Happiest Ever After

Do They Have Difficulty Apologizing?

“An apology means nothing if they don't stop doing what they are apologizing for. Believe action, not words.” Mandy Hale

You are going to screw something up in your relationship at some point. That is a fact. If we are honest with ourselves and have a healthy sense of self, we should be able to acknowledge we are wrong sometimes and, being human, we make mistakes. How you and your partner handle this is an important measure of how well things turn out for your relationship.

Some people have a hard time saying sorry. They may have been shamed or punished as a child when a mistake was made and now can’t accept responsibility. Dr. Guy Winch says, “Admissions of wrongdoing are incredibly threatening for non-apologists because they have trouble separating their actions from their character. If they did something bad, they must be bad people; open the door to shame.”

An inability to apologize may, however, just be due to their gender. Studies have shown that women apologize more than men. Women apologize as an expression of sympathy, but also in order to build and maintain relationships. Dr. Deborah Tannen helps us understand why men do so less often: “An apology is a move that frames the apologizer as one-down.” So, to apologize is a sign of weakness, fault, or vulnerability.

From personal experience, I know this gender difference in frequency to be true. I would say sorry to restore peace in the relationship even when I didn’t think I was wrong. On the other hand, I only heard sorry once in my marriage. Is it because he never screwed up? Far from it. Some say this is because men need to protect their fragile ego. Studies at the University of Waterloo, however, concluded that men have a higher threshold as to what actually requires an apology.

My concern here is not so much in this difference in how and why genders differ in the way an apology is issued. It is more in the misuse of the word sorry. Some say it, but don’t mean it or use it as a manipulation. I see criminals apologizing before sentencing and wonder what they are saying sorry for...because they got caught?

A true apology has four parts: the words, ‘I am sorry’, an acknowledgement of blame, a vow to not do this action again, and amends. I have heard it is easier to ask forgiveness then permission. This is a pattern that doesn’t have a place in a well-functioning relationship. If your partner is always coming to you asking for forgiveness, even with a genuine apology, are they really sorry if they do not change? You need to have trust in a relationship.

I, for most of my life, didn’t realize that many apologies I was given didn’t qualify as a true apology. When you tell someone you are sorry they feel that way, that is not an apology, you are telling them that what they feel is wrong or that their perception of the situation is. It puts the other person in a position of seniority, such that they get to judge how you feel. It kind of feels like an apology to the listener though, especially if the words sorry have never passed the speaker’s lips before. This is merely misdirection, sleight of hand, if you will.

A true apology never has the word but in it. Dr Phil states, “‘But’ is a powerful word, it means forget everything I just said, I’m now going to tell you what I really mean.” In an apology, it says I have a good reason why I did what I did or someone else is to blame. This is a backhanded apology that can placate a person into feeling like they have been apologized to, while sometimes turning the blame back onto the person that has been wronged. “I’m sorry but you made me so mad.”

These are not genuine apologies and we need to learn not to accept them.

‘I’m sorry’ is a complete sentence. As Erin from The Office says, “Buts are for pooping”.

Do I Feel Encouraged By This Person?

“If our relationship, friendship, or connection isn't mutually helping us row or re-energize our souls, then we are just wasting each other’s time.” Unknown

You should be able to answer yes to these three questions: Do I feel lighter after being with this person? Do I feel encouraged? Do I feel valued?

With the newness of a budding romance, everything looks wonderful. Of course we feel lighter, brighter, floating on air. Is this just the rush of dopamine and norepinephrine? When the newness wears off, what will you be left with?

I have been in relationships where I felt like the consolation prize and ones where I was made to feel like the ultimate grand prize. It is easy to guess which ones I enjoyed more...

When I was the consolation prize, I struggled to understand why, when I loved this person so deeply, they did not love me as much. I thought if I put in more effort, showed more love, I could change his mind about me. I am sure you can guess that I eventually figured out he was never going to feel about me the way I felt about him and things ended. If you have to stand on your head to try to make someone love and value you, you are shortchanging yourself. We should not have to perform or earn love and respect like some trained circus animal.

