In today’s fast and frantic world maintaining relationships particularly the marital relationship is becoming tricky for few individuals. The honeymoon period in any committed relationship is not meant to last forever. Eventually, it becomes certain that sharing and living a life with another person requires an appropriate set of skills. Many couples start to come apart after the few years of the wedding because some of you are not bothering about how to maintain and strengthen your emotional bonds.

In this article marriage counselor and relationship expert Shivani Misri Sadhoo sharing Top 5 Ways To Improve Your Marriage. Here they are.

1.      Soften Your Stance

Arguments are one of the major reasons for discord in marital life. Arguments often flare up because one partner escalates the dispute by making a critical or arrogant remark. Discussing up problems politely and without blaming each other works much better and allows couples to peacefully engage in any conflict.

2.      Focus On The Positive Things

In a happy and content marriage, while talking about problems, couples should at least make 5 times as many positive statements to and about each other and their relationship as compared to the negative ones. For instance, a happy couple will say We enjoy a lot instead of “We never have any fun.  A good marriage must have an abundant climate of positivity. Make daily deposits to your emotional bank accounts.

3.      Learn To Fix And Exit The Arguments

Happy couples know how to exit an argument, or how to fix the situation before an argument gets completely out of order. Examples of fix attempts: usage of humor, offering a gentle remark (I understand that this is not easy for you), making it clear you are on a common page (We will handle this ordeal together), backing down (in marriage, just like any sport, you often have to yield to win) and, mainly offering signs of appreciation for your partner and their feelings along the way. If an argument gets too heated, take a 15 minutes’ break, and try to approach the topic again when you both become calm and composed.

4.      Refine Yourself

The happiest and successful couples are kind to each other. They refrain from saying every critical thought when discussing delicate issues, and they will search for ways to express their needs and concerns respectfully without blaming or criticizing their partner.

5.      Adopt High Standards

Happy couples adopt high standards for each other. The happiest and successful couples are those who, even as newlyweds, denies to accept hurtful behavior from each another. Low levels of tolerance for improper behavior in the initial phase of a relationship equals a happier couple down the time.

About Shivani Misri Sadhoo is an expert on Marriage and relationship issues and gets frequently been featured in leading newspapers, magazines and TV channels. Counsellor Shivani is an experienced and certified counselling psychologist with a specialization in the area of Personal Crisis interventions like coping-up with Relationship Issues, Marital Counselling, Separation and divorce, Child and Adolescent issues, Depression, Stress, Loss and grief. Counsellor Shivani is currently working with India’s top hospital groups like Fortis Hospital, IBS (Indian Brain & Spine) Hospital and Express Clinics.

Are you finding it difficult to get along with your mother-in-law?

Do you wish you could have lesser stress over your relationship with her?

Whenever we think about a mother-in-law and daughter-in-law relationship, unfortunately, most of the time a negative image comes to our mind.

In-laws can be the cause of a great deal of stress and frustration especially, to a young mother if she is not equipped to balance the demands of child-caring, house-cleaning, working and nurturing the relationships of her loved ones.

Mothers-in-law may be difficult to manage as some may benchmark you against their high standards, pick on everything you do (especially if you are living with them) and interfere when you try to discipline your kids.

But there are some ways to help resolve disputes with your mother-in-law.

Renowned, psychologist, marriage counselor and relationship expert Shivani Misri Sadhoo shares 5 ways to have a better mother-in-law and daughter in law relationship. Here, they are:

1. Pick Your Battles

Not everything is worth arguing over. If your mother-in-law prefers you to follow a certain criterion when you keep your stuff.  Particularly, if you live in her place, give yourself space and time to accommodate her preferences.

When it comes to arguments over issues which are really important like the choice of school for your kid, you can at least remind her in a polite manner that you listened to her for a lot of  other things and followed them. Can she let you have your own way for this one thing?

2. Try to Woo Her At Regular Intervals

You might be thinking. Is it really possible? Nevertheless, give it a second thought. Every woman likes to be loved and appreciated, not just from their husbands and sons but even their daughters-in-law. Keep aside your pride and ego, and ask her out for her favorite activity or thing once in a while.

Set aside time and a reasonable budget (you don’t need to go overboard) to take her to eat her favorite cuisine, shop for clothes, travel on an affordable holiday or treat her to a movie or a concert of her choice.

Give a beautiful bouquet of flowers once in a while and let her show it in front of her friends.

Even a small act of love, like buying her lunch or dinner when she is sick, will help to open her heart towards you.

3.  Never Try To Out-Argue Her. Especially In Front of Others

As Indians, we value respect towards our elders a lot. More so as a daughter-in-law. Even if your mother-in-law is wrong, unless this is a life-threatening event, let her have the last say and absorb your words. When she is cooled down and you too, try interacting with her nicely, and ask her to consider your point of view too.

