Building Lasting Relationships – psychotherapy, counselling and making your relationship lasting and fulfilling:
“Hope can awaken and motivate deep change over time.”

We live in an instant world with instant solutions. We want a relationship where there is trust, faithfulness and commitment. For what is life, where there is no love, feeling, empathy and loyalty. When we enter a relationship we have different expectations and we should share them with our partner. For some, relationship means security and safety, and for others, it means adventure and having a friend to have fun with. For others, it is security, power, companionship, ambition, legacy, perpetuation, etc. Whatever your motivations, many people believe in true love, and build a happy and contented relationship, shown in their consistency, in being responsible, and in delivering the emotional and practical symbols of your cooperation – including a loving attitude, gifts, kind words and deeds, and steadfastness.

A happy relationship is all about getting to know one another, to trust someone so much that you are willing to let them know you as well as you know yourself. It is that intimacy, that togetherness and oneness that’s what we should spend every day leading up to our wedding day, and every day thereafter, consistency developing.

Love without intimacy is an illusion in a relationship. We all want someone who knows us and continues to accept us … someone who trusts us with his or her little, and deeper, secrets. One has to take the emotional risk of letting your partner know you; if you do not let your partner know you, you will live alone even though you are under the same roof – sad! In sharing your deepest feelings and emotions, even though you might not always get the welcome reaction, you take the plunge in creating a relationship that is intimate and close, and eventually safe and comforting.

We have so many external stimuli, emotions and inputs from the world that influence how we feel, then how we behave and react. If you had a difficult time at the office and show fierce, vicious, or violent behavior to your partner because he/she forgot to do something, you owe it to your partner to apologize, explain what you are experiencing, commit to restrain yourself, and make progress in doing so! Your commitment to progress, and demonstrating it, will evoke hope.

Seeking instead to find gratification through infidelity and polygamy, although part in some cultures, usually has no place in most marriages, since it most often leads to rupturing the potential for deep and significant bonding.

The role of psychotherapy and counselling in building long-lasting relationships:

But happy marriage, a life-long journey, is a goal that some couples give up on even within the first two years of married life, thus never experiencing the incredible gift that a marriage is meant to be, and with skill, and dedication, and, if needed, with skillful marriage counselling-psychotherapy-coaching, pass these barriers and discover the optimism and pleasure of a building a secure and dedicated long-lasting relationship. Even if it seems impossible to retrieve, where there was love and excitement, and dreams of a future worth having, hope can awaken and motivate deep change over time.

People in Toronto, troubled by infidelity and betrayal, often seek psychotherapy for their relationship. Monogamy and commitment, promise and obligation, vows and responsibility, are often the focus for coaching and relationship therapy. In fact, couples counselling often prevents separation, break-up and divorce by enabling Toronto couples, through effective relationship coaching, to avoid withdrawal, even vicious or violent behavior, and enhance the capacity of a relationship for tenderness, passion, warmth and desire. Psychotherapy, through examining promises, vows, and commitment, discover the convincing reasons for faithfulness and commitment, beyond the moral duty, and into functional, romantic, and spiritual benefits of trust.

No wonder the temptation, the dream of yearned-for tenderness softness, caring, affection, desire, passion, compassion and warmth can tempt a person away from an already existing relationship, especially one fractured by relationship pain. But when mistrust taints a relationship with suspicion, seeking its core comforts can be difficult, until hope of trust can be restored.

Relationship counselling by a trained and experienced psychotherapist can often assist a couple with the needed changes. A psychotherapist can deals with the analytical view. He or she can assist in differentiating the cause of the behavior from the results of that behavior. An example could be if a spouse was abusing the other spouse, it could stem from the abusive spouse's past. The abusive spouse may have been a victim of abuse as a child, abused in a relationship him or herself, or even have been a witness to abuse. Mutual commitment to stop the abuse, and provocations, is a first step. Then psychotherapy focuses on gaining insight into chronic physical and emotional problems, and it focuses on the patient's thought processes and way of being in the world. If you are in a relationship where there is difficulty with compassion and warmth, desire and passion, you can probably benefit from the help and guidance of a trained and experienced psychotherapist/counsellor.

Ingrid Dresher, a psychotherapist in Toronto, can help you find make your relationships long-lasting. Ingrid has been married for 30 years, so she brings not only the ability to assist you to access your inner strengths, compassion for yourself and others, and your spiritual self, from which you can find your inner wisdom; her years of experience in psychotherapy and counseling, and her own commitment to a path of spiritual growth, may help you to seek your self and to move towards your own path of happiness and contentment, within yourself, and in relationship.