“Unicorn,” is defined as“a creature of the imagination; a person that exists only in legends or myths or fiction.”
As a therapist, mediator and attorney, I see many unhappy individuals and couples longing for the “happily ever after” they had planned. The ones in the most pain are not sure if they want to stay or go.
To many of my clients, the possibility of experiencing a truly happy marriage seems as remote and impossible as sighting that “imaginary creature represented as a white horse with a long horn growing from its forehead.”
A happy marriage is not a mythical or magical experience. It’s the end result of many acts of two people who truly CARE about each other.
You can appreciate that despite your best efforts, from time-to-time you’re going to trigger each other. Or hurt each other. Or scare, sadden or disappoint the other.
The difference between reality and mythology is that the happy marriage doesn’t miraculously appear. In the real world, you can create a happy marriage by learning a few Compassionate Communication skills — including empathy and forgiveness — and applying them liberally and often to your relationship.
What I have learned over the years is that the difference between a happy and an unhappy marriage is that in the HAPPY one, each partner truly CARES.
Partners share:
C – Compassion for themselves and their partner. Compassion is not codependency. It’s a healthy perspective on your own needs as well as your partner’s. It’s knowing the 5 steps to receive what you truly want and need and practicing the miracle of empathy.
A – Acceptance of all the idiosyncrasies that make your partner unique. Acceptance is the ability to love someone for who they are, and not who you need them to be. It is also accepting the humanity and divinity of both of you, knowing we are spiritual beings having a human experience. And marriage can trigger all our human parts.
R – Respect for each other’s individuality. Respect is the ability to see the good traits of your partner and honor those. No one is perfect. As Sam Keen said, ” We come to love not by finding a perfect person but by learning to see an imperfect person perfectly.”
E – Empathy for your feelings, desires and needs. Empathy means you listen, understand, and truly care what your partner feels, and they learn to do the same for you. You drop the walls you’ve built to protect yourself and the filters through which you have judged each other and truly relate from your heart.
S – Self love that allows each of you to practice healthy self-care. True self-love is the ability to take exquisite care of yourself, no matter the circumstances. You give yourself the attention, affection, appreciation and acceptance you need. Then you share all that love with your partner.
If you’re unclear where your relationship is breaking down in this CARES model, I can help.
Bottom line: Unicorns don’t exist, but happy marriages do. You can have one — if you try.
And if you do your best, and CARE as much as possible and it’s still not meeting your needs, you can have a Compassionate Divorce®, which isn’t a Unicorn either.
Linda Kroll is a therapist, mediator, attorney, Chopra Certified Master Teacher, and author of the bestselling Compassionate Mediation® for Relationships at a Crossroad: How to Add Passion to Your Marriage or Compassion to Your Divorce.
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Usually when people are doing marriage counseling, there’s a part of them that might have thought about leaving, but they don’t want to bring it into marriage counseling.
They may be concerned that if they bring it into marriage counseling, some counselors may feel, “You’re not here for marriage counseling, you’re thinking of divorce, so go get a mediator, go with an attorney. You’re outside my realm of expertise.”
I’d like to give you that expertise because when you have the tools that I give you, you are confident in talking with an individual or couple about what an ending would look like.
Your clients would have all the information they need, and then with that information, they can process their feelings in a way that empathy can help them heal.
Then they can create a whole new relationship together.
But they have to have all parts feel welcome. Even the parts that are trying to decide, should I stay or should I go.
Often in marriage counseling, they don’t want to have that discussion because they feel guilty that there’s a part that wants to leave or has thought about leaving.
But if you welcome that part, you get to what’s underneath it. And usually what’s underneath it is a lot of sadness, a lot of pain, some anger. And you can process all of that with your clients.
If you’re working with a couple where one wants to stay and the other one wants to leave, you now have the skill set to create a neutral forum where they can talk about everything.
So the person that wants to leave can stay present to talk about their feelings and the person who wants to stay can stay present to talk about the possibility of a divorce.
You help them learn to compassionately communicate with empathy.
Once they do that, miracles happen and they can create a whole new relationship together based on who they are now, what they both want and need, and whether they’re able and willing to give it to each other.
I’ve pioneered this process on the shoulders of IFS, higher consciousness energy work, mediation, and law
It’s a hybrid that combines emotional and spiritual healing along with legal and financial information and support.
I give all of that to you so that you can give it to your clients.
And that’s just some of the ways that it’s different than the wonderful IFS that we all know and love.
I’m at the Botanic coming to you live because I wanted to talk about what kind of relationship can you start over with right now
And in our Compassionate Communication Community, we talk a lot about connecting to our highest self, letting go of limiting beliefs and judgments,unburdening, pain from the past and relating from our heart.
But what does that really mean?
Instead, you could take a breath right now, and as I look around at the beautiful scenery, think about a relationship right now that might be strained or might be in conflict.
And see if in just a few moments you can start over.
When my children were younger and teenagers and we might be fighting about something, one or both of them might come in in the middle of an argument crying and say, “Can we start over?” rr
And what that means is it doesn’t matter who said what, who did what, who was right, who was wrong, what did you need to do over.
It just means start over.
Just take a breath and see if you can pick up from the last time you felt good about that person and go back there and do it again.