While the person we are with should value us, this is not the way to gain self-worth. We need to value ourselves first. If the only value we think we have is that assigned to us by another person, what if that person changes their mind or dies, do we then have no value to anyone? I speak not here that the person we love assigns our value, but that they see our value. They need to see and respect what we bring to the table, not just accept it as their due.

I hope no one reading this is thinking, ‘but I am worthless’. When we feel bad about ourselves, we do things to try to make ourselves feel better. We think if anyone at all wants us, no matter the reason, that gives us value. You are so wrong. You have value and are worthwhile and I am sorry if you have been made to feel this way. Before you try to be with someone else, you need to first learn to love yourself. Then when you see you are a kickass, beautiful human, you can head out and find someone that is worth being with you!

We should be in ‘growth mode’ our entire life. Wanting to learn new things and become a better version of ourselves. The person we are with should help us in this regard. They should help us to follow our dreams, not tell us what they are. We might see that our spouse would be a great teacher, but we have no right to sign them up for this degree. What we want for them may be different then what they want for themselves. You need to follow your partner’s lead, not drag them along. When you try to push someone into doing what you want, the natural instinct is to resist. Just as we must not live our child’s life for them, we can not live our spouse’s either.

Plants need water, sun, and soil to grow; if well taken care of, they will yield beautiful blooms. People too need the right environment to be the best version of themselves. Home should be where we feel safe, loved, and supported. Where we blossom. The people there should be those that help us feel good about ourselves and help and encourage us to pursue our dreams. No one wants to come home at the end of the day and be told – or made to feel – they are less than.

Feeling Encouraged Worksheet

Have you been told you need to take a class so you have something worthwhile to say?
Are you told you are lacking in intelligence?
Do you dread going home?
Do people tell you that you act differently around your beloved?
Do you ‘dumb down’ around your partner?
Do they demand you dress up when you are together?
Have you been told ‘you are lucky to be with me’?
Are you being pushed to go back to school or change jobs?
Do they critique what you order in restaurants?
Do you feel like you need to play a role when you are with your partner?
Do you feel you are not good enough for them?
Do you feel like this is your only option?
Do they remember things about your schedule and ask about them?
Do you feel like if you grow you will outpace your partner?
Have they told you you are not living up to your potential?
Are they slow to respond to phone calls or texts?
Do they take offence or disagree with everything you say?
Do you feel they are not making much of an effort in your relationship?
Do they always steer conversations back to things they want to talk about?
Do you always feel like if you only try harder things will work out?
Do they share with others information you think is private?
Are efforts to better yourself met with disapproval or hostility?
Do you feel like there are things about yourself that are best not shared?
Do they seem jealous when you have successes?
Do they overreact to slights or jokes at their expense?
Do you feel they aren’t really listening or understanding you?
Do you not feel completely safe?
Do you feel like they would like you better if you changed?
Do you watch what you say?
Do they want you to fit into their world but don’t want to fit into yours?
Does he mansplain things to you?
Is time with you a priority?
Do they express interest in every aspect of who you are?
Do they often say that there are better ways to do what you are doing?
Is assistance only given sparingly?
Do they refuse to help your friends or family in a crisis?
Do you feel they are not sharing information with you?

Have Good Relationships Been Modelled for this Person?

“My father didn't tell me how to live; he lived, and let me watch him do it.” Clarence Budington Kelland

We all come into our romantic relationships carrying baggage – suitcases and trunks filled with past experiences, memories, and traumas. It’s this baggage and that of your love interest that will play a starring role in how things play out between you. There are lots of books and articles on relationships out there ripe for the reading, but no influence will be as powerful as the modelling we receive when we are developing our sense of self and our love map. Our love map is what we think is normal and will expect in our romantic relationships. What we see happening in relationships when we are in the highly influential years of five to eight will have a big part in what feels typical to us. During these years as our brain is growing rapidly, we are highly impressionable and what we see and experience in those years imprints on us.

