The psychology of family relationships between husband and wife

Family relationships are not an easy matter, which often not every psychologist can understand. Here you need to analyze not only those circumstances that have arisen at some point in the problems that have arisen between husband and wife, but also the entire history of their relationship. And you need to start, most likely, from the time of mutual love. The roots most often grow from there. We started to create our relationships wrong at an early stage of family formation - and now they are reaping the benefits.

The foundation of any healthy human relationship is trust, honesty, and mutual respect. These qualities or their absence are especially vividly manifested in the family - without them it will not last long. Of course, young people are united by love. If their love is disinterested and unconditional, then it will be the main factor that holds the family together and helps to go through any trials.

The psychology of family relationships identifies the following main types of family relationships:

• Affiliate - they can also be called cooperation, when relations are built on equal terms. The nicest and most stable kind of relationship.
• Competition - a completely healthy way of relations, when spouses compete in achieving common goals, provided that goodwill remains between them. Otherwise, they can develop into rivalry.
• Competition - manifests itself in the desire of the spouses to dominate each other.In this type of relationship, it is difficult for partners to come to a consensus regarding common interests, rather, everyone cares about their own. This greatly undermines family cohesion.
• Antagonism - Sharp confrontation between partners, growing out of competitive relations. Such a family persists only for compelling external reasons, internally nothing unites it, relations are heading towards a break.

In addition to the classic types of interpersonal relationships, there are also relationships in the family based on the game of jealousy, silence, adaptation. Silence is when all discontent is diligently silent only for the sake of maintaining a relationship. There are situations when families exist on a contract basis.

Accommodation relationships can be different. One spouse may seek protection or play the role of savior, victim, or executioner. And also quite often in this kind of relationship, the husband treats his wife as a servant or housekeeper.

In contractual relationships, first of all, material or moral calculation reigns. Such marriages are based on an oral or written agreement.

Family crises most often arise for the following reasons.

• Unreasonable expectations on one or both sides (more often a material plane, sometimes a spiritual one). In such a family, one of the spouses has a one-sided view of the responsibility to provide for the family. He or she imagined that their half would make them financially richer: provide things, housing, travel, and so on.
• The contradictory views on the management of the economy. For example, a man expects that, as in his parental family, his wife will serve him in the kitchen, and she, considering him independent, leaves him to take care of himself.
• Opposing views on parenting. For example, in a girl's family, it is customary for parents to walk with the child together, and the husband believes that this is the mother's concern. This can cause confusion in a married couple.

• Routine, lack of family traditions. It so happens that in the family of one of the spouses it is customary to celebrate certain holidays, to spend them in a special way, and for the second half, these traditions may be unacceptable. For example: a spouse is used to celebrating holidays in a restaurant with friends in a noisy company, and his wife likes to celebrate in a quiet family circle. The undoubted factors, as a result of which relations deteriorate, are the monotony and everyday problems.
• The reason for the crisis can also be explained by the fact that the feelings of the spouses have cooled down. This may well happen when relationships are built on the basis of external factors: good looks, material security. If the spiritual support is initially weak in a relationship (there are no common interests, hobbies, worldviews), then when the first bright feelings cool down, an emptiness arises in the relationship.

• The psychological climate in the family also depends on the emotional characteristics of the spouses, their difference in temperament. If one of the spouses is measured and balanced, and the other reacts violently to any little thing, then the first can quickly get tired of the emotional changes of the second.
• Sometimes relationship breakdown occurs after the birth of a child in the family. Cold relations between spouses arise due to the fact that a young mother devotes herself completely to caring for the baby and pays less attention to her husband. Or the husband completely shifts the responsibility for the child onto his wife, so she simply does not have time either for herself or for her husband.

Diagnostics of crises in family relationships is aimed at identifying destructive attitudes associated with the manner of communication in a particular family and caring for each other's feelings, with the methods of housekeeping and raising children, with the image of family leisure, as well as with responsibility for the material support of the family. And another important point in family diagnostics is the ability of partners to accept each other.

The following actions can help restore the disturbed atmosphere between family members.

• First, you need to reconsider your attitude towards marriage: if it is materialistic or your marriage is under a contract, then you should not expect deep feelings and dedication from your partner. Try together with him to adjust your agreement for the general benefit.
• Clarify: who of you is responsible for the main part of the household chores, who is responsible for material security. In order for spouses to better understand each other, they should assign roles, decide who is responsible for which area of ​​household, social and financial responsibilities.
• Let your soul mate do what you love, hobby. Do not deprive her of the opportunity to be alone sometimes - this is a normal desire. And also allow yourself to be alone at times.

