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Jack Ito PhD and Toshie Ito photo

Psychologist and Relationship Coach Jack Ito PhD (with his wife Toshie).

"I'm Jack Ito. I come from a small town in the North. I'm a churchgoer and a family man. I live with my wife Toshie, our two teen sons, and my mother and father in law. I helped our marines and sailors keep their relationships together when they were trying to forget their time in Iraq. I counseled children and couples for 16 years. I am a psychologist and relationship coach."

  • PHD Clinical Psychology
  • MA Theology
  • MentorCoach Certified Coaching Program Graduate
  • Former professor of psychology at Geneva
  • 16 Years Marriage & Family Counseling and Coaching

Why Coach Jack is the right coach for you.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dr. Ito invites you to find out how much relationship coaching can help you with this Special Offer:

  • Relationship assessment
  • Live coaching session
  • Email Coaching
  • 20% Discount

Click Here for Details


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"...reasons will only work well in persuading people who are already on your side..." Neil Rackham and the Huthwaite Research Group

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"When you learn new ways to deal with difficult people, they have to learn new ways to deal with you." Brinkman & Kirschner, Dealing with Difficult People

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



Dealing with Difficult Partners: Use Effective Responding to Bridge the Emotional Gap Between You and Your Mate

 

Are you effectively responding to your partner? If these statements are true for you, then you are not:

  • You can't remember the last time you had a meaningful conversation with your partner.

  • You have to be careful or on guard when you are around your partner.

  • It seems lately that you are just going through the motions of a relationship ("roommate syndrome").

  • You don't bother to talk about counseling because you know what your partner will say.

 

 

Would you like to re-connect the two of you?

Hello, I'm Psychologist and Relationship Coach Jack Ito. I help people who have been tolerating or avoiding their partner to lovingly (don't confuse this with nicely) re-connect.

With your permission, I will walk you through three relationship rebuilding steps. They are the same steps my clients are using to rebuild their relationships.

Your partner needs to love and be loved as much as you do. But your partner's behaviors actually prevent that from happening. The way you respond to those behaviors will either maintain or change that behavior.

Working as your relationship coach, iI will help you to respond to your partner in a way that breaks the current pattern and establishes a new, closer one. Every time you respond to your partner you will either gain or lose respect, and become either closer or further apart. partner who is not about to change on his or her own.

Sound too good to be true? Just think of how you and your partner became distant in the first place. The both of you started responding to each other in ways that pushed the two of you apart. Is it so hard to believe that changing those ways can bring you together again?.

Above all, don't give up on your relationship, and don't waste more of your precious life time. The time to stop fighting and avoiding has come.

Coach Jack

P.S. It will take you more than a few minutes to read through these 3 steps. But, it's important for you to un-learn some things that may be keeping you stuck.

 

3 Steps to Re-Connecting with Your Partner

 

Step One: Escape Your Own Trap--Whether it's

The Hamster Wheel Trap: Keep trying, keeping failing, repeat.

It's not lack of love, but burnout that kills relationships. What do we burn out on? On trying. Trying without success means that what you are trying is not effective. Trying it again just keeps the hamster wheel spinning. When you don't know what to do, do nothing. At least that slows down the burnout. But, then, you need to learn some effective things to do or you will get tired of living the same way day after day.

•tired of asking•tired of complaining•tired of bargaining•tired of waiting•tired of avoiding•tired of fighting•tired of being like a mom•tired of being like a dad•tired of making all the decisions•tired of letting all the decisions be made for them•tired of being lonely . . .

Your ability to love isn't broken. Do you know how quickly love comes back when problems are resolved? Very fast. Both partners are ready to love each other as soon as they make things right. And, actually, the more they have driven each other apart, the more intensely they make up!

Are you in the Hamster Wheel Trap? Try writing out on a piece of paper what you are doing that will help your relationship to improve. If you can't write anything, then you are in this trap.

The Perfectionist Trap: Repetition in thinking does not lead to new solutions.

How much have you been able to improve your relationship just by thinking a lot about it? Do you spend hours repeatedly thinking about the possibilities? Regardless of what you think your partner should or should not do, or what could happen, or might happen--all that thinking won't change a thing (though it will keep you feeling miserable). Giving up on figuring it all out in advance and focusing on one or two steps at a time will get you out of the trap.. This will feel risky on your own, but much safer when you are working with a coach who has been through all the steps many times.

An exercise to escape repetitive thinking: Make a list of your repetitive thoughts. When you start to think the same things again, tell yourself, "It's already on the list, so I don't need to think about that.". At the end of the list, write down the one or two steps that you are taking so that you don't need to keep thinking about these things.

 

The Courtroom Trap: Explaining things to your partner will help your partner to understand, but will not change your partner's behavior.

Have you tried to persuade your partner to change by giving evidence and explanations? If you have, you have probably found that it works for new situations (that your partner is unfamiliar with), but it does not work for established behaviors. You can easily teach young children something because they don't know any other way. But, once a child develops his or her own way of doing things, it takes more than explanation to change their behavior. Most difficult partners already know exactly what their partners want. Does your partner really not know what you want? Will more explaining or reasoning do the trick?

The next time you want to explain something to your partner, ask yourself if your partner already knows (whether he/she agrees or not). If so, then how will your partner perceive your explanation? Nagging? Controlling? Blaming?

The Genius Trap: Only effective actions get effective results.

Whatever you are doing to deal with your relationship problems may seem like the right thing to do. The smarter you are, the more difficult it will be to believe that your way is not a good way. But, are your actions resulting in a closer relationship? If they're not, no matter how reasonable they may seem, they are not the right actions. It may seem ironic that people much younger, or older, or less educated than you are doing better. Although I am highly educated and very experienced in relationships, I hire professionals to help me with many areas of my life. Real estate, home repair, healthcare, finances, to name but a few. Get out of this trap by honestly answering this question--Do you know the effective actions to take for your relationship?

(People in the Hamster Wheel Trap know that their way doesn't work though they keep hoping it will. People in the Genius Trap believe their way is the right way, even if it never works).

Are you in the Genius Trap? Answer these two questions: 1) Is my way right? and 2) Is my way working? If you answer "yes" to the first, but "no" to the second, then you are in the Genius Trap.

The Commanding Officer Trap: You can only directly change what is under your control.

What would happen if you directly tried to change your partner (by advising, pleading, whining, nagging, demanding, or coercing)? What would happen if your partner tried to change you this way? Even though we are just trying to help our partners, the direct approach brings emotional resistance. The harder we push, the harder they push back or pull away. But, if Instead you change the way you interact with your partner, your partner will naturally and automatically change the way he or she interacts with you. This indirect change principle will be the most important one that you will learn from coaching to restore your relationship.

Although you may only want the best for your partner, if your partner puts up emotional wall to keep you out, you may be in the Commanding Officer Trap.

The MASTER KEY to get out of all of these traps is changing the way you respond to your partner. From that moment, your partner will change to adapt to your change--with no pressure from you.

Go to Step two: Detoxify Your Relationship

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  Copyright©Jack Ito 2008