healmarriage

Achieving New Year Resolutions

2012-01-16T14:15:00.000-08:00

Three Keys To Achieving Your New Year’s Resolutions:

Now that the new year has arrived, many people are thinking about changes they want to make so that they can be happier or more effective — or just better people.A new year seems like a good time to begin assessing the coming 12 months, just like midlife is a good time to assess how you are doing with your life. New Year’s resolutions are common in our society and they can be very effective in producing change.So what changes do you want to produce this year? Do you have financial goals? Relationship issues you want to explore and change? Or are there dark sides to your nature that need to be examined, cared for and nurtured into a healthier place?New Year’s resolutions usually fail because most people do not give the goals and objectives much thought. They are merely a passing fancy. “I want to lose weight.” “I want to make more money.” The trouble with these types of statements is that they have no depth of intention, no specific details, no thoughtfulness or determination to produce results. It becomes like people buying lottery tickets and fantasizing they will win big and end all their financial troubles. Good plans must have character. They have intention, procedures, insight and follow-through.First, you must know what you want to achieve. That can often be hard, especially if you prefer to live in the moment and not plan for the future. Goals must be realistic, not pie-in-the-sky wishes. Remember, “If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.” Make certain you have achievable goals that are measurable and realistic.Second, you must establish measurable steps that will carry you towards your ultimate goal. If you want to make more money, define the small steps that will lead to achievements along the way towards the ultimate goal; that way you can measure your progress. Once some small progress is made, the goal begins to have character and it gains momentum. Most goals aren’t achieved because they are too broad and too unrealistic, and there’s no plan of action to reach the end result.Finally, achieving resolutions requires visualization of the results and the unity of the unconscious and conscious mind working in harmony to produce the result you want. Always remember that the unconscious is the most powerful part of our consciousness. Setting the unconscious on course requires visualization, affirmations and daily meditation towards the success you want. No easy task. And that is precisely why most people fail in their resolutions. They do not have the determination or follow-through to achieve the objectives they think they want.So if you want to succeed this year with goals and objectives, make certain they are measurable and clear, that you have small goals to achieve before the big goal is reached, and that you work every day with both your conscious and especially your unconscious mind to achieve what you want for your life. Stephen Martin is a marriage and family therapist in Moss Beach. He has practiced on the Coastside for over 30 years. He can be reached at 650-726-1212 or by email at stephen@healmarriage.com. His website, www.healmarriage.com, offers more information.

2012-01-15T18:08:00.000-08:00

Psychology Today published chapter five of my book "The Everything Guide to a Happy Marriage".
The topic is fair fighting inside marriage.
Check out the article.
Also check out the free marital test at www.healmarriage.com.

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/awakening-psyche/201201/how-not-ruin-marriage-veteran-counselors-ten-rules-fair-fighting

Why is the Holiday Season both Wonderful and Difficult?

2010-11-06T13:02:00.000-07:00

The holiday season is a wonderful time of the year to reflect upon all that we are grateful for, but it can also be a stressful time for too many families. At the heart of this paradox is the expectation we have unconsciously accepted about the Christmas season. We expect everyone to be happy, jolly and generous. We expect generosity and abundance. But reality is not always accommodating. Too often, life presents challenges rather than illusions.
In order to avoid depression during the holidays, it is imperative to accept reality as it is and not as we wish it to be. Life has a way of delivering what you “need” rather than what you “want,” according to the Rolling Stones.
During the holiday season there are two big illusions that cause most of the depression: the expectation of financial abundance, and the expectation that families should be happy and emotionally healthy.
Advertising pushes the abundance theme in order to promote sales. If this goal is unattainable, one natural outcome is emotional exhaustion or depression.
The second illusion is the fantasy that every family will be happy and emotionally healthy during this season. Because the majority of people are unconscious about their human nature, this illusion leads to disappointment when we encounter family dysfunctionality. Families are dysfunctional. There are no “always happy” families. We all have emotional wounds, and most people cannot adequately deal with this pain. When we uncover the pain and agony of human interactions, we can be thrown into depression. Seeing the family dysfunction at Christmas is especially painful.
The truth is that families are a mixture of light and dark. Every family has its dark side and the majority of humans are incapable of accepting and dealing with this dark side. Very few people are trained to deal with the trauma of their families. When they are confronted with this pain, they can become depressed.
The key to avoiding depression is to accept that these two illusions are illusions. You are very fortunate if you have enough financial resources to be as generous as you want to be. You are also extremely lucky if your family is loving and kind most of the time. Very few people have both financial stability and family emotional health. Only Disney characters have everything they want. Hollywood sells dreams, and it is imperative that you do not automatically buy into the dream world created by the entertainment industry.
The emotional pain in life is always a function of not accepting what is true. Life is suffering, but once you accept that this is the nature of life, you cease to suffer, and you can then be grateful for what you do have. And probably what you have is some financial freedom, and a measure of family joy. No one has everything. Only Hollywood can create such an illusion. And in order to avoid the pain so many people experience during the holiday season, accept what you do have, and work on improving what needs to be improved.
And while the holidays can be difficult — for all the reasons mentioned above — that doesn’t mean they have to be. Once you understand the dangers of illusions, you can give what you have to give with your heart wide open. Most people want love and acceptance during the holiday season, and that costs nothing to give. So have a wonderful holiday season and love your family to the best of your capacity. Happy holidays to all!

Good communication is complicated

2010-07-15T21:32:00.000-07:00

“What we have here is a failure to communicate”…….so goes the most famous line from the movie Cool Hand Luke.

Communication should be simple, right? Perhaps if we are thinking of the communication of simple facts, but when it comes to emotions and aspects of a personal relationship, communication is in fact extremely difficult.

When humans develop an intimate relationship they never consider how difficult communication really is. Most of us expect our communication system to be easy, uncomplicated and rarely misunderstood. In reality, good communication is a skill the majority of people never acquire. And then, we wonder why other people misunderstand us so often.

In my experience listening to couples attempting to communicate with each other in couples therapy, the number one reason people misunderstand each other is because of what therapists call ‘projection’.

Simply stated, projection is the taking of our own attitudes and feelings, view points and emotions and believing because that is how we feel then other people we are communicating with will feel the same way. In other words, we unconsciously assume everyone sees the world just as we do.

Not so. We are all unique and none of us has the same experiences as anyone else. This requires we understand that everyone we talk with does not think and feel what we do, that in fact taking our thoughts and helping another understand them is very complicated and often misunderstood.

The largest arena I see this dysfunction is in the belief that our partner is criticizing us, when they are not. What happens is we are actually critical of ourselves and assume because we are critical of ourselves, so are other people, especially loved ones. We then attack these people for feeling the way we feel ourselves about ourselves.

Now that is a mouthful. But let me give an example. Perhaps you have poor self esteem. Meaning, you do not value yourself accurately, but have negative images of yourself. Because you feel this way about yourself, you will often read other people as feeling the same way about you, when in reality they do not. But because we are so invested in believing others view us negatively, we assume the worst when in reality we ourselves feel badly about ourselves and assume everyone else does as well.

This continually occurs in therapy. People believe their partner sees them in a negative light, when if checked out by an impartial therapist, we find their partner does not believe what they negatively believe about themselves. It takes much time and is slow hard work to correct these misconceptions. But in truth many couples project their own negative feeling about themselves onto their partner and believe they are hostile towards them, when in truth it is our own thinking we are doing battle with.

The only way out of projection is to ask and then believe what your partner really feels about you. Just because you feel negatively about yourself, does not mean they do as well. However, the game of projection is so powerful it takes many sessions to correct these misconceptions. And it can only be done if you analysis what you feel about yourself, and then checking out with your partner what they really feel about you.

This is not easy work. Thus many couples fight about issues that are not real; they are projections from one party onto their partner. Once you see how this works in human relationships, you can begin by questioning yourself first before you project your own feelings onto your partner. Then, communication while more complex has a chance of being more accurate and the fighting can begin to slow down.

Marriage is like a three-legged race.

2010-07-15T21:30:00.000-07:00

When I was a child I remember picnics where we ran the three-legged race. Two people had their middle legs attached, and the objective was to run in unison with your middle legs tied together, so that between the two of you the couple had three legs. The race required coordination so the couple ran together in harmony. It was not an easy task, but eventually the couple learnt how to run together by coordinating their bodies as one.

Marriage requires a similar skill. Marriage is a team effort, where the two of you are stronger than each alone. A good marriage can be defined as a union where two people are stronger as a couple, than as two separate individuals. If however, the two are divisive, and competitive with each other, you weaken the team. And thus a poor marriage is where two are worse for being a couple, than being a coordinated team.

The secret to running as a three-legged team is collaboration. Being critical of your partner only slows the team down. It is like your right hand hitting your left hand and pretending your body is not hurt. When you attack your partner, you attack yourself. If after running a three-legged race, you lose and criticize your partner for not helping, you are guaranteeing that the team will fail. Better to look at the problems that caused you as a team to fail, than criticizing your partner individually. In a three-legged race you either win together or you lose together. So too in marriage. You either both succeed, or you both fail. Blaming your partner for a marriage failure is like the left leg criticizing the right leg for not winning the race. It may make the left leg feel better, but it will not remedy the failure.

Marriage is not for everyone. Some people prefer to be single than to work together as a team. Unfortunately we as a society have pathologies singleness. We assume single people are lonely, unhappy and looking for a marital partner. This is simply immature, excessively romantic and idealistic. I know many people who are happier as an individual than as a couple, and assuming this is unnatural for humans is ridiculous.

If you wish to be married, then you must work at becoming a team. You must learn how to be a couple, as two people have to learn how to run a three-legged race as one. The key to running a three-legged race is to move your combined middle feet together as a unit, not separately as an individual. This requires coordination, a spirit of teamwork, and patience as you learn how to support each other rather than criticize and tear each other down.

All team sports require the individuals give up most of their personal ego for the benefit of the team. For example, on a football team, it is imperative for a quarterback to be blocked by his front line. Every successful quarterback always congratulates his front line when they win, and when they lose they are very discrete about criticizing in public their team members. Successful football teams work together as a group. With group sport teams, they all succeed or they all fail together.

Marriage is the same as team sports. Team is the essence of marital success. The team cooperates, coordinates and collaborates. In so doing they either succeed together or they fail in their mission as a team.

