When life falls apart, we tend to tighten and close, protecting ourselves. This tight, closed posture keeps us stuck in the breakdown phase. People can spend their whole lives here, twisting themselves to accommodate bitterness, mistrust and fear.

But when we let a breakdown break us OPEN, that’s when real change can happen. That’s when we find ourselves surrendering to the poignancy of the moment. Our hearts melt. Perhaps amidst sobs, we catch our breath and are awed by the depth of our (shared) human experience.

There’s an unmistakable shift from the breakdown phase to breaking open.

The posture of breaking down is different from breaking open. Breaking down is CONTRACTED and shallow. Breaking open is EXPANSIVE and deep. It’s lighter here, vulnerable and scary maybe, but also courageous, present and lively.

From this place, we have the opportunity to begin integrating our experience. New possibilities and insight emerge. This is BREAKTHROUGH.

I call this whole process Breaking Down… Breaking Open… Breaking through.

As your awareness of this process deepens, you might find that you can spend less time in the wholly unpleasant breakdown phase, moving quickly to breaking open, savouring the raw depth of experience here, and then moving on to integration and breakthrough.

But don’t be in such a hurry to get “back to business,” to breakthrough, that you skip the Breaking Open part altogether. There’s much benefit to be gained here! The consequence of skipping the breaking open phase is that even though you might get on with your mostly functional life… you remain contracted and closed.

Every breakdown comes with gifts, and it’s in the breaking open phase that these gifts are received.

The move from breaking open to breakthrough is generally quite natural and doesn’t usually require effort. You may not even really notice it. But the move from breakdown to breaking open can be more difficult and profound, especially if you’re accustomed to resisting it.

Here’s my tip: Use breath and posture.

Remember, breakdown is Contracted and Shallow, breaking open is Expansive and Deep. With your body, move from a contracted or collapsed posture into one that is expansive. Begin taking deeper, conscious breaths. Bring your head up. Expand your chest. Open your palms in offering and receptivity to the world. You’re not trying to change your emotions or thoughts, just provide a different container for them. In fact, repressed feelings may intensify. So feel them, and stay open. This is what growth feels like.

Now bring this to your relationship.

(note: Eckhart Tolle points out in “A New Earth” that a literal translation of “sin” is “to miss the mark.”)

1. Treating her like a buddy

If her pants are getting tight, don’t tease her. Don’t compete with her, or make her compete with you. Don’t bring up stupid things she’s done when you’re out with friends. Don’t even challenge her or hold her accountable the way you would a friend. She’s not a buddy. She’s a radiant goddess, a queen, the divine feminine manifest. Treat her accordingly.

2. Criticizing

She knows when she screws up. The last thing on earth she needs is your criticism. Ever.

3. Retreating too far into the relationship

You have a purpose in the world. You have friends, work, hobbies, goals, and perhaps a spiritual practice. Take refuge in your relationship as it serves you, but keep your direction too. Ultimately this will serve the relationship more than losing yourself in it.

4. Asking friends and family for advice

This is something she’s more likely to do, but guys do it too. Don’t. Friends and family are well-meaning but are generally part of the system. They lack objectivity and sometimes sense. Support and camaraderie don’t have to descend into advice and opinion slinging, though they often do. Educate your friends and family about what’s actually in service to you and your relationship and if they still don’t get it, steer the conversation elsewhere.

5. Not getting help when you need it

That said, sometimes you need help. Help can look like a million different things, so choose what feels right to you. There are coaches, counsellors, pastors, yogis, energy workers, workshops, groups and more. Go to someone who is skilled, without bias, and committed to being truly in service.

6. Keeping one foot out the door

Ooh this one’s nasty. Most women can sense this even when you don’t even know you’re doing it! If she can’t trust you, you’re sunk.

7. Assuming your relationship will take care of itself

If you’re like lots of guys, you have a to-do list. Put your relationship somewhere near the top. This DOESN’T mean creating a relationship make-work project. It means honouring each other enough to make time for connection, intimacy, sex, recreation, fun, dinner, dates, checking-in, celebration and generally enjoying each other!

Anyone else notice this?

It’s like, maybe if I bang my head HARDER…

Of course, “Working on our relationship” isn’t generally at the top of most guy’s to-do list. But our spouses might expect it. Or we think we SHOULD do it… after all, many experts tell us it’s mandatory.

“But you don’t understand. We have ISSUES.”

Great, so let’s spend our precious time together hashing over our problems for hours on end until we both feel confused, upset and exhausted. Then we can start over again tomorrow, fulfilling the pessimist’s bleak summation: Life is Hard, and Then You Die.

“OK smart guy, what do you suggest?”

Thought you’d never ask! Simple… Celebration!

