There is a big difference between pain and suffering. Pain is when you cut your hand. You don’t worry about your hand if you know it will get better. Suffering is when you’re not sure that your hand will heal, and you worry about what is going to happen. In relationship, pain comes and goes, and this is normal. Suffering in relationship comes when you hold back love because you are worried about whether your relationship will survive the pain.

When you were dating you carved out time for each other, no matter the pressures of everyday life. You could not fall in love without that time together. This begs the question; don’t you think to sustain that love that you must also make time for one another even now?

Traditionally we give gifts at Christmas time and at birthdays. As our society has become more affluent our gifts at Christmas time have become more elaborate and more expensive, especially in the case of our children. Gone are the days when a string of beads, a book, or a soccer ball were acceptable gifts to give our children. Now it is ipods and Tamagochis and Play Stations and X Box consoles.

Letting go can feel like jumping out of a plane without a parachute. The relationship may have ended weeks or months or years ago, yet you can't get him or her out of your mind. We want to deny the relationship has ended. Letting go allows you to close one chapter of your life and to be able to start a new one with a clean page. If you keep thinking about an ex either with love or hate or fear or find yourself comparing all your dates to a former partner you are having trouble letting go.

Need to get beyond relationships that just don't work?

If you find yourself doing the same routine day after day, never remembering what you did the day before, having nothing to look forward to, living your life - but never enjoying it or anything in it...you are probably living your life and the relationships in it on autopilot...

Can chores and housework really be romantic? Can the two of you grow closer by workin' it out together? Or does all that mundane everyday stuff drag you down and spoil the fun?