The Day I Fell Out of the Sky

2009-03-04T17:09:00.000-08:00

THE DAY I FELL OUT OF THE SKY.

Or

The Near Death Experience of Worldwide Capitalism and what we all can learn from this financial crisis.

In 1993 I learnt how to fly off the cliff’s at Fort Funston, San Francisco with a paraglider. A parachute with a built in harness that one sits in while riding the wind along the Pacific Oceans cliffs. What a thrill. To fly like a bird. To become totally one with the experience. This was what the Buddhists call living in the present moment. The excitement was so intense; there is no time to think of anything but what I was doing right NOW.
I had skied for many years at Lake Tahoe. Beginning in 1969 at Mt. Rose, I learnt on the bunny slopes. Eventually I advanced to the black diamond areas. But as with most experiences, after many years of skiing, I grew bored and decided to find a replacement that would take me to new dimensions, new heights, with new thrills.
Paragliding is flying without wings. You ride the wind along the cliffs turning the paraglider with hand held straps. Soaring like a bird, I felt I was in heaven. And in a sense I was. Until, on Memorial Day 1993 I hit turbulence and my paraglider stalled, and I fell out of the sky.
I was seventy feet up in the air, and the wind blew my parachute back off the cliffs into the place where there is not wind. A place of no wind is hard to conceive. Wind, like water has a predictable path. You can see water as it moves downhill. You cannot see the wind as it follows its predictable flow like water finding the path of least resistance.
Back twenty feet from the cliffs I entered the dangerous calm. As soon as I entered this space my paraglider collapsed as the air that kept me aloft left the paraglider. I instantly fell 70 feet onto my back landing in a bed of ice plant. I recall the turbulence before the fall. I do not recall the fall. The next moment I was lying on the ground falling to earth doing spinal cord injury to my body as the disc between C-6 and C-7 exploded onto my spinal cord when I broke my neck.
I recall my first thought well. “I never anticipated this in my life time. This is something very new for me. What is this about?” I could not move. I was paralyzed. Immediate other paragliders were by my side keeping me still. Someone called 911 and in minutes the ambulance was there to take me to Seton Hospital in South San Francisco.
It was six months before I learnt how to walk again. Kaiser Hospital in Vallejo, California has a state of the art facility for spinal cord injury patients. In Vallejo, I began life all over again. Learning first how to sit upright without fainting, then how to use a wheel chair, and then slowly learning how to walk again. Finally after 6 months I learnt how to live in harmony with my life altering injury and the continual pain associated with incomplete quadriplegia.
I learnt many lessons from this experience but without a doubt the most important lesson was that when confronted with a life altering experience, self pity is self defeating. Somehow I instantly knew that if I climbed down into the self pity pit, no one could come and get me out. Self pity is a deep dark hole in life that only you can extricate yourself from. Not only that, but self pity gets old and boring to you and your friends and family. If you sing the song of poor me for too long, you will end up friendless. Besides, you cease learning what is always present within life’s major lessons when stuck in self pity.
Years later I came to learn that the word Nirvana means “place of no wind”. What I now know is that with this accident I visited Nirvana, the place of no wind. In that magical place of no wind (Nirvana), the paraglider collapsed, and I came crashing down to earth in my fall from the sky.
Like all survivors of near death experiences, the catastrophe was also my greatest blessing. I learnt lessons I could not have leant any other way. I know this because until I broke my neck and produced spinal cord injury, my thinking was very different. This was life altering. This was a life lesson given to me in seconds that enabled me to change my entire view of life. Even my mother acknowledges that this experience changed my personality. Instantly, life long issues vanished. I began anew.
Every crisis has within it an enormous opportunity. The economic disaster the entire capitalistic world is currently going through is a near death experience of capitalism. This is our once in a life time event. It is being compared to the great depression. Maybe it shall be worse, maybe it shall be as bad, but either way, experts tell us this is our 1930 experience happening to us in 2008.
Now we collectively will change. For many it feels like the end of economic prosperity. For many it is joblessness and then possible homelessness. Everyone is affected. No one is immune or safe. For the optimist, it is however an opportunity to change our lives and live in harmony with the new economic situation that has been delivered to the entire capitalistic planet. This is our once in a life time experience to change. Like all catastrophes, this is too rich an experience to allow ourselves the feelings of self pity. Now we will all learn what we are supposed to learn from this financial crisis. We shall all be different when this is complete, just as the generation that went through the great depression was permanently affected by that great event.
We do not yet know what is really happening. No one knows. No economist, no prophet, no magician, no politician, no President. We are all flying solo, and we are in the midst of a major event that will support us all to become different than we have been before.
This is our collective Nirvana. This is our visitation of the place with no wind. This is our once in a life time chance to change. This is our collective fall from the sky. And when it has passed, we shall all know why this has happened and we shall all be different than we were before this occurred. 2008 was the beginning of our collective near death experience.

Divorce ends a marriage; it never end a Family

2009-01-31T13:46:00.000-08:00

Death ends a life; it does not end a relationship. Divorce ends a marriage; it does not end a family. Upon death the relationship continues to live inside the living. Upon divorce, the family lives on while the parents separate from their children.
No family escapes the pain and damage of a divorce. I teach a workshop that teaches how that damage can be limited.All divorce creates trauma for children, just as all war creates PTS (Post Traumatic Stress) for all who fight in battle. Your children are wounded by your divorce.
How deep the wound is depends upon how the divorce is handled.This workshop teaches the skills needed to limit the damage from a divorce. There will be damage, but the extent of the damage can be modified with thoughtful guidance and learnt skills. This workshop is about teaching those specific skills.The end result is to hold the family unit as a team as much as possible while the marriage ends.
Divorce ends a marriage, it never ends a family. Whether the family is severely damaged or the damage is limited is the responsibility of the two parents. This workshop teaches the key principles that limit the damage from a divorce.
E-mail me or call at 650-726-1212 for the next available workshop on this topic.

The Power of Belief

2008-12-26T17:42:00.001-08:00

The Power of Belief Henry Ford said: "believe you can, believe you can't, either way your right."We are living in challenging times and no one has to explain that to us. What we may not know is that our viewpoint of the times will determine whether we are successful or whether or not we shall fail.In 1993 I was paragliding and fell 70 feet on my back and broke my neck. I was instantly paralyzed. I recall my first thought. "I never dreamed this would happen to me". I became instantly engaged in a process that would require 6 months hospitalization and a physical therapy 8-hour day as I learnt how to walk again. My neck was broken at C6 and I had done permanent spinal cord injury. My future was very unknown to everyone but me.From deep within me I found the entire experience positive. I never dreamed I would not recover. I never pictured myself in a wheel chair for the rest of my life. I just knew I had to give my all to my recovery, and in so doing I recovered much of my mobility.I have told many people since "The best thing that ever happened to me is that I broke my neck". I constantly get the response that is a strange way to view your accident. Then i say, "OK, the worst thing that ever happened to me is that I broke my neck. Which way would you look at the experience given I had broken my neck?"The power of belief is well documented. The mind can return from all types of adversity. People are incredibly powerful if they give themselves the willingness to achieve success in the face of difficult odds.As a community of people, we are all trying to make our way through these tough times, and it is easy to just let down and give up. But in so doing we shall achieve nothing. Better to fight back. Better to hold onto the power of positive thinking.During my 6 months in hospital many incidents helped me in my recovery. But undoubtedly the strongest gift was the power of friendship and the strength in people supporting people. That got me through the hardest times, and the bleakest nights.Community is power. If we support each other, we can make it to the end goal, whatever we decide that is for us. But it requires people supporting people. It requires community.Obama is the President elect because he understands community organization. He could have taken any job upon graduation but chose to go to Chicago and make $13,000 per year as a community organizer. He was ridiculed by some for having such small capabilities, but the truth is the last laugh is upon his critics, because he community organized himself right into the White House. And now, he intends to community organize the USA into a full economic recovery.I have no doubt he will succeed. It is not him, it is us. He constantly says so. And he is right. But he does provide the right backdrop for "US" to make it. He is the right leader for the right time.I encourage all of us to community organize ourselves into a successful venture. I encourage all of us to view life positively rather than hopelessly.

Creating a Long Term Successful relationship

2008-12-25T20:22:00.000-08:00

Creating a Successful Long Term Relationship

The average marriage lasts 6.8 years. Makes you wonder about the “seven year itch” Marilyn Monroe spoke of. Historically most couples stayed together for financial reasons. Today, financial support will not hold relationships together. Emotional support is required for a lasting and successful marriage.

What is emotional support? It is the love bond that exists between two who want to join their separateness into one. It is the ability to communicate feelings. It is the quality of friendship that must exist in a marriage if it is to survive the challenges of stressful life.

When a relationship begins to turn sour, inevitably most people blame their partner. Being right and making the other wrong holds more value than love, peace and harmony. The ego reins, and love begins to die. Mature individuals resist the temptation to blame and make the other evil. Watching grown adults fight like children in kindergarten may be understandable, but it doesn’t create soul. Mature and loving people face their inevitable challenges with dignity and grace and resist the temptation to throw insults at each other like children in a sandbox.

What to do when your relationship is faced with challenge. First and foremost, accept the reality that a wonderful relationship isn’t just destined, it is also hard work. To believe that relationship is effortless is to believe in magical thinking. Children use magical thinking as fantasy to avoid responsibility and work. Grown adults too often revert to such childish behavior when they give up when the going gets tough. No relationship is always easy. Just as a beautiful rose garden is created by a dedicated gardener, so a beautiful relationship is weeded, watered, and fertilized by the couple who treasure what they have. It may be tempting to see a beautiful cultivated area and magically believe it “just happened” but I can promise you, some dedicated gardener has spent countless hours caring for the elegance that you are beholding.

Beyond accepting that all wonderful relationships require work and effort, it is also important to engage each other using your differences as strength, not weakness. Too often, people see differences as difficult, rather than understanding that difference is healthy. If we were all the same, we would never grow. It is in our differences that we are challenged and created. Sameness is boredom and death. Difference is aliveness and creation.
Finally, a successful long term relationship understands the value of patience. Good things happen to those who wait. It is in the waiting that growth occurs and love deepens. Impatience is short sighted. Patience is at the heart of longevity.