As Jon Eisman (Senior Hakomi Trainer and originator of the Re-Creation of the Self coaching model) likes to say, “Imagine you have two options: You can spend the next five minutes hitting yourself with a hammer, or you can give yourself a nice relaxing massage. Which would you prefer?”

Similarly, you have a choice to “work on your relationship”… or to celebrate it.

Working on it almost always means focussing on what’s negative, difficult or dark. Celebrating it means focussing on what’s positive, easy and fun. And what happens to anything you focus on? It expands right? Kind of a no-brainer if you ask me.

I’m making a point here - sure, sometimes we need to attend to a problem. But many of us fall into the trap of ONLY attending to problems until we don’t see anything else. It becomes a habit.

What’s actually going RIGHT in your relationship? What do you appreciate? There’s SOMETHING, even if it’s small. Celebrate THAT. Tangibly. Intentionally. Together. With a dinner or a toast or a massage or a kiss or a dance or an embrace or whatever you choose.

You can always come back to the hammer anytime.

Are relationships primarily for mutual support and understanding? Sexual pleasure? Financial efficiency? Healing? Personal growth?

If you don’t ask this fundamental question, how can you ever know if you’re succeeding?

Are your relationship goals the same or different from hers? Does it matter? Are they complementary? Synergistic? Incompatible? Flexible? Rigid? Changing?

Find out.

We tend to assume that romantic relationships exist to give us pleasure. If they don’t, we assume they’re broken. After all, it probably felt pretty good at the beginning right?

The good news is that yes, relationships do have the potential to offer us feelings of well-being. And that’s not all.

They also help us grow up. If we let them.

If your relationship is less than pleasurable, it is asking something of you. A difficult relationship is asking you to LET GO of something, or perhaps to go deeper INTO something. You can be certain that there is a powerful growth opportunity within the relationship that you will have a glimpse of when you are open (or desperate) enough to see it. And you’ll probably find it where it hurts the most.

If you will reframe your relationship challenges as opportunities, a world of new possibilities can emerge.

None of my relationships with girlfriends ended particularly well. I seemed to be cursed with issues that ran deep. After my divorce at age 32 broke me wide open, I was ready for a change.

My subsequent relationship journey offered me an extremely unwelcome year of sexual abstinence, and then a fiery affair that quickly turned into a full-on relationship and possibly the hottest hell yet. I hit rock bottom, relationally speaking. Misery, confusion, endless arguing… breaking up, then make-up sex in the same night… often. Broken furniture even!

Somehow we stuck through it. We did a couples workshop weekend. It’s hard to say if it really helped. We almost didn’t go back Sunday because so much shit got stirred up Saturday. We saw a counsellor a couple of times. I didn’t care for her much. Kim went back and the counsellor basically told her to leave me. She didn’t.

Obviously I’m not a bad guy, but it’s true I had relationship issues. All of my work and training as a coach and Hakomi therapist was against a relationship backdrop of drama, uncertainty and conflict. Except… there was a big shift at a certain point. A crack in the wall of dysfunction. What happened?

Well, we’d worked through a lot, found our way through somehow. We loved each other, that’s certain. And all the training I’d done had a serious effect on my own healing, self-discovery and personal growth. These were all contributing factors, but there was also a specific event that really catapulted the relationship (and my life) forward.

An outgoing and successful Coach was a participant in one of my training weekends and he invited me to an evening event that he hosted. Something about relationships - it was pretty vague. I went, and it changed my life. Well, not right away, but it planted the seed.

I got an introduction to a model of relationship called “Gender Synergy.”

Something really hit home and I started trying out the model with Kim. I didn’t tell her anything about it at first, I just did it. The results were immediate and remarkable.

Six months later I hired this coach, Jean-Pierre Leblanc, to mentor me and I immersed myself in the Gender Synergy model. I drank it up. He introduced me to David Deida’s books, especially “The Way of the Superior Man.” It was like coming home. I was a changed man.

Now I’m experiencing joy, satisfaction and a deep sense of accomplishment in my relationship that I never imagined possible. And there’s no compromise, no payoff. I get to be me, and Kim appreciates and respects me for who I am, because I’ve become someone better than who I was.

Gender Synergy has become a foundation of my work. It’s penetrated my whole life and improved me radically. That’s my wish for you too. That’s the hope. And I know it’s possible. As someone who’s chosen a career helping people change, I’m especially passionate about the transformative power of relationships. If you’re ready to step up and take responsibility for turning your relationship around or moving it forward in a big way, this site is for you.

Be the Change you Want.

Your Ally,

Coach Justice

The Invitation: A single 90 minute teleclass could be the first step to saving your relationship and putting you on the path to relationship mastery forever. And it’s free. Sign up on the top left corner of this page now, and receive times and dates by e-mail.