Blog
Kelly Vandiver
For many couples, parenting inequality in child rearing is a hot button topic. And now, six months into a pandemic, homeschooling children, balancing work-life, and days on end, face to face with our kids and spouses without relief from one another, is even more challenging. In our private practice, the prevailing theme among wives has been the disparity in shared parenting responsibilities with their husbands. Without good relational tools to combat this issue, resentment can build and cause even greater division with our spouses. The goal should always be to move closer to one other and grow as a couple, and model this for our children.
So, it’s important to understand the origin of this imbalance, how it shows up, and what you can do about it if this occurs in your marriage.
What does inequality in child rearing mean? Basically, it means one parent is carrying much more of the child rearing load than the other and there is an imbalance in the shared parenting responsibilities.
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A big problem that we see every day in our private relationship coaching practice, is the collision of different parenting styles between couples and the numerous marital problems these differences cause.
Like we tell our clients, the parenting problems always mirror the marital problems – because how we do one thing is how we do all things. Everything overlaps, so how we see our partners in our marriages is also how we are likely to see our partners as parents.
The biggest issue at hand here that most people don’t understand, is that when it comes to parenting, who we are as parents all depends on how we are shaped by our parents, our childhoods, and how we developed psychologically in response to our perceptions of our experiences growing up.
As adults, while we do choose who to be as parents, most people don’t understand that who they are being is who they’ve been programmed to be and that they are operating on auto pilot or default mode, instead of intentionally and consciously choosing who to be as a parent and as a partner. So what we...
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As we are witnessing in so many aspects of life right now, and with everything that’s happening in the world, the old systems and constructs that have been at the bedrock of our culture for hundreds of years – are crumbling from underneath us.
We have long been existing inside of a culture and in a world that does not value human life. That is evidently clear with the latest course of events and what’s been being exposed and coming into the light.
And if we live in a world that doesn’t value human life, then by default, we also live in a world that doesn’t value the sanctity of marriage or the family unit.
One of the oldest constructs and programming of our culture that directly effects marriage today – that is crumbling down and longer serves us is: SEPARATISM.
Many of the marital problems that exist today are caused largely by the programming of separatism. From our gender, to our race, to our social class, to our credit scores, separatism has been deeply ingrained and programmed subconsciously into all of us from childhood. Not to mention most of us...
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This week, we are wrapping up our 5-Part Series, The 5 Losing Strategies In Communication and in today’s episode, we are talking about the number 5 Losing Strategy: WITHDRAWAL.
In this episode we talk about:
- How withdrawal can be VERY in your face and obvious, and how it can also be very covert and passive aggressive.
- How you can never get more of what you want in your marriage by withdrawing.
- How the first casualty of withdrawal is PASSION.
- Specific examples of how withdrawal shows up in marriage.
- The difference between mature acceptance and withdrawal.
- How to have a “Relationship Reckoning” to help you decide whether to stay in or leave the marriage.
- What to do about this losing strategy and how to get rid of it for good!
See you on the episode!
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HOLIDAYS ARE HERE, AND YOU KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS: STRESS!
Parties, dinners, decorations, presents, overspending, rushing around, toxic family members….
Holidays can be SO stressful because they include all things that trigger!
So we wanted to do this special holiday edition episode to help you have holidays that you not only survive in, but thrive in that make you genuinely FEEL good, are joy filled, calm, peaceful, and loving.
At least 90% of the time💁🏻♀️
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The holidays are in full swing, and the countdown is on for Christmas and the New Decade that’s soon to arrive!
This is a perfect time to start to ring in some new intentions and create a new vision for you and for your marriage.
So we’ve created this Intimacy Advent Calendar just for you, and invite you celebrate your spouse all month long, and watch your intimacy grow by practicing the art of INTENTION❤️🌲❄️⭐️✨
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I asked God often, and for many for years of my life – to show me the way to true internal peace because I remember how miserable it was to always have that internal gnawing of dissatisfaction, negativity, and helplessness – like I would never know the answers for how to find it.
It was such a crappy place to live and one that was completely unnecessary. But I didn’t have the tools, and I didn’t have the knowledge to make the shift.
Knowing what I know now, the problem was that I was looking outside of myself externally for the things that would give me inner peace.
I looked for it in the amount of money I was making. In the house I lived in. In my husband – wanting him to soothe away and fix my inner anguish.
But NONE of that worked. NONE.
It wasn’t until I became acutely self aware that something absolutely needed to change, and took 100% responsibility as the creator of my reality – that things began to shift radically in my internal world.
And as my inner peace began to grow and flourish, my external world began to change in miraculous ways...
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Happy Thanksgiving week!!! We hope you’re having a relaxing time with family, and ringing in the holiday season right!
Today, we have a very special podcast interview to share with you that we did with our dear friend, the one and only, Empath Coach Lola Pickett where we talk about detoxing your love life, and how to have a conscious, connected, and fulfilling love in your life when you heal and make the decision to have it.
Click here or the picture below to listen in!
