Книга - The Secrets of Successful Families

The Secrets of Successful Families
Artem Tolokonin


A Family Psychologist Opinion
The book «Secrets of Successful Families» by family psychologist Artem Tolokonin, the Russian bestseller, is now in English! You will get to know the opinion of a foreign specialist, who understands not only Russian but also universal principles of a happy marriage. The author offers a practical and philosophical guide on solving vital problems in romantic relationships. On the basis of true stories you can track the main mistakes that spouses make and get useful tips on everyday behavior. Learn how to move from addiction to mature love and achieve a balance between your personality and family.





Артем Толоконин

The Secrets of Successful Families





Copyright © 2020 by Artem Tolokonin





Reader’s Note


We all come from a family – whether a wealthy one or not, a happy one or otherwise. We initially know what a family is and what it should be. What in fact is this knowledge: the truth or a parent scenario which will ruin your own marriage if you follow it? In this book the author studied fundamentals of a family. He is sure that each and every family relationship can be improved, restored and built on under the laws of unconditional and mature love.




Author’s Note


This book is a result of my years-long practice of helping people to resolve their family relationship issues and of family experience: my family helped me understand simple principles of building balanced relationships. I wish each reader of this book would find harmony and family happiness and see a way to resolve their family issues if there are any, to decrease the number of divorces and increase the number of happy families. To my mind, love is the reason for building family relations and the relations themselves are the consequence. Love is the only right shining beacon for your thoughts, feelings, and actions. The main secret of a successful family is developing the feeling of love in an individual during all their life.

I would like to express my gratitude to Aleksandra, my beloved wife, to Eva, Alla and Artem, my children, as well as to my clients for their trust, and to God for the gift of love!




Introduction



Opponents or Partners? A Dismal Trend

Nowadays, the issue of family culture is essential. Books about adultery and dissipation have grown popular, their authors scavenge marital mistakes, put human vices on show, turning problems within a family into an essential attribute of married life. At its core, this is literature for teenagers that stirs emotions and disturbs mind. It is eagerly bought to experience these emotions. People escape to a fictional pathological world instead of facing the truth.

To realize that a family is not a domestic tyranny, not a prison, not a code of prohibitions and restrictions, a different, evolutionary view of family relations is needed. Leo Tolstoy’s famous quote “Happy families are all alike” gives rise to a controversial and, in fact, incorrect conclusion in modern public eye: all of them are equally boring. Nevertheless, at my psychotherapeutic sessions, almost all my clients admit dreaming of a happy family life and love. This book is exactly about love, too! It is about what most people are truly concerned about: how to create a happy and balanced family!


The Waiting Room: self-fulfillment or love?

A lot of people buy yellow press to look for the answer to their problems there, “Oh, and that one has already had an affair? Has Abramovich left his wife, too? Why, I am doing fine, actually. I am normal.”

The Author: This mass trend shows how global family problems are in modern society.

The Reader: You mean, anybody can save their marriage?

The Author: Of course, they can, given the will. This is exactly the situation you have to work out. There is no wish to do so because a tradition to fight for the family has not been developed in our culture. People get divorced because this is the easiest way.

Young people who are getting married do not usually think about the deep meaning of what they are doing. Then, as children and grandchildren are born, they pick up the family scenario, and a chain reaction happens. Only a change in the way of thinking will help overcome deep-rooted family problems.

The Reader: It seems that family members used to be very closely economically-linked with each other. The woman was absolutely dependent on the man, she did not have her own money, she had nowhere to go. There was no even need to. Accordingly, people considered marriage necessary and somehow even inevitable, while divorce was the last resort. Now there is no such dependence. Neither the husband nor the wife feel bound or consider it necessary to conceal their dissatisfaction with each other. However, dysfunctional relationship within a family serve as a constant source of stress, take away a lot of energy, that you would prefer to invest in self-fulfillment or in something else because you only live once and…

The Author: What does such “self-fulfillment” provide for love?

The Reader: Well, I don’t know. The self-fulfillment opportunity is the chance of the same self-enrichment, development.

The Author: That’s it. Some people plunge head over heels into such spiritual practice and forget about reality. They lose track of life.

The Reader: Can’t work or activity become a spiritual practice? Doesn’t an individual expand their horizons this way?

