When wondering whether or not your spouse is compatible, the question you’re really asking is “What if I’ve married the wrong person?” 

In fact, I would wager that there’s not a person out there who hasn’t, however fleetingly, asked themselves that self-same question. It’s a great question, I mean really, how do you know?

When we first meet someone and fall in love, love is easy. It’s aided by the body’s production of a cocktail of chemicals and hormones. 

Research shows that we like others because they are either similar to, or better than us.

That’s also where it starts with our love interest.

We choose them for the things we have in common, like our shared love of walking in nature, or our common dislike of the rude barista at the local coffee house. 

We also choose them because often they have strengths that we don’t, like his ability to do that math equation in his head, or her ability to know exactly what to say to make someone feel better.  

We choose them so that we can feel re-joined with our long-lost twin self.

It almost feels like a Cosmic attraction, doesn’t it?

When you think about it, this is precisely why:

In good relationships the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

Sadly, because most of us were never taught how to deal with differences in opinion or taste with respect, empathy and humour, our differences, once the love and goodwill begins to fade, usually end up being the things that irritate us the most about our partner.

Ironic, considering they were the things we originally found most impressive, and were drawn to in order to find balance. 

Another question that every single one of us has asked is “How can I make my partner change?” and the simple answer is you can’t. You can’t make anyone change.

Don’t be under the false illusion that your partner doesn’t want to change though. I can imagine that if you’re not happy in the relationship, they aren’t either, and they probably do want change, just not change that being imposed on them.

If you don’t think it’s nearly impossible to change someone who is not willing to change, just think how hard it is to change yourself, and you are willing.

- Charles f. Glassman

                                                                                               What’s the first thing most of us instinctively do when we’re told by our partners that we MUST do something? That’s right, we dig our heels in. It’s a funny thing, but in nearly 30 years of working with couples I’ve seen so many different examples of people totally cutting off their nose despite their face to avoid doing what their partner has demanded of them – and at this point in your relationship, where there’s so little kind-regard and connection, EVERYTHING is probably going to feel like a demand, regardless of how nicely you put it.

So right now, don’t expect your partner to do what you ask, eventually though, if you follow the Laws of Lasting Love, they will get back to a place where they do care, they’re just not there now.

If only I had a dollar for every time someone has said to me that they felt hoodwinked by their partner. “She had a great figure or he had a fantastic job when I first married them, now see what’s happened. I just don’t feel like they’ve kept their side of the bargain”.

I always say the same thing, “Did you make it clear that was part of the bargain when you married them?”

Many of us expect (there’s that word again), each other to fulfill certain roles in our lives, for example to work just as hard as we do, have the same level of nurturance towards our kids, or the same level of concern for our future financial safety.

When we do this to our partner, we are in effect turning them into a Role-mate and not a Soul-mate. Role-mates only last for as long as they are fulfilling a role, they need to stay static and not change, which of course is impossible, because we are all constantly changing.

When they inevitably stop doing what we want, or otherwise let us down, the magic starts to fade. Sadly, it’s an inevitable stage in most relationships. The phone calls and the conversations start to become a nuisance, and touch begins to feel either unwanted or obligatory.

When you compare the euphoric feeling you had at the start of your relationship with how you currently feel, you might even wish to feel that again, but with someone else. It may seem more achievable and certainly easier, than from the seemingly impossible place you now find yourself with your partner.

You could certainly fall in love with another person, but I can absolutely guarantee that eventually it won’t work either, because as the wise poet Rumi so succinctly put it: Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.

While another person is the most radical substitution for our emotional fulfillment, there are many other ways we replace our partner once we begin to feel let down by them. We turn to work, the kids, our friends or family, or so-called addictive behaviours, like TV, food, alcohol, social media or porn. Or a combination of some or all of the above.

What have you turned to?

I've been a couple's therapist for over 25 years but it wasn't until I went to couple's therapy with my husband Mike, that I realized there is a huge distinction between therapy that helps your marriage survive, and therapy that helps your marriage thrive.

The therapy we received, even though it was from a well-regarded therapist/academic based in the US, belonged to the first camp - survive not thrive.

Week after week we would pay this lady a lot of money to talk about our problems. We would leave the sessions feeling more and more demoralized, and soon we began to dread them.

While at the very best she succeeded in helping us become slightly better Room-mates, we never managed to get back to being Soul-mates while working with her.

Then I started looking into the research and found I was not alone in my experience. The sad news is; couples therapy has a 75-80% failure rate. Here's the research.

After my own disappointing experience I couldn't help wondering if any of my own clients were feeling this way too. I anonymously surveyed a cross-section of them to find out. I explained how I welcomed the truth, and wanted to improve the way I worked with couples going forward, including my own.

What had the experience of therapy been like for them? Had I helped them succeed in getting their Soul-Mate relationship back, or really just becoming better Room-Mates? Questions like these led me to some very interesting findings.

Most of the success stories came from couples I’d worked with in the aftermath of an affair. What was different about the way we worked together and the way I worked with regular couples?

