Gudrun Frerichs, PhD

Keep Romance Alife in Your Relationship

A common perception is that after a while relationships lose their romantic touch and turn into something more akin companionship and friendship. However, a group of researchers have investigated a large number of studies to find out whether this common perception is true.

They found that we don't have to settle for 'luke warm'. Indeed, they say it is perfectly possible to have lifelong romance and passion in your relationship. More so, people who report more romance in their relationship are usually more satisfied and happy. A key to romantic love seems to be the feeling that "...my partner is there for me".

So, don't settle for less, don't restrict your expections. You can have longlasting romance in your relationships. It is attainable. However, you have to work with focus on devotion on having lasting romance in your life!

Read the original research article here

 

Finding A Soul Mate?

Another thoughtful  clip by Mark Gungor about finding the One And Only Person That Will Make Your Happy! ... ?

Identifying Personal Responses to Conflict Situations

When it comes to dealing effectively with conflict situations, knowing about your own conflict style will come as a great help. Everybody reacts differently to conflict. Basically, how we react to conflict, what triggers conflict, and what constitutes vulnerable areas to could lead to conflict depends very much on a person’s history and his/her formative experiences in childhood. For example, growing up in a family where conflict often led to violence might cause a child to grow up dealing with conflict either by acting violently or by avoiding it altogether.

The Tale of 2 Brains

It is surprising how many couples struggle with their relationship - yet they fail to get professional imput that could help them to improve their happiness and satisfaction a good working partnership could hold. Their family car gets more often a tune-up than their relationship - even though people often have even less understanding of what makes a good relationship than what it takes to have a smooth running car.

In the following video clip, marriage expert Mark Gungor presents a humorous exploration of the difference between how women and men think and behave.

8 Steps To Successful Conflict Resolution

I mentioned before that conflict arises when a person’s needs or expectations are not met. However, conflict does not just rest on a difference in needs but also on the negative meaning that people give an action or behaviour. Thus our perception and interpretation of a situation plays a large part in conflict.
Your partner comes home later than expected without calling you. You feel disappointed and hurt and are getting angry because you consider his actions disrespectful; he obviously doesn’t care about you; he can’t be bothered. You make a scene and accused him of all the things you just thought.

Conflict As An Opportunity Of Growth

Conflict is a normal occurrence. Whether you think of personal intimate relationships, friendships, or workplace relations, you can anticipate that conflict will happen sooner or later. It is unrealistic to expect that people have always the same needs, ideas, intentions, or plans. By finding constructive ways navigating through times in which you have a different position to your ‘partner’, you will be able to

• grow as a person
• arrive at a deeper understanding of any given situation
• learn about the other person and his/her needs
• will gain a deeper understanding of yourself and your important needs.

In a way, conflict can be understood as a result of resistance to one’s planned path of action or expected needs. Yet, rather than seeing it as a negative phenomenon, resistance has a life giving side to it. Life would be impossible without resistance. Indeed, resistance is not an impediment but the driving force for any progress and forward movement. Without resistance people cannot blow-dry their hair, cars don’t move, and people would slide off chairs.

When you experience resistance, you are given the opportunity to grow stronger within yourself as well as strengthen your relationships. Read on in the next post that explores “How to fight fair”.

What is Conflict?

Most people have a clear idea what conflict is. Most people don’t like conflict. In most cases conflict is difficult and hurtful for all parties involved.

Social theorist Axel Honneth explains the significant role conflict plays for a person’s healthy sense of identity and individualisation as follows: Individuals learn about who they are through interactions with others. Thus they derive a sense of self and identity through social processes of approval and recognition. 

Any forms of disrespect, for example rudeness, insult, humiliation, the withholding of care or support, the withholding of rights that are enjoyed by other members of society, discrimination, marginalisation, the lack of appreciation or acceptance for one’s way of life, abuse, rape, or torture cause a threat to a person’s integrity and self-development and could bring the whole identity of a person to a collapse. 

The Brain Loves Gossip

Do you love to gossip and feel a little bit guilty about it? I do. Usually, gossip is connected with some inferior way of communicating with and about others, mother told us "You shouldn't do!" Now, I found this delightful artlicle with a passage from the book "Your Brain at Work".

Your brain is immensely social. If you were a wolf, large parts of your brain would be devoted to getting resources directly from the wild. You would have complex maps for interacting with the physical landscape, like maps for sniffing out a distant meal and others for finding your way home in the dark. As a human, especially when young, you get your resources not from the wild, but from other people. Because of this, large amounts of human cortical "real estate" is devoted to the social world. If you work in an office, you could probably close your eyes and describe ten people around you, how important they are in relation to each other and to you, how they feel today, whether they can be trusted, and how many favors any of them might owe you. Your memories of your social interconnections are vast.

Gossip is something that the brain likes to do. As neuroscientist Matthew Lieberman says, "Four out of five processes operating in the background when your brain is at rest involve thinking about other people and yourself."

David Rock suggests that people love to go on social networking sites because they give them the opportunity to check out what other people are up to and spread a little bit of gossip. Kind of what I am doing right now: gossiping on about a paragraph that put the workings of the brain into words that put a smile on my face.

The Benefit of Groups

"The quality of a person's social life could have an even greater impact than diet and exercise on their health and well-being. There is growing evidence that being a member of a social group can significantly reduce the risk of conditions like stroke, dementia and even the common cold. New research by the Universities of Exeter and Queensland, Australia, shows that membership of social groups has a positive impact on health and well-being". (American Physiological Society (2009, September 13).

Myth About Womens' Low Sexual Desire

Many people are of the opinion that if a woman rarely wants sex there is something physically wrong with her. Maybe her sexual desire, her libido, would improve with the help of medical treatment? What pill can be prescribed that would get her back on the right track?

Like in many other areas, some health professionals (and certainly pharmaceutical companies) quickly reduce interpersonal, social, and cultural problems to a hormonal imbalance, that can be - and should be remedied with something we can buy in the pharmacy.

The biggest misconception of our present time is that problems like low sexual desire or depression are all due to hormonal or chemical imbalance. A misconception that is widely fed and supported research financed by pharmaceutical companies whose huge profits rely on people reaching for 'the pill'.