(Hal & Sidra's ) Voice Dialogue Tips

Voice Dialogue Tips

June 2009

Email us: jcoroneos@bigpond.com
Web Site: www.bodymindinformation.com
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Dear Participants,

Welcome again to Hal & Sidra's Voice Dialogue Tips.

1. This month we continue our series of articles titled " The Top Ten Challenges to Relationship: Keeping Your Love Alive Amid Life's Routines "
Challenge 4: Friends & Challenge 5: Children




2. Understanding The Psychology of Selves and Voice Dialogue gives you unique insights into your Dreams, and how they can become a teacher for you. To watch Hal & Sidra present a video on Dreams, visit http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8eEXm0MehU

3. Coming Soon - A new feature film about the Mind, Consciousness and Relationships, more about this in the next issue.





The Top Ten Challenges to Relationship:

Keeping Your Love Alive Amid Life's Routines

(an excerpt from Dr Hal & Sidra Stone's book titled "Partnering")



Challenge 4: Friends


It is extremely important to have friends and not to depend solely upon your partner to fill all your interpersonal needs. However, it is possible for our friendships to divert our primary linkage to someone other than our partner.

In the past, this has been particularly true of women. Their friendships have been deeper and more intimate than their marriages. They felt that they could say anything to their friends, but that they had to be cautious about what they said to their husbands. When they needed comfort they spoke with their friends not with their husbands. When they were unhappy about something that their husbands said or did, they did not speak to their husbands about it, but aired their concerns with their friends instead. Rather than saying to their partners, “I did not like it when you … ” they called their friends and discussed the matter with them. This shifts the primary linkage from the husband to the friend.

There is another way in which the primary linkage moves away from the relationship and to the friendship. This is a particular problem when one partner is an overly responsible person who gets very involved with the needs and problems of friends. There is a point where the balance between the friend and partner is shifted and the relationship loses. The energy is withdrawn from the partner and goes to the needy friend.

For instance, Bob and Jill are sitting at the dinner table. Jill tells Bob a funny story about their daughter's success with her potty training. Bob proudly tells Jill about his contract to build three homes in the new housing development in the next town. They are having a great time together. The phone rings. It is Jill's friend, Marla, who is having marital problems — again. Rather than finishing her meal with Bob, Jill leaves him at the table and talks for an hour with Marla. She links to Marla, her friend who needs her. She breaks her linkage with Bob who, she thinks, can manage on his own. If this happens frequently enough, the primary linkage is no longer in the marriage but in the friendship, and the marriage becomes an empty form rather than a living relationship.

As you might notice from this interchange, friends often carry our disowned selves, or missing pieces. If we look at the example of Bob and Jill, we see that Jill is not allowed to be needy like Marla. Jill, as a responsible type of person, must abandon her own dinner in order to care for Marla. She does not have the option of saying, “I'm sorry but I can't talk just now, Bob and I are eating dinner. I'll call you back tomorrow.”

The question to ask yourself here is Who is my best friend? In general, when you have something really important on your mind would you rather talk to your partner or your friends? For a truly intimate relationship, the answer will be “my partner.” There is a saying “It's wonderful to be married to your best friend.” When the primary linkage is in the relationship, that is just the way we feel; our partners are our best friends.



Challenge 5: Children



We devoted chapter 8 to the effect of children on relationships because it is so common for children to replace the partner as our primary linkage. They are a marvelous gift but, just because they are so fascinating and delicious, they are also an almost irresistible distraction from the primary relationship. For many of us, it is the easiest thing in the world to shift our primary linkage from our partners to our children.

Basically, when a baby is born, the mother must bond to the new infant so that it will flourish. This usually means that, at least for a while, she will shift her primary linkage from the relationship to the child. These days with the increasing involvement of fathers in child rearing, the father is likely to shift his primary linkage to the child as well, for the same reason the mothers have done so in the past. It feels good.

It is absolutely necessary for both parents to realize how important it is for themselves, their relationship, and the well-being of their children, to stay connected to one another. This means that they will do whatever is necessary to maintain their own linkage.

When the linkage between partners is broken because one partner shifts the primary linkage to the child, the other partner is left hanging out alone, like an atom with an unpaired electron commonly known as a free radical. This “free radical” will look for someone or something else to bond to. Then any of these other “challenges” we have been discussing may become the object of the primary linkage. Let's see what this can look like.

John and Jane have just had a baby after eight years of marriage. Before the birth of the child, John and Jane were inseparable. Jane taught school full time and John worked in computer software development. Now that the baby, Nancy, has entered the scene, Jane has taken a leave of absence from teaching, she is busy all the time and her primary linkage shifts from John to the baby. John feels rejected and is a bit worried about money, but he does not like to feel vulnerable so he does the sensible thing. He spends more and more time at work. After all, there are more bills to be paid and Jane is no longer teaching full time. Now Jane is linked to the baby and John is linked to his work. But there is a problem, a big one, their connection is no longer primary.

Sometimes the primary connection remains within the family but instead of being between the parents, it shifts to the children. Each partner links to a different child. The mother's primary connection may be to her son and the father's to his daughter. One parent may connect to the most successful child while the other parent's primary connection is to the most needy child. If there is a single child, it sometimes happens that both parents' primary linkage is to the same child.

If you have children ask yourself these questions: Is your primary linkage to your partner or to your children? What about your partner's primary connection, is it to you or to a child? When did you and your partner last take time to be alone and to reconnect in intimate ways that did not include your children?



The next Challenge to Relationship titled "Doing Rather than Being", will be presented in upcoming Voice Dialogue Tips.

You can read past tips by clicking here

For more information about Voice Dialogue DVD Series, visit www.bodymindinformation.com


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Medical Doctor
Producer of The Voice Dialogue Series

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