By Margaret Paul, Ph.D.

The fear of rejection is a huge issue in relationships. For some, the fear is so huge that it stops them from being in a relationship. For others, it plagues them throughout their relationships and causes much anxiety.

Rejection is a part of life, and learning to lovingly manage it is very important to our wellbeing.

To help you learn to move beyond the fear of rejection, I would like to help you see who a person is rejecting when they reject you. Are they rejecting your wounded self or your core Self?

Your wounded self is the self you created when you were growing up to protect yourself from pain. This is the ego – the part of us filled with fear and false beliefs, and many ways of trying to get love and avoid pain. This is the part of us that gives ourselves up, or gets angry, blaming, or critical, or turns to various addictions, or is resistant, or is numbed out or withdrawn.

The wounded self in all of us is not lovable. No one falls in love with our wounded self. No one even really likes our wounded self.

Your core Self is who you really are – who GOD created rather than who YOU created. This is your true Self, your essence. This is the part of all of us that is inherently lovable and loving. This is who someone falls in love with.

When you have been rejected, which part of you is being rejected?

If you have been your wounded self a lot in a relationship – people-pleasing by giving yourself up, getting angry, judgmental and blaming, withdrawing, turning to various addictions, and/or being highly resistant, then it is very likely that you are being rejected for your wounded self. You are not being rejected for who you really are, but for choosing to be controlling rather than loving. We all need to accept that if we choose to be our wounded self most of the time in a relationship, there is a good possibility that we will be rejected.

However, if you have been your core Self for much of the relationship, then it is very important to not take rejection personally, as it is not about you at all – it is about the other person’s fear of intimacy.

In most relationships, two people get together at their common level of woundedness – i.e., they are equally in their wounded self, equally self-abandoning. If, at some point in the relationship, you open to learning and healing, and learn to take responsibility for yourself and be more in your core Self, your partner might be threatened by this. It is very important that if your partner rejects you for your growth, you not take this personally. This is not about anything being wrong with you – it is about your partner not wanting to learn and grow.

On the other hand, if your partner is the one learning and growing, and you choose not to learn and grow, and your partner leaves the relationship, it is not because there is anything inherently wrong with you. There is never anything wrong with the core Self. But if you choose to stay stuck in your wounded self and your partner leaves, it is because he or she is rejecting your wounded self, not your core Self, and your wounded self is NOT who you really are.

Next time you are rejected, look inside and see who is being rejected – your wounded self or your core Self? If someone reject you for your wounded self, then take it as an opportunity to learn and heal. If someone rejects you for your core Self, then good riddance! This person would never have supported you in being all that you are.

Margaret Paul, Ph.D. is a best-selling author of 8 books, relationship expert, and co-creator of the powerful Inner Bonding® healing process. Are you are ready to discover real love and intimacy? Learn Inner Bonding now! Click here for a FREE Inner Bonding Course: http://www.innerbonding.com/welcome/relationship_help.html, and visit our website at http://www.innerbonding.com for more articles and help.

By Lori Radun

Do you remember when there were no children in your life? Hanging out with your spouse was your first priority. You had fun going on dates. You had time to talk and share with each other your day’s events. And sex was something you looked forward to. And then along came Ron or Meena, and then maybe Mike or Tish. Suddenly, life became centered on your children. Time for each other as a couple was rare.

If you and your spouse plan to be a happy couple after the children have left, you need to grow and connect with each other today. While there are no guarantees that you and your spouse will be one of those cute, old couples in “When Harry Met Sally,” there are things you can do to increase your odds.

When I think of the marriage ceremony, the unity candle is an excellent symbol for what should happen in marriage. Two candles (two people) come together to light one big candle (one team). A healthy marriage has unity. Always think of your spouse as a teammate. Create a marriage with a shared vision and shared goals.

Your husband should be your best friend, and you should be his. Your marriage is a place for intimacy, and being intimate means sharing completely and honestly who you are – your feelings, likes and dislikes, your dreams, and what is important to you. Intimacy happens when both people can share anything and feel safe in doing so. You and your spouse will always be growing, so take the time to understand each other in every way – socially, emotionally, mentally, physically and spiritually. Intimacy is only achieved by spending time together regularly.

Safety in marriage comes from knowing you can trust your partner completely. Being trustworthy means you love and respect your spouse. You keep your commitments and strive to treat each other with compassion and understanding. Your spouse needs to know without a doubt that you are not going anywhere, even when the going gets tough.