Turning Off The Worry Machine

2008-12-16T19:10:00.001-08:00

Turning Off The Worry Machine
The secret to loving and living well is not to allow worry to control your thinking. In other words, not to give into the human emotion we commonly call fear. That is easy to understand. What is truly a riddle is how do humans turn off the worry machine? Saying, “stop worrying” doesn’t do cease worry and fear. Declaring you will stop worrying, is just an argument you have with yourself about this behavior. Worry will not stop with mental will power. So how do you turn the brain worry process off?Wait. If worry cannot be controlled by thinking “don’t worry”, why attempt to turn it off? Why not laugh at it. Why not be the observer of the machine and watch your own thinking. When you recognize that you are not your mind, you can begin to see the ridiculousness of worry. It is a mind puzzle set up inside the human psyche, similar to the rat chasing the cheese inside a maze in a psychological lab.To understand that you are not your mind, begin by observing your finger. If you lost that finger, would you still be you? Yes, of course. Then you are not your finger. You use your finger, which is directed by your brain to obey your thoughts. Just as you are not your finger, ultimately you can recognize that you are not your mind. You use your mind, but you are the consciousness using your mind to receive and give your being information.You are however trapped inside your mind. Some of the information you receive in your mind is wrong. To counteract the capacity to believe fearful thoughts, you can accept that you are not your mind, but that you use your mind, and right now your mind is misbehavioring by worrying. You are the consciousness observing and deciding all that is occurring in your experience. You use your finger and your mind but you are not your finger or your mind. Understanding this is essential to turning off the worry machine. You can only manage the mind with your consciousness.Now to understand worry. Worry is false thinking. Worry is based upon fear, never is worry based upon love. Worry is a dress rehearsal for a possible disaster created by the mind as a mental preparing for such possibility so you can be ready when disaster strikes. This worry creates stress and does harm to your body. It also interferes with your relationships. Fear is not a healthy basis for good relationships. Love is the better choice over fear and worry.Worry defines who you are. Those important things you worry about define who your personality is, how you respond, and how you show up in life. If you worry about your appearance, then you place all your attention to that, and everyone knows that about you. When you worry, stress appears, and you move out of harmony with yourselves.Turning off the worry machine requires you begin to live in the present moment rather than allow your mind to race into the future. When we race into the future and worry, we allow fear to consume us. Pulling your mind out of this futuristic negative thinking, allows you to recognize that worry is a fantasy of the future based upon your personal fears. Living right now you will see that nothing is wrong. But thinking about the future being wrong produces worry, fear and stress. This projection of your thinking into the future is worry or fear. Love is based on living in the present moment. Fear is based upon living in the future.Truth is worry is a psychological disease that is epidemic within our Western society. The media feeds us information to stimulate fear in the news, movies and other entertainment. This is because fear is a powerful motivator. The media uses fear to sell us the commercials that feeds the fear-producing machine called your thinking or your mind.Not only does the media feed the public fear, politicians and religious fundamental charismatics also use fear to sell people their products. Be careful of fear mongers. They usually have something to sell you, and once purchased you end up the worse in the deal. They feed you fear and you respond, as they want you to respond.Worry is a negative aspect of the human mind that can be lessened. To do this, you must accept that you are the consciousness observing the mind’s thoughts. You do not have to yield to the fear and worry. You can choice to laugh at the thoughts and dismiss the topic as soon as your conscious mind will allow the topic to disappear. Always remember the conscious mind is similar to a chattering monkey sitting on your shoulder always judging and always commenting upon everything you observe. The conscious mind is not always your friend. When you worry, you do not love yourself.

Managing the Financial Panic now engulfing the World

2008-11-20T20:30:00.001-08:00

PANIC.
Panic is a anxiety response to excess emotion. Currently the entire world is experiencing a major panic attack seen in the financial markets and the ceasing of the availability of credit for capitalism to run smoothly. We have heard endless reasons for the panic and everyone knows it is happening. What is important is not that we understand the "why" for the panic, but rather we need to understand the methods for dealing with this panic.
When a human has a panic attack, it is recommended that they breathe into a paper bag. This slows down the excess of emotion that has flooded the brain. The purpose for this is simple. When emotions flood our mind we go into an overload of negative emotion and fear, and cannot gain a clear sense of what is important and what is not important. By breathing into a paper bag, you learn that breathing is the primary function needed to survive. So by breathing into the bag, you take your mind off the excess emotion, and get down to basics. That without the next breath you will die. This is similar to the method of getting air out of a bottle. You place water into the bottle, thus empting it of the air. The air is forced out by the water. So fear can be forced out by remembering to breathe, and realizing that breathing is far more important than the fears we have racing through our thinking.
Panic attacks can be managed by meditation as well. This simply places your mind in a position that causes you to watch your breath or count numbers rather than have a contant stream of thoughts that have you overwhelmed. Meditation is a clear method for inner peace. It can when practiced regularly stop the mind from excess fear and panic.
Humans tend to follow each other. We are societies of humans and when panic occurs, we need to stop the fear and settle down. That is wht F. D. Roosevelt said "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself". FEAR is the issue. Fear is the problem. Fear and panic are the same emotion.
What is occurring is we are letting go of the old system that no longer works. The old ways that no longer serve the majority of people. We are entering into a time for massive changes and there is every reason for hope as we let go of the old and grab onto the new. But all transitions are emotionally disruptive, and thus the currrent panic.
The solution is to let go of the fear and embrace the new changes that are coming. Keep your focus upon the good that is coming and celebrate the old that is no longer serving the human race.
Fear and panic are human emotions that can be managed once we comprehend them. They are useless emotions that only serve as a dress rehearsal for disaster. All fear is the mind preparing itself for the worst case senario. But how do you know the worst is going to happen? What evidence do you have that this panic is based upon sound principles? I would argue the panic is gaining momentum as everyone joins into the panic. As we individually embrace the changes that are coming, and welcome the new, the panic will cease to consume us.
Roosevelt said it best of all: THE ONLY THING WE NEED TO FEAR IS FEAR ITSELF.

Workshops Now Offered

2008-11-11T13:17:00.000-08:00

I am now offering workshops for individuals and couples who wish to manage their marriage and family in more productive ways.
The workshops are conducted in small settings in gorgeous surroundings in my offices in Moss Beach, 6 miles north of Half Moon Bay.
Workshops are on Saturdays from 9.30 am to 4.30 pm.
The cost is $90 per person.
The two workshops I currently offer are:
1) Making Your Marriage Work: the keys that all successful marriages have mastered are taught and modeled.
2) Divorce Ends a Marriage, it does not end a Family: Unfortunately in todays world, divorce is sometimes necessary. Many people damage their families as they end their marriage. But this does not have to occur. With key principles, families can saved some of the excesses often associated with a divorce. This workshop teaches those principles.
Call 650-726-1212 or email me at stephen@healmarriage.com for more details.

DIVORCE ENDS A MARRIAGE, IT SHOULD NEVER END A FAMILY

2008-10-03T17:00:00.000-07:00

Make no mistake about it; divorce is a profound emotional, financial and spiritual disruption for all involved. Many men and women consider it one of the worst experiences of their lives. No matter who makes the decision, both partners are profoundly affected by it. Usually, the spouse initiating a divorce carries the guilt, while the one not wanting the marriage to break up assumes the anger ¾ and the role of victim. But, in reality, both spouses suffer enormously before, during and after a divorce occurs. No one, not even a therapist, can tell someone if and when she should seek a divorce. In this chapter some reflections on divorce are offered in hopes of lending a new perspective to those facing this painful decision.
Once upon a time not so long ago, when a bride and groom stood at the altar and repeated the vow "Until death do us part," they meant it as a lifetime, unbreakable commitment. Divorce laws of the past reflected this black and white meaning, and there were enormous social pressures to stay married. Now, for many, this notion of permanence seems quaint. Putting aside the historical inequities of traditional marriage and property laws that harmed women and children and required reform, there were unforeseen and largely unacknowledged costs that came with the change in the definition of marriage from a permanent to an impermanent union ¾ with consequences that continue to shape the lives of men, women and children today.
Increasingly, the idea of divorce (or the contemplation of divorce as an option) functions as the "solution" for personal unhappiness within marriage. It's also fair to say that divorce as an idea serves as a rationalization used by one or both unhappy spouses for giving up on the commitment they made at the altar. Arguably, this revised concept of marriage as inherently impermanent and divorce as a solution for all things that go wrong in the marriage relationship inflicts a sizeable amount of harm on the husband and wife and, especially, on the children who must face the real, lifelong consequences of the dissolution of the family they hold dear. A bit of history enlightens.
During the 1970s, divorce, and by extension the institution of marriage, went through a major transformation with the introduction of the legal concepts of no fault divorce and community property. Prior to this time, fraud had to be publicly proven in a court of law in front of a judge who would then decide who was "at fault" in the marriage and whether or not to grant the divorce. He could then award custody and make financial dispensation of any and all marital assets. This system of divorce produced shame, and embarrassment and, often, the public ridicule of an entire family. The burden of proving marital fraud in a courtroom became so acrimonious that divorce tore many families irreparably asunder.
No fault divorce allows two people to dissolve a marriage without any evidence of fraud, with the most common, often perfunctory legal reason for divorce now given as irreconcilable differences. In most states, after the impersonal processing of a few official documents, each divorced spouse walks away with half of the marital assets. At first this approach seemed humane as it reduced the disastrous affects associated with the public humiliation of divorce trials. However, it produced other challenging ramifications.

