Coping With Family Disputes

This week: Effectively Coping with Family Disputes: How the intuitive insight Personal Prophesy offers can help ease conflict within the family.

Family relationships are spiritually nurturing at their best and downright impossible to cope with at their worst. What we share with family members should be some of the most celebrated experiences of our lives, but a large number of us can't find enough excuses to escape the very people to whom we are related.

Over the years, I have perceived many more poor family relationships than I have strong ones, and I have seen few positive ties between related individuals in the cards. I have perceived brother pitted against brother, sisters lashing out at sisters, and mothers and fathers who are so emotionally detached in terms of the very families they have created that they have no idea why there is conflict and disharmony occurring within them at all.

Intuitively speaking, most parents have a tendency to "sleepwalk" through the raising of their children. They provide the necessities of food, shelter, and clothing. They teach their children what they feel they ought to be taught in terms of society's standards. They bring their children to school, give them Christmas presents, enforce house rules, and they send them out into the world once they have reached the age of adulthood.

They automatically do all the things they feel they are supposed to do as parents, but are oblivious in their sleepwalking to the most important lesson in life they could ever possibly teach their children: Teach them how to truly love unconditionally.

Think about it. Most of us never had the chance to learn genuinely how to "love" from the people we were born to and inevitably raised by. We grew up in families that attempted to observe major holidays and important occasions with a sense of loving unity, then reverted to arguing and, quite often, shunning each other the remainder of the year.

We grew up in fatherless -- or motherless -- homes where the lessons we learned about love were often biased and lopsided. We may have had aunts or grandmothers who raised us without caring for us. There were parents who refused to let us play with children who had the wrong background or skin that was the wrong color. We often learned that forgiveness meant getting a verbal, if not a physical, beating first and having to crawl our way meekly back into the good graces of the family later.

Is it any wonder so many of us experience difficulty with our family relationships today? Without a solid foundation of love -- genuine and unconditional love -- conflicts between family members are sure to erupt and further erode what should be some of the most important relationships in our lives.

Whenever the cards are intuitively read, the past -- when we are focusing on family relationships -- must be considered in order for the present and future to be accurately perceived. We must always remember that we are the sum total of our own experiences. Our relatives are the sum total of their own. Because we all process experience differently, we are naturally going to see particular situations from our own individual points of view.

Disputes, therefore, are inevitable -- given our own personal perception of the situation, which happens to be at hand. Try, if you can, to look beyond the immediate conflict -- to perceptually delve into the emotional make-up of the relative you are at odds with. Chances are that by doing so, you will better understand why he or she has taken such a position, and you will be more apt to find a workable solution between you.

If, for instance, your relations dislike the man or woman you have chosen to marry, take the time to consider why they might feel this way. It probably isn't "him" or "her" causing the conflict between you, but an issue that runs much deeper. If you have serious problems getting along with your mother or father, consider what might be at the root of the difficulty. Is it really "you" or perhaps a personal emotional struggle he or she has yet to resolve. If a sister or brother won't speak to you, refuse to be rejected by sending letters, cards, and calling at every opportunity. By demonstrating unconditional love toward family members, you have a far better opportunity to help bring them to the point of constructive change -- which is what Personal Prophesy is all about.

Disputes between family members require great care in their handling and an abundance of unconditional love on your part so that they can become stronger relationships in the end. You don't have to accept a legacy of conflict and pain in terms of your relationships with family members. If you choose to be the one who breaks those emotional chains of the past, and persevere through love and forgiveness, you will in time succeed.
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Extra-Marital Affairs

In all the years that I have spent intuitively perceiving the future from cards, I have never conducted a reading for anyone who entered marriage expecting to become an unfaithful spouse. Even those who may have had some difficulty being totally faithful to their partners prior to marriage are perceived as having taken those vows with their hearts in the right place.

The problem is, hearts have a tendency to view marriage from an entirely unrealistic viewpoint. They beat passionately in the chests of those who stand at altars and vow undying love for one another while sharing a moment in time that is about as idealistic -- and unrealistic -- as it can possibly get. Where, after all, is the realism in vowing "From this day forward," when that glorious wedding day is a well-executed plan of perfection? The gowns, the flowers, the catered banquet -- everything about that day is more marvelous than the future will ever be, but nobody wants to think about that when there's a wedding to be staged.

How can we even think to profess "Till death we do part," when we have no idea what trials and tribulations life is likely to thrust our way over time, let alone how we will cope with these hardships and still manage to keep love alive five, ten, twenty years from now when we have beautiful wedding clothes to buy? We are so focused on the ceremony attached to that union, we don't have time to give the future any thought.

The fact is, we don't know what the future will bring in terms of our marriages. All we can do is try our best to live up to the vows we make, keep our commitments strong in faith, and trust as we grow and change as partners while doing our darnedest to stay together and love one another as the future unfolds before us.

Unfortunately, too many of us bail out of our marriages before we even give them a chance to show us just how sturdy they really are. We consider trust and faith to be delicate crystal goblets that shatter in our hands at the first sign of trouble. We perceive the future to be a "yellow brick road" we should be skipping down together, and the instant it turns into rough and rocky road ridden with hardship, what do we do? We take a quick, emotional exit.

The first place that exit usually leads to is right into the arms of someone else. This is someone we perceive will love us "more" or "better," someone who seems capable of relieving us of our current unhappiness. We don't realize that the only way to truly relieve ourselves of unhappiness is to face it within ourselves and show our partner's forgiveness and unconditional love as we allow our marriages the chance to change and grow right along with us.

