"I am psychologist and relationship coach Jack Ito PhD and I want to help. Follow these six steps so that you can know what to do."

6 Steps to Saving Your Difficult Relationship

Step One: Get Correct Information About Relationships and Relationship Failure

1. People don't end their relationships because they don't love each other any more. People end their relationships when they get burned out on the ineffective methods they are using to fix them. That goes for both you and your partner. When you and/or your partner do all that you know and the relationship is still not improving, it is only a matter of time before it emotionally or physically ends.

2. Thinking is not an action. Regardless of what you think your partner should or should not do, your thinking won't change a thing. No matter how "right" your thinking is, it won't make any difference to your partner who thinks his or her thinking is right. Once you have the necessary information, repeatedly "thinking about things" only delays effective action.

3. Explaining things to your partner will help your partner to understand, but will not change your partner's behavior. People do not change an established behavior as the result of explanations. Explanations are most helpful when people are learning a skill for the first time (e.g., learning math, learning to drive a car, etc.). Most difficult partners already know exactly what their partners want.

4.The effectiveness of your actions are determined by your results. If you are not getting effective results, your way is not effective--period. When our actions seem reasonable, it's hard to believe they won't work and we try them over and over. Smart people especially, get stuck in this reasoning trap. Experience must rule if you are to be successful. Let your experience tell you if your way is effective.

5. You can only directly change what is under your control. Any effort you make to change someone or something not under your control will make you feel angry, frustrated, and eventually depressed. Direct attempts to control others brings emotional resistance from them and emotional stress to yourself. This stress will wear you out until you have no energy left to try anymore.

6. Every change we make in ourselves brings a corresponding change in others. When we learn interviewing skills, we get hired. When we learn self-presentation skills, we get dates. When we learn to manage the way we respond to our partners, our partners change the way they treat us. Between becoming passive (not good) and separating from your partner (extreme), there are many gentle (but not weak), low conflict ways for you to get more respect and more intimacy from your partner. Learning to do these, rather than focusing on changing your partner, will bring good results.

Go to Step two: Learn to Cope with Your Feelings

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