Yes, it means you have to eat humble pie, but if you value your relationship with her, somebody needs to take a step back first. After some time, when she feels you are not a threatening daughter-in-law, she may change her stance on how she responds to you.

4.  Find Allies

If you can make an ally with anyone else to intervene on your behalf, for example, your husband, children or siblings-in-law, do it in advance. Build goodwill with them so they can vouch you’re not a bad daughter-in-law when you get into a dispute with your mother-in-law.

5.   Discuss Your Concerns

There are many external factors that throw a spanner into your relationship with your mother-in-law. These could include stresses in getting a job, managing demands of work and family, health issues of yourself or family members, or major changes diet, going back to your studies etc.

If you do face external concerns, share them with your mother-in-law. Try to let her understand what’s going on in your life and how you’re trying your best to figure these things out. She may just give you that little bit of extra space you need at the moment and at best can also, provide you with a good idea.

Relationship Tips by Relationship Counselor Shivani Misri Sadhoo

Human relationships are quite fickle and tricky at times, particularly in marital life. You never know what will happen next in your relationship. More so if it involves cheating on your partner. When someone you love and betrays your trust, it can feel like a hopeless situation. But when you learn how to move on after cheating, it’s completely possible for your relationship to survive.

Here’s how to turn your relationship around, repair trust, and get things back on track. India’s eminent marriage counsellor and relationship expert Shivani Misri Sadhoo reveals 5 ways couples can survive cheating.

1.    Practice Gratitude

Does not matter what happened in your marriage, coming back to gratitude will set the groundwork for positive transformation.

If you feel destroyed by betrayal and despair, take a moment to focus on appreciation. Think about all the things you appreciate about your mate. After a few minutes of refocusing in this way, notice what changes inside you.

2.      Completely Face Your Feelings

When you are hurt or emotionally broken, you may tend to blame, run, fight, judge or explain. If you can stop and fully feel the heartache gently, you will be surprised at what is possible. When you step completely into the sensation in your heart, beyond thought and explanation, the feeling commences shifting.

3.    Try to Do Things Together

Couples who spend time together and have shared interests recover from cheating much more rapidly and effectively. Try to discover or rediscover things that you can do together that you both enjoy. Always remember that not all hobbies or activities are costly there are plenty of things you can do together that do not cost money.

4.   Create a Vision of the Past And The Future

One of the ways that couples can learn how to move on after cheating is to think about the past like when they first met or got married. How did you fall in love? Why did you get married? How did the relationship look like back then?

Now, assume about the future you wanted together enjoying your golden years of togetherness, travelling, playing with the grandchildren, and enjoying family activities. What would it look like? Create an image of these things and how nice it can be to share this with the person you love most the person with whom you are married.

5.   Start a better-than-ever relationship

Take a relationship education course or counselling that starts by helping you identify the weaker areas in your relationship and then try to strengthen them for future happiness together. The more powerful your skills for talking together about sensitive issues are, the less likely you will be to drift apart or to let anger or disagreement rifts lead to resentment or fights.

In today’s fast moving lifestyle, building a healthy and long lasting relationship with your spouse is not easy; a large portion of the population that daily faces professional, travel and financial pressures, find the least time and energy to devote to their family and spouse.

According to Delhi’s eminent marriage counsellor and relationship expert, Shivani Misri Sadhoo, the key to maintain a healthy and long term relationship is not to take relationship or spouse for granted rather put a constant effort to enhance the romantic bond by – building healthy relationship habits. These good romantic relationship habits could be:

1.  Always go to bed together.

One of the effective good relationship habits is to go to bed at the same time. Remember happy couples resist the temptation to go to bed at different times. There’s nothing more soothing than a bedtime cuddle.

2. They don’t expect their partner to read their mind; they ask for what they need: 

The happiest couples generally ask for what they need and listen to each other’s needs. Running around hoping that another person will know what you need or that you are supposed to know exactly what they need is a recipe for disaster. The happiest couples are delighted to openly talk about needs and honour differences in needs without feeling like anyone should have already known or that their ‘soul mate’ will have the same needs as them.

3. Always trust and try to forgive.

In every relationship, there would be arguments and small fights but couples who are dedicated towards their relationship make a habit to trust and forgive, rather than distrusting and begrudging as their default setting after an argument.

4. They focus on what they do right, not what they do wrong.

Positive reinforcement is an age-old concept used with children but it’s also important for fully grown adults too. So compliment your partner when they deserve it and try not to look for things they do wrong.

Relationship expert and marriage counsellor Shivani Misri Sadhoo suggest if you are in dating world or if your family is arranging a meet with prospective guy or girl for an arranged marriage, here are 4 qualities of a romantic partner that you can look for in the person.