Every marriage has conflict and every couple has differences. In my marriage, we fight over disciplining the children, among other things. If you are going to grow and connect with your spouse, you have to learn to work through your disagreements. Make every effort to understand each other. Understanding comes about when you can listen with your heart. It’s so much easier to brainstorm win-win solutions when there is a clear understanding of what is important to each partner.

Speaking of differences, the healthy couple accepts and embraces each other’s strengths and weaknesses. If you think about it, there is a positive and a negative to every quality. I have a lot of compassion, but sometimes I am too sensitive. My husband provides structure in our family, but sometimes he is too rigid. When one spouse has a perceived weakness, often times the other balances it with a strength. For instance, my flexibility and his structure often conflict. However, our family needs both. Encourage the development of your spouse’s strengths and be patient with the weaknesses.

When you spend time getting to know each other and sharing yourself, you will naturally feel affectionate. Sexual intimacy is an important element in marriage. In order for women to desire sex, there needs to be healthy emotional intimacy. And men, unfortunately, achieve emotional closeness through physical intimacy. It is important for each partner to work to satisfy the other’s needs. Make the time to ignite the passion.

It is important for a couple to grow together, but it is also important for each person in the marriage to grow individually. It takes a lot of hard work and maintenance to make your marriage thrive, but it is well worth it. Your children need a model for a healthy marriage. And, when the children have left to start their own lives, won’t it be nice to look at your spouse and say, “I want to spend the rest of my years with you, my friend?”

Lori Radun, CEC – certified life coach for moms. To get her FREE newsletter for moms and the special report “155 Things Moms Can Do to Raise Great Children”, go tohttp://www.true2youlifecoaching.com.

By James Walsh
Marriage has held on to its position of being the number one social institution throughout all these ages. It has been holding sway in spite of all other social, economical, political and military turbulences across the span of the world.

Of late, however, this honourable institution has come under attack in its time honoured form. The first attack on marriage was from the ever increasing divorce rate across the developed countries of the world.

It is sometimes referred to as the divorce revolution. This period of time witnessed an exorbitantly large rate of divorces amongst the general populace. Divorce was touted as the panacea for all ills plaguing the married society.

The number of divorces kept increasing across the world as the sixties moulded into the seventies and then onwards into the eighties and nineties. Unfortunately for the believers of marriage the given situation has still not abated and divorce rates continue to spiral across the world.

This exceptional increase in the rate of divorce had not even subsided when a new and altogether different form of relationship started challenging the institution of marriage. This new challenge was from the live in relationships.

People were, very simply put, just not getting married anymore. Instead of getting married they were living together as any married couple will and carrying on with their lives accordingly. They just refused to adhere to the commitment required by marriage as an institution.

This started becoming so common that now there are an ever increasing number of single parent families. It is no longer uncommon to come across single parent families whether they are owing to divorce or accident or choice.

All this has got the sociologists to behave as a worried lot. They are alarmed at the impact that such an ever increasing number of single parent families will have on the society. They have already started clanging the warning bells.

There are several reasons behind people opting for live in relationships as opposed to a married life. Perhaps the first and foremost cause is the rise in individualism in the human society. People wish to be independent and they feel that marriage and its related commitment somehow robs them of their cherished freedom.

Another reason is of course an accidental start of a family where the mother may not wish to or is unable to lose the child she is carrying. In other instances it may simply be that any one of the two parents does not wish to be burdened by the family way of life.

Yet another very strong reason for the rise in live in relationships is that a very large number of populace, the children of the divorce revolution, are simply unable to relate to marriage. They merely fail to understand the intricacies of married life as they have not witnessed something similar in their own homes.

Another major cause of the rise of live in relationships is that people are afraid to get married as they are afraid of divorce! They take it for granted that with the statistical rise in divorce rates, their marriage is also destined for same.

Having either witnessed or heard about the pain and sorrows aligned with divorce, these people wish to save themselves from all the trouble. Thus it is that they have a very simple solution to it all and that is simply to avoid marriage altogether.

Unfortunately for these people, this fear and the associated phobias stop them from knowing what the beauty of marriage is all about. These people fail to comprehend that if marriage has survived all these ages, then, there must be something very positive in its nature.

Such people may be escaping the hurts from a possible divorce but they are in fact missing out upon the all the fun that marriage has to offer. Marriage gives one that one individual who can be relied upon at all times, good or bad.

It does not make sense to avoid getting married simply because one is scared of divorce. If marriage is some kind of a challenge then the challenge has to be met head on. How else does one tell about the taste of a dish without tasting it?