• Know how to listen to your partner, allowing him to talk about something important or express a boil. Sincere communication will help melt the ice of misunderstanding between you.
• Sometimes putting yourself in the shoes of your husband or wife will help you better understand him and accept his feelings.
• Be mindful of your needs. Do not suppress your healthy interests to please your spouse. Dissatisfaction can lead to depression or irritation.
• Plan a joint vacation, start family traditions. This will help maintain a harmonious relationship not only between husband and wife, but also between parents and children.

The husband must always remember that he is facing a woman. And despite the fact that she works on a par with him or even performs some male duties, in her soul she remains fragile and vulnerable, and the male task is to protect her fragility. It can be "very deep" and she herself can stop feeling her femininity, but for the sake of family happiness it is worth making an effort.

• Say affectionate words to her more often, just let them be sincere, real. Just don't hold back your tender feelings while they are. Don't be afraid to waste yourself. Love has the property of joy - it gave a spark of warmth, and in return the flame of love. That is, women are very sensitive to the manifestation of real feelings and always respond to them vividly.
• For the same reason that your wife is primarily a woman, offer to take on some of her responsibilities. You can walk with your child while she does household chores, buy groceries on the way home from work, make breakfast, clean up the table, or whatever, depending on your family lifestyle.
• Listen to the state of mind of your soul mate: maybe she wants to be alone, or, conversely, you are not much together.
• Just put yourself in the position of a spouse more often. Looking at the situation from the outside, you can see it well and see what you did not see from your position.

In the modern world, it is not uncommon for a woman to take on male roles: she leads an organization, leads a household, leads her husband. Many men try to retain or win back their duties and conflicts often arise on this basis.

Therefore, in order to maintain harmony in family relationships, the first thing a woman needs is to change her roles from male to female.

• Let your husband provide for you, not the other way around.
• Reconsider your attitude to the household - cleanliness and comfort in the house is the prerogative of a woman, and repairs and rearrangements require masculine strength.
• Take care of yourself, even while on maternity leave. Men are inspired by beauty.

Let him solve family life and leisure issues. Even if it seems to you that he will do everything wrong. After all, a family for a man, as well as for you, is a place where you want to manifest yourself, create something new, bring something useful from yourself.

Learn to understand the mood of your companion and do not interfere with his desire to sometimes switch and go fishing.Do not deny yourself your healthy interests and hobbies.

A common family mistake is shifting responsibility to a spouse or circumstances. The partner does not want to admit his mistakes, but, manipulating, emphasizes the mistakes of his companion.

Let's consider other errors as well.

• Lack of compliance between spouses. If you insist only on your own - this will not help to resolve the issue, but will only increase the distance between you.
• Self-sacrifice to your spouse, work, children. When someone sacrifices himself, it gives him the temporary satisfaction of his need for recognition. And when the recognition passes, dissatisfaction comes.

• Guidance only by material criteria. This mistake can manifest itself both in a constant desire to earn more money, and in constant thoughts about work, which leads to dulling of feelings and a "mechanical" attitude towards family members.
• Imposing your will on your partner. Such a mistake is a scourge of modern relationships, not only in the family. This attitude is an attempt to erase the uniqueness of your partner, to equate him with your standards.
• Erroneous Role Reversal: men show passivity, relieve themselves of responsibility for the material and spiritual components of family life, while women, on the contrary, take this responsibility away.

Above were tips on how to improve family relationships and what a man and a woman should do for this. But the work to strengthen the family does not end there. Healthy relationships are the result of the daily work of each of the family members. For those who are ready to make efforts to preserve family happiness, there is a description of a good, supportive atmosphere in the house and tips for maintaining it.

• Allowing to be. This global characteristic concerns a wide variety of aspects of the relationship between spouses. Let your loved one feel and think the way he wants, let him do what he knows, let him do what he knows. And then, in return, you will also receive permission to be - this will create harmony in your family.
• Mutual respect. This point is a continuation of the previous one. Respect the thoughts, feelings, actions of the partner - this is what the relationship in the family is based on and one of the conditions for its stability.

• Support each other. A bit of physics: a table with a broken leg becomes unstable and falls to one side. This is also the nature of relationships: in the absence of support from any supporting part - wife or husband - the structure (family) becomes unstable. By supporting your spouse, you contribute to the security of your union.
• Sincerity and openness. "My home is my castle". The meaning of this saying is not only in protecting and supporting each other's family members, but also in the opportunity to be open, true, the way you are. Of course, this is not a one-sided need for acceptance, but also the ability to accept the sincerity of your partner.
• A mutual desire to develop relationships. Relationship development starts with self-development. Therefore, spouses striving for harmony in the family do not wait for their partner to change, but start with themselves. Subsequently, the other half will try to keep up with him along the path of forming the best qualities in himself.

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