What now appears clear is that after divorce became legally easier and more socially acceptable many people didn’t include the idea of "till death do us a part" in their thinking about the marriage vows. They may have said the same words, but either didn't take them seriously or, didn't think through their implications, leaving millions of husbands and wives psychologically unprepared for the difficult times all marriages bring.
America's divorce rate began rising in the late 1960s and jumped during the '70s and early '80s, as nearly every state enacted no-fault divorce laws. The rate peaked in 1981 at 5.3 divorces per 1,000 people. Since then it has dropped by one-third (The National Center Health Statistics, NCHS).
It seems that many who stood at the altar and spoke the words "until death do us part" meant instead “until this gets too hard, or until I get bored with you and someone better comes along.” This is not to say that the millions of people who married and divorced over the past three decades ¾ including both authors of this book ¾ were being dishonest or deceptive while going through with those marriages and subsequent divorces. What is far more likely is that (with the help of the larger culture) many were deceiving themselves.
Women, since the 1960s have been working in greater numbers and are thus less economically dependent upon men. During this same period women have sought divorces much more frequently than before. The most recent data shows that nearly 70 percent of divorces are female initiated. While economic and legal changes have allowed more women to consider divorce, there are other, strictly emotional dynamics that may be pushing women from simply considering taking this step to going through with it.
Women have a deeper sense of what is possible in an emotional relationship, and with greater independence, many have been less willing to tolerate inadequate marital relationships. Men on the other hand seem more content inside a marriage especially if they are physically cared for by the female whom many have unconsciously come to relate to as mother replacements. Also, in many cases men who are unfamiliar with emotions have permitted the female to carry the emotions for both of them ¾ a burden that can become very difficult for the woman in a marriage.
At the most simplistic level, one which women often find offensive, many men tend to see marriage as an exchange of services. They take out the garbage, take care of the cars, and mow the lawn, while the woman tends to the inside of the house, offers sex and takes care of the children. For many men, this seems like an equal exchange, while women, when asked, tend to see this as too much giving on their part and not enough receiving.

When June and Stan came into therapy, June explained that the giving and the receiving in their marriage were out of balance. They both worked full time, yet June felt the burden of the housework and caring for the children. As the unconscious assumptions of this relationship were further exposed, it appeared that, at first, June gave these gifts without resentment, and Stan was only too happy to receive them. But with the passage of time, June began resenting the imbalance and, as her resentment grew, she began to close down emotionally towards Stan. With this emotional shut down, their sexual lives ceased, and Stan began to store up resentment towards June for withholding sex.
This is the stalemate June and Stan had reached when they began marriage therapy. But, it turns out, the reason they came at all was June's ultimatum to Stan. "Come with me to marriage therapy or I'm leaving you and taking the kids." Stan had to be shocked into seeing the problems in the relationship as real and threatening to the marriage itself. But as Stan was unwilling to go through a divorce, June’s decree that either they went into therapy or she wanted a separation worked to move the relationship towards healing.
The process of marriage therapy eventually helped Stan realize that the shutting down of sex was his responsibility as much as June's. Stan came to realize that June needed emotional satisfaction before she could open up to Stan sexually. He accepted the need to engage in foreplay, something he generally resented and avoided. Slowly Stan learned the harder lesson of how to pay attention to his own feelings, which allowed him to be more receptive to June's. As he became more knowledgeable about emotional connectedness, June became more available to Stan for sexual activity. She felt loved and reassured that Stan cared for her emotionally. With these changes the marriage began the healing process, with all the richness that is available when two people emotionally care about each other’s feelings.

Stan's ignorance of his own internal emotional life is very common. Men often have to learn about emotional connectedness after they get married, while women understand these principles naturally, although some women can be said to feel too much; they can find themselves flooded with emotions. For a marriage to work harmoniously, this imbalance has to change. Often, a wife can teach her husband about emotional satisfaction, and a husband can teach his wife about controlling her emotions when it's necessary to do so. Many men tend to be dismissive of emotions in human beings, and this attitude can make a man unwisely see his wife's emotional display as manipulative, and then harden himself towards her, which is the very thing you do not want to have happen if the marriage is going to improve.
The decision to dissolve a marriage is extremely personal. And while divorce is always a failure, sometimes it's a necessary one. Physical or emotional abuse is the main reason people should seek a divorce. Physical abuse is easy to assess, while emotional abuse is far more subjective. But this type of abuse is real and severely damaging to its victims. Emotional abuse can include one spouse making degrading remarks, being very controlling or emotionally neglecting the other spouse.
If one parent is violent or verbally abusive towards the other, the children will always side with the one who's been hurt. If you are the victim of spousal abuse, your first job is to find a safe place for you and your children. Try to avoid painting the image of the other parent as a perpetrator. This will ensure the children distrust the entire sex of the offending parent. Where a mother has conditioned a daughter to see her father as “evil”, she can grow up to view all men as “evil,” severely limiting her chances of having a good marriage.
Addiction is another extreme, potentially abusive situation. In cases where one spouse is in the grips of an addition to a substance, or to a behavior such as gambling, or sex, and refusing professional help for his addiction, separation or divorce may be necessary for the protection of the spouse and children. Many spouses dealing with an addicted partner find support and suggestions on how to help the addict without endangering themselves from the Al Anon twelve-step program. Associated with Alcoholics Anonymous, these all-volunteer organizations are in every community (check your phone book), and offer their valuable services anonymously and free of charge.
Before you make a decision to divorce your spouse, you should make at least one visit to a marriage and family therapist. Like a dentist is trained to understand what is happening to your teeth, therapists are trained to understand the difficulties within a marriage and family. Seeking outside guidance before making such a large decision is obviously desirable, just as it is better to go to the dentist than take a pair of pliers to extract a tooth from your own mouth because it is painful.

According to the NCHS, the divorce rate for people with higher levels of education has fallen slightly over the past decade, while the number of divorces for those without a college degree has stayed the same. Noted author on marriage, sociologist Stephanie Coontz attributes this difference to education giving people better communication and negotiation skills ¾ both essential for a marriage. Coontz also pointed to studies that show a wife's work outside the home tends to stabilize a marriage.
If you feel the need to divorce your partner but he does not wish this to happen, your first step should be to let your partner know what behavior of his is bothering you, and see if he can change it, and whether you can change your responses. Often, the best way to try to effect such changes, particularly if communication between you has broken down, are through marriage therapy. Better to pull out your own teeth with pliers than take on a divorce without outside guidance and counseling ¾ especially when underage children are involved. Still, the majority of divorces occur without any outside help sort, whether that help comes from a minister, Rabbi, or from a licensed therapist.
Before the legal and social sea changes that fundamentally altered the institution of marriage in the 1970s, unhappy spouses stayed married "for the sake of the children." In the decades since, this view has often been derided and denied as unnecessary, even antiquated. But, as one out of two marriages end in divorce, up to one million children per year experience the trauma of divorce. Only within the past ten years has it become undeniably clear that the negative impact on divorce on these children has been disproportionate (compared to their parents) and dire.
One landmark study on the impact of divorce on adult children conducted by Judith Wallerstein caused major reverberations when it was released in 1999. In it, Wallerstein and her colleagues resoundingly demonstrated that parental divorce caused heretofore unacknowledged emotional and behavioral negative consequences ¾ including mood disorders, school failures and relationship problems ¾ in 25 percent of adult children of divorce who were tracked in many cases into their forties. This was compared to 10 percent of adult children from intact families who experienced these problems.
Judith Wallerstein's study demolished a popular myth advocating the view that it is less harmful for children to experience the "temporary" trauma of divorce than to witness their parents' ongoing marital unhappiness. In reality, the degree of damage to children depends upon the level of unhappiness, or abuse they witness.
A good case can also be made that when children witness divorce they are seeing a harmful example of their parents' failure to keep a commitment. Which is the worse behavior for a child to witness first hand, marital conflict or the avoidance of commitment? Only you can decide, based on your own marriage, and personal experience.
This all assumes under age children are involved in the marriage. When two adults without children come to such a volatile crossroads in a relationship, the bar is obviously much lower. Personal growth can be valid reason for a divorce when one of the parties believes he has worked extremely hard to bring improvement to a marital relationship and is frustrated by a lack of effort by his spouse or a lack of results. But if children under eighteen are involved in your decision, the decision should be examined with much more care and concern for the children's welfare.
If there are under age children involved, perhaps other arrangements can be made so the marriage can continue until the youngest child reaches eighteen. You may be remain husband and wife and parent your children while maintaining quasi-independent lives. One of you may have an additional residence. Remember there are no longer any or many hard and fast rules for marriage. Each man and woman create most rules independently in a marital relationship. Seeking outside therapy can assist you find other ways to remain in relationship for the purpose of keeping your family intact until the children are older.
Once the youngest child is 18 years of age, any married person who has put up with a failed marriage should be entitled to follow his own inner calling and end the marriage, if he so desires. To take this idea to its extreme, perhaps all marriage licenses should expire upon the 18th birthday of the youngest child in a family. The couple that then wishes to continue being married would have to formally renew their marriage license, and reinvest in their union for the second half of their lives. With such a decision, perhaps a re-marriage ceremony and community celebration should take place.
This perspective, although radical, is presented to underscore the physic and practical benefits ¾ to you an your children ¾ of treating your original marriage vow as both real and permanent. The completion of the commitments you made when you married and especially after you created a child together contains an integrity that is often overlooked, worse, scorned as "old fashioned" in today's culture. Once again, underage children are the real victims of a divorce. It is their well-being that must be considered before the decision to divorce is made final, or before a family is dissolved.
Every marriage has good and bad times. Some don't make it through one year. Many others succumb at the aptly named "seven-year itch." If you thought your marriage had made it through these familiar pressure points, but now find it very troubled, first be aware that you're probably not thinking clearly right now. Emotions, from hurt and anger to grief or fear can be overwhelming. So how should you make the difficult emotional decision to divorce if you are currently weighing the possibility?
One deceptively simple method is to write out a list of the positive and negative aspects of your marriage and carefully weigh the pros and the cons. Put all the reasons for ending a marriage on one side of the page, and the reasons to stay married on the other side. Then attempt to give a weight or point value to each point, from one to ten, so that you rationally see what the choices are, how important each is, and why you ranking it thusly. The fact that your husband is a great father to your children might be given a point value of 10 and lead the "pro" column, while his inability to share his emotions may receive a six and go in the "con" column.
The idea is to slow down the decision-making process behind a divorce. When divorce is frivolously chosen, your experience of commitment is shortchanged. It is a dangerous romantic fantasy to believe that a good marriage is an easy one, free of conflict. The opposite is often true. A marriage that looks calm and peaceful on the outside can be stagnant, or even rage-filled on the inside. A good marriage provides a safe container for conflicts to be worked on and resolved. The only way to create this safe container is for both of you to make a rock solid commitment to keep working at it ¾ especially when the times get tough. It's not that divorce should be abandoned. Just because it is slowed down, does not mean divorce should be or could be taken away as an option.

