Healthy relationships

I would like to talk about the components to a healthy relationship.

I teach that there are five ingredients in a healthy relationship

1. Love
2. Friendship
3. Companionship
4. Sex
5. Intimacy.

Love refers to wanting the best for your partner.

Friendship is to know the best and worst of someone and still like, accept and trust him or her.

Companionship is doing things together.

Sex is your physical connection.

Intimacy is expressing your vulnerability – your innermost emotions – to your partner.

It’s possible to have one element without the others. You can love someone but not be friends – not trust each other. You can be friends but never do anything together – you may talk a lot but not share activities, hobbies and recreational time. You can have an exciting physical connection but never truly open up to each other about your deepest fears, fantasies and past hurts – you don’t talk about your deepest nature and feelings.   After the five major ingredients, there are six other elements that also play a significant role in building and keeping a relationship strong so that both partners feel loved and fulfilled.

1. Mutual concern

Both partners care about each other’s well being. They’re interested in each other and view each other as important. While not becoming a doormat, each partner wants the best for the other and makes appropriate compromises. Each one takes a sincere interest in the other person.

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Overcoming depression and anger

I would like to talk about depression and anger and share a success story about a client of mine who overcame eight years of depression and medication.

Let me begin by responding to a reader’s query regarding my last newsletter:

What about the person that always has a smile on their face, makes other people laugh, tells positive and inspiring stories, and is eager to lend a hand or open up their home to others?   On the inside, however, this person is continuously scared to death, lonely, or grief-stricken — but never talks about it. They just don’t feel the need to bring all that negativity up in conversations.  Is this a problem or a healthy way of thinking?

-       Karen, TX

I never encourage denying or escaping what a person truly feels.

If you are feeling any pain inside or negative emotions, speak up and reach out for help. Beware also of being the martyr and thus taking care of others and not yourself. I also believe we have the power to overcome our inner challenges as this next success story will reveal:

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Positive attention is much more powerful and rewarding than playing victim or poor me

In this Success Newsletter, I would like to talk about positive attention and why it is so much more powerful and productive than playing the victim or crying “poor me.”

A good friend of mine in her early thirties was diagnosed with breast cancer. The news was obviously devastating to her and her family but this woman was strong. She decided she was going to conquer the cancer. Amongst her health regimen, I gave her a few simple visualization exercises to perform daily. She would imagine a troop of soldiers going into the affected area and gently rounding up and removing the cancerous cells and then throwing them down a pipe and out of her body. Her strength and resolve to get better succeeded. She went into remission and eventually was cleared of cancer – and she did not have to have her breast removed.

What great and amazing news!

One would expect that she would want to celebrate and boast about her victory.

Unfortunately, that was not the case.

She chose to go the opposite way and continued to seek pity from everyone for her situation. She sold herself to all of her friends as a survivor and struggler. It worked for a while and she received lots of attention and sympathy.

Of course, the people closest to her became tired of hearing her story of “poor, poor pitiful me.”

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Stopping the Victim Game!

In this week’s Success Newsletter, I would like to answer the overwhelming response and requests for more insights into my last newsletter about victims. http://patrickwanis.com/blog/victims-never-succeed/

First, I invite you to view new radio interviews, photos and TV appearances on my website just posted. 

One of the key points of my last newsletter is that to be successful and happy, you must take responsibility for who you are, your actions and your choices. Let me use an example. For the first time in her life, Anna was in a wonderful relationship whereby she said had never before been treated so well by a man. Her boyfriend loved, encouraged and supported her physically, mentally and emotionally, expressing patience, kindness, compassion and devotion. But the better her boyfriend treated her, the worse Anna treated him. She would take out her emotions on him, act cruelly and blame him for her behavior. “It’s your fault that I treat you like crap, because you let me,” Anna told him. “But I have pointed out to you so many times Continue reading “Stopping the victim game” »