• Stress
• Relationship Problems
• Alcohol
• Parenting (privacy problems)
• Too little sleep
• Medication
• Body image
• Obesity
• Low testosterone
• Depression
• Menopause
• Too little intimacy (talking, snuggling, hand holding)

What Portland, Oregon Marriage Counselor Believes You Can Do

If you are experiencing a low sex drive you should first see your doctor and determine if there may be hormonal or other physical problems. If you are not sleeping well be sure to let your doctor know that as well. It could be a problem with your lifestyle, but also it could be health related. If you take an anti-depressant you can consult your prescriber about the possible side effects.

If you are struggling with depression, relationship problems, self-esteem issues, stress or parenting problems you should talk to a Portland, Oregon marriage counselor such as me. If I am not the right fit for you, I will make an appropriate referral.

Some women don’t feel that they fit any of the categories above, but still have lost their sex drive. There are some simple and effective things you can try if this is the case for you.

• Think more often about sex. Men think about sex frequently and automatically. Women do not.  Maybe because we are encouraged not to, maybe it is biological. But when something is in your top-of-mind-awareness, it comes to mind easily. Think back during the day on some of the nicest sexual encounters you have had with your honey. Savor the memories.
• Exercise regularly. Libido increases as you increase regularity and duration of cardio-vascular exercise.
• Make out with your honey for ten minutes and see what comes of it. Relax and kiss, stroke each other’s arms and let nature take its course. You may feel sexier, you may continue on and make love and lease of the benefit will be in the increase in oxytocin in your bloodstream.  It is a feel good and bonding hormone.
• Make sure your partner knows what you need sexually. Too many women do not tell their partner’s how to make love to them. Your lover can’t read your mind. Share your “owner’s manual”!

A marriage counselor can help you with any of these issues that you relate to. Give us a call or visit our website for more free relationship advice.

Here are some benefits to seeing a marriage counselor while going through a divorce:

1.    Grief counseling—a marriage counselor can help you with your feelings of loss. This is especially important to help you move ahead in your life and get past the pain, minimizing the divorces effect on your future.

2.    Navigating through your divorce—Marriage counseling can help you learn about your impact on your unsuccessful marriage. You’ll “up the odds” that when you find love again you will be ready to create a successful relationship.

3.    Learning from your mistakes—Feelings can range from relief to rage, from hurt and despair to loneliness and depression. Seeing a marriage counselor can help you build a support network of friends and family as well as help you develop a self-care plan to get you through this time.

4.    Accepting being single—it’s not uncommon for divorcee’s to become desperate to find someone so they don’t have to face their loneliness. A marriage counselor can assist divorcee’s coming to terms with their “singledom” and actually help them learn about themselves and prepare for a future relationship.

5.    Attend a Keeping the Love you Find Workshop-Harville Hendrix created this weekend workshop for individuals who want to understand why they picked the partner they picked and how you contributed to the issues.

A Marriage Counselor will Help you Heal and Grow

Navigating the waters of a divorce is difficult and painful. Considering an experienced and qualified marriage counselor can be the best decision you will make to not only recover but to bring new insight and personal awareness to your life.

See our website to find a qualified marriage counselor in Portland, Oregon and Bend, Oregon. Read our blog post “Marriage Counseling Can Do More Harm in Four Ways” by Norene Gonsiewski, Oct. 17, 2009

It got us to talking about why couples bicker so much, in particular why we used to bicker so frequently in the first years or decades of our marriage. In our 3 mile long conversation (we were hiking), we concluded that the source of bickering lies in two areas: the need to be in control and the need to be right, or at least not to be wrong.

Marriage Counselor in Portland, Oreon Learns New Tricks

We thought back on the little power struggles to convince the other that our way was THE WAY. Being married to a marriage counselor can make this worse, because my way is backed by research, right?

So why is it that my spouse and I have eliminated our bickering? One obvious reason is that the training I received in Imago marriage counseling helped us both to understand our roles in the power struggle.  Attending the Imago marriage education workshop gave us tools that we have continued to use.

Another reason we have graduated from bickering could be that because we now treat our relationship with INTENTION and CONSCIOUSNESS versus being UNCONSCIOUS and REACTIVE. We less often feel the urge to be right; instead we want to be kind. Therapist Virginia Satire once said, “Exchange judgments for curiosity and exchange being right for being kind.” Good relationship advice.

Mature love can be defined as feeling affection and respect for your partner. The word respect comes from a Greek word that means “gazing at the other”.  When we respect someone, we are really looking at them, not who we want or need them to be.

Marriage education and marriage counseling can help you to move from unconscious and reactive to being intentional in your thoughts and behavior. When you are bickering the little kid in you just wants to be in control. Or you just don’t want to be wrong. Marriage education can help you both understand that little kid in yourself and in your partner, and teach you tools to practice new behaviors.

For a good marriage counselor in Portland, Oregon or information on marriage counseling visit our website. To find out more or to sign up for marriage education, please visit our couples workshop page.