1. Look for similarities between you two

A lot of relationship research across the world has identified that opposites do not always attract in the long term. People tend to find more opportunities to develop their marital relationship when they share similar interests, value system and attitudes. For example, a girl who loves to trek would possibly get better opportunity to enhance her relationship with her husband if he loves to trek as well and they can trek together. However, if there are differences in taste and/or hobbies largely, the couple then should check if they both hold the capacity to respect each other’s individual preferences and can offer each other the freedom to explore their individual interests.

2.  Kindness, fidelity, and support

While selecting an ideal life partner, a person and his/her family in India put a lot of emphasis on personality, career, and earning potential and physical attractiveness. But remember more than anything else, it’s the person’s kindness, loyalty, emotional support and understanding that really defines who he/she is and that will determine if you would really be happy with this person in life.

Since all superficial traits are conditioned to time and situation, like someone who is an average earner today could reach an excellent career point in future or vice versa, or someone who looks extremely beautiful today would be overweight after child birth or vice versa.

But someone who is kind, capable and puts efforts to understand another person’s unspoken words i.e. emotions and feelings–will be like this possible for rest of his/her life. Hence look for these traits and check if it’s genuine or pretended.

3. Have to mean in life.

Appreciate and value the person who is leading a purposeful life, holds a passion, a mission or larger meaning to his/her life. This happens when a person uses his/her strengths to help something they believe in. It might be volunteering with NGO, being an active part of a spiritual process, contributing to a good cause.

Remember a person, who has a bigger mission in life and live more than its materialistic dimensions, holds much better chance to live an emotionally healthy and peaceful old age and that would certainly make them a better life partner than others.

4. Check for emotional stability

This trait is the most important harbinger of relationship success, and should ideally be at No 1. Those who lack emotional stability and are high on the trait of neuroticism, tend to be moody, touchy, anxious, and quicker to anger, all traits that can be destructive in any given relationship. Those who have low emotional intelligence or EQ, tend to be negative and are more prone to be combative with others and their partners. There is a strong link between high levels of neuroticism and divorce.

How to check if the person is emotionally stable? Marriage Counsellor Shivani Misri Sadhoo suggests looks for the following clues.

• An emotionally stable person treats others well. They view other people with compassion and treat them with kindness that is a hallmark of their own emotional well-being.
• An emotionally stable person is flexible. People who have emotional wellness have an ability to adapt to all kinds of situations that life throws at them. They’re able to assess a situation mindfully — they notice their surroundings, their own emotions and other’s reactions to a given situation — and then they use these factors to decide what the best course of action would be for them. Hence if a person shares a difficult period of his/her life and how they overcame time, try to identify how they coped with it, took help of others or used situational assessment, searching inner strength, overcoming fear and doubt etc.
• An emotionally stable person holds gratitude in life. If a person is emotionally healthy, it’s likely he/she easily feels and shows gratitude for the people and the things in their life. Holding gratitude is a way of purposefully looking at our life with a sense of appreciation for what we have, rather than focusing on what we are lacking. And indeed, research has shown that counting our blessings has added strong benefits to our emotional well-being.

Developing and maintaining work-life balance can seem impossible in today’s competitive workplace and fast lifestyle. Technology has made employees accessible around the clock. Fears of job loss increase longer working hours. Physicians and mental help experts agree that the compounding stress from the never-ending workday is damaging. It can hurt relationships, health and overall happiness.

According to Couples Therapist Shivani Misri Sadhoo, despite these realities, there are people who are managing to carve out satisfying and meaningful lives outside of their work and maintain good work-life balance. She suggests for bringing work-life balance, people must understand and try to bring certain habits in their life. These habits are:

Make Deliberate Choices

Instead of just letting life happen, people who achieve work-life balance make deliberate choices about what they want from life and how they want to spend their time. They talk to their partners, spouses, and others who are important in their lives and come up with a road map of what is important to them, how they want to spend their time and commit to following their path.

Time for family, Friends and Important Interests

People who have managed to bring work-life balance in their life, commonly don’t just wait to see what time is left over after work. They make a point of planning and booking time off to spend outside of work and powerfully guard this time. Hence when they are home, they don’t think or get bother about office worries, when they are at the office they guard themselves against having any home worries.

Strong sense of what they expect from their life

People who manage work-life balance have developed a strong sense of who they are, their values, and what is important to them. Using this as a guideline for everything helps them determine what success means to them. They know what makes them happy and strive to get more of that in their lives. In short, they don’t run a blind race that causes professional, mental and emotional complexities.

They devote time to healthy habits

People who manage work-life balance often develop an interest in healthy activities and perform them daily. Activities like yoga, aerobic, meditation, music, sports, or some other interests allow them to get away from the pressures of everyday life to relax, rejuvenate, and regenerate themselves.

How people trip on the slippery slope of relationship?