The Author: Your craving to self-fulfillment indicates that deep in your soul you want to have a family.

The Reader: Everybody wants it, for sure!

The Author: Then what are you afraid of? Go ahead and build a family relationship. You need to get out of the power of the scenario you are now ruled by. Analyze accurately, consider what comes from what and change yourself – that’s it. From my point of view, family life is the most powerful spiritual practice!




The Waiting Room: Love Is a Support Field

I have wonderful friends, but there are very few married women among them although they all dream of a family. It appears to me that not everything depends on a woman in changing her lifestyle and creating a family. I am also saving a collection of those who are happily married…


The Author: Is it a collection of rudiments?

The Reader: No, this is a collection of family relationships that have all the features of a successful family you named. The husband and wife are friends, they have good sex, it is clear that they are in love just by the way they look at each other. Although they are already way older than 40, they give birth to their second child just for pleasure, simply because the first one has grown up… However, I know only three families like that, and in one of them the husband died after ten years of such a happy marriage. Alas, most examples of family life around me do not inspire me to get married. The husband and wife do not understand each other, they annoy each other, fight, and, as a rule, one of them completely subordinates his or her life to the needs of the other. A lot of women say, “I’d rather be alone than like this – I’d be merrier, healthier, happier.”

The Author: First of all, any situation within a family can be changed. The thing is that when one of the partners starts changing, the other keeps up with him or her. People communicate with each other at the subconscious level much more than consciously. If you are trying to get something from your partner believing that he or she should do what you think is right, this is not love but an internal racket. When you accept a person the way they are, when you love them, they begin to brighten up, surrounded by your energy, and start changing.




The Waiting Room: Suffering in Sympathy

Today, when talking with my daughter, I recalled a case from our friends’ life. When it was revealed that the wife had high blood sugar and the risk of diabetes appeared, all carbohydrates were excluded from her menu. The husband also gave up eating sugar and carbohydrates in sympathy with her and even grew more handsome and lost 10 kg. My daughter says, ”So, what surprises you? Can it be any other way? I don’t need a family where one doesn’t share the life of the other!”


The Author: So people must be sure: if one in the family suffers, the other must resign to suffering too?

The Reader: Yes, share it…

The Author: I think this is a somewhat slanted position. It has a right to be, but it is not necessary. Each family member should feel comfortable. Nobody has to suffer.

The Reader: Even if it means to agree to some restrictions to support their spouse?

The Author: Yes, it happens so, only if there is a sincere desire, a drive and no one is forcing anyone. Then, after going around this circle, the relationship breaks new ground.

The Reader: I think the husband did it precisely because the relationship was already at a high level there. However, such cases can be counted on the fingers of one hand.

The Author: In fact, there are much more of them. I have been observing these examples in my own practice for more than 10 years. Probably now is the time for me to share these cases!

The Reader: To give good examples?

The Author: Yes, such examples are a kind of source to which one can turn, find answers to their questions if they are experiencing difficulties in family life and realize what can be done about it. Find out the ostents and laws of love. Not see the norm where it is not there. Not comfort oneself with myths. Modern marriage is a partnership marriage, but the partnership must be reliable and strong.

A balanced marriage is a family created by two psychologically mature and self-reliant people. Two free individuals love each other with unconditional love and become even freer thanks to their partnership. They never feel cramped or sad together.

If a marriage is based on dependence, such as, “I can’t live without you, you must…“, that’s it, the marriage is heading for a break-up. When you simply love and enjoy it, you do everything on your part to develop this feeling, make money, and engage in self-realization. This gives rise to a mutual movement towards each other and creates a balanced environment. If all this happens consciously, then you have an amazing feeling of happiness, peace, confidence, and harmony.

However, family relationships do not emerge spontaneously and do not die away unexpectedly. It is an area of responsibility of both spouses. This isn’t about any specific abilities or any gift of being a husband or a wife. I treat family relationship evolution as a deep-laid spiritual process available to anyone. All the prejudices that people surround themselves with, like “this is prohibited,” “this is impossible,” are their personal limitations imposed on themselves. If you are the master of your life, if you claim to be called a Homo sapiens, and most importantly, if you want your life to bring you joy and pleasure and not look like a series of sad days similar to each other – then you can solve any problems.

Observe, realize, and work!




