Conversations with Cinthia

Relationship Problems- Successful Solutions, Part 2

Have your words ever caused pain in a relationship?  All of us have experienced the pain that words can cause, whether those words are ours or are spoken by someone else.  We can study communication and learn all kinds of helpful techniques, but, at some point, most of us have to work on controlling our tongues if we're going to improve our relationships.  Today Cinthia discusses the biblical concept of speaking the truth in love and gives specific, practical tips for doing this.  The more something matters, the more it matters how we discuss it, and this includes issues that are sometimes difficult -- for example, sex, money, and housework, all of which Cinthia specifically addresses today.  Join her to discuss ways of saying what needs saying without causing unnecessary harm or disconnection.  

Relationship Problems- Successful Solutions, Part 1

Have you ever had someone try to answer you without waiting to fully hear your question?  Have you ever done that to someone else?  Hearing others is vitally important, and it sounds simple.  It's not easy, though, and we're rarely trained in it.  Today Cinthia offers some of that training we're missing and helps us learn to slow down and understand the people with whom we have relationships.  If you want to be a better listener (or the people around you want you to be a better listener), don't miss this episode.  

Top Relationship and Sex Killers, Part 3

This may be the last of a series, but today Cinthia is covering the top sex and relationship killer of all: selfishness. Sometimes we're more selfish than we know, especially since Cinthia includes refusal to take care of ourselves under the heading of selfishness since, sooner or later, it tends to reduce what we have to give and force others to take care of us. So what is selfishness? Cinthia explores definitions that are likely to hit home with all of us at some level. She also talks about specific ways we can begin to address our own selfishness to give our relationships a chance. This is an essential topic for anyone who wants to make a relationship work, ever. Ironically, we can't be our own best versions when we are overly focused on ourselves. Join Cinthia to look at what to do with our own selfishness.

Top Relationship and Sex Killers: Loving Yourself, Honoring God and Others

Have you ever thought of your own basic self-care as a way to love other people, or of the way refusing to address past emotional baggage affects those around you?  What is it like for the people who love you when you don't take care of yourself in basic ways, address the issues that impact you most deeply, forgive people in your past, or learn how to communicate effectively, invest time in relationships, or function as an emotional adult?  Cinthia explores the importance of dealing with ourselves honestly so that people in relationship with us don't have to do our parts of relationships as well as their own.  

Top Relationship and Sex Killers, Part 2

If we want to know how to make something great, it helps to know what helps and hurts it.  Cinthia started yesterday talking about things that can threaten our relationships, and she continues today by looking at relationship factors, hormonal changes that can come with aging, infidelity and pornography, etc.  She explains that many sexual challenges can be overcome in a strong relationship but that things that kill the relationship tend to take sex down with them eventually.  Because of this, she continues with a look at things that can harm relationships in general; these include things like being controlling, trying to fix the other person, having unrealistic expectations, disrespecting differences in gender, personality, and temperament, and several more.  Join Cinthia to increase your awareness of the things that can challenge and even threaten your relationship, and join us again for the last episode in this series!

Relationship Rules, Part 3, AND Sex Killers, Part 1

Today Cinthia finishes one series and begins a related one.  First, she finishes talking about the kinds of relationship rules that increase emotional health.  Today she addresses recognizing the difference between when others are being truly dysfunctional toward us and when they are just being different than we are, often due to gender, temperament, or personality.  She also covers being likeable (as opposed to just insisting that people should like you) and several important guidelines and hints for making relationships work.  Next she discusses the way relationships and sex are supposed to work together and moves into things that can destroy both.  This is the end of one great series and the start of another, so make sure you listen to all the episodes in both directions!

Relationship Rules: Who Needs Them?, Part 2

Yesterday, Cinthia introduced the case for having healthy relationship rules in families, intimate relationships, and other relationships.  Today, she reviews why some of us have a harder time with rules than others, then goes on to discuss how to begin observing healthier relationship rules.  She also discusses where to start if you realize the lack of health in your relationships goes beyond your own behavior (i.e. if a relationship has had unhealthy rules and another person is still operating by them in their interactions with you).   Join Cinthia to look at how and when this might apply.

Relationship Rules: Who Needs Them?, Part 1

Do we really need relationship rules?  Are they only the stuff of pop psychology and magazines, or are they necessary for healthy families, intimate relationships, and general human interaction?  Cinthia makes a case for relationship rules today, and it's a good one.  She then goes on to discuss dysfunctional rules that tend to exist in families and other relationship systems before outlining some basic healthy rules that encourage healthy relationships and interactions.  What relationship rules did you learn growing up?  What rules do you have now?  What rules do you want to use in the future?  Join Cinthia to explore the role rules can play, for good or for ill, and to consider the rules by which you want to live in relationship.

Relationships with God and Man, Part 5: Sex, Emotions, and the Bible

Have you ever noticed that sometimes there's a difference between how you want a particular relationship to be and how it actually is?  We can hope for growth in another person or in our relationship with that person, but hope and pretense are not the same thing.  Today Cinthia encourages an honest look at the relationships we actually have rather than continued expectation of intimacy where it does not exist.  Join her to ask some hard questions and then consider how to cultivate the kind of real intimacy that will satisfy your soul.  

Relationships with God and Man, Part 4: Relationships with God and Self

Healthy relationships with God and with ourselves enable us to have healthier relationships with others.  But how do we have healthy relationships with ourselves?  Today, Cinthia discusses feelings, boundaries, and the difference between guilt and shame, as well as what it means to make peace with ourselves.  Learning to forgive ourselves instead of excusing our actions or believing our shame can revolutionize our insides; love, then, produces behavioral and relational changes that shame never could.  Also, Cinthia explains what it means to re-parent ourselves and act as adults toward ourselves.  If you want to become your own best version, this episode matters; start improving your relationships by learning to manage yourself.