#107 – Episode 107 – How To Have A Relationship That Doesn’t Suck with Marie Murphy PhD

VeronicaValli

Marie Murphy is a relationship coach who helps people untangle what makes a relationship work. We discuss how we can use relationships to ‘fix’ ourselves and why beliving that it’s another person’s job to make you happy will make you miserable.

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One of the most common patterns I’ve seen in my 20 years as a clinical psychotherapist is replacing alcohol with a romantic sexual relationship. And that usually happens when we stop drinking without getting to the root problem of why our drinking became destructive in the first place. In those instances, relationships can sometimes play out as avoidance of self.

Marie Murphy works with people that are experiencing relationship problems of all varieties and helps them to untangle what makes a relationship work.

“We have the power to make tremendous changes in our relationships, simply by making changes within ourselves.” – Marie Murphy

All of our relationship challenges are essentially about us. When our relationship isn’t going the way we envisioned it, we can get caught up thinking that we’d be happier if only our partner did something differently, if only we could move into our dream home, if only the relationship dynamic was different. But the truth is that all of it starts within us.

“Starting with our relationship with ourselves is one of the best investments we can make.” – Veronica Valli

The romantic industrial complex sells us the story that true romantic love will sustain us for decades along with very prescriptive ideas of what a “good” relationship looks like. From TV shows to movies and music, we’re told that not only do we need a partner to be happy but the relationship dynamic must play out in a very specific way.

“Learning to take responsibility for your own happiness is a critical ingredient of happiness in a relationship.” – Marie Murphy

But as Marie and I have seen, the key factor in achieving long-term relationship success is down to our expectations. Having realistic expectations of our partner, learning how to cultivate the relationship in a new way as it changes over time, and not having the expectation that your partner just makes you happy by virtue of existence.

“You can’t expect someone else to fix your difficult feelings.” – Marie Murphy

Being able to be present with ourselves is not a skill set that most of us learned how to cultivate yet figuring out what that means for us, as individuals, is critical for building a relationship with ourselves.

Learning how to process our emotions is one of the greatest gifts we can give ourselves and also gives us greater capacity to engage in loving relationships.

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