Every time we think of the word ‘cheating’ we imagine someone engaged physical relationship. But cheating is a wider term and also includes emotional intimacy. “Emotional cheating is a modern term used to describe an infidelity condition where one or both partners maintain emotional and psychologically (non-sexual) intimate romantic relationship outside their marriage and hide it partially or completely from his/her partner,” says Delhi-based Shivani Misri Sadhoo, relationship and marriage counsellor and founder of Saarthi Counselling Services. It applies to unmarried couples too.

There seems to be a rise in this phenomena and of the several reasons attributed to it, counsellors say that lack of emotional fulfillment in a…..

Read here: http://www.dnaindia.com/lifestyle/report-emotionally-not-yours-2489771

How to stop getting taken on a guilt trip?

Guilt trips can be defined as a situation where one of the partners tries to induce the feeling of guilt in the other partner for the purpose of manipulation. Most romantic relationships are susceptible to guilt trips. This is because partners feel a sense of commitment to each other and naturally crave acceptance from one another. As a result of this, if there is an argument, then usually one of the partners is quick to give in to the feeling of guilt to please the other and to avoid upsetting the balance of the relationship.

So, if you find yourself feeling guilty in your relationship for no reason whatsoever, then here’s what Marriage Counsellor Shivani Misri Sadhoo, relationship expert, suggest you to do to get out of a guilt trip….

Read the article here: HT City Article

According to past sociological & psychological studies & surveys, 67% of couples experience a decline in relationship satisfaction in the first three years of a baby’s life and this deterioration often persists into subsequent years.  In fact, one study showed that couples notice a 40% increase in arguments after having a baby, and two-thirds of these couples admitted that these were often “silly” arguments caused by stress or exhaustion.

Though many couples are over the moon about their new bundle of joy, they also struggle with work-life balance, more loneliness, financial stress, friendship changes, more chores, and minimal free time.

New parents are also sleep-deprived, which, research suggests, greatly diminishes their ability to stay positive, communicate, and manage your emotions. One study revealed that working couples felt their daily workload increased by 4 hours each day after they had a baby.

Today relationship expert and Marriage Counsellor Shivani Misri Sadhoo shares some important tips that new or would-be parents can follow & practice to avoid the decline of their relationship & closeness after having their baby.

1. Understand, Communicate and except that there will be change in Sex life

Women and men are wired very differently – a new mother can be totally consumed with baby care all day and night. She may simply feel ‘all energy drained out’ after giving so much of her body to the baby and energy to household chores. Conversely, the guy’s way of feeling close is to have sex. As this is where things can break down, communication and understanding play a vital role in increasing the intimacy.

Counsellor Shivani suggests all husbands that during their early fatherhood phase, instead of ending up staying away from the wife and feel rejected in their heart, they should put efforts to do baby care & household chores and try to get their wife as much as possible the free time to take rest. This will definitely go to win their wife’s attention and heart and gradually will make them come closer their husband.

2.  Mothers should find some time for themselves

Remember if you feel worn out after a long day, you can’t expect to feel excited about your relationship: you need to keep loving yourself in little ways so that you have good energy and loving feelings towards your partner.

“It’s important to find ‘me’ time as well as “we” time,” says Counsellor Shivani. It can be good to stick a reminder  fir the things you need to do for self-care – from painting your toenails to watching a movie on Youtube while you feed the child or call a friend or check emails while baby has a kick on the floor,

3.  Plan The Time You Can Spend with your partner.

Good relationship maintenance requires couples to spend quality time with each other and after the baby comes, free time looks like a distant dream. Hence couples must recognize the requirement to spend quality time and they should plan accordingly. Like every weekend you may keep you child with his/her grandparents and go to watch a movie or have a dinner in the restaurant.

4.  Both the partners should try to join parenting classes

In today’s nuclear family parents put too much attention on their single or two children and as result, today’s parents commonly argue over whose way is right, because both partners are adjusting to their new roles and responsibilities.

Many young fathers feel left out, especially if the mother acts as the baby’s primary caregiver. New moms often feel as if their husbands are ill-informed or less experienced and that sparks the frequent arguments.

Hence before the baby is born, both the partners should conjointly visit the doctor and most importantly both should try to attain parental classes that generally been organized by all major hospitality chains or by individual counselors.  This way they will adopt coordinated parenting style early in their life instead of wasting their precious time arguing, criticizing each other parenting style and distancing themselves from each other.

About the author: Counsellor Shivani Misri Sadhoo is the consulting psychologist with Fortis Hospital, IBS (Indian Brain & Spine) Hospital and with Express Clinics.

Counsellor Shivani has served over thousands plus happy & satisfied individuals and couples in India and abroad.She is one of India’s eminent Marriage Counsellor & Relationship Expert, who is frequently been featured by leading newspapers, magazines and TV channels.