During this Thanksgiving time of year, we talk about gratefulness.  And I’m pretty sure you never hear someone say they are grateful for relationship problems when this topic comes up…

Today, I want to talk to you about being grateful for relationship problems because they give us an opportunity to grow and change in better ways.

Living in an energy of gratitude is one of my favorite subjects to discuss because practicing tuning into our feelings of gratefulness is one of the most powerful ways to have emotional and physical wellness.  

Of course  it is good to feel grateful for all the wonderful things in our lives at this time of year (and all year for that matter). We can be grateful for our health,family, wealth and all the good times. However, we all have challenges and problems in our lives and in our relationships.

I would like to add one more thing that I would encourage you to be grateful for and that is your relationship problems. 

You might be wondering…why should we be grateful for problems? 

And, in particular relationship problems?

Here’s why…problems help us develop. Problems give us time to pause and take a deeper look inside of ourselves as well as inside of the inner world of our loved ones.

When things are going easily and smoothly, we might as well enjoy it. That is a wonderful thing. However, it’s not necessarily a time of growth and development. The truth is that life and relationships in particular ask us to grow.

Relationships beckon us to become the best versions of ourselves. We are not here to be stagnant;  we are here to evolve and outgrow the person we might have been or even are today.

Let me give a simple personal example.

Earlier in my  marriage, my wife and I would have the problem of bickering and fighting. It was a problem because it caused both her and I emotional and physical distress.

It also interfered with our capacity to enjoy our relationship and  family. that pain motivated me look at what was going on.

It motivated me to seek to discover my contribution to these problems.

What I learned is how much fear was running my communication patterns. I learned how poorly I listened to my wife when she said something that made me feel uncomfortable. 

Due to this process of increased self awareness and applying what I was learning I have much more “emotional muscle” which enables me to manage my own emotions so that I can become a better listener.

This is one of the many examples of how relationship problems have helped me develop a part of me that really needed to develop.

In turn, this emotional muscle has helped me deal with challenging feelings that I face in my career both- in my therapy practice and my being a professor at USC.

So not only do relationship problems lead  to better relationships, this growth can help us in other areas of our life as well. To continue with that example, working on this relationship problem also led me to be more comfortable in my own skin despite flaws and Imperfections.

It’s such a better way to live life realizing that it is not a catastrophe if a person is angry or upset with me. This was another benefit that this particular relationship problem gifted to me.

Of course I am not saying that we should be happy that we have problems.

What I’m saying is that there are benefits that we can experience by learning from these problems.

Even the problem of infidelity which is a painful relationship problem I often see in my practice is one that could be seen as a problem that can often times leads to growth and development which in turn can lead to happy relationships and lives.

I’ve seen many people who have cheated become people who are more tuned in and more sensitive and more mature. I’ve seen people betrayed who have learned the power of forgiveness.

I suggest that you think of the top three relationship problems you may have right now.

See if you can reframe these problems as opportunities to learn or develop some part of you. Is there something you pay attention to now that maybe you would not have paid attention to it without that problem causing distress?

Relationship problems can draw our attention to something that can be very important. Maybe it’s something that you did not see your parents pay attention to.

Here is a simple exercise I want you to do:

1. Write those three problems down and think about the benefits of these problems.
2. Once you have done that, I would encourage you to write down the sentence- I am grateful for this particular relationship problem because… then just write whatever it is that could benefit you now or in the very near future. 

I want to conclude this article by writing about one more very important benefit that relationship problems can do for us.

It can sometimes lead to activating a part of you that has been dormant sometimes for your entire life.

A very good example of this is this particular couple that came to see me recently because the wife was bored and said that the husband was “just no fun.”

She was ready to possibly leave the relationship.

This led to helping the husband explore how he became so serious and overly responsible in his family of origin. He was able to activate that playful childlike part of him after a relatively short period of time. These relationship problems and the threat of divorce actually led him to “claim” a part of him that he had given up unconsciously so that he can survive his family.

He is now more fully himself; a person who can be responsible when he needs to as well as a person who could be playful, silly and adventurous with his wife.

In summary, there are two important reasons to be discover ways to be grateful for your relationship problems:

1. There truly is value in our relationship problems and it makes sense to see these problems in a more accurate way.
2. There are immense benefits to these problems.  These benefits help us in our relationships as well as in other areas of our lives.

Enjoy your Thanksgiving and holiday season and appreciate the pleasures and problems of your life.