Having a Domestic & a marriage-saving pancake recipe.

What do you do when you and your partner have totally different opinions about how the family handle domestic chores?

Just last week my teenage son deposited his considerable pile of dirty laundry next to the washing machine.  Heigh ho, I was doing a dark wash anyway so I loaded his in too and set the machine off before going to work - reminding him to hang it up to dry when it was finished

When I returned home I discovered that he had indeed emptied the washing machine - straight into the tumble drier.  When I asked why, my husband replied 'Oh, I told him to just chuck it in'.

Thank God for email.  I was so livid I made myself a cup of tea and went to check mine knowing I needed to give myself some space before I said anything I might regret.

The next morning I felt ready to discuss Laundrygate.  I didn't want to talk to my son - yet - I needed to clear the air with my husband first.

To be honest, even though I was making delicious banana pancakes for us both, he did not meet my request to talk with the greatest of enthusiasm.  In fact, when I asked if we could talk about the laundry incident he promptly walked away and started looking out of the window!

To be even more honest, I was nervous about opening up this topic anyway - it could so easily fall into an argument about who was right and who was wrong.  So I decided to start there - to explain that I felt nervous, that I was worried about bringing up this subject and that it wasn't about blame or criticism,  I wanted to talk about it because I was upset about what had happened and there were some important issues I wanted to clear up.

My husband turned back from the window (the pancakes were ready) and we opened up the conversation.  I explained that I had wanted our son to hang up his laundry for several reasons; firstly, not because I want to be the Laundry Police; our son is on the verge of adulthood and my focus is no longer on being a 'mummy' but on helping him develop the skills he needs for adult life.  The experiences in my own life and in my work have shown me that household issues can become a REALLY BIG DEAL in a relationship and as a mother I want to help him understand that domestic skills are also important life-skills.

Secondly, the drier is a greedy beast that devours fossil fuels and is not something to be used unthinkingly.  If I had been doing the laundry I would have hung the wet stuff up to dry.  It can be a boring, mind-numbing job I know, but having a good system helps the general flow of laundry traffic.

But there was a third, even more important issue here, and it was the one that had the biggest charge for me.  When I really investigated why I had felt so upset I realised that I felt I was being cast as the mean one by asking my son to do the laundry and that there was a game of Good Cop/Bad Cop going on.  You know, the one where one of you is the nice, kind, cuddly parent and the other the mean, strict, stressy one?

The Bad Cop tells them to clean up their room the Good Cop laughs and takes them out for ice-cream.  The Bad Cop asks for the dishes to be cleared away, the Good Cop starts a tickling game.  The Bad Cop sticks to bedtime routine the Good Cop lets them stay up as long as they like.

In most relationships one partner tends to be more 'disciplined' than the other and the roles can sometimes reverse, depending on circumstances.  There will always be differences of opinion and ways of handling situations, but the important thing to remember is the impact playing Good Cop /Bad Cop can have when there is no awareness of the dynamic, or when it is being used to score points off each other.    Unresolved issues in a relationship makes the Good Cop/Bad Cop game really nasty; the conflicting messages are confusing to the children and create stress, plus in the race to score points the children are forced to choose and by doing so they suffer.

Even though I'm long in the parenting tooth this dynamic is an old pattern in our relationship and, like a pernicious weed, it keeps coming up just when I think its all gone.  However, I am committed to addressing my part in it and it's not that I want to be the Good Cop, I just don't want to play the game at all anymore.  I want to keep building partnership and I know that in order to do so I have to be willing to change the way I handle the situations that trigger me.

Instead of falling into Bad Cop mode ( blame & punishment) I gave myself some time to identify what it was that really bothered and then talked about it.  It wasn't easy, I went off track a few times, but I kept reminding myself that to change the pattern I needed to remain open, communicate honestly and set my goal for mutual understanding.  How to have a difficult conversation

It would have been easy to dismiss this event as just a domestic hiccup, but the small events offer a great opportunity to work on relationship and deepen the partnership.  Sometimes working on the 'silly' stuff is much more effective - and easier - than having to address the same thing when the problems become serious.  Plus the benefit is that by doing so you learn how to build a strong foundation of true partnership for your family to grow up on .

Here's a link to the recipe for marriage-saving pancakes and another to get in touch if you want further help!

Have you turned into your mother?

My friend, Fiona, alongside having a beautiful holiday cottage, is also the proud mother of six new chicks.  I'm no poultry expert, I just know that the eggs were placed in an incubator and one, caught in its shell like a child tangled in its pyjamas, had to be helped out by Fiona.  All of the chicks hatched successfully however, and now follow her around with a great deal of devotion and some sibling rivalry.

