Relationship Course Corrections

Are your choices giving the results that you want? Take a look at your relationship. Are you on course? Is your relationship meeting your needs, it is meeting your partner’s needs? Does it feel good to you or are you struggling along?

In 1979, a sightseeing flight from New Zealand to Antarctica, with 257 passengers onboard ended in tragedy. Unknown to the pilots, there was a two-degree error in the flight coordinates. This small error put the plane 28 miles off course by the time they approached Antarctica. When they descended to a lower altitude to give the passengers a better view of the landscape they found themselves directly in the path of Mount Erebus.

Unfortunately many couples ignore small warning signs in their relationship, hoping that somehow the relationship will self-correct. This generally leads to disaster.

Couples that stay the course, that are satisfied in their relationship, have just as many obstacles and disagreements, but they make adjustments as they go, they learn from their experience together, they check in with one another, they express their thoughts and feelings, they forgive one another, and they don’t hang onto the garbage that would eventually weigh them down and cause them to crash.

The 1979 disaster could have been prevented had the navigational planners realized and corrected their error. Unfortunately is seems they made no attempts to check the flight plan co-ordinates against the geographical reality (the mountain in the flight path).

Unfortunately many people approach life with the attitude, I am right and don’t confuse me with the facts. They make little or no attempt to do a reality check in their relationship.

You need to get real in your relationship. It is important to understand that neither your nor your partner’s perceptions actually represent reality. They simply represent your interpretations of reality. When you make a serious attempt to also see things from your partner perspective, to really hear and understand how they are feeling and thinking, not to judge them or to prove that they are wrong, but to make a serious attempt to see things from their perspective, you will come closer to getting real. When you get real in your relationship you are in a better position to see and make needed corrections.

Don’t wait to make a course correction, until you crash into a mountain, don’t wait until your relationship is dead. Start making choices that will give you the results you want.

Susan Derry, B.Ed., M.S.Psy., R.P.C.
Professional Counselor & Life Coach

Co-author of Marriage Prep: Beginnings a downloadable marriage preparation course

Co-author of Intimate Sex: Manual for Lovemaking, a sex manual for couples

Offers a free Nurturing Marriage Ezine