The Story of Us (directed by Rob Reiner), 1999

Between the parting of the spouses, the decision they made to divorce and the divorce itself, there is a border area when you can work out the situation, sort it out and understand whether you should divorce after you have worked on yourself and on the family as a whole.

Ben and Katie find themselves in a situation like this. They have been married for 15 years. Every attempt to get closer made by one or the other spouse turns into a fight. Only when the characters find a nerve to give up finger-pointing at all, they finally start enjoying their life as a couple. The parting and preparation for a divorce turn out to be a good time to realize that none of them owes anything to each other. The solution is to love your partner the way he or she is.





Part 1

My method of solving domestic issues of any complexity







How do you define if there are certain issues in your family? It’s as simple as that! Do you feel lonely? Are you tired? Do you hurry home after work? Do you make plans for the future? Do you feel good at home? How well do you sleep? Do you often fall ill?

If you are in no hurry to get home, if you think about the future with a sad heart, if the person close to you annoys you and you understand that you annoy them, and even feel unwell, these are signs of family issues.

But first, you need to ask yourself where do these issues come from? Why did they occur exactly in my family? Why is it happening exactly in my life? How do I make things right? These questions need to be answered as soon as possible.

It is often difficult to determine all by yourself where the roots of the problems are. You can seek advice from a specialist or be guided by a book from which you will learn what love is, what stages it goes through, how childhood traumas and family standards of previous generations affect gender behavior in your family. So, after you understand how to work with it, how to get rid of the destructive scenario of your family life, you will want to become the master of your life and be able to decide and establish the quality of family relationship all by yourself!

A person most likely will come to a conclusion: why should I break up family relationship if I can save it? There is no need to look for any reasons or extrinsic stimuli for love to awaken. Actually, a person can love and be loved 24/7, but only if they choose so for themselves.

This is what my approach is about: you need to teach a person to love, and then, as a rule, they won’t have to destroy anything. It’ll just become another sphere of activity which can become a wonderful work and even a lifework. As a company that needs to be developed: today five people are employed there, tomorrow it may be twenty-five of them, it is the growth and expansion of the company that makes business stronger.

You have to invest in family relationship just as in business. Not only money and other material resources but also feelings, time, attention, and love. These investments will bring you great delight as you can get even more attention and love in return. This thrill goes along with you if you do it consciously, if it is your choice.

If a person is prone to the influence of a negative family scenario (usually unconsciously), they believe that their minimum contribution to the family is normal. They say over and over again that the situation cannot be changed for the better. “I cannot mend my ways; I am the way I am!” It’s self-deception. This is just an immature view, a “couldn’t care less” attitude not only to one’s own fate but for the fate of future generations because this scenario is destructive!

When it is inherited, children will begin to implement it too. Sooner or later, in the flow of their love – mind you, everyone wants to love! – there is the same dam arising just as it was with their parents. Family perceptions of previous generations will still emerge. Therefore, the spouses who admit that their relationship is not open to change, who do not invest in it, simply pass their problems on to future generations this way.

While we are children, adults educate us and show us how to behave, how to treat ourselves and the world, how to build family relationships. Then, having absorbed the emotional atmosphere of our childhood, we grow up and leave our parents’ family to create our own. Parents and kindred program the child’s future gender behavior and form the so-called family scenario. Since it is laid down in early childhood, then, as a rule, an adult does not fully realize it. That is, the question of love or its absence in one particular family is actually much more important! If a person has reached maturity, if he or she has a desire to solve their family issues and not just go their separate ways, transform their relationship, then he or she starts working with them. This is the beginning, the starting point opening the way to a better tomorrow!

Everything can be remedied. Everyone has a chance to change their lives and relationships by changing themselves. A professional can help understand what exactly is going on in the family, what it is caused by, and teach how to transform internal contradictions into understanding and partnership. He or she can help learn to love here and now, no strings attached, that is, to reveal a mature feeling of love.

However, to make a person follow the path of their spiritual development, their own intention is needed above all.

Then all the nightmares that have been tormenting them so much simply leave their life. Everyone stumbles, everyone makes mistakes, there is nothing wrong with that. By correcting them, a person gains experience, follows a way that neither they nor their descendants will then have to go through again. Later on, life will be setting new tasks – usually in the sphere of business and creativity.

