Licensed family therapist Stephanie Yates-Anyabwile answers the internet’s burning questions about relationships. How do you …
I’m Stephanie yatesanyabuile a licensed marriage and family therapist I’m here to answer your questions from Twitter this is relationship support [Music] underscore Jesse Beauty how do I tell my closest friend her boyfriend begged me for sex so I think the best thing you can do in a situation like that is find opportunity when your friend is already disarmed you never want to pull something like this out when you all are already in the course of an argument for example I would go ahead and let her know that this is something that’s going on will she get mad at you there is a possibility that she will but what she’s upset about is the information itself and she’s probably very embarrassed humiliated but if you keep this information to yourself what does that say about your friendship with her that’s going to call into question the relationship itself between you and her and so you try your best to be as humble as possible and let her know the reasons why you’ve chosen to share this with her and let the chips fall where they may hopefully she can be mature and understand that you have her best interest at heart but if she’s at a place where she’s not ready to accept the truth and she wants to be upset with you then you kind of have an eye-opening experience about the person that you’re considering to be your friend from Lindsay W is it ever okay to ghost someone I would say if you feel like you’re unsafe if you’re dealing with someone who might be stalking you or has anger issues and you feel like you can’t trust this person can handle the information that you’re not interested anymore that is the only time that I would say that it’s okay to ghost but we see most often is that people have a hard time trying to have difficult conversations with people with this opportunity a person that you clearly don’t care that much about to where you’d be fine to never talk to them again this is actually a great time to practice having difficult conversations sharing your feelings and dealing with the person who you may be making upset so that way when you are with the person that you love and care about and you need to have a difficult conversation you’re a little bit more prepared to do that because you’ve got some practice in Michael the boy how do I tell my partner some of his friends are losers [Applause] um so if you feel like your partner is surrounding themselves with people that you don’t think are investing and your partner’s success definitely find a way to have that conversation with them but what you don’t want to do is establish yourself as the enemy you never know the conversations that your partner is having with their friends behind closed doors there could be times where those people are standing up for you in a way that you didn’t know was actually sustaining your relationship so be very careful when you establish yourself as the enemy between your partner and their closest friends because you might not win that battle and if at the end they choose their friends over you you’re the one who started the war from Key blade Kate can I ask you guys a question if you guys are in a relationship and your partner is flirting with other people would you consider that cheating or disloyal within one relationship you might be in a position where flirting is actually expected I know some couples that that fine flirting to actually be ego boosting and they like to see that their partner can still pull someone if they want it to but in other relationships it can be a major hit on your partner’s self-esteem to see that you’re interested in someone else attracted to someone else and then going to the next step and actually acting on those feelings you definitely don’t want to have one person who is okay with it and another person who is not so make sure you’re having those conversations very early on in the dating process about what defines cheating and disloyalty within your relationship so that you’re not moving forward with someone who has very different ideals than you do from baliholic serious question how do I know if I’m a narcissist if you are even looking at yourself in such an introspective way most of the time you’re you’re not a narcissist because the thing about narcissistic personality disorder is that one of the requirements is a very limited self view you don’t see the pain you cause the people around you as a matter of fact you’re looking at everyone else like why are they causing me all of this distress from Jay Gaddis opposites do attract and that even applies to your attachment Styles but does having different attachment Styles mean you’re with the wrong person one of the main things that we’re talking about when we’re talking about attachment Styles which for anyone who’s unfamiliar with attachment Styles means that a lot of us have a bit of a predisposition for how much intimacy we’re comfortable with in relationship if you’re anxiously attached for example you’re probably going to want a lot of validation from your partner you’ll want somebody who is telling you they want to be with you who’s comfortable holding hands who can help you know that they are committed to this relationship maybe more often than another person would if you have a secure attachment that means that you don’t need a ton of validation from your partner and you also don’t need a ton of space from your partner but if you have an avoidant attachment style you tend to value your Independence and autonomy and you need a lot of space it’s not that you’re not interested in having intimacy within your relationship but you might not be the type of person that’s interested in spending 24 7 with your partner as a person who’s anxiously attached might be more interested in doing so you can be with someone with a different attachment style but you do want to pay close attention to what that different attachment style is from the real J Dior timeline’s too peaceful who do you all think should pay on the first date okay I’m gonna get canceled here this is the thing that I’m gonna say that people are not going to agree with me about but I truly believe that if you are interested in pursuing a long-term relationship with someone you should look at that as a partnership from the outset so I’m big ongoing Dutch you know so that way if this is a person that you’re interested in spending more time with both of you have more funds to make that a reality now I do understand that for some people it’s important to know a person’s intentions from the beginning and paying for a meal or an activity is a way that that person can prove to you that they are really interested in you is that really telling you if that person is interested in you because they could be paying for your meal and five other people’s meals and it doesn’t even matter from pulse Nigeria 247 how do you know that someone is gaslighting you especially those you are in a relationship with gaslighting is another one