Temporary separations can help a troubled marriage. The problems and the stress they cause can be mitigated with a little space from your togetherness. A separation can provide new insight into what is valuable and what cannot be tolerated in the marriage. Because many people fear that a separation always ends in divorce, they avoid it as an option. But many couples gain new vitality from spending some time apart from each other. Think of it as a trial divorce. Then you will better know what is best for you, your family and your children. In Stephen Martin's 30-year marriage therapy practice, roughly half the couples who tried trial separation got back together after six months. A trial separation may also help expose the real, perhaps hidden issue underlying one partner's desire for a divorce. For example, an issue that frequently leads to divorce is the deep unhappiness within one of the partners in a marriage. Often, that unhappiness is self-created, but, while living with his wife, the one feeling unhappy cannot completely understand his reasons for it. By the point at which he is considering divorce, he could be projecting that unhappiness on his partner. He may believe that if he were no longer married to her, he would find happiness.
If this is the case, it's best for the one feeling deep unhappiness to perhaps spend some time living alone, and/or seek individual therapy to see if the problem can be corrected within himself, thus making a divorce unnecessary. If, on the other hand, the problem is toxicity within the relationship, and he is convinced that the toxicity cannot change, perhaps a divorce is the only reasonable alternative.
Divorce ends a marriage, but should it end a family? Everyone needs the safety and support of a family, and when it is torn apart by a divorce, the consequences can be disastrous. In order to minimize the damage to the children should a divorce become necessary, marital issues between Mom and Dad should be kept out of view from the rest of the family. The relationship between two married people is distinct from the relationship between a mother and a father of a family. Wise parents who need to divorce know that divorce does not end a family, and they struggle to it together while they let go of their marriage.
To facilitate this, each parent should obviously refrain from telling the children her personal grievances with the other parent. Unfortunately this rarely happens as emotions spill over and inside the emotional disruption, parents tend to complain about the other parent in front of the children. Immature parents either consciously or unconsciously wish to force the children to make choices between mother, and a father. Nothing can disrupt a child’s life more than siding with one parent over the other, and to have the parents encourage this alienation from one parent. Children never want to choose. When this happens it inevitably is the result of either parent forcing this decision, unless the children witness extreme abuse.
When telling children of a coming divorce it is best to have the child see her own therapist to handle the emotional disruption she is experiencing. Give as few details as you can, and only answer questions she asks. Attempt to have children remain non judgmental about the coming divorce. Teach them it is not their fault. Most children blame themselves when a divorce occurs. If only they had been better children, their parents would not need to divorce. Whatever the situation in a family or stepfamily, divorce is never a child's fault; it is the failure of two adults to get along as husband and wife.
Let your children know you will always be a father and a mother to them, that what is changing is simply the role of husband and wife. Again, the family is not divorcing; the husband and the wife are changing their roles inside the marriage, not inside their family.
After a divorce, emotionally mature parents try to get along as parents, and let their marriage go. This means your conversations as parents should (at first) be limited to just the children and their well-being. Sensible parents know that you never divorce a child, even if you have to divorce the child's other parent.
The key to success in this difficult transition is making a distinction between your roles as husband and wife and separating those roles from mother and father. Healthy families navigate a divorce by understanding the different roles, and never destroy the role of the other parent in the eyes of their children.
If you need to complain about your ex, never do it with the children. Find friends or seek professional guidance to grieve the loss of the marriage and release the anger of a divorce. Usually a divorce will take at least three years to heal from. Allow yourself the time to grieve, be angry, to feel hurt and disappointed, but keep this from your children. Children never want to choose between good parents…. they always want their parents to get along and love each other. Sometimes it takes a divorce to accept the other parent of your children. If this is the case, and you've tried many different approaches, unsuccessfully, to save the marriage, perhaps the divorce was necessary. Better to get along as Mom and Dad than hate each other as husband and wife.

Why Does the State grant Marriage Licenses without any evidence of proficiency?

2008-09-28T12:58:00.000-07:00

Why Does the State grant Marriage Licenses without any evidence of proficiency?

Before you are granted a driving license, you are required to prove to the state issuing the license that you know how to drive. This is good common sense as a car can be a destructive machine when not operated correctly. If you do not know what you are doing, you can hurt yourself and others.
Does anyone doubt marriage can be destructive to human beings, families and society when they fail? To assume proficiency before granting a marriage license is to take a huge chance on the lives of many people, especially the children that are born into such a disastrous contract.
What is the purpose of a marriage license? Is it a mere formality? Is it a romantic fantasy permitted by the State without requirements just so they can raise revenue by charging a fee? Historically, marriage is the legal mechanism that permits property to be properly distributed upon death? The license assumes certain inherent rights and codified rules that shall be followed. A license to marry is granted by the State to the individuals wishing to marry, and it formalizes financial agreements that the State has codified.
I believe in most States, there are only two requirements before a license to marry is granted. One is that both parties are of the legal age for marriage. The other guarantee is that there be only one partner permitted at a time. Polygamy is not permitted in this country, although multiple marriages are permitted as long as a divorce occurs in between those marriages.
Is this really enough to grant a license? After all, a license grants certain rights. If you don’t like the rules of the license, you should not get married.
Why do we permit a condition to exist where the majority of marriages end in divorce in this country? The answer is complex, but divorce began in earnest after the State changed the rules about requiring fraud be proved before a divorce would be granted. This change was necessary because divorce degrees became very odious and a public scandal where human inadequacies were testified to in a court of law and made public to all. So now we have a condition called “no fault” divorce, which allows a divorce to be granted when one person wants the marriage to end.
But what about the children of failed marriages? Are they not casualties we need to consider before we so casually grant licenses to people who wish to be married? Why should licenses be necessary to demonstrate proficiency in handling an automobile, but not the potentially far more hazardous matter of marriage? Surely there should be more to it than just a revenue-collecting device. And if that is the main reason States grant a license to marry, it is a very cynical view of a marriage.
As a licensed Marriage and family Therapist who deals exclusively with marital and family issues, I would propose society establish more evidence of proficiency before granting a license to marry. I would like to see mandatory premarital counseling and educational course about marriage and family given by either the Church or the psychotherapy profession. I know many ministers and pastors who will not perform marriages without such thoughtful preparation. They take their role as minister seriously, and as with other sacraments of the church, require thoughtful study before solemnizing a marriage in their churches.
I believe this is responsible action on behalf of the Church. But it is not the church that grants the license. It is the State. You don’t need a church to marry you. So surely it is the State that is ultimately responsible to make sure a potential couple are competent. If we as a society are ever going to take seriously the downward spiral of family life in this country, we must eventually require educational evidence that two people are ready to receive a license to marry before the license is granted.
Is marriage a serious institution or is it the playground of the romantics? When Britney Spears got married in Las Vegas several years ago and divorced the following day, it made a mockery of the entire institution of marriage. Such weddings, entered into impulsively in a moment of fun, should no more be allowed than giving children a license to drive ‘just for fun’.
Eventually the States are going to have to hold the granting of marriage licenses more seriously than they currently do. This will happen when we as a society become disgusted with the current state of divorces and the human catastrophe that results. Surely some educational requirements before the license is granted would go a long way towards putting this right.

Should Your Marriage Be Saved?

2008-03-09T13:53:00.000-07:00

One of the most troubling questions I encounter during the first session of therapy with couples is "Should we work on our marriage or should we end it?"

My answer is always the same. "I assume if you have taken the time to call me and discuss this question with a marriage therapist then their answer is 'yes.' Otherwise, you would be seeing a divorce lawyer."

Never go to a marriage therapist and expect them to answer this question any other way. To do otherwise, is like going to a doctor and asking whether or not you should live, or give up and die. A doctor is in the business of saving lives. It's the same with a marriage therapist who assists couples in repairing marriages. I never presume a couple wants to end their commitment, and let their marriage die.

Divorce is often a lack of imagination about how to live in a committed relationship. The real feeling that exists behind a couples' statement that they wish to end their marriage often is, “We are exhausted by trying the same old patterns and encountering the same failure. Can you give us any ideas how we can be different in this relationship?”

Now that is an excellent place to begin. So lets explore the possibilities.

After thirty years of doing marriage counseling, I have found that, in most cases, within thirty minutes of listening to a couple, I can see what needs to change in a marriage. Of course, most couples are not ready to hear what I can see after listening to them for just thirty minutes.

They first want to complain, release their anger, and express their frustration. Then, perhaps, they're ready to hear what is needed to repair the damage.

Marriage counseling is not rocket science. It involves a basic comprehension of couple dynamics and the skills to help the couple see what it is they need to do differently in order to heal their marriage.

Although marriage counseling may not be a complicated process, I would say that marriage is the most complicated human relationship I know of. It is more complex than parent / child, employee / employer, or any other family relationship. Why is this so?

It's complicated because, in order for it to work, the modern institution of marriage must be an equal relationship. In the work place, democracy doesn’t rule. The boss is in charge. In the parent child relationship, the parents are in charge, or they should be. As many parents have found out the hard way, setting boundaries for one's children is the only parenting style that enables children to feel secure enough to become responsible, self-confident adults.

But in marriage, the two partners need an equal relationship. If your relationship is not equal, it will breed a power struggle. When one spouse holds more power than the other, eventually that relationship must come unglued. The reason is simple. An imbalance in the distribution of power will create disrespect and passive aggressive behavior. The more powerful spouse will disrespect the weaker one, and the weaker one will express their hostile feelings in a passive-aggressive manner.

This imbalance of power is at the heart of most marital problems. It affects the self-esteem of both individuals in the relationship and results in the one who is weaker sabotaging the one who is more powerful.

Many marriages of this kind are held together by the negative use of power. For example, traditionally men have the power over money, while women have the power over sex. As a result, in marital therapy, sex and money are the two most disputed issues. But, most declared problems are not the real problem. The real issues lie under the surface and have never been deeply examined. The couple must look beyond their money and sex issues to see the underlying power struggle that has created their dsyfunctionality. Until they see this deeper dynamic, they will go around in circles fighting and struggling, complaining and hurting each other, but never really knowing what is at the route of their problems.

In my experience, most couples blind themselves to their real issues, preferring to instead fight about issues that are merely symptoms of these underlying issues. Until the real issues are addressed, the couple will never heal.

Enter the competent marriage therapist. He should see the underlying dynamic of a marriage and have the experience to guide the couple to heal their original wounds.