I have some friends and some of them aren’t talking to their children, some aren’t talking to their siblings, and there’s a way to have boundaries without disconnecting.
Even if the other person might not be someone that you want to communicate with right now, you don’t have to communicate with them. You can just start over.
Take a deep breath, give yourself permission not to replay the old stories, to change the filter by which you’re seeing the other person, and to allow yourself to begin to think that you can start over.
People can change, Situations can change.
And forgiveness is a gift that sets you free.
You can set boundaries. You can decide you do or don’t want to be connected to that person.
But if you give yourself permission to start over right now and take off that filter through which you’re judging them or yourself, and stop believing the stories you keep telling yourself, and just give yourself a clean slate, then what you can do is change the energy between the two of you.
And as you change the energy, the relationship changes.
Give it a try.
Think about somebody right now with whom you’re having a convict or a strain.
Take a few deep breaths, belly breaths where you can really get to your higher self.
Drop down from your head into your heart and compassionately communicate to yourself first.
Let yourself know that you understand you have some hard feelings or hurt feelings or misunderstood feelings. And then see if you could turn that compassion outward because the other person probably does too.
They may have similar hurt feelings and sadness, and you can put yourself in their shoes for just a minute so that you can be compassionate.
And there’s a great guided meditation I have on my website. You can get it in your Compassionate Communication Care Kit at www.LindaKroll.com/CCC
You can get a guided meditation to help you get to Self.
And when you’re “in Self,” you’ll see that our human parts that rub up against another’s don’t have to get in the way of a divine soul connection.
We can connect divinely with other people.
*****
So I’m at the Botanic Garden waxing philosophically bringing you to see the glorious view is here and inviting you to start over with somebody right now.
And even if you don’t tell them you’re starting over, just do.
And you may find that they’re going to reach out to you and you can begin a conversation without processing all the feelings of the past, even though that’s good to do.
Both of you want to. But the other thing is to see the highest in
each one of you. To let all your human parts that judge just relax while you go to the top of the mountain from your highest and best Self and have compassion for yourself and have compassion for the
other party.
Even if you decide not to connect, you’ll see there’s more peace.
****
You can start over with a relationship that brings you peace, brings you joy, and gives you a way to get off the hook of whatever you’re telling yourself.
We’re at the Botanic Gardens I’m about to go to the Rose Garden and we’re talking about starting over.
And just like plants need to be replanted, relationships can heal and transform.
A few months ago there were tulips. Now here’s roses.
Relationships can take on different flavors.
Compassionate communication sets you free.
Whenever I come here, I just reconnect to myself, to my soul, to the earth.
if you have any questions about how to start over in a
relationship, just ask me. I’m a pro.
I’m a pro at starting over with parents and children, ex-spouses and in-laws and all kinds of people with whom you could have conflict, but you don’t need to maintain the conflict, especially when there’s so much beauty in the world.
Take time to smell the roses, take time to get outside, and most of all give yourself permission to start over.
And again, a rose by any other name is still divine. And you are divine. Thanks for joining me.
Sending love, light and hopes that wherever you’re having an issue in a relationship, just start over. It really works.
I want to invite you to do is to reach out, to reach out for help, to reach out to me, to reach out to a counselor because my hope is that Compassionate Mediation becomes a new paradigm for conflict resolution,
I hope that people all over the world will have access to these tools so they can implement them when there is a convict.
I mean, eventually I hope they teach it in schools and on playgrounds and in boardrooms and in politics so that, we can all bring higher self-awareness into conscious conflict resolution.
I was joyfully married to my college sweetheart, and about 20 years into the marriage with two wonderful daughters, we were looking at a divorce, sadly, and we didn’t have these tools.
So unfortunately, we struggled for a long time. We stayed separated for a very long time.
And during that time I thought I was being helpful to my family because we weren’t really divorced yet. But the ambivalence was really difficult. We both were dating other people. It was a very confusing, very long time
And I remember there was one time we were, had a status call in court and I sat in the courtroom and my beloved soon-to-be ex-husband was sitting on the other side of the room.
And I remembered thinking back that this was the man I married. This was the man that was there from when our children were born. This is the other grandfather to our three wonderful grandchildren.
And this is not how it’s supposed to be. There has to be a better way to do this.
And I remember sitting in the courtroom and I as woo woo as it sounds, I just remember visioning some pink light coming down, some light from God, the heavens to say, we can sit in compassion.
We can know that there’s a higher purpose, that we’ve come to this moment, and we don’t have to go the typical route to get divorced.
And in that time, I sent compassion in his direction and we did resolve it. And it had its ups and downs.
So even if both parties aren’t aware of this process, you can align your heart with the intention that you are going to bring consciousness, higher self, calm, compassion into this process. And everybody can benefit.
Even if your partner is upset, it’s one of you that’s upset at family gatherings, not both of you. Your children aren’t necessarily in the middle. And over time, that compassion can forge a whole new bond that your family can marinate in, in whatever form it takes.
I wrote the book to help you – Compassionate Mediation® for Relationships at a Crossroad: How to Add Passion to Your Marriage or Compassion to Your Divorce.
Compassionate Mediation® is a transformational process of conflict resolution that will help you add passion to your marriage or compassion to your divorce. .