That is not to say that all marriages should last. Certainly those which are incapable of surviving due to abuse or addiction or where there is no love at all should definitely come to an end. But in terms of those marriages where we just don't try our best, when we opt for that "easy exit " because we are bored or so dysfunctional in our way of thinking that we overlap relationships by having someone waiting in the wings for us so we don't spend any time feeling unloved, we are, intuitively speaking, following disastrous paths to the future.

Intuitive perception can help us avoid entering into relationships with others when our marriages are encountering troubling circumstances. When a spouse is emotionally distressed, it will be clearly evident in the cards. When a spouse is feeling less than satisfied and needs more care and attention, this will be evident as well. When conflict holds the potential to dangerously divide a couple, you can count on it being perceived in the cards 100 percent of the time.

By having pre-knowledge of these conditions, we can alter the course of our marital lives by giving these relationships more tender loving care in the present, by communicating our needs to each other and, certainly, by doing everything in our power to keep the commitments we've made alive and thriving.

Visualize your marriage as a house the two of you built together. If it has been fashioned to be strong in timber and beam, the "heart" of your marriage will beat safely inside it. You will feel secure knowing the doors and windows are firmly latched against all outside influences. There is no wind or storm that will ever be strong enough to penetrate the sturdy fortress the two of you have built together.

On the other hand, if the two of you have built a flimsy house together and the doors to it flap in the wind at the least provocation, outside influences will have easy access to the "heart" of your marriage that resides within. Others will stand in your backyard, ready to jump at whatever entrance they can gain to the home that should belong to you and your marriage alone.

Those who engage in relationships with men or women who are still married need to realize that the partners they are taking are still very much under the influence of their marriages. Intuitively speaking, many of these partners will return to these marriages at some point in the future simply because they have walked away from "unfinished business" emotionally. They have yet to fully resolve these marriages in their own hearts, one way or the other.

In terms of the Personal Prophesy philosophy, you cannot take your own happiness at the expense of someone else who has committed to the man or woman you love and still find a life of contentment and fulfillment for yourself in the future. These new partners need to resolve their marriages first and come to you without any emotional ties to the past. It isn't until they have completely ended one life that they can give themselves fully to a new life with someone else and pursue the potential for true happiness together in the future.
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Keeping Marriage "sexy"

Sexual attraction may bring two people together, but sexual attraction certainly won't keep them together. Marriages and long-term relationships will only last when they have been built on a solid foundation of compatibility and friendship.

If you're married or have committed yourself to a relationship based entirely on great sex, all I can say is -- boy, are you in trouble. Eventually, you have to get out of bed and cope with the rest of the world. And the rest of the world will inevitably put all sorts of stress and demands on your relationship, which will cause the sexiness in it to fluctuate considerably.

Face it, bills and debt are not sexy. Long hours on the job can make us too tired for all that olympic sex we used to enjoy. Having kids can take the spontaneity out of passion literally for *years*! This is where having something else going for ourselves, like true compatibility and the understanding naturally attached to it, makes these rough, very UNsexy periods in our lives easier to cope with as we search for ways to achieve passion in our relationships once again.

Keeping your marriage/relationship sexy isn't really all that difficult. It doesn't mean you have to become kinky or far-fetched in the lengths you must go to in order to reach heights of ecstasy after years of living together. You don't have to scream and shout that you need attention -- if your relationship has started off on the right foot, and you are willing to show consideration and compassion for one another when passion between you fluctuates.

Essentially, it's about putting in the time and making the effort to keep yourselves sexy for each other in some very basic ways. Here are the things I've learned -- intuitively -- after all the years I've been studying Personal Prophesy, the method I use for perceiving the future from ordinary playing cards.

1. Keep yourself looking just as good today as you did before you walked down the aisle together "way back when." This isn't just a tip for the ladies, but you guys out there especially need to pay attention to this. I'm not suggesting that you have to look like movie stars 24 hours a day, but we could all do better in the appearance department to be more visually pleasing to the partners we love and have committed ourselves to.

2. Put serious effort into staying in the same physical shape you were in prior to committing yourself to this relationship. Strive to stay in shape, to dress attractively, and to practice good hygiene (GUYS) at the end of your workday. It's too easy to get lazy about dressing well, and to let yourself "go" weight-wise, to think appearance isn't that important. It is important. Looking good makes your partner see you as an attractive, sexy, and arousing mate. Arousal is just as crucial to the sexiness in your relationship outside of the bedroom as it is in it.

3. Make an agreement that your bedroom is your own personal Garden of Eden where arguments, kid problems, bills, family battles, etc. are *not* allowed. When you go to bed, tell yourself you are going to bed with your lover, not the stressed out, cranky husband or wife who tends to work too many hours, doesn't make enough money, or didn't get the chores done on time. This is the place where the two of you nurture your love, not find new ways to test its endurance.

4. Fantasize with each other! Keep your sexual lives a living, growing, and beautiful thing between you. Act out fantasy scenarios together, and send fantasy gifts and letters to each other. Strive to keep what brought you together in the beginning a wonderful intimacy that belongs to no one but the two of you.

5. When all else fails during those times when you are both really busy, stressed, or just not spending as much time intimately as you can afford to spend together, have a special code phrase between you that you can use. It could be something like, "I need 30 or 20 or 10, dear," meaning, "I need that much of your undivided attention right now to share alone with you." Doing so will help to nurture your relationship during the difficult periods that inevitably plague all long-term relationships.

Yes, there will be ups and downs and periods of fluctuation where sexiness in your relationship is concerned. But, if you work at it and don't allow the rest of the world and it's problems to steal it away from you, you can keep your relationship sexy for years and years to come.
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