Our life partner is one of the most important pairings we will have in our adult life. They are supposed to be with us forever after, the co-parent to our children, and take care of us in old age. We should receive some serious schooling into how to pick the right person and to form healthy relationships, rather then going by what feels right in the moment. It is only when we are in trouble that we pick up a book or go to a counsellor to try to figure out where we went off the rails and try to get back on track.

Intuitively, you would think children who had gone through a trauma would try harder as adults to avoid the patterns they witnessed and were subjected to. Still, this does not seem to be the case. Children who witnessed or were abused in their family of origin are likely to become abusers. Purely on statistics alone, we know that people who come from divorced parents have a higher divorce rate. The stats vary but find they are anywhere from thirty-eight to sixty-nine percent more likely to divorce. If a parent remarried, they are even more likely to divorce: ninety-one percent. It is baffling that it is this way.

Not only are children of divorced parents more likely to divorce, they are fifty percent more likely to marry another child of divorce, according to Nicholas Wolfinger, a professor and author. A relationship where this happens can increase the risk of divorce to two hundred percent. Does seeing a lot of divorce around us make us view marriage as disposable? The ex said no, but yet only one member of his family (out of five children) did not get or is on their way to getting a divorce. When we come from a family like this, we need to try harder going into it. We need to try harder during it and when things get bad, try even harder to fix things.

I am not suggesting we banish all those whose parents have divorced to an island and mark them with a scarlet D...that would be a pretty crowded island. Awareness is key. In the face of these odds, they need to try harder, seek help earlier, and let no stone remain unturned before even considering the D-word. You need to ask yourself if your partner is aware of the effects of not seeing healthy commitment and actively working on overcoming the impact.

So, what if there is no divorce in the past, are we good to proceed full steam ahead? Not so fast. One can come from an intact home and never witness healthy coupling. Look to the dynamics in the family of your beloved; parents, grandparents, aunts, and uncles. Does his father make jokes like this: ‘Why were shopping carts invented? So women could learn to walk upright.’. That should have been a clue for me that women were not held in high regard. Is there a lot of fighting and disrespect? Would you want to be living the life you are witnessing? Look as well if healthy female/male relations are modelled elsewhere, in friends or co-workers. If someone has not seen healthy relationships growing up and works in a predominately same-sex industry, they may be doubly cursed. Sometimes when there are not opposite sex members around, an ‘us vs. them’ mentality is cultivated.

Have You Answered Dr. Aron's Thirty-Six Questions?

“The more you know about the past, the better prepared you are for the future.” - Theodore Roosevelt

Husband and wife psychologists Arthur and Elaine Aron, (1997) postulated that the connection between strangers could be accelerated by asking each other personal questions. He came up with thirty-six questions that start off being fairly innocuous, but become more thought provoking, require more in depth answers, and are increasingly personal. Following the test, the subjects were asked to gaze into each others’ eyes in silence for four minutes. Doing this exercise, requiring about forty-five minutes, can lead to closeness and intimacy and, given the right circumstances, falling in love.

The point of the original experiment was not to make people fall in love, but to produce temporary deep emotional closeness. The study states, “Are we producing real closeness? Yes and no. We think that the closeness produced in these studies is experienced as similar in many important ways to felt closeness in naturally occurring relationships that develop over time.” Though the point was not to produce marriage, two of the original test subjects, who were strangers prior, went on to marry just six months later.

The test did not become widely known until the New York Times printed its Modern Love column (by Mandy Len Catron) after she put the questions to the test on a blind date. She says of the experience, “The questions reminded me of the infamous boiling frog experiment in which the frog doesn’t feel the water getting hotter until it’s too late. With us, because the level of vulnerability increased gradually, I didn’t notice we had entered intimate territory until we were already there, a process that can typically take weeks or months.”

The bonding that this test creates has made its way into couples therapy with these questions being assigned as a way to allow couples struggling with their marriage to reconnect. The questions with their increasing intensity require us to display our vulnerabilities and highlight our sameness.