that we’re hearing a lot more about these days when I think of gaslighting I think of someone who might be intentionally or even sometimes unintentionally making you second guess yourself making you second guess your feelings you know maybe you saw something happen and they say something like that didn’t happen so sometimes it could be outright lies and sometimes it’s something like oh you really don’t feel like that right they might be telling you you’re just acting you really don’t feel that way stop trying to make a scene they don’t validate or value your perspective on how you’re feeling or what you’re seeing and most of the time they’re trying to convince you to see or feel things a different different way from Moon areas should I leave my girlfriend who doesn’t trust me and is very insecure or work it out well we’re talking about a relationship where you have one partner who is very insecure that is actually language that we still use when we talk about attachment Styles secure versus insecure attachment sometimes when you have a partner who is acting very insecure they probably have an anxious attachment Style and what that means is that they’re going to require a lot of validation from you now for you if you’re the person that’s got to provide that and that is your limit you’re like I cannot constantly make this person feel at ease in our relationship it’s not my job to try to heal them from previous relationship wounds I fully respect that in that case absolutely end things from Lindy R can a relationship recover from cheating a relationship absolutely can recover from cheating if both people are committed to making that relationship work so if you’re dealing with the relationship after there’s been a betrayal and trust it’s not going to just go back to what it looked like before you had that betrayal and Trust if you were with the person who no longer believes you when you say that you’re at a certain location for example and they would feel more comfortable if you would share locations you have to be open to hearing their request if you’re looking to have that relationship continue forward and if you’re the person who got cheated on you have to humble yourself and be open to having a conversation about the gaps and the relationship that could have led to that cheating so after cheating it’s extremely important that you both focus in on what’s going to be required to rebuild the trust and it could take years for that to happen from Adrian loves Gigi do open relationships really work asking for a friend and this is another one where it’s going to be highly dependent on the people who are within the relationship you have to know what people are needing so if we go back to attachment styles for example simple if you’ve got two people who have an avoidant attachment style they both need a lot of space and dependence autonomy an open relationship might be perfect for them because they don’t have to feel trapped or imprisoned in a relationship that’s very limiting and they do still have the stability and consistency of having that one partner that they will achieve their long-term goals with from a Rouge Waheed 3 what causes a marriage of 10 15 years to fail what changes or does not change I always thought the respect and understanding gets better with time but the cases around me are showing otherwise what we often see is that as relationships progress through really critical Milestones it requires a reconfiguring of the identity of each of them individually as well as how they fit as a couple so the empty nest syndrome for example you’ve got a couple who maybe got married had kids within the first five years then they spend the next 20 25 years trying to launch those kids what happens when the children are completely out of the house and now it’s just the two of you and you don’t remember how you relate to one another anymore you don’t know your hobbies your interests you don’t know how much space you need and you start really noticing that this retired life that you envision for yourselves is just not compatible from underscore oty underscore how do you know if he’s the one you want your relationship ideally to represent a safe haven for you so if you’re having stress at work with your family you want this person and this relationship to be the place where you can relax at the end of a stressful day so even though in the beginning these relationships aren’t always that appealing because they can seem actually kind of boring those are the types of things that you want to pay attention to where there can be nice longevity in the relationship because you guys are creating a dynamic where you can weather a lot of different storm together from Inspire chat how does developing self-love help to strengthen your relationship when we are expecting the people in our lives to make us feel worthy we are setting ourselves up for failure because they’re humans and they’re going to fail so when you have those self-love practices of setting side time and having boundaries and taking care of your body all of these things that tell yourself hey if no one else comes through for me I’m going to come through for myself it makes it a lot easier for the people around you to show you that they love you and it feels like an add-on instead of a need for 13 honey do love languages matter to you this is a great question I think love languages are really important when it comes to Love Languages I find that it’s a really great way for you to identify your needs compared to your partner’s needs there are five love languages you have words of affirmation physical touch quality time acts of service and Gifts most of us are going to score on all of those to some capacity but you want to see what are your big hitters for me for example it’s words of affirmation but a really interesting thing that we don’t talk enough about when it comes to Love Languages is that it actually also gives you insight into some of the most severe ways that you can hurt your partner so if we were to continue with the words of affirmation for a person who really values words if you say demeaning things especially in front of a group of people those things are going to affect a person with the words of affirmation love language more than a person with physical touch for example next from stage five social can you have a compromise without a sacrifice like what if my partner wants kids and I don’t how do you navigate that without sacrifice this is a great question and it’s one of those things that needs to be discussed in the beginning of your relationship if you want to have children and your partner does not want to have children or vice Versa that’s the type of thing that you really cannot compromise on at the end of the day someone is not getting what they want and they’re going to have to compromise their values and when it comes to kids I personally think that’s the kind of thing that you should not be compromising on that’s it that’s all the questions we had I hope you learned something till next time …