Day: May 7, 2020

Establishing a deep, meaningful relationship with your partner, as well as other important people in your life, is what contributes to your mental health and well-being. In a healthy relationship, you’re able to connect with the other person, understand them on a deeper level, and both give and receive emotional support. 

In fact, emotional support is an essential aspect of a healthy relationship. It not only brings partners closer together, but also gives them the strength to overcome numerous challenges in their relationship and life in general.

This is why the lack of emotional support can be detrimental to both a relationship and a person’s mental health. Whether due to emotional intimacy issues and emotional distance in a relationship or feeling that you’re in an unequal relationship, some individuals may find it difficult to open up emotionally and provide their partners with the emotional support they need. 

What Is Emotional Support In A Relationship?

What does emotional support actually entail in a relationship? Is it simply encouraging someone to go after their personal goals or listening to them? While these are important aspects of emotional support, it also entails the feelings of compassion, empathy, encouragement, acceptance, and concern for your partner. 

In meaningful relationships, emotional support is offered from both individuals and brings them closer to each other. It also helps you establish a foundation for your future together. Additionally, the practice of offering emotional support provides a foundation for being able to resolve conflict kindly, see your partner from a place of reality, and attach securely to one another.

How Important Is Emotional Support In A Relationship?

Giving and receiving emotional support benefits both your relationship and you individually. 

• It deepens your relationship. Being in a supportive relationship brings you closer to your partner and helps you establish a deeper level of intimacy and trust. Knowing that you can rely on your partner and give each other support and compassion will also help you overcome challenges in your relationship in a healthy way. 
• It contributes to your mental health. Having emotional support from the people who matter to you the most means that you feel loved, cared for, and accepted for who you are. On the other hand, it’s not uncommon for people who lack emotional support to feel undeserving of love, believing that they are the reason behind this, which further reflects on their self-esteem. 
• It helps you overcome serious problems. As an important aspect of mental health, emotional support plays a crucial role in overcoming serious problems in life. Having a partner and family members who support you can help you deal with immense grief in your life or be an effective way to relieve stress and anxiety. 
• It helps you achieve your personal goals. Emotional support can also encourage you to go after your personal goals and work on yourself. If you lack emotional support, you can also lack confidence and determination to go after what you want and need. An emotionally supportive partner will believe in you even when you don’t believe in yourself. 

Since emotional support has such a great impact on relationships and personal growth, its lack can sabotage your every attempt to get closer to your partner. This is why many individuals decide to work on this issue through emotional support and emotional intimacy coaching where they identify the underlying problems and take steps to resolve them. 

How Do You Show Support In A Relationship?

If you believe that you haven’t been supportive enough in your relationship, you can take actual steps to change this. There are numerous ways to provide someone with emotional support, but the most important thing is to recognize the problem and work actively toward changing the negative patterns that have been sabotaging your relationship. 

Fortunately, expressing emotional support is an ability that you can grow into, especially if you believe that you have been the withholding one. 

How to emotionally support someone

How you express emotional support to your partner may greatly depend on the nature of your relationship and your personality. However, there are some common ways you can emotionally support your partner and show them that you are there for them. 

How Do You Overcome Lack Of Support?

However, what if you’re on the receiving end? That is, what if you’re the one not receiving emotional support from your partner? While this can be highly discouraging and have a negative effect on your mental well-being, there are a few ways you can deal with this and overcome possible challenges it presents. 

• Practice self-love and self-appreciation. If you feel that you’re too dependent on what your partner or other people in your life think of you and if you need their “approval” to do something, you should try to work on your self-esteem. Practicing self-love will help you become self-sufficient and don’t let the lack of support from others prevent your growth. 
• Determine whether you’re with the right person. If you believe that your partner doesn’t support or value you, they may not be the right person for you. While leaving them behind may sound difficult, it may be a better option than being in a distant, withholding relationship. 
• Try to understand your partner. If you believe that your partner doesn’t provide you with emotional support, try to determine why. Perhaps they feel insecure, afraid to open up emotionally, or hesitant because you’ve just started your relationship. Also, your partner may not have had emotional support in their life, so they don’t know how to give it. 
• Seek professional help. If you and your partner want to overcome relationship challenges, you should consider signing up for emotional support and intimacy coaching where you will be able to address your problems and work actively on resolving them. 

