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Being in a relationship with someone who won’t change isn’t easy.

If you’ve ever experienced it, you know that it can be exhausting, frustrating, and painful. It can also make you feel sad—for what your loved one used to be like or could be like, for the lost potential of your relationship, and for what you’re not getting from them.

But do you know what makes it even harder?

Feeling stuck and confused about how to navigate the relationship.

My ex-husband had a drug addiction, and we ended up falling into a codependent relationship as a result.

This would have been a challenging situation under the best of circumstances. But it was even harder for me because there were some things that I didn’t know at the time about how to navigate challenging relationships in a healthy way.

For example, I didn’t know that when I was around my ex, I was better off focusing on what I COULD control than on what I couldn’t. (Read my previous post to learn...

Have you ever had someone in your life who you desperately wanted to change? Or have you ever been in a relationship where you’d often say to yourself, “If I just wait a little bit longer, encourage them more, or try harder, they will finally change and everything will be better”?

My dear, having a relationship like this in your life is exhausting, and I get it.

And I can tell you that your experience definitely isn’t unique because I’ve been there myself.

In fact, many of us have someone in our life who does something that bothers us on an ongoing basis—whether it’s someone who chronically violates boundaries, is emotionally closed off or unavailable, has a quick temper, or engages in self-destructive behaviors.

In my case, this person was a romantic partner. But it can be anyone we love and care about, such as a parent, sibling, child, extended relative, or friend.

When we have someone like this in our life, it can be really tricky....

Did you catch what I shared in my previous blog post—the one about how to set healthy boundaries with your parents?

In that post, I shared that for a long time, I didn’t know that my relationship with my parents lacked healthy boundaries. And I didn’t understand that the relationship and my own well-being were suffering as a result.

I’ve also shared with you before that it’s important to know the signs that your relationship with your parents lacks healthy boundaries. Because it’s only once you realize that these boundaries are missing that you can work toward putting them in place and enjoying a healthier and less stressful relationship.

But here’s what some of you might be thinking:

My parents do give me unsolicited advice or call me out of the blue all the time. Up until this point, though, I haven’t really set any boundaries with them about it because it seemed easier to just put up with it. But now I have a romantic partner. He...

I have a confession to make: I really enjoy talking to you about setting healthy boundaries with parents.

Why?

Because it’s a topic that’s near and dear to my heart.

If you’ve read my blog posts before, you might know that I used to lack healthy boundaries in my relationship with my parents.

You see, when I was growing up, I was taught to place the needs of the people around me, especially my family, above my own. So I pretty much always said “yes” to my parents, did what they wanted me to do, and let them call the shots.

And for a long time, I didn’t even realize that our relationship had this dynamic because it lacked healthy boundaries. (If you’re wondering whether YOUR relationship with your parents needs better boundaries, check for these 7 signs.)

However, even once I knew that I needed to put better boundaries in place with my parents, I had a hard time setting them.

One of the reasons why I struggled was because I thought that by...

As a therapist, I have clients coming to me with a wide range of issues and challenges.

But there’s one issue that pops up more frequently than almost any other: setting boundaries.

As I’ve said before, boundaries are an essential ingredient for a healthy relationship. Just like you can’t make an egg omelet without eggs, you can’t have a healthy relationship without boundaries.

The challenge is that it can be scary and uncomfortable to set boundaries, especially if you’re not used to doing it.

And as I know from my own life and the experiences of my clients, boundaries can be downright daunting when you need to set them as an adult with your parents.

Why?

Because think about it:

If you’re like most people, your relationship with your parents is probably the one that has changed the most over the course of your life.

When you were born, your parents were 100% responsible for you. They made every decision for you, including what to eat, what to...

A big part of my journey of breaking free of overgiving was to learn how to set healthy boundaries.

As I’ve shared before, setting healthy boundaries was something that I really struggled with before I became a therapist.

Part of the reason why I struggled so much was because I felt very guilty about setting boundaries. I truly believed that if I put a boundary in place with someone, I was being selfish and denying my loved ones what they needed and deserved to be happy.

But it wasn’t just the guilt that made it tough for me to set boundaries. Boundary setting was also hard for me because in those early days, I often found that people violated the boundaries I set.

Whenever I set a boundary and someone violated it anyway, I used to think one of two things: (a) that boundaries don’t work or (b) that the other person was completely unreasonable.

The reality, though, is that boundaries are usually very effective when you set them skillfully. And most people in your...

As a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, I’ve done A LOT of couples therapy over the years. So you might expect me to say that if you want to reduce conflict in your relationship, feel more heard by your partner, or enjoy a deeper connection with them, you BOTH need to work on your relationship.

But do you want to know something?

I have many clients who really want to change something in their relationship. But they come to my office alone. Why? Because for one reason or another, their partner doesn’t want to work on the relationship.

When these clients start working with me, there’s something I see in all of them: doubt. They doubt whether the time, energy, and money that they’re investing will be worth it if their partner isn’t working on the relationship with them.

That’s why they’re usually pretty surprised (I would even go as far as to say “shocked” in some cases) when they start seeing BIG changes in their relationship...

In my last post, I shared some of my favorite tips for communicating better with your partner or loved one. (In case you haven’t read it yet, these are 3 tips that most people don’t think about, but they can quickly improve communication in your relationship. You can find out what they are right here.)

When I was first training to be a therapist years ago, I shared some of these tips with a friend named Maria. She had been with her husband, David, for over a decade. But around the time that I was in grad school, Maria had started to realize that she often felt unheard in their relationship.

David was generally very loving toward Maria. He would make coffee for her to take to work, plan date nights for the two of them, and even buy her flowers for no reason at all. And so in many ways, their relationship seemed great—even like something straight out of a rom com.

But recently, Maria had realized that she had been losing her voice in the relationship because...

Do you ever walk away from a conversation with your partner thinking…

• “I never end up saying what I want to say”?
• “They just don’t get why this matters to me”?
• “Small things turn into a bigger deal than they need to be”?
• “We always have the same argument over and over again”?

If you do and it happens more than once in a blue moon, you might recognize that you could benefit from improving how you communicate with your partner.

It makes sense, right? If the way that you’ve been trying to communicate with your partner or loved one hasn’t been working, it’s only reasonable to try to switch things up.

But here’s what you might be thinking: “Yup. I know that I need to change the way that I communicate with my partner. But WHAT do I need to change? And WHAT should I do instead?”

That’s how I felt after every disagreement that my ex-husband and I had.

I knew that the way that we were...

Does it seem like you and your partner are always arguing about something these days?

If you do, you might be feeling emotionally exhausted and frustrated. But you might also be feeling a bit confused.

After all, if you and your partner care about each other and are in a committed relationship, why do you butt heads so much?

If you think you’re alone in wondering this, I want you to know right now that you most definitely are NOT.

Because when I work with couples in my practice, one of the most common issues they raise is that they argue or disagree ALL the time (and they’re sick of it).

As an example, let me tell you about one of my clients. For the sake of this blog post, we’ll call her Rachel.

Rachel came to me because she and her husband Marcus seemed to be fighting about everything lately.

One time, for example, she had gotten home from work late in the evening after an exhausting day during her company’s busy season. She was hoping to walk in the door...