Dr. Helen Fisher, a biological anthropologist who specializes in love and romance has some interesting things to say in an article in Oprah magazine. Fisher points out, and this marriage counselor agrees, that the most powerful aphrodisiacs are located in our bodies. Fisher’s relationship advice is that our libido is affected by three brain systems: lust, trust and love, and we can improve on the functioning of each system.

Portland, Oregon Marriage Counselor Suggests that You Can Naturally Improve Your Sex Drive

Each system has its own hormone that increases the libido. Let’s look at what Fisher says about each one.

Lust: Lust comes primarily from testosterone. Women have this hormone too, and its presence increases sexual desire. One way of increasing your level of testosterone is to play a competitive sport. Women get a big boost in testosterone levels from competition. Also, making love increases production, so the more you make love, the more you will want to make love.

Trust: Feelings of trust and attachment are fostered by the hormone oxytocin and women have more sex drive when they feel safe and attached. Oxytocin administered to arguing couples, has the effect of relieving their conflict. The better you get along, the more you will feel like making love. You can stimulate oxytocin production naturally with touch. Take this relationship advice: hold hands while you watch TV, trade massages or cuddle in bed.

Love: The last hormone that affects your sex drive is dopamine, a key player in the brain’s pleasure center that’s been found to promote romantic love. In my role as a marriage counselor I am keenly aware that once the novelty wears off for a couple, their sex life is in jeopardy. Read what Fisher has to say about the effect of novelty on your libido, “Research shows that novelty—taking risks or trying something new—can trigger the release of dopamine in the brain. I’m not just talking about novelty in the bedroom (although that would be a good start). You can get the same effect from sampling a new type of cuisine together or riding the roller coaster at an amusement park.” Wow, who would have thought that trying one of Portland’s fabulous restaurants might end up with a homemade dessert!

Next week, look for Part II of Improving your Libido.

To read Fisher’s article, see this link: Oprah article. For more free relationship advice visit our page: Free Resources. For a quality marriage counselor in Portland, Oregon, give us a call at Portland Relationship Center.

Experts who help step families know what a challenge it can be. The new family is created from the loss of the original family and the children involved are sad, hurt and angry.  Their feelings have nothing to do with you personally, but it feels personal.

The role of step parent takes time to develop, up to five years.  The number one mistake is to immediately assume the role of parent. You married the child’s parent, not the child. They did not choose you, so play your cards right and give them the time necessary to come around to that choice.

Marriage Counselors in Portland, Oregon, see success from following 5 guidelines

Experts know that step families face huge challenges, and need guidelines such as these to help:

1. Defer to the Bio-parent: You must be the good cop and let the bio-parent be the bad cop. When discipline is necessary let your spouse handle it and give them your support.  Do yourself a favor and take a back seat, as hard as that sounds. Let the bio-parent be the expert.
2. Don’t compete with your counter-part: Don’t compete with the person whom you share your role with, i.e. if you are the step mom don’t try to do a better job that the bio-mom. Back her up, and respect and acknowledge the strength of the biological connection.
3. Discover your step child’s interests: Marriage counselors in Portland, Oregon, advise stepparents to start off as you would in any friendship, by exploring your common interests. Invite the step child to do things together and make them fun, not parental.
4. Get out of the way: Give your spouse and the step children one-on-one time without you. This is a normal need and if the family were intact, hopefully both parents would have this type of time with the kids. Children should not be deprived of one-on-one time because their parent remarried.
5. Act lovingly even if you don’t like your step kids: Every marriage counselor knows that love is a decision followed by a million actions and choices. You may never love them like your own, but you can act lovingly each and every day. It is always the right thing to do.

If you struggle with problems in your step family visit the Empowering Parents website and read the full article, the five secrets of successful step parenting.  Visit our free resources for more relationship tips and if you are looking for a marriage counselor in Portland, Oregon, then give us a call at the Portland Relationship Center.

After the celebrity breakups last week of the Gores, the first Muslim congressman ever elected and the Dog Whisperer, the week ended with 59 year old Rush Limbaugh¹s fourth marriage, this one to a 33 year old woman whom he met during the divorce from his third wife.  When asked about their age difference, his fourth bride told the press, “I’m sometimes not able to relate to the average person my age.”

Rush Limbaugh’s multiple marriages are all too common.  It isn’t that I believe people shouldn’t try again or remarry, rather that people need to stop kidding themselves about the causes of their failure. As a marriage counselor I agree with Dr. Doherty when he says, “as a marriage therapist what I find depressing is people churning through multiple marriages without learning very much except that they married for the wrong reasons or married the wrong person (but now it’s different) or that the love went away.”

Portland, Oregon Marriage counselor hears much blame and little accountability

Mr Limbaugh uses the common explanation for marital failure.  For his first divorce:  “I was doing what I thought I had to do. There was romance in the idea of being married. It was just the wrong reasons.”  For his second divorce, “The love had just vanished. We’re still friends.”   Real insight into a divorce involves understanding one’s own role.  None of us need to look further than our own mirror to see half of the reasons a marriage works or doesn’t.

