Neither Kurt nor Jamie want to hurt each other. Unfortunately, they are also not open to learning about their own feelings and behaviors, or each other’s. Resorting to controlling behavior keeps them safe and eliminates need to effectively communicate their fear. Fear is what motivates their intention to control and in face of fear, their love dissipates.

Instead of each person taking full responsibility for his or her own happiness and unhappiness, they gave that job to each other. Imagine that your feelings are a child within. Imagine what would happen if you had an actual child that you kept trying to give to others to take care of. That child would feel scared and insecure most of time. Yet that is exactly what happens when we make others responsible for our feelings - our child within feels scared, insecure, angry, depressed, and anxious. It is only when we take responsibility for our own feelings, which we can do through intent to learn, that we will feel secure enough to give up need to control and resist control.

It would be easy to blame Jamie for their problems - if only she didn’t get so needy and angry, everything would be fine. It’s just as easy to blame Kurt - if only he was more attentive and caring. Yet until both Jamie and Kurt are willing to take responsibility for their own feelings, and until loving themselves and each other is more important than controlling or not being controlled, their conflicts will continue.

The act of taking responsibility has nothing to do with blame or fault. Each person taking full responsibility eliminates need to be right and that is an essential step to a mature and reasonable outcome. What if Jamie had started with, "Kurt, I love celebrating our anniversary and you hate it. Can we talk about what would work for both of us?" They could have more easily resolved issue. And what if Kurt had responded to Jamie’s initial controlling statements with caring and openness instead of resistance, such as, "Honey, you know I don’t like celebrations, so please don’t expect me to plan something. Let’s talk about how we can make it work for both of us." Either one of them could have moved into an intent to learn and taken responsibility for creating what they wanted.

Each of us has choice to begin to notice our intention. If each of us changed our intention from controlling to loving, and learned to take responsibility for our own feelings, we would each be participating in healing our relationships and thereby healing our planet.

Margaret Paul, Ph.D. is best-selling author and co-author of eight books, including "Do I Have To Give Up Me To Be Loved By You?", "Do I Have To Give Up Me To Be Loved By My Kids?", "Healing Your Aloneness","Inner Bonding", and "Do I Have To Give Up Me To Be Loved By God?" Visit her web site for a FREE Inner Bonding course: http://www.innerbonding.com or mailto: margaret@innerbonding.com

Many of us have spent a great deal of time in unsafe relationship spaces. In fact, some of us have never experienced a safe relationship space because many, if not most, of us have not learned to create a safe inner space by staying in a loving adult frame of mind when our fears are activated. When our fears of being rejected, abandoned, engulfed and controlled are triggered, most of us are triggered into a child state and immediately retreat into our learned controlling behaviors. We may move our focus into our minds to avoid our feelings; we may attack, blame, defend, demand, explain, deny, judge, criticize, shut down, withdraw, resist, give in and comply, placate, lie, become overly nice, and so on. Of course, moment we act out in controlling ways, our behavior may trigger another's fears of being rejected or controlled, and that person may then react in controlling ways as well, creating a vicious circle and an unsafe relationship space.

If, when these fears are activated, we focus on who is at fault or who started it, we perpetuate an unsafe relationship space. Blaming another for our fears (and for our own reactive, unloving behavior) makes relationship space more unsafe than ever. Then both people in relationship end up feeling bad, each of us believing that our pain is result of other person's behavior. We feel victimized, helpless, stuck, and disconnected from our partner. We desperately want other person to see what they are doing that (we think) is causing our pain. We think that if other person only understands this, they will change--and we exhaust ourselves trying to figure out how to make them understand.

Over time, being in an unsafe relationship space creates distance between people involved. When we have not created a safe space in which to speak our complete, heartfelt truth about ourselves, joy between us gradually dies. And more we hold back our innermost feelings and experiences, shallower our connection becomes. Our intimacy crumbles.

In friendships, marriages, and work relationships, our joy, aliveness, and creativity get lost as we each give up parts of ourselves in an attempt to feel safe. In romantic relationships, passion dries up. Superficiality, boredom, fighting, and apathy take its place. We try valiantly to figure out what went wrong. But too often we ask, "What am I doing wrong?" or "What are you doing wrong?" rather than inquiring into health of relationship space itself.

Only when we look at relationship space will we see what we are each doing to create unsafe space. The dual fears of losing other through rejection and losing ourselves through being swallowed up by other are underlying cause of our unloving, reactive behavior. These fears are deeply rooted. They cannot be healed or overcome by getting someone else's love. On contrary, we must heal these fears before we can share love--give and receive love--with each other.

The key to doing this is learning how to create a safe inner space where we can work with and overcome our fears of rejection and engulfment. This is a process, not an event. Practicing six step process of Inner Bonding gradually creates inner safety as we learn to take personal responsibility for our own feelings and behavior. Inner Bonding guides us in defining ourselves internally through eyes of our personal spiritual guidance, instead of externally through performance, looks, and others' approval. In addition, it provides us with a clear process for conflict resolution that can be used in any relationship difficulty. Instead of love eroding with time, love deepens daily, supporting each person in sacred journey of soul's evolution.

Any two people who are willing to learn to create their own inner sense of safety can also learn to create a safe relationship space where their intimacy and passion will flourish and their love will endure.

Margaret Paul, Ph.D. is best-selling author and co-author of eight books, including "Do I Have To Give Up Me To Be Loved By You?", "Do I Have To Give Up Me To Be Loved By My Kids?", "Healing Your Aloneness","Inner Bonding", and "Do I Have To Give Up Me To Be Loved By God?" Visit her web site for a FREE Inner Bonding course: http://www.innerbonding.com or mailto:margaret@innerbonding.com