Not getting to the bottom of the real issues is like the story of the princess and the pea under the mattress. No matter how many mattresses she placed on top of the original mattress, until the pea is found and removed, will she not be able to sleep. Good marriage therapy finds the pea under the mattresses, and teaches the couple how to remove the disruptions that are causing their strife.

The Main Reason Marriages Fail

2007-10-29T11:14:00.001-07:00

I have been a full time marriage therapist in private practice for the past 27 years. I have worked with literally thousands of marriages and observed and analyzed marriage in more detail than the vast majority of people. I have seen all sides of marriage - the good, the bad and the ugly. And if you asked me why do some marriages self-destruct here is my answer. And although there is a danger of being simplistic, I believe there is one overriding reason why marriages fail.

Put simply, it is the unhappiness of one, projected upon the other. What do I mean? I am referring to the human tendency to blame others for your own inner feelings. We have a long history of blaming others for our difficulties. Our entire legal system is set up around this premise. If someone is wronged, they hire a lawyer who will fight for their rights in court to prove one right and the other wrong. Or, at least to show one ‘more’ right and the other ‘more’ wrong. Also, because we are a capitalistic economic system, the law assigns financial remuneration to the ‘victim’ and mandates that the ‘perpetrator’ financially compensate the ‘victim’ for the wrong done.

Of course lawyers who receive their income from fighting these legal battles believe this system to be the best way to make meaningful changes in our society. Lawyers are not paid if they do not win their case. So the incentive is to prove one right, and the other wrong. Lawyers might question this assessment, but I do not wish to debate this issue here, I merely wish to point out that we as a society have been programmed to believe that it is reasonable to assign one as victim and the other as perpetrator, or one as right and the other as wrong.

Once you accept this premise, it is easy to understand how inside marriage, whenever one party feels unhappy, they might assume that their partner is in some way responsible. Then, believing that all the negative feelings they have within themselves are their partner’s fault, the fighting begins. Eventually that fighting takes on a life of its own. It is fueled by our communal cultural belief system that one is right and the other is wrong, and obviously it is you who are right, and your partner is therefore wrong.

Once this process begins, the marriage is doomed to continual battles. If you believe your feelings are your partner’s responsibility, the marriage can never improve until your partner changes. Once you believe the problems you face in life are your partner’s fault, the marriage goes down the slippery slope into despair.

Is there an alternative to this system? Of course there is. But it requires you rethink the victim mentality concept. If you see yourself as a victim of your partner’s behavior, this establishes a classic power struggle that eats away the good will inside your marriage and destines the relationship to perpetual power struggles and conflict, unless your partner passively accepts all the blame for all the problems you face in your life. But once this occurs, you will lose all respect for your partner and become bored and disinterested in your relationship, and label your partner as passive aggressive. The victim / perpetrator model for human relationships guarantees the relationship will never attain the levels of human intimacy that are possible when both partners are individually strong and respectfully support each other to become the best they can be.

The solution is for everyone to take full responsibility for their own feelings, and not project their unhappiness upon their partner. Once you become aware you are internally dissatisfied, it becomes your responsibility to change yourself to fix the unhappiness. Not that you should not communicate where you feel wronged or that you cannot request your partner consider some changes if they are realistic. That is a perfectly acceptable communication, as long as it is delivered responsibly and in an adult fashion. Many couples lash out at each other when angry, just like a child might throw objects at another child when they feel overwhelmed. Marriage is for adults. Children of whatever age should avoid such a complex relationship as marriage.

To have a successful marriage both partners must accept personal responsibility for their own feelings and their own behaviors inside their marriage, and both partners must accept the consequences of their behaviors. Projecting your unhappiness onto your partner inevitably leads to fighting, perpetual struggle and eventually a massive meltdown inside your marriage.

So let me repeat after observing thousands of marriages, it is my conclusion that the most destructive quality for marriages is the childish need to hold your partner responsible for your internal unhappiness, with the resulting expectation that they need to change, so you can be fulfilled.

Life in the rear view mirror.

2007-07-15T10:33:00.001-07:00

"And if life is just a highway, then the soul is just a car.
And objects in the rear view mirror may appear closer than they are"
Meatloaf.

Object in the rear view mirror always appear closer than they are. It is an optical illusion. It not only is an illusion when looking in a rear view mirror, it is as Meatloaf suggests, an illusion relevant to human life and our personal history. The incidents of the past appear closer than they are when you feel distressed and horrified by your personal history.

What are the issues associated with looking in the rear view mirror of life? Life must be directed by looking backwards to get some idea how we should operate in the present and future. Life is guided forwards, by looking backwards. But looking back has dangers that need to be understood and we need to remember that the perception of the past distorts the reality of the present, just as objects in the rear view mirror appear closer than they are.

As a psychotherapist with 26 years of hands on experience, I know you must look in the rear view mirror of life to heal. It is absolutely true that some digging into the past is essential for emotional healing. The issue is how much digging, and how much exploration is essential. And once begun, how do you stop the endless obsessing over the past having uncovered the secrets.

Woody Allen has made a career out of digging into his past. He has found the funny side of his neurosis and used it to make movies that are witty and entertaining. But how much of his behavior is valuable for the rest of us who have no need to make funny movies about neurotic people?

Why look backwards, and how far backwards do you need to look? Unless you have learnt from the past, you are bound to repeat the same mistakes. That is the human way. Unconscious behavior repeats itself over and over again, until we have integrated the lessons of the past and we no longer need to repeat them. This is the case for looking in the rear view mirror of life.

But having learnt from the past, when do we cease looking backwards? When do objects in the rear view mirror appear closer than they are? I suspect once you have become obsessed with the past you have gone too far. If the objective is emotional healing, and the behavior of searching through the past has become obsessional, then I would assume looking backwards has gone way too far.

In reality there is no past or future, there is only the present. Now is the present. The past is gone, and the future is undefined. There is nothing about the future that is real in the present. Yet we can become obsessed with the future and the past and miss the present moment. This is the great truth offered by Eastern religion. Western religion focuses upon the future (heaven and hell), while eastern philosophy teaches the value of living in the present moment, the “now”.

The concepts may be hard to grasp, but the consequences are large. All fear is a reaction to the past or the future. In present time nothing exists that needs to be feared. Yet we all live with fears. And all fears come from looking in the rear view mirror, where objects appear closer than they are. Fear is a clear distortion of reality, and it can only be healed by living in the present moment, which means giving up looking in the rear view mirror.

The important message to gain from this discussion is that while the past and the future may be intriguing, they are largely irrelevant. Present time is the only moment that exists and once you have gained that wisdom, you are capable of producing happiness for yourself. Without this understanding you are looking at life through the distortion of the rear view mirror. And you are driving your car forward while being distracted by the past.

“Even As Love Crowns You So Shall He Crucify You”

2007-07-15T10:31:00.000-07:00

One of the most beautiful books of poetry ever written is ‘The Prophet’ by Kahlil Gibran. Gibran is perhaps the greatest Sufi poet along with Rumi. Sufi’s are the mystical branch of the Muslim religion as the Kabala is the mystical branch of Judaism. In this wonderful expression of wisdom in poetry, the Prophet who lives on top of the mountain sees his ship coming from afar, signifying that he is ready to die, and complete this life’s journey.

Before the prophet leaves this home by ship into death, he moves down from the top of the mountain, where he is asked a series of questions by the people of the village of Orphalese who have gathered to say goodbye. The questions they ask him are the fundamentals questions we all ask about life. The questions include what is love, marriage, children, work, giving, pleasure, death, and many other fascinating topics. The first question that he is asked is “what is love”. The Prophet proclaims his vision of love, which along with the Apostle Paul’s description in Corinthians 13, is perhaps the most beautiful description on the topic of love.

Inherent within the discourse is the point that love is our teacher, and that love gives us the opportunity to refine our human soul. The prophet says, “Love is for your growth and for your pruning.” Love will teach you many joyful, and difficult lessons. The centerpiece of the prophet’s teaching is that love shall both crown you and crucify you. Love shall instruct you and perfect you. Love shall prepare you for the next stage of the journey into eternity.

“For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you…He threshes you to make you naked. He sifts you to free you from your husks. He grinds you to whiteness. He kneads you until you are pliant; and then he assigns you to his sacred fire, that you may become sacred bread for God’s sacred feast.”

The Prophet goes on to say, “But if in your fear you would seek only love’s peace and love’s pleasure, Then it is better for you that you cover your nakedness and pass out of love’s threshing-floor, Into the seasonless world where you shall laugh, but not all of your laughter, and weep, but not all of your tears.”

Love is according to all ancient wisdoms, the paramount teacher. Love is both wonderful and extremely difficult. The lessons of love are priceless. Yet most of us think of love as an emotion that is sweet, easy, happy and joyous. We think of love as an emotion only, rather than a spiritual force that changes us and perfects our spirit. The Prophet teaches that this is not so. Love can and will crucify you, but in so doing the character and personal growth is well worth all the pain. Those who have chosen the spiritual path know this well. To love is to open yourself up, to become vulnerable. To love is to be open to pain, hurt, depression and sadness. But it is also to be open to joy, delight, excitement and happiness. It is far better to love and suffer from that love, than to never have loved at all. There are risks in loving, but the rewards are much greater than the suffering in the view of the Prophet.

As a Therapist I can tell you much of the work of therapy is hard and rigorous, but the rewards are beyond verbal description. To end the pain of the ego, to find the peace in solitude, to come to acceptance and to give up control, these are the priceless qualities produced within us when we enter love’s threshing floor. As a Therapist who acts as a guide for people upon their personal spiritual path, I am privileged to watch in awe as human’s wrestle with their inner demons, do battle with their ego self, resist the dark side, and reach for the impossible dream. And with love as the master, the rewards of such work are magnificent to observe. I am continually humbled as I observe the work people do in therapy to resolve their inner conflicts, to come to peace with their dark side, and to find all that love has to offer.

Love truly is the ultimate teacher.

The Secret of Good Marriage Counseling.

2007-07-15T10:29:00.000-07:00

The carpenter uses a hammer, the mechanic a wrench. What does the marriage
counselors use to create the magic during a marital therapy session? Marriage counseling is a relatively new profession, unless you consider religious leaders as the predecessors
of the vocation. As a profession, marriage counseling is less than sixty
years old. And it is really only in the last twenty years that it has become accepted as having real value for society.