Famous people are just like the rest of us, they tend to look outside themselves for the cause of their problems. That is the wrong place to look if you would like to avoid a divorce and instead have a great marriage. An Imago marriage counselor can offer you tools to help you to avoid the pitfalls of blaming the other and instead become aware of how you contribute to the nightmare or the dream relationship. For more help, please check out our relationship education programs and marriage counseling services in Portland, Oregon, at our website.

To do this requires that we make regular deposits into our relationship bank account. It requires that we become curious about our partners needs and desires. As we work toward the notion of “becoming one” in a committed partnership we ultimately learn to “have each other’s backs”. A relationship tip that can save you aguish is to remember “to feel like one, takes two”.  We need to individually contribute to the good of us both.

Marriage counselors know the importance of secure feelings in relationships

Susan Johnson, creator of Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy states it this way, “in times of distress we need to know that we can turn towards our partner and he or she will be there for me”. Many of us didn’t learn or receive a secure attachment with our parents in childhood. If we did not have a stable and secure childhood then when we move into marriage we become defended, anxious and insecure which brings tremendous stress to our marriage.

The good news is it doesn’t have to doom your relationship! If you didn’t learn it in childhood, you can learn it in your marriage. “Becoming one” means you can learn to have each other’s backs. You can learn to build, repair, restore and enrich your marriage and deepen your committed partnership. A great way to learn this is to take the “Getting the Love You Want” Couples Workshop. Follow this link for “upcoming dates”. Marriage counselors can help you with many relationship tips. Take the advice of professionals and ask yourself, “what can I do to feel closer to my partner today?”

Marriage counselors vary in their training and in the methods they use. Some therapists who offer marriage counseling have never been trained as relationship experts. Of those who have has some training, some do not actually use a proven method.

Marriage Counseling can save your health and wealth

The Gores are very public figures so it is easy for me to drum up emotion about their marriage failure. But over half of marriages fail and other than a marriage counselor like me, most people don’t think much about the impact this failure rate has on our communities. The Gores are financially set for life (although money will not help their children face the loss nor insure their success at marriage) but most of us suffer financially, emotionally and even physically from a failed relationship. Most problems in marriage are normal, but we do not get the help we need and our normal problems are blown out of proportion.

If you are looking for marriage counseling please be certain to ask the marriage counselor you call about their training and their experience. What tools do they use? How many couples do they see annually? What is their success rate? Do they offer marriage education courses?

And don’t wait to get the relationship help that you need! Most divorces happen because people let small problems slide that could have been fixed earlier. The right kind of marriage counseling really works.

Working on shyness may be good relationship advice

 
The authors of the studies suggest that shyness makes it more difficult for people to enter into social relationships and, because shy people feel more social anxiety, they are less confident in dealing with the inevitable problems that marriage entails. It may also be that shyness causes isolation from other couples, family activities and social engagements.  Marriage counselors offering relationship advice will tell you that all couples need to have activities they enjoy together outside of the home and with others.
 
“There is hope even though shyness itself might be resistant to change,” write the authors. “People can be taught to have more efficacy in how to resolve the specific marital problems they face. As a consequence, any marital difficulties prompted by personality can be prevented by explicit training on dealing with marital problems.” Marriage counselors can teach a shy individual to use communication tools.  These types of tools have been shown to create a sense of safety so that a couple shy or not, can have connection rather than conflict.
 
More information: The article “Shyness and Marriage: Does Shyness Shape Even Established Relationships?” in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin is available free for a limited time at Shyness and Marriage.
 
For more relationship advice, free resources and quality marriage counseling please visit our website at Portland Relationship Center.

A study by a team of economists identified a potentially disastrous phenomenon in marriage which they call “The Happiness Gap”. This effect was seen only when the husband was feeling better about life than his wife. The researchers discovered that the bigger the difference in the happiness of husbands and wives the greater the risk of a break-up.

Marriage counselors often notice that when the female partner is unhappy she is more likely to start divorce proceedings. The study showed the happiness gap widened when wives were burdened with most of the housework, if they had different social backgrounds to their husbands, or if they had higher than average incomes. The gap was closed when couples were matched in social backgrounds, if they had a common religion, if the chores were shared or if the woman was a housewife, a student or retired.

Interestingly, unmarried couples reported greater gaps in happiness, with men saying that they were happier than women. Marriage counselors often see unmarried couples in which the female partner is no longer satisfied with the unmarried arrangement and wants to break up. Perhaps as singer, Beyonce, suggests, “…if you like it, put a ring on it”, to insure that the relationship will last.

Once there is a ring involved, the effort to keep both partners happy is not over. To avoid divorce and assure contentment, men and women need to both be happy in the marriage. Happiness requires good communication, affection and regular contributions into the “emotional bank account”.

For helpful relationship tips, free resources and excellent marriage counseling visit our website,
Portland Relationship Center.