Overcome Emotional Intimacy & Support Issues With PIVOT

Enrich your relationship by learning how to give and receive emotional support through the PIVOT process. Our Advocates can provide you with personalized individuals coaching guidance that will help you deal with personal issues that may be hindering your relationship. We also enable you and your partner to work together on your emotional issues by joining intensive couples’ workshops where you can make a quick, yet long-term change. Start making progress today!

When you and your partner first started dating, the feelings of infatuation and excitement were so intense that even the least perceptive onlookers could testify with absolute certainty that love was in the air. But now that the honeymoon phase is over and the thrill of the new is gone, you aren’t so confident about the future of your relationship or your partner’s feelings toward you. 

The fear could be so overwhelming that you cannot even bring yourself to communicate these doubts and voice your concerns to your partner. Discussing the intimacy problems in your relationship openly would mean having to validate their existence, and that is a challenge in and of itself.

Yet the question keeps preying on your mind: does your partner love you as much as you love them? In other words: do you love your partner more than they love you? And if so, what do you do about it?

What Is An Unequal Relationship?

Deep down, you can’t shake off the uneasy feeling that you are trying too hard and that they are just not that into you. Every now and then, the thought that they might not care about you as much as you care about them runs through your mind. And what if someone new comes along and they realize the things between you are not working out? The thought that your partner might decide to break up with you fills your heart with dread. 

If you feel this way but cannot pluck up the courage to talk to your partner about it, you might  want to consider a codependency intensive or a related relationship course which you can attend in privacy and from the comfort of your home. 

But first things first: what is an unequal relationship and are you in one?

An unequal relationship is one in which one partner gives more than the other one. In other words, the relationship lacks balance and equality between partners. One partner’s thoughts, feelings and needs are more important than the other one’s. They are the so-called power member.

Unequal Relationship: The Red Flags

Many of us have made the mistake of pursuing romantic interests who are unavailable at one point or another. If and when this pursuit develops into a relationship, it may be an unequal one in which one partner is taking advantage of the other, while the other partner may or may not realize it.

But what are the red flags? Any signs that signal a power and control imbalance, such as if one partner:

• calls all the shots
• refuses to compromise
• doesn’t consider the wants and needs of the other person
• has the last word

Another common sign of an unequal relationship is if one partner is expected to pay for everything in order to earn the other partner’s affection.

As we grow older, we become more mature and more aware of our choices. What we may not realize is that we can easily fall into the trap of getting involved in an unequal relationship at any point in life. Is it the end of the world? No. Is an unequal relationship healthy? No. 

But is it worth staying in and can it be fixed? It depends, but it definitely takes a lot of work. You and your partner need to be willing to learn to communicate with each other and develop a mutual understanding so that you can both be free to be who you are and grow together.

How Do You Know Who Loves More In A Relationship?

Before listing the signs that may indicate you are giving your partner more than they are giving you, let us highlight the fact that not everyone shows affection in the same way. Each person is unique and so is the way they express their feelings. Some people may appear cold and distant because they have a different way of showing how they feel but does not mean that they love you any less than you love them.

Signs That You Are Giving More Than You Are Receiving

Before you know it, you end up in a vicious cycle, and you might not even notice the pattern. Since you always come up with excuses for their behavior, you give them more and more room to take you for granted.

Is It True That In A Relationship One Person Loves More Than The Other?

The answer is simple and straightforward: not in a healthy relationship.

In romance, like in all other aspects of life, finding balance is a challenge. But it is not impossible. A meaningful relationship that is based on lasting, healthy love is a relationship where both partners love each other profoundly and never take each other for granted. We all deserve a relationship just like that, a relationship in which we feel safe, seen, and heard, not one in which we have to settle for anything less.

Is It OK To Love Someone More Than They Love You?

It can be hurtful and confusing to come to the realization that a person we love might not love us as much. Think long and hard whether this is something you can live with and consult a professional if you are not comfortable talking it over with your partner. 

What matters is that you fully understand that things might never change. At some point, you may become overwhelmed with negative feelings, frustrations and unfulfillment, insecurity and resentment as a result of the imbalance. Do not ignore your gut instinct and your emotions, because they will not go away and may only get worse with time.

Accepting that you love your partner more than they love you may cause you to lose your self-worth and may even lead to depression. You deserve better and more, someone to give you emotional support and stay by your side no matter what.

Where To Go From Here? Let Us Shed Light On That.