The secret of good marriage counseling is simple. It is assumed that when a
couple experiences a breakdown in their marriage, communication is the problem. And that with clear communication, solutions can emerge. So how does the therapist
create the context so that the truth can appear?

The secret is in listening for the pain, and then looking for the love. The pain
is the confusion that has gotten in between two people who began there
relationship with optimism, but now find that it has become entangled with
emotional pain, discontent and disillusionment. The pain must be released, or forgiven, for healing to occur, and it can only be released once it is stated, expressed, and understood. When a relationship is in trouble, both of the partners are in pain. One often appears more in pain than the other, but this is really an illusion. Couples mirror each other. If the relationship is to heal, both have to get in touch with their communal emotional pain, even though one may express the pain while the other is stoic.

Listening for the love is the healing work of marriage counseling. As the
pain comes out, so will the faint whispers of love and commitment be
expressed. Listening for these faint cries is the essential work of the therapist, as the couple has probably lost sight of the caring, the commitment, and the love they felt for
each other when they began their marriage. Getting both individuals in touch with that love is what heals the hurt, and rebuilds the trust. This is the skill the marriage counselor brings to the experience.

Sometimes, but not often, marriage counseling ends in a couple divorcing. Mostly, couples find ways to carry on, working through the issues until the love is permitted to return and blossom. In my experience, most marriage counseling is successful, when success is defined as carrying forward with the commitment made at the beginning of the marriage. Most couples still promise “till death do us part” and assisting two people find the love they have temporarily lost because the pain has become larger than the joy is the secret to good therapy.

The work of counseling marriages is a sacred task. The therapist is invited
into the most vulnerable places of a couples intimate relationship. The counselor is
the mediator for the marriage. The marriage is the client and the husband and the wife are seen as the two individual parts of the whole. Good marriage counseling honors the relationship, and helps both parties return to the joy and the love that was present when they started their commitment.

So what is the secret for finding a good marriage therapist? Get referrals from friends or professionals, and then talk to the therapist ahead of scheduling an appointment and ask them their philosophy and how they practice their trade. Try the therapist once, and if it doesn’t feel right or an emotionally safe place for you and your partner, immediately look for another therapist. If you are not certain the therapist you are seeing is right for you, they probably aren’t. Not every therapist is appropriate for everyone. Marriage counseling is a highly personal experience and if you do not feel honored, heard and that you can trust the therapist, find one who will serve your needs. Finding the right therapist is your responsibility; don’t expect the therapist to tell you they are not appropriate for you.

Before Considering Therapy

2007-05-07T19:02:00.000-07:00

“The unexamined Life is not worth living.” Socrates

When Socrates wrote this famous statement, psychotherapy wasn’t an option. However, examining the inner workings of one’s life is perhaps the most important exploration left for man. Mankind has explored most of the earth and is beginning to explore the heavens, but very little is know about the interior workings of the human psyche. The human spirit is at least 95% unconscious and exploring the hidden dark caves of the soul is brave hard work.

Psychotherapy can certainly be taken to extremes. Woody Allen has made a profitable career joking about such excess. In one of his movies Woody complained his therapist was not being effective, and he joked he would give him another six years to see if anything would get better. However, the time of excessive psychotherapy sessions has past. Clients are now focused upon solution-oriented therapy where a problem is presented and a solution is sort. Such therapy is typically called brief therapy, meaning that it lasts from five to twenty sessions over a six to twelve month time period.

Therapy is a place to explore your feelings and the circumstances of your life. In this exploration, the therapist is not an expert who knows what you should do with your life, rather the therapist offer a safe and confidential place for you to go to discover how you feel and what you can do about these feelings, and the current conditions in your life.

The most important qualities you need to look for in choosing a therapist is the openness and freedom you feel in talking with that therapist. If you feel restrained or uneasy, they are the wrong therapist for you. Perhaps you are not ready to do this work with any therapist, and that merely means the time is not right for you to explore your unconscious mind. There will be times when you will not like what you are examining about your life, and at these times a good therapist may support you by holding your focus to the matters at hand. Growth is uncomfortable, and it is easy to get upset with the therapist because you are looking at issues about your own life you do not like to examine. In such cases it might be tempting to hold the therapist responsible for your life, but if they are competent, they will not accept that responsibility nor demand you continue to examine what you are not capable of exploring.

Psychotherapy is a service that costs money. For some reason, some people resent this aspect of therapy. Perhaps it is because the therapist is viewed as a substitute parent, and our society expects parents to provide everything without any cost to the child. Or perhaps it is because therapists are viewed as society views the clergy. We expect spiritual guidance within a church to be free of charge. Whatever the issues people have with money and therapy, the solution is to know exactly what your sessions will cost before you begin therapy. Once you have booked a therapy session that time has been sold to you and you will be responsible to pay if you miss your session or don’t give 24-hour notice of a change. The therapist is a trained professional who is making the equivalent amount that plumbers or electricians make. Therapists are required to have 6 to 10 years of education beyond high school, and another 3 to 5 years in training before they are licensed to practice. Family lawyers typically charge $350 to $450 per hour to assist their clients end their marriage, while marriage therapists typical charge $100 to $250 per hour and they assist you to save your marriage.

May I finally speak to the issue of using your friends for marital therapy rather than a trained professional who is bound by law to keep confidential everything you share in therapy? Nothing poisons the well of marriage more than the need to tell all your friends about the distress in your marriage. Whenever you see these people, they shall always begin the conversation with,” how is your marriage”? This will become the main topic of conversation every time you get together. It will become a tar baby you cannot release yourself from. You then become reduced to a reality TV show for the amusement and entertainment of others. And, they probably shall tell all their friends about your broken marriage. Better to pay a professional who is trained to keep confidential what should be held sacred and private.

The Transformational Power of Love

2007-04-14T12:29:00.000-07:00

“Even As Love Crowns You So Shall He Crucify You”

One of the most beautiful books of poetry ever written is ‘The Prophet’ by Kahlil Gibran. Gibran is perhaps the greatest Sufi poet along with Rumi. Sufi’s are the mystical branch of the Muslim religion as the Kabala is the mystical branch of Judaism. In this wonderful expression of wisdom in poetry, the Prophet who lives on top of the mountain sees his ship coming from afar, signifying that he is ready to die, and complete this life’s journey.

Before the prophet leaves this home by ship into death, he moves down from the top of the mountain, where he is asked a series of questions by the people of the village of Orphalese who have gathered to say goodbye. The questions they ask him are the fundamentals questions we all ask about life. The questions include what is love, marriage, children, work, giving, pleasure, death, and many other fascinating topics. The first question that he is asked is “what is love”. The Prophet proclaims his vision of love, which along with the Apostle Paul’s description in Corinthians 13, is perhaps the most beautiful description on the topic of love.

Inherent within the discourse is the point that love is our teacher, and that love gives us the opportunity to refine our human soul. The prophet says, “Love is for your growth and for your pruning.” Love will teach you many joyful, and difficult lessons. The centerpiece of the prophet’s teaching is that love shall both crown you and crucify you. Love shall instruct you and perfect you. Love shall prepare you for the next stage of the journey into eternity.

“For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you…He threshes you to make you naked. He sifts you to free you from your husks. He grinds you to whiteness. He kneads you until you are pliant; and then he assigns you to his sacred fire, that you may become sacred bread for God’s sacred feast.”

The Prophet goes on to say, “But if in your fear you would seek only love’s peace and love’s pleasure, Then it is better for you that you cover your nakedness and pass out of love’s threshing-floor, Into the seasonless world where you shall laugh, but not all of your laughter, and weep, but not all of your tears.”

Love is according to all ancient wisdoms, the paramount teacher. Love is both wonderful and extremely difficult. The lessons of love are priceless. Yet most of us think of love as an emotion that is sweet, easy, happy and joyous. We think of love as an emotion only, rather than a spiritual force that changes us and perfects our spirit. The Prophet teaches that this is not so. Love can and will crucify you, but in so doing the character and personal growth is well worth all the pain. Those who have chosen the spiritual path know this well. To love is to open yourself up, to become vulnerable. To love is to be open to pain, hurt, depression and sadness. But it is also to be open to joy, delight, excitement and happiness. It is far better to love and suffer from that love, than to never have loved at all. There are risks in loving, but the rewards are much greater than the suffering in the view of the Prophet.

As a Therapist I can tell you much of the work of therapy is hard and rigorous, but the rewards are beyond verbal description. To end the pain of the ego, to find the peace in solitude, to come to acceptance and to give up control, these are the priceless qualities produced within us when we enter love’s threshing floor. As a Therapist who acts as a guide for people upon their personal spiritual path, I am privileged to watch in awe as human’s wrestle with their inner demons, do battle with their ego self, resist the dark side, and reach for the impossible dream. And with love as the master, the rewards of such work are magnificent to observe. I am continually humbled as I observe the work people do in therapy to resolve their inner conflicts, to come to peace with their dark side, and to find all that love has to offer.

Love truly is the ultimate teacher.

Can Couples Recapture the Magic in their Relationship?

2007-03-11T16:32:00.000-07:00

If you have been in a committed relationship for any length of time, you have probably faced the loss of enchantment most relationships experience as time marches on. How to return the magic is one of the most common questions presented in marital therapy. What can be done to awaken the marriage, and return the magic?

Whenever I go to the circus I am always impressed with the work of the trapeze artists. Their grace and timing is impeccable. They have learnt how to co-ordinate they’re rhythm with each other, and their beauty as a team is mesmerizing. I would describe the trapeze as a group of people dancing in mid air, with only a safety net to protect them from total disaster.

I see the beauty of the trapeze as a wonderful metaphor for couples who are looking to have an extraordinary relationship. The ease and grace witnessed by the audience does not tell the story about how much they have to practice and work out together to produce such a beautiful drama in the air. The dedication to their work, and the amount of time they practice goes unnoticed once the circus act begins. But we all can understand from the difficulty of the task how hard they have worked to produce the results we see at the circus.

Truth is they have practiced, practiced and then practiced some more. So with a good relationship, time is spent acquiring skills that gives the couple the grace and surrender we all enjoy to behold. Practice is required to create a magical relationship. It never happens effortlessly. In the trapeze act we do not see all the attempts they try to create what is seen during the performance. So to with extraordinary relationships. They happen because the couple has dedication and resolution.