Set 1

1. Given the choice of anyone in the world, whom would you want as a dinner guest?

2. Would you like to be famous? In what way?

3. Before making a telephone call, do you ever rehearse what you are going to say? Why?4. What would constitute a "perfect" day for you?

5. When did you last sing to yourself? To someone else?

6. If you were able to live to the age of 90 and retain either the mind or body of a 30-year-old for the last 60 years of your life, which would you want?

7. Do you have a secret hunch about how you will die?

8. Name three things you and your partner appear to have in common.

9. For what in your life do you feel most grateful?

10. If you could change anything about the way you were raised, what would it be?

11. Take four minutes and tell your partner your life story in as much detail as possible.

12. If you could wake up tomorrow having gained any one quality or ability, what would it be?

Set 2

13. If a crystal ball could tell you the truth about yourself, your life, the future or anything else, what would you want to know?

14. Is there something that you've dreamed of doing for a long time? Why haven't you done it?

15. What is the greatest accomplishment of your life?

16. What do you value most in a friendship?

17. What is your most treasured memory?

18. What is your most terrible memory?

19. If you knew that in one year you would die suddenly, would you change anything about the way you are now living? Why?

20. What does friendship mean to you?

21. What roles do love and affection play in your life?

22. Alternate sharing something you consider a positive characteristic of your partner. Share a total of five items.

23. How close and warm is your family? Do you feel your childhood was happier than most other people's?

24. How do you feel about your relationship with your mother?

Set 3

25. Make three true "we" statements each. For instance, "We are both in this room feeling _______."

26. Complete this sentence: "I wish I had someone with whom I could share _______."

27. If you were going to become a close friend with your partner, please share what would be important for him or her to know.

28. Tell your partner what you like about them; be very honest this time, saying things that you might not say to someone you've just met.

29. Share with your partner an embarrassing moment in your life.

30. When did you last cry in front of another person? By yourself?

31. Tell your partner something that you like about them already.

32. What, if anything, is too serious to be joked about?

33. If you were to die this evening with no opportunity to communicate with anyone, what would you most regret not having told someone? Why haven't you told them yet?

34. Your house, containing everything you own, catches fire. After saving your loved ones and pets, you have time to safely make a final dash to save any one item. What would it be? Why?

35. Of all the people in your family, whose death would you find most disturbing? Why?

36. Share a personal problem and ask your partner's advice on how he or she might handle it. Also, ask your partner to reflect back to you how you seem to be feeling about the problem you have chosen.

The Arons, of their test, stated, “On the other hand, it seems unlikely that the procedure produces loyalty, dependence, commitment, or other relationship aspects that might take longer to develop.” While this is a great beginner exercise to get you familiar with one another, I believe the more questions you ask the better. There is a caveat however: this only helps if you are as honest as possible.

Do They Respect Your Bodily Autonomy?

Co-written with: C.J. Fitzpatrick

The issue of bodily autonomy is hardly a new one. “My body, my choice” – a slogan for female bodily autonomy was first coined in 1969, but the struggle clearly predates the so-called ‘second wave’ feminist movement started largely by Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique.

Even so, a United Nations Population Fund report published in 2021 found that roughly half of all women are denied bodily autonomy, unable to make decisions regarding sex with their partner, contraception, and seeking health care.

This has been thrown into even sharper relief lately as debates concerning overturning the 1973 Roe vs. Wade Supreme Court decision rage on in the United States...

Let’s make it clear, though, that bodily autonomy is not purely an issue of those that identify as women. It’s an issue that concerns all genders – male, female, and nonbinary; not only cis-gendered people, but trans people as well.

Bodily autonomy is one of those things that you really don’t think all that much about...until it’s violated.

The first thing that comes to mind when you read the previous sentence is probably rape which is, of course, the most clear and obvious form of violated bodily autonomy. But there are many many ways in which one’s bodily autonomy can be violated that, while perhaps less severe, are no less insidious.