It is an established fact that family people live longer. A person experiences the greatest stress at home but not at work – after all, we are most open-hearted and defenseless at home. Thus, a person’s anxiety and depression will never go away until their family background changes. When harmony is restored in the family, family life ceases to be a cause of distress and turns into a source of resources and support. Happiness and love start flowing as if from a cornucopia.

This is my method! I don’t advocate for ruining anything. Even in the most difficult cases when it seems that, actually, the family no longer exists, it is possible to analyze the situation, create a program to restore an adequate psychosexual age and move towards the discovery of a masterpiece called love. Thus, the person changes their family relationship themselves, and so my help ends there. Ironically, partners can develop and learn to love only in a real family relationship! If they simply divorce, the true crisis roots will remain unexplored. A change of partner, like a change of a facade, does not change anything inside.

You can mend and restore absolutely any family relationship! There are no prejudices here. If you believe in it, you can break any deadlock, given the will. Even if an army of mistresses intervened in a family relationship, spouses hate each other and send each other off to a lunatic asylum – such things happened too! – you can get the situation well in hand and return everything to a natural, calm state of partnership, understanding, and care in six months or a year.

My method is to put a person in a state of love, so that their eyes open and light up. This is work with human energy. It is only my own spiritual practice that helps me do therapy effectively.

Without it you can only speculate or, even worse, manipulate. You have to help a person realize the feeling of love within themselves, help plunge into it – then they will understand where they need to move and what to work on in themselves. Love as a gift is given to any person, and the development of this gift is the most important challenge for a person, the meaning of their life! The most important thing is for everyone to learn how to love; then there will be fewer divorces, fights, and wrecked lives. I want everyone who is reading this book to feel responsible for their feelings, make love a guiding light of their lives, and advance steadily along this route through their life!

When people seek my help in salving their marriage, I recommend taking a break in considering a divorce for a while and then develop an individual program to overcome the crisis. It includes both personal work with each of the partners and general family therapy. In a while, each of the spouses realizes their contribution to family problems and learns to treat themselves and their partner in a different way, based on love. Slights and claims go away! When a person sees their own unique inner world, they start to see how unique their partner is. Natural interest in each other and mutual understanding are regained, and then the issue of divorce becomes irrelevant.

There are occasions where only one of the partners seeks advice, the other one may not know about it. This is not an obstacle to family changes. Even if one of the partners starts changing, renounces slights and learns to love, this affects both spouses. Thus, their relationship improves naturally.

If you cannot consult a specialist, then this book will help you sort out your situation on your own and will direct your thoughts and actions in a creative way. It is based on many years of my private practice and my own life experience.




Part 2

On Love. The Main Answer to the Main Question








Stages of Development of a Feeling


Love is a feeling that unites a person and the big wide world they live in. It is love that symbolically connects a human and their spirit and provides them with an alternative look at the outside reality. Love is the cornerstone of anyone’s life; it is the norm on which any relationship should be built. It is when adults fall in love, they decide to create a family. Lovers unite, realize their feelings in sexual intercourse, and then they have a child. Love is a phenomenon. However, love is also something that inspires people to develop and to move ahead. Even if we are talking about the professional sphere, one should not expect much success in any profession without love for their trade.

So, love is the foundation for building any normal family relationship. When feelings arouse in teenagers, they tend to enter into partnerships – yet outside the family, before the family. Therefore, you need to understand the laws of love development in a person because then you can determine at what level of development they are. If this level is not enough to form a strong and reliable family relationship, then I, as a professional, help the person correct their behavior model, awaken a feeling that would allow them to create a harmonious family relationship and a feeling of unconditional love.

Unconditional love is totally different from addicted love. Addicted love says, “I cannot live without you, you are everything for me, and you do something that I cannot accept.” This creates problems in family life and everything they entail.

There is a concept of psychosexual age (see the graph). Very often it does not coincide with the person’s biological age. Psychosexual age is determined by the level of gender relationships that a person forms and demonstrates. A person may be 50–60 years old, and they behave like teenagers in gender relationships: they often change partners, fall in love, and lose their head. An analysis of how love was formed in a particular person throws a light upon their problems.





Конец ознакомительного фрагмента. Получить полную версию книги.


Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию (https://www.litres.ru/artem-tolokonin/the-secrets-of-successful-families/) на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.