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We talk to people every day seeking marriage help who wonder HOW we find “balance” (if there is such a thing:) and make everything “work” between running our business, being parents to 8 kids, daily self-study, self-care, AND an intimate and loving marriage that is fulfilling for both of us.
After breaking down our process, there were 7 KEY SHIFTS THAT WE HAD TO MAKE in our life after coming together in order to STOP THE BAD PATTERNS from popping back up over and over again, communicate effectively, and really get on the same team so that we could experience true healing, growth, joy, and fulfillment together as a couple.
Because that’s what life is all about right???
LOVE. HEALING. GROWTH. JOY. FULFILLMENT.
A marriage we can look at and be so proud of together at the end for our days here on earth, that will be our legacy to leave behind to our kids, grandkids, and the future generations. IT’S A
BEAUTIFUL THING to get to this place.
And if you are anything like us, we know that having great love and a great marriage is one of your highest...
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This week, we are continuing our 5-Part Series, The 5 Losing Strategies In Communication and in today’s episode, we are talking about the number 4 Losing Strategy and it’s a NASTY one: RETALIATION.
In this episode we talk about:
- How there’s nothing that HARSHNESS ACHIEVES that LOVING FIRMNESS can’t achieve better.
- How retaliation is actually just revenge.
- The difference between overt and covert retaliation.
- Specific examples of how retaliation shows up in marriage.
- What to do about this losing strategy and how to get rid of it for good!
See you on the episode!
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January 2009 – I was nearing the ending phase of a toxic and physically abusive marriage to a narcissist.
January 2011 – I met the love of my life who I now have a conscious and aligned marriage with – who also just happens to be an empath and healer who is loving, kind, patient, and has a huge heart.
TALK ABOUT DRASTIC NIGHT AND DAY CHANGE!!! And changed QUICKLY.
How???
My mirror has changed DRASTICALLY to reflect who I am on the inside and my whole life has changed because of a DECISION to have something and be something very different.
I changed my life forever in 2009 when I made the DECISION to begin to get myself out of the situation I was in, to get help, find myself, figure out how I got myself into that situation, and to heal myself from the inside-out no matter what so I would never find myself in a situation like that again.
A conscious and aligned marriage, as well as a business helping others create their conscious and aligned marriages have been created and fostered with TLC since that time – and my strategy is the same now as it...
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This week, we are continuing our 5-Part Series, The 5 Losing Strategies In Communication and we are talking about the number 3 Losing Strategy: Unbridled Self-Expression.
In this episode we talk all about:
Learning to become self-aware of our own emotions and feelings
How to be own our experience of things without projecting onto our partner
The difference between unbridled self-expression and constructive self-expression
Specific examples of how unbridled self-expression shows up in marriage.
What to do about this losing strategy and how to get rid of it for good!
See you on the episode!
**We apologize in advance for the blurry picture, but the content is too good to miss out on. So make sure to tune in!
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This week, we are continuing our 5-Part Series, The 5 Losing Strategies In Communication and we are talking about the number 2 Losing Strategy: Controlling Your Partner.
In this episode we talk all about:
- Control and why it is such a tempting strategy.
- How controlling behavior can show up differently in men and women.
- The difference between blatant/overt control and the more sneaky/covert control and what they each look and sound like.
- Specific examples of how control shows up in the every day lives of our clients.
- What to do about this losing strategy and how to get rid of it for good!
See you on the episode!
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This week, we kick off our first of many series to come called: The 5 Losing Strategies of Communication.
You see, we all have what is called: “a losing strategy profile” that can seriously trip us up in relationship. And when your losing strategy profile is triggered and activated in you, it will automatically trigger the losing strategy profile in your partner.
So we created this series for you, to help you gain more self awareness around what your losing strategy profile is around communication in your relationship, and what to do about it.
Because when we get triggered by our partner, fight or flight takes over, our heart rate goes up, those old and harmful patterns will creep their way in, and before you know it, it’s disconnection city in your household with both partners left feeling frustrated and back in the same “stuck” feeling place. And this happens over and over and over again for most couples.
There’s a saying in the world of therapy and coaching that most couples have the same fight over the course of forty or fifty years. And we have found...
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Marriage and intimate relationship is truly sacred and beautiful when you’re with the a conscious and aligned partner who is on their own healing path of inward and upward growth. This is called: walking the healing path of love together. This is a wonderful and rare thing.
On the other hand, if either you or your partner are not doing your healing work, not conscious of your own flavors of dysfunction, not taking radical responsibility of your own growth – marriage will sadly – only be a mask you wear.
And underneath it all, will continue to live your inner pain, shame, guilt, trauma, and sorrow that you’ve never healed – and you’re likely with someone who is in the same boat. And you’ve likely begun to look at one another as the “problem.”
And the more time that passes being with this person, the more dysfunctional they become, you become, and the more dysfunctional the relationship becomes.
Because time doesn’t heal all wounds. Time conceals all wounds. And marriage most certainly will bring all wounds to the surface eventually.
And there you are,...
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