For example, there was recently a post on the ‘Am I the Asshole’ Reddit board in which a woman described an issue she had with her partner telling her not to use tampons because they made him uncomfortable... He even went so far as to throw out a box of her tampons when he found them. This is a clear example of someone not being allowed to exercise their bodily autonomy.

In a relationship – any relationship, not just a romantic relationship – both partners should respect their own and each other’s bodily autonomy. It’s impossible to be equals if one partner looks upon the other as something they have control over.

In the 1800’s and earlier, it was simply a fact of life that a woman was a man’s property, but the simple fact of the matter is that, through today’s lens, it’s abuse to try to control another’s body and the choices they make about it.

Psychologist Willard Harley Jr., in his practice, has identified ten needs that, when fulfilled, will ‘affair proof’ a marriage. One of the needs he asserts that – as a general rule – men have is an attractive spouse. While I admire much of what Harley has to say, I feel his advice in this chapter is antiquated. He says, “If he doesn’t like a certain hairstyle and colour, abandon it. In fact, consult with him ahead of time and get his opinion before ever getting a different style or colouring.”

Would you put up with a friend that felt the need to tell you what you could and couldn’t do with your appearance? Unlikely. It should, therefore, be just as egregious when a partner tries to do the same.

We expect a partner to respect our wants and needs. This should extend to choices we make about our body as well. That’s really what it boils down to: respect. Does your partner truly respect you as an individual if they feel the need to monitor your social media or your diet or your doctor’s visits?

Marriage vows often include phrasing along the lines of ‘becoming one’. But at the end of the day, you’re still two separate people with separate wants and needs and it’s important that both of you remember that, even when they get an ugly haircut or a new tattoo.

Bodily Autonomy Worksheet

General:

Are they ‘pro-life’ or ‘pro-choice’?
Do they respect when you say ‘no’?
Do you need to ask their permission a lot?
Is your opinion treated as valid?
Is there behaviour they consider ‘unladylike’ or not ‘manly’?
Do they describe women as ‘broads’ or chicks’? Do they use vulgar slang for genitalia?
Do they have negative opinions of LGBTQ+ people?
During disagreements, who makes most of the concessions?

Health and Appearance:

Do they tell you how to dress?
Is there pressure to wear make up (or not wear make up)?
Do they require you to ask permission before changing your appearance (i.e. colouring your hair)?
Do they demand you look a certain way in public?
Do they demand you look a certain way when they come home?
Are health decisions made for you?
Do they pressure you into using therapies or medications based on their diagnosis of you?
Do they tell you what products you can or cannot use on or in your body?
Do they try to control what/how much you eat?
Do they try to control your exercise habits?

Social Media:

Do they monitor your social media?
Do they tell you who you can and can’t follow on social media?
Do they restrict use of certain apps?
Do they go through your phone without your permission?
Do they go on your social media accounts without permission?
Do they demand to know your passwords?
Do they control what you post?

Menstruation:

Do they understand how menstruation works?
Do they view menstruation as weakness? Do they use rude words for menstruation?
Do they try to control what kind of menstrual products you use?
Do they treat you as dirty or unclean when you’re menstruating?
Do they reject your thoughts and opinions as being due to hormones during your period?

Sex and Sexuality:

Have you been pressured to send photos that make you uncomfortable?
Do you feel forced into sex or specific sex acts?
Do they believe sex workers can be raped?
Do they believe one spouse can be raped by the other?
Do they believe a woman can/should ‘forbid’ a man’s sexual release’?
Do they believe someone can say ‘no’ to sex at any point in the act?
Do they try to get out of wearing a condom or using birth control?
Have they ever tampered with your birth control (i.e. poking holes in the condom, throwing out your pills)?
Do they try to control what type of birth control you use?
Have they recorded you having sex without your consent?
Have they ever threatened ‘revenge porn’?

Pregnancy and Birth:

Do they have a plan in mind about what will happen if a pregnancy occurs without having included you in the plan?
Does the non-birthing person want too big a say in the birth plan?
Who gets the final say in the birth plan?
Is breastfeeding being forced or forbidden?