One day using a popular conflict resolution strategy the therapist had given us, I tried to talk to Mike about something he’d done that had upset me. Following the instructions to a tee; I asked if now was an OK time to talk, I stuck to one topic, using ‘I’ not ‘you’ messages. I’d also been respectful, and vulnerable too. But his eyes were glazed over and his response was indifferent. Why was nothing working with this man, who would once have moved heaven and earth for me?

 At that moment I realised all this talking was hurting us more than helping us. I pictured an ‘account of reckoning’ for our relationship, rather like a bank statement. But it wasn’t money that was being debited and credited, it was kind-regard and connection. The statement was in both of our names. The starting balance was already low, and I noticed there weren’t many deposits being made. We weren’t being very kind to each other, and truth be told we were really quite disconnected. For each problem we talked about, or each time either of us blamed the other about something, there was a withdrawal of kind-regard, no one likes to hear they've messed up. Our account was seriously in the red!

I realized we had to focus on making kindness deposits first. No more blaming and criticizing, no more focussing on our problems. We needed to build the balance back, before our relationship would ever be able to handle the toll that talking about our troubles was taking.

In fact, that’s exactly what my clients who were finding their way back to being Soul-Mates were doing. Regardless of whether they’d been the cheater or the cheated-on, each one of them described how they had made a conscious decision ‘to do whatever it takes’ to win back the love of their partner.

They were making kindness deposits, regardless of whether or not their partners reciprocated. They were diligently following my instructions for how to get loving connection back, regardless of how checked out or challenging their partner was being. And their partners eventually came around - it was only a matter of time!

That’s what many of my regular couples, including myself, had been doing wrong. We were putting the cart before the horse. Trying to increase love and connection by discussing our problems. Instead of making ourselves strong first, by building back some of the kind-regard and connection that made us feel like Soul-mates at the beginning. After all, a doctor wouldn’t perform an operation on a patient who had a low blood count. Yet that’s what most therapists are doing.

 I decided to follow the example of these Soul-Mate success stories, with the very same ‘do whatever it takes’ attitude. I stopped the fruitless discussions and instead started saying and doing things that would rebuild connection, regardless of how unreceptive or unappreciative Mike had decided to be. I let go of the futile expectation of immediate reciprocity, which I could see was trapping many of the other couples who were failing. The results were amazing, Eventually Mike warmed up and our Soul-mate connection and love came back. And each year passes our love only grows deeper and deeper.

A man arrives in a little town and he's thinking about moving there so he asks the local sage "what's this town like, I'm thinking about moving here?"

"Well what's your town like?" the sage asks.

"It's pretty awful, the people are horrible, they lie and cheat and have no morals", was the man's reply.

"I think you'll find they're the same here" said the sage.

A week later another man wondered into town and asked the same question; "I'm thinking about moving here, what's this town like?"

So the sage asks, "well what's your town like?" 

"It's wonderful, the people are really friendly and everyone helps each other" says the man.

"I think you'll find they're the same here" said the sage.

The moral of the story is beautifully summed up in the quote by Anais Nin -

"We don't see things as they are, we see things as we are".

The same thing applies to our relationship.

I learnt that the hard way when 3 years into my third marriage, the kind and attentive man I'd married was rapidly turning into a version of my father (and most of my other ex-partners) - critical and rejecting. 

The therapist we went to told us we each had to take 50% of the responsibility for the failure of our marriage.

This just made me miserable because I kept looking for reciprocity from my husband for the changes I was making. I kept getting stuck in his  business; was he reading the book, was he doing the exercises like I was? And of course because he wasn't, I was getting more and more demoralized, losing hope we'd ever be able to fix our marriage. 

It's wasn't until I realized that the common denominator in all my failed relationships, regardless of the kind of men I was choosing, was ME.

So I decided to take 100% responsibility, both for my own happiness and the health of my relationship. 

When I started showing up differently, and treating my husband differently, he started to change. 

In fact that's what the Third Law of Lasting Love - 'Choose Change to Create Change' is all about. It's founded on the Fifth Law of Nature - 'The Law of Cause and Effect'.

Because love is a force of nature and like nature it follows certain laws.

Love follows the Laws of Nature and when you obey these laws you can create love, you can MAKE love. And when you break these laws, you will BREAK love.

So there is so much you can do by yourself to fix your relationship, which is why I have written my program not just for couples who attend together on a 'Joined-Up-Journey', but also for those who are on currently without a partner and are on a ‘Just-Me-Journey’, taking this course so the when they find love, they’ll know how to make it last.

Then of course there are those who are like I was; on a ‘Join-Me-Journey’, whose partner feels either hopeless and apathetic or resentful and stubborn right now, and isn’t ready to do anything to change just yet.

In fact I've even helped people whose partners have moved in with the affair partner, or filed for divorce.

DON'T UNDERESTIMATE THE STRENGTH OF THE MARITAL BOND OR YOUR ABILITY TO RESUSCITATE IT!