As Happy As When We First Started Dating

“I feel as happy with him as I was when we first began dating!”

“She’s meeting my needs past the point I expected. The relationship feels happy in the same way it was in the first few years of our marriage!”

Toxic Anger To “Your Love Is So Awesome”

“We were both toxic, so angry, yelling, saying, I hate you in front of the kids. And in going for a walk with one another, rather than enjoying each other we would boil over. It was to the point we were both seriously considering separation. For several months, just before coming in for the first session, we had hit rock bottom. I felt traumatized, like we tried everything, and the only thing to do would be to be done with the relationship. For those two months, we both had a real fear of divorcing and I was panicked that we were headed toward divorce.”

However, now they we’re working together so they can could both get love needs met, whereas in the past they we had put those needs on the back burner…. The change for this couple was remarkable. It was even visible in the verbal and physical affection they showed for one another, including the way they sat close, cuddled in the waiting room, and endearingly talked to each other in the session. When describing the change in their relationship, she spontaneously turned to him and said:

“Honey, your loving me this way now is so wonderful—it’s awesome!”

Nervous Fear To Happy Gratefulness

“I’m really happy when you come home now. I’m so glad, so very grateful rather than getting a nervous feeling and a lump in my throat out of fear when hearing the garage door open.”

I’m Blown Away—We’ve Totally Turned It Around

“When looking back, I’m blown away. I can’t believe how close I came to leaving him just before starting therapy. That would’ve been such a mistake, because we’ve now totally turned it around in a relatively short period of time. I really didn’t think it was possible.”

Dead Romantic Feelings To Rekindled Love

“Before we started therapy there was underlying conflict all the time. I just didn’t like him. We were just living together with no sexual intimacy. Anytime we talked about anything, he’d just get defensive, angry, and loud. I couldn’t take it. Now both of us have learned to think and not react in discussing things. He’s worked on his voice tone and worked very hard at not being defensive. We had kept our distance and I avoided him. We didn’t talk. We were dead. There was nothing there in the relationship for me. We were just living together with great distance, and I wanted distance in the relationship. I felt no romantic or positive emotional feeling. Now, I feel much more positive and have loving feelings. I now know that sex is 95 percent emotional and 5 percent physical. I was dead and thought I could be a nun! Now, the sexual feeling is back. And I just don’t need as much alone time now.”

The Thermostat Story—Unselfish Love

In their seventh session a couple described how the husband practiced unselfish love for his wife in what they referred to as The Thermostat Story. It was summertime and they were having an argument about how he wanted the thermostat set at 68° while she wanted it at 72°.

He said,

“I’m normally contradictory and bull-headed, but I decided to really listen to her need more carefully.”

After hearing her reasoning, he decided to act unselfishly. He told her that it seemed that it was a more important need to her than it was to him, so he was going to go with her desire. She said at that moment it touched her so much she cried and said:

“Maybe you do love me. You tell me you do all the time but don’t show it; this time I felt it. It felt so different; all my resistance fell away because you were thinking of me.”

He responded saying:

“I want to get good at showing you!”

She gave further positives about the change he was showing at home with both her and the children in listening to their needs and being less impatient or angry. He responded in an exceptionally articulate way:

“It’s enlightening to be in a relationship and approach day-to-day conflict with the idea of what your partner’s needs are, thinking unselfishly about the other person’s needs.”