This attachment is called modelling - not the catwalk kind (although I have to admit those little chicks were looking very cute when I saw them) but the copying kind.  Young animals learn the tricks of their trade by modelling the adults that bring them up.

We humans do the same.  As children we learn how to walk, talk, relate to the world and, most importantly, build relationships from modeling the people around us.  It is an automatic download, it happens without us having to think consciously about it and then gets stored in our subconscious mind, powerfully controlling the levels of intimacy and connection we allow ourselves to have in all relationships.

As children we are open and sensitive to the nuances being played out in our parents' relationship.  Any vulnerability we experienced, any upset we witnessed, any rejection, heartbreak, humiliation or hurt we felt will be stored in our subconscious mind and influence our beliefs and thoughts about our own self, life and relationships.

How was your parents' relationship growing up? What model of relationship is your subconscious using a template?   Even though you vowed you wouldn't be like your mother, you'd get a career and marry a man who was the opposite of your father, years down the line do you look around you and realise that, whilst your life might look quite different on the outside, inside you now understand exactly how she felt?  If we have no successful relationship model to draw from, and no awareness of the deep programmes that run us, then what do we do when our life and relationship fall into the Dead Zone?

What does a healthy, successful relationship look like?  It is different for every couple, but the values and principles remain the same.  Commitment, Love, Respect, Laughter, Understanding, Communication, Forgiveness, Creativity... all the good stuff.

Photographs by Fiona Hackman

If you sense your relationship is not as good as it could be, but any conversation about it with your partner is met with rejection, then perhaps you would benefit from some relationship training?  Personal coaching in  relationship dynamics and effective communication skills could just the thing to help you start a whole new level of conversation.

Contact kim@relationshiptraining.co.uk or call 07789408378 for a chat.

Slipping though my fingers.

The morning of my daughter's wedding I woke at 4am with a strange feeling.  I can only describe it as similar to that first really specific pang of labour that tells you your life is never going to be the same again.


I realised I was going through a new kind of birth process.  Our daughter was about to step over a threshold.  Later in the church when my husband 'gave' her away it really hit home.  She had moved from our family to one of her own.  She and her husband had begun their own community.


The wedding was wonderful.  Everything about it had significance; the rings made by her sister, the song composed and performed by her brother during the signing of the register, the flowers in the church she and her grandmother had arranged.  Every detail had been thought through and the message was: everything and everyone mattered.  The love, care, sensitivity and attention to detail with which they as a couple had organised the whole thing shone out throughout the day.  People kept coming up to congratulate me on an amazing day - but honestly, it was all my daughter and son-in-law's work.

I focused mostly on 'Tissues and Issues' plus the famous jam jars and was the Feeder for the week - having filled the freezer with food so that creating a meal each day was easy, especially when the night before the wedding we had 16 family & young friends for a mad, sad, lovely, laughing, crying celebration of her final night at home.


I really needed the tissues a few days later.  One son back to Spain, dear friends departed for Ireland, the couple on their honeymoon - and it was all over.  I was delighted for everyone, thrilled it had all gone so brilliantly but so many goodbyes on one day were just too much.


I was sad that the family had changed, sad that it had all gone so quickly and sad that it was the end of an era.  Meryl Streep kept breaking into the Mama Mia song in my head "Slipping through my fingers ..." and I'd be off crying again.


As the weeks have passed I have noticed a change in my world view.  I am recognising the shift is not so much about my daughter's new status but about my relationship to it.  It's as if I have been set free on some level.  I will always be her mother, and I delight in that, but I have also been released from being her parent and am now also a novice mother-in-law with a distant possibility of graduating to grandparent.


Don't get me wrong, I am not in a hurry to be a granny, I still have two (albeit, nearly grown-up) children at home!  But I recognise that the next significant stage of my life is beckoning.  I have done the Maiden, the Mother and now the Crone is calling and, actually, it feels really exciting.


In her book, The Wisdom of Menopause, Dr Christiane Northrup explains how, as hormone balances change, the drop in oestrogen causes the area of the brain associated with nurturing and nesting to shrink but the area to do with creativity and vision is suddenly supercharged.  Yay!  That is what the Crone is really about and explains why we get so desperate for our kids to leave; we want to get on with our lives, we have ideas and plans we can finally fulfill!


Letting go is such a powerful exercise and makes room for amazing things to happen.  It took a few days to work through letting go of my daughter, and believe me, if that Abba song plays I am still in tears, but I can see now that by letting go I am allowing so many possibilities to come into my life.  

