This is true whether you stay together or get a divorce. To the extent you have the experience of love in your relationship, your relationship will be supportive and relatively effortless.

You create the experience of love by giving the gift of acceptance and appreciation. You destroy it by being judgmental, critical and controlling. Notice how you feel when someone is non-accepting towards you. Notice how fast the experience of love disappears.

Instantly, you get hurt. You get upset and close down. You put up your walls of protection and automatically become non-accepting and critical in return. Then the other person gets upset, puts up his or her walls of protection, and becomes even more non-accepting towards you.

Then you get even more upset. Your walls of protection get stronger and you become more critical of the other person. Then that person gets more upset and becomes more resentful of you. Then you become more hateful towards the other person.

Without knowing, you create a cycle of conflict, a cycle of resisting, attacking and withdrawing from each other. This cycle of conflict then destroys your relationship and produces tremendous suffering. If you have any relationship that isn't working, this cycle is present.

If you want to heal your relationship and end the conflict, you need to end this cycle. Fortunately, all it takes is one person.

The cycle of conflict is like a tennis volley. Two people are needed to keep the cycle going. Only one is needed to end it. When one person stops playing the game, the cycle is over. You stop playing the game when you give acceptance and appreciation instead of being critical and resentful.

You automaticaly make the shift from criticalness to acceptance when you let go of your resistance. You can do this by taking the following steps:

1. Find and heal the hurt that has been reactivated by the other person.

Ultimately, the reason you are non-accepting is because the other person has triggered a suppressed hurt in you. As you heal this hurt, the need to resist disappears. You can then interact in a way that creates love instead of destroying it.

To learn more about healing this hurt, read the sections, Heal The Hurt and Find And Heal The Inner Issues That Run Your Life.

2. Give the person full permission to be the way he or she is.

Notice that the other person is the way he or she is whether you like it or not. Your feelings are totally irrelevant. Hating the way someone is doesn't change a thing. That person is still exactly the way he or she is.

When you fight the truth of how someone is, you fuel the cycle of conflict and you lose your ability to see what needs to be done. When you are at peace with the way someone is, you see your situation clearly. You can see what needs to be done and you can do it in a way that is supportive.

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