If you are uncertain about the future of your relationship and need an unbiased professional with experience in emotional intimacy coaching to talk to on a deep and meaningful level, our individual coaching online sessions may be just what you need. On the other hand, if you and your partner are willing to work on your relationship and make it work, we also have online intensive workshops designed specifically for couples. Through our series of carefully planned-out online relationship courses, we can help you find a way to a more fulfilling life and a more fulfilling romance.

Do you feel like your partner is pulling away from you? Do they seem emotionally distant and you can’t tell why? Do they seem less interested in spending time with you than they used to be? You are not alone. 

Unfortunately, emotional withdrawal and unavailability are common in relationships. The signs may start to show up slowly and intensify over time if ignored. Building intimacy in a relationship is hard, to begin with, but when the emotional gap becomes too wide, both you and your partner may start to feel isolated, lost, and confused. 

Keep reading to learn why people become emotionally distant and what you can do about it. 

Why Is My Partner Distant?

Emotional drifting can occur for numerous reasons. While it’s easy to believe that only one side of the relationship is to blame, it’s important to understand that nurturing a healthy bond takes two, and both you and your partner may have contributed to the intimacy issues. 

Causes Of Emotional Distancing

Some common reasons why couples experience emotional distancing are: 

• Your partner needs some time alone. When you’re in a relationship, it can be difficult to find an opportunity to spend some quality time on your own, especially if you have children. If you notice your partner is spending more time on their phone or playing video games, they may be craving some time off.
• They are under a great deal of stress. Emotional withdrawal is a common mechanism for coping with stress. Your partner may be experiencing some turmoil in their personal or professional life which may be causing them to pull away from you. Try talking to them about the levels of stress in their life. 
• They may not feel the same way anymore. If you’ve been together for a while and haven’t really worked on deepening intimacy, it’s possible that your partner has mixed feelings about the relationship. Have a serious conversation about it, but give your partner some time to prepare. 
• You’ve entered a pursuer-distancer cycle. Your partner may consider you to be too needy and may withdraw because of it, which causes you to feel even more worried and abandoned, and in turn needier. If that’s the case, you can try to pull back for a while and see if anything changes. If you can’t pull back – it may be a sign that you have some attachment challenges that need to be addressed.
• You’ve entered a criticism-withdrawal cycle. This relationship dynamic develops when one partner in a relationship becomes highly critical of the other, constantly making them feel inadequate. The criticized partner then withdraws further and creates a deeper gap. If you’ve been harsh with your partner, try to be more gentle and see how it goes. 

What Are The Signs Of Emotional Unavailability?

Some individuals are naturally better at expressing their emotions and thoughts outwardly. While you may feel like you wear your heart on your sleeve, your partner may not be as comfortable with showing their feelings. If you feel like your partner is distant, look for these telltale signs of emotional unavailability: 

• They can’t describe their emotions;
• They struggle with showing affection; 
• They aren’t comfortable talking about your emotional issues; 
• They don’t give you emotional support; 
• They become defensive when you bring up issues in your relationship; 
• They invalidate your feelings; 
• They are often too busy to spend quality time with you. 
• The relationship feels one-sided; 

The first step towards bridging an emotional gap in your relationship is recognizing that there is a problem. If you are struggling to build a healthy relationship with your partner, consider reaching out to a professional relationship coach. With expert help, you will better understand the root causes of your relationship issues and discover ways to work together with your partner to change your relationship for the better. 

What Does Stonewalling Someone Mean?

Does your partner avoid any sort of discussion or cooperation when it comes to resolving emotional issues? They may be resorting to a defense-mechanism called stonewalling. A person who stonewalls will withdraw when you bring up a problem, dismissing your words and invalidating your feelings. They may say something like “you’re being unreasonable” or “you’re blowing things way out of proportion”, etc. 

You may encounter stonewalling whether you’re trying to address a concern in private or with a relationship coach. If your partner relies on deflection to render any discussion irrelevant or insignificant, it can be difficult to come at any kind of solution which can make you feel frustrated, unheard, and confused. 

How Do You Deal With An Emotionally Distant Partner?

Find Peace And Happiness With #1 Relationship Intimacy Coaching

Feeling unheard and invalidated in your relationship can cause you a great deal of stress and anxiety. The good news is, you can find joy in your relationship, no matter how alone you may feel. With help from our PIVOT coaches, you can reach emotional balance and nurture a healthy and lasting relationship with your partner. 

At PIVOT, we provide expert assistance to individuals and couples via carefully devised workshops and relationship-building retreats. We are here to help you find fulfillment and happiness in your relationships. Give us a call!