When I come up against any resistance to it I remember to employ the phrase ‘Let Go and Let Grace'.  It has an elegance and femininity that sits comfortably in my mind and I like the image of sitting back and allowing things to happen.  

The Wisdom of the Crone! 

Loving Partnership

Lola and Sam were having a light-hearted conversation about how they met, Lola said she believed it was Fate.  When Sam casually remarked that he didn't believe in Fate, Lola felt deflated 'like a bubble had burst'.  She felt stupid that his comment had had such a powerful affect on her and couldn't understand why it still hurt months later.

Our emotions have great intelligence and for relationships to thrive we must learn to value them and give them the right kind of attention.  Most of the time we are taught to dismiss feelings as a sign of weakness, but the deeper truth is that our vulnerability is our greatest strength;  where we are fragile is also where we are able to make powerful connections, heart to heart.

Whether Sam believed in Fate or not was not really the issue here, it was that in the face of disagreement Lola had fallen into deep emotions linked to old feelings of inadequacy.  

Believing that her feelings and thoughts were foolish and of no value, she had assumed she was wrong and handed over her authority without a moment’s thought.  She had automatically and unconsciously adopted the inferior position, giving Sam the superior role in the relationship.  This unconscious decision and the subsequent - but subtle - loss of connection between them that resulted, was the real reason she was still upset.  

The superior/inferior pattern is common in relationships and is not a recipe for long-term success.  After a while the inferior/superior dynamic breeds resentment on both sides.  In the inferior position you back away from conflict, you may even place your partner on a pedestal, but eventually you begin to feel resentful that your partner doesn't take you seriously or have enough time for you.

With the power of the superior position also comes responsibility; you have to take care of everyone which takes its toll on your time, energy and resources.  This pattern can go on for years without either party realising the problem and eventually the creativity, spontaneity and connection between you dies.

Most relationships settle into a superior/inferior dynamic, primarily because it is the traditional relationship model we have all grown up with.  However, to build a healthy, long-term relationship there needs to be a new model: Partnership, where your partner's sense of equality, success and well-being is as important to you as your own.

This new model of relationship is led from the heart, not the head, and requires a different intelligence - emotional intelligence.  It takes courage and a willingness to be vulnerable and open to build true partnership, but the rewards of deeper connection, trust and greater intimacy provide a safe, nurturing and loving environment for all.  Partnership offers an inspiring role model for the next generation.

Lola and Sam are working on their relationship with much more consciousness.  They're developing emotional literacy, learning transformational communication skills and discovering that the most powerful language comes from the heart. 

Perhaps it was Fate that set up that conversation after all!

For tips on building partnership see our previous blog on 5 habits for successful relationship.

or contact kim@relationshiptraining.co.uk or 07789 408378 for partnership skills coaching.

I'd rather be committed

The actress Rita Wilson says that, after 23 years of marriage and knowing what she knows now, she would still marry her husband, Tom Hanks.  

This got me wondering.  I have been married 30 years and knowing what I know today,  would I still marry my husband?  Please don't misunderstand me, I love my husband and I am happy with our life together - but the question tugged at me like an insistent child wanting my attention. 
  

I went for a run and thought about the question.  I took the dog for a walk and contemplated it.  I worked in the garden and ruminated.  I did the ironing and pondered. You can probably tell, I gave it a great deal of thought. Having asked myself the question I wanted to be honest, really honest, both with myself and in my relationship.  

After a couple of days I discovered what had been nagging at me. Saying yes this time would mean giving 100% commitment and this thought had triggered an old belief that commitment means the end of freedom, a loss of identity, a surrender of power.  

You'd think that after all this time and given the nature of the work I do, I would have worked this one out, but as a coach I believe its important to keep doing personal research!

Our beliefs are like computer programmes, they have their own intelligence and can be extremely powerful. They develop from our childhood experiences and grow to run our lives. Even though as adults we decide we won't do things like our parents, the buried programmes start running with or without our consent.  

You begin a relationship believing you'll live happily ever after and then one day wake to discover you and your Beloved are out of the fairytale and into a nightmare, with no idea how you got there. 

A healthy relationship needs at least one person willing to communicate about a problem.

Giving yourself 100% to the relationship means making your partner's success and well-being as important to you as your own.  It is the fastest way to escape the trap of old, self-defeating beliefs and offers the best route to true freedom - the freedom to be yourself. 

Commitment to reaching resolution rather than settling for compromise, to being understanding and being understood rather than merely being right or feeling wronged will lead a relationship back from the edge and onto a whole new level of intimacy, love and friendship. 

By uncovering my old belief I was able to make another - more conscious - choice: to commit to partnership and equality. 100%.

And so, dear Reader, I married him.

How about you?