left the shoes under the table instead of putting them away, instead of branding them to be lazy or messy, you can simply tell him or her that the shoes under the table are bothering you, and makes the room look messy. Can he or she put the shoes onto the shoe rack please.
  5. Really put yourself in his or her shoes. Double standards are so common, I am certain all of us do it from time to time. It’s very easy to point out other people’s flaws, but we are somehow blinded by our own. Before losing your temper, try put yourself in his or her shoes. If you were your spouse, how would you handle it? Things could be a lot easier and clearer. I can certainly appreciate a partner with this character, who can put himself in my shoes when we have disagreements.

All the above are very important things to follow, in my eyes. Like I said, I am no relationship expert, certainly had a couple really messed up ones myself. These are my personal experience and lessons learned. Hope some can be helpful to your relationships, and help you find your happily ever after.