A Daily Dose

We cannot change directly after discovery because of the anxiety most of us experience and the anxiety we put on others. In Adrienne's situation, she was putting her anxiety in the way of her intimate relations which was blocking her to maintain a healthy intimate relationship with anyone. Once she figured out what she was doing, she first had to release this anxiety from self and then move on to the anxiety strung on others.
This leads us to the second question, focusing on self. Once Adrienne relieves the anxiety from herself she can see how she has affected others and can change that. As the old saying goes "you can't love others until you love yourself" which can be used in this situation. If that doesn't make sense, just take a look into your own relationships like the relationship with your parent/guardian. If you're not happy with yourself, how is this going to reflect upon someone whom you live with everyday and who makes important life choices as you grow up? It's the same being reflected upon in your intimate relationships, if you're not happy with yourself how is this going to reflect upon someone you plan to spend everyday with and make important life choices with? Changing yourself will be beneficial to how you're going to love and treat others intimately and you can do this without being self-centered because you're not closing yourself off from others. Instead you are releasing yourself to love others in an improved way.

Understanding new insight about oneself doesn't automatically lead to change. Seeing the reason behind why a person acts a certain way leads only to understanding and awareness, but nothing there proves to the person that their actions are wrong, or that their reasoning is invalid. If a person acts guarded and closed because they've been hurt and are afraid to open up, realizing the reasoning behind their actions doesn't prove to them they that will never get hurt again, and therefore they should readily open up to others. Also, focusing on changing oneself doesn't involve being selfish, it involves being willing to recognize faults and ready to improve them. Becoming a better person will only lead to positive effects on all intimate relationships, so it is arguably the farthest thing from being selfish.

The reason we can't automatically change once we gain insight into why we act a certain way in a relationship is because changing is DIFFICULT! A lot of people have acted the same way throughout all of their relationships not knowing why and the way they behave is sort of like a habit. Everyone has a certain way of dealing with problems even if we don't know WHY we deal with them in that particular way. You can't just say "I'm going to change", and change the next day. I think making changes in the way you act requires a lot of effort! To me, the best way to change the way you act/think/feel about soemthing is to take baby steps! You cant spin and do a 180 in one day, but if you make little changes, the 180 will seem a lot less difficult.

It takes time and insight to determine what is the actual cause to a problem. It may be the stress from work or from past relationships that are affecting your current one. In Adrienne’s case she has some stress that has remained unresolved in her original family. Her father is dying and she hasn’t rectified her relationship with him. She has a brother who is retarded and has never had a relationship with him. She views this as not affecting her life as she has never really known him. Her marriage has lost its intimacy partially because of all these stresses. She then tries to “fix� the relationship by focusing on the intimacy and doing more intimate activities together. This doesn’t work for her as her husband feels pressured and that just causes more stress. She decides instead that whenever she is feeling stressed about her marriage intimacy to call her father and talk with him. This helps because that is closer to the true cause of her stress, and relieving that stress is what will help her relationship the most, allowing her to relax and open up. She also takes a vacation to go visit her brother whom she has never had a relationship with.
Focusing on “fixing� intimacy problems never seems to be able to work. It adds more stress for the couple thinking that things aren’t working. Often it is best to find the source of the anxiety and resolve that, rather than putting so much attention on the relationship. The more attention there is on the relationship and making it work, the harder it is for intimacy to develop. It’s easier for people to be happy together if the people are happy with their own lives. Adrienne’s marital relationship doesn’t improve until she focuses on herself and her relationship with her original family, and making the ties stronger there. Only then can intimacy develop in her marriage.

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It adds more stress for the couple thinking that things aren’t working. Often it is best to find the source of the anxiety and resolve that, rather than putting so much attention on the relationship.

I agree.