Magical relationships have the timing and grace of the trapeze artist. The timing comes from experience, learning new skills, and putting yourselves in the position where you can be couched by others. People ask therapists all the time, does therapy work for couples? The answer is yes, but it takes commitment, dedication and practice. I have seen many couples transform dysfunction systems into graceful works of art, but only with hard work, practice and powerful communication skills.

Couples therapy is only one of the tools available for couples wishing to return the magic. I have seen spectacular results from marriage encounter weekends, and many churches offer them free of charge. Check with your local minister to find such weekend retreats for couples. I have seen many good seminars and workshops produce transformation in marriages. I have watched couples grow just by going to group sessions for couples. Any arena where you get to practice and learn new skills will improve your relationship, and will assist the couple in recapturing the magic that began the relationship in the first place.

If you want to have a powerful relationship, you will have to work at it. And, this needs to happen not just when you get into trouble. Before the magic wears thin, finding support to produce an extraordinary relationship is available from many sources. If you really want to revitalize your commitment, you can and you will find many sources for support in doing this work.

Perhaps having a wonderful relationship is not important to you. Maybe the trapeze artist is a totally pointless craft. Maybe you prefer to just have an exchange of services in your marriage. If so, let things be. But if you yearn for more, and if you long for the magic to return or increase, you will have to be committed to working hard. You may have to learn new skills and you will definitely have to practice these skills within your relationship if you want it to flourish and grow.

Abandonment Feelings

2007-02-24T20:41:00.000-08:00

Much of human behavior is run unconsciously by the fear of abandonment.
Frankie Lane who died recently sang the High Noon song associated with the movie. “Do not forsake me oh my darling”. Frankie sang the song with such pathos that you felt alone just listening to the song. The song had a haunting experience of aloneness and isolation in the face of everything that was supposed to be good. “Do not forsake me oh my darling, on this our wedding day”. Ultimately this feeling runs human beings in the strangest of ways and we often act out these feelings without conscious control.

For example, the female astronaut who stalked a fellow astronaut and was arrested for her behavior was acting out abandonment feeling, without even understanding what she was doing. The media questioned the research NASA does when selecting such high powered people to explore space. They reasoned that psychological testing should have identified these bizarre behaviors she expressed ahead of time. But how can any psychological test predict the dark side of the abandonment feelings? They come when lest expected and can create bizarre behavior that is personally humiliating and even criminal as in the case of the female astronaut. Not only that, if we disqualify people when feelings of abandonment run amok, no one would ever achieve any high office anywhere. Certainly not politicians and religious leaders who have been publicly caught acting out their abandonment feelings having affairs with the most inappropriate people at the most inappropriate times.

Best to understand your dark side and know that we are all capable of acting out painful abandonment feelings. Ultimately they arise from being human. We are born without a clear purpose, without a real sense of belonging and we have to create family in the best way we can. If this is at all faulty in your past, when you least expect it, these feelings can create havoc in your life.

As a marriage and family therapist, I see these feelings expressed whenever the couple is at odds with each other and whenever they begin feeling lonely inside their marriage. Most affairs have their origin in these feelings, as sexuality is one of the prime addictions used by couples to salve the hurt that comes from the feelings of abandonment. If you have never felt alone inside an intimate relationship, perhaps you will not understand. In my experience most people feel totally alone from time to time, so if you have never recognized these feelings inside yourself, perhaps you are in denial about your unconscious mind and the tricks it is capable of playing.

Often sexual infidelity is blamed on drug and alcohol abuse. But under the mind-altering experience of wiping out your better sense of priority with drugs and alcohol, you will find the abandonment feeling lurking and waiting to create havoc. Handling the drug and alcohol abuse may be the first step in recovery, but ultimately if you are to understand yourself and exercise a measure of self-restraint, you will need to come to terms with abandonment feelings.

The Eastern philosophies tell us abandonment is an illusion. They say, we are all one; that we are all connected as a complete species. In their view, the illusion of being totally alone is the mind playing games within itself to darken the experience of living. If this philosophy is correct, then humans should never feel abandonment. But I have never met anyone who was self-observant who didn’t have a hard time from time to time dealing with feelings of abandonment.

Many young adults blame their parents for these feelings. They reason that because these feelings are so painful to cope with, there must be something mummy and daddy didn’t do that produced these feelings. Parents in our society are quick to criticize themselves, and often take on these guilt trips and then the feelings produce hurt and anguish within the family that if not understood can deaden the family spirit.

Truth is we all have these dark feelings to manage. Like greed, lust, jealousy, and the other negative feelings humans have to manage, these feelings can express themselves in self-destructive ways. To cope with the feelings it is best to look them straight in the eye. Do not run from them. Understand them. Learn how to manage them, and accept that all humans have feelings of isolation to deal with, and sometimes these feelings of isolation are hard and tough to cope with.

Why is Marriage So Difficult?

2007-02-24T16:51:00.001-08:00

I love watching the Olympic Games. The best of the best compete for a gold medal. What is obvious is that winning a gold medal is extremely difficult. If everyone could win a gold medal, the Olympics would not be special. The same is true of marriage. If success were easy, the majority of marriages would be wonderful. First time marriages would not have a 50% divorce rate, and the majority of people who stay married for life would report marriage as ideal. However, the reverse is true.

Truth is most people fail at marriage. Success in marriage is like success in any arena of life, rather difficult and demanding. Being a full time marriage and family therapist in private practice, has lead me to conclude that no more than 10% of marriages are really successful. Success in marriage is where both parties report that their marriage is challenging but very rewarding. Good marriages balance the needs of the individuals without sacrificing the harmony of the couple. Truth is that may be as complicated as balancing on parallel bars, or running a successful marathon.

Human’s gravitate to groups and seek companionship. These needs are well served by marriage. However, creating harmony with another is complicated unless one member of the couple is totally dominant, and the other completely submissive. True marital harmony is a goal most profess to want; yet few attain. The compromises required for two strong people to be both individuals and a couple is an art form that only the few master. Just like the Olympics, the true masters make the sport look easy, when in truth they have practiced and practiced for years to gain success in just one small arena of life.

Why is marriage so difficult? Because opposites must be in balance. Because two becoming one is extremely demanding. Remember the three-legged race, when two people tie your inner legs together and try to run in harmony. Challenging and difficult. You must surrender personal ego and work as a team. But once accomplished, the task is meaningless, except as a metaphor.

The real problem for marriage today is that no one spells out the challenge. Society is more interested in saving the word “marriage” for heterosexuals than in accepting that marriage between two people whatever the sexual preferences is extremely challenging and very difficult. As long as we debate the form of marriage and not the substance of marriage we shall remain in the dark ages. Society spends mega bucks promoting the official party surrounding the wedding and does nothing to prepare for the hard work of marriage. This is like preparing for the Olympics by selecting the candidates based on outer garments and party preparations. Forget running preliminary races or having trials. Base everything on outer appearance. And then the rich would succeed at sports while the poor would not be invited. If this were how we prepared for the Olympics, not many gold medals would be forth coming. The gold belongs to those who have natural talent and who practice and train for many long years before going to the Olympics. Success in marriage doesn’t belong to those who throw the best wedding party, but rather to those who practice at the art of marriage.

Why do we believe that anyone who is heterosexual can succeed at marriage as long as they have the right send off, and get a legitimate license? Just look at all the politicians who want your vote. They all have perfect little families and happy marriages and they show them off at their national conventions. Marriage is simple according to the political parties that want your vote. All politicians have perfect families and perfect marriages, until the press gets wind of the outer illusion.

By now I hope I have made my case. Marriage is difficult. As difficult as winning at anything that is challenging. Marriage like life was never intended to be easy. It is not easy for heterosexuals or homosexuals. Marriage is not easy for Republicans or Democrats. Better marriages are not found in Christian or Muslim marriages. Marriage is hard work, and the truth is most people are too lazy to win a gold medal in sports, or have a successful marriage in life. Worst of all, society perpetuates the illusion that a marriage license is all you need to succeed in one of the most challenging aspects of life.

When our society places marriage and family issues for students to learn in school then I will know we are more committed to having successful marriages in our country. When we have more psychological services offered to families who struggle with violence, then I shall know we as a nation are more committed to what is possible in marriage. As long as we are worried about who can marry and who cannot marry, we remain in denial about the struggles and challenges within all marriages and we stay stuck with the empty form of marriage rather than striving to reach the gold medals available to the hard working few who search for perfection within the married state.

Solitude of The Self

2007-02-24T16:44:00.000-08:00

Every now and then a true orator appears and inspires us in ways we have not been moved before. Martin Luther King, John Kennedy, Winston Churchill stand apart for the inspiration they were able to create in our generation. Few women have had the opportunity to reach such highs. But without a doubt one such woman was Elizabeth Cady Stanton. She was able to debate the rights of women in such eloquent words that no one could respond articulately to her arguments. They would ridicule, hate, malign, but no one could clearly address the issues she spoke about. My daughter recently came across her final address, and I found it so inspiring for all of us (men and women) that I would like to reproduce it for your consideration. The title is the solitude of self. Stanton was a mother, wife, lover, social activist and at the end of her life after her husband died, she spoke of the solitude of life so beautifully, so clearly, that I believe we can all gain from her insight.

Here is her final address to the National American Convention on January 18, 1892.

“No matter how much women prefer to lean, to be protected and supported, nor how much men prefer to have them do so, they must make the voyage of life alone, and for safety in an emergency they must know something of the laws of navigation….
The talk of sheltering women from the fierce storms of life is sheer mockery, for they beat on her from every point of the compass just as they do on man, and with more fatal results, for he has been trained to protect himself, to resist, to conquer... Whatever the theories may be of woman’s dependence on man, in the supreme moments of her life he cannot bear her burdens….(In) the tragedies and triumphs of human experience each mortal must stand alone.
The strongest reason why we ask for women a voice in the government under which she lives; in the religion she is asked to believe; equality in social life, where she is the chief factor; a place in the trades and professions, where she may earn her bread, is because of her birthright to self sovereignty; because as an individual, she must rely on herself.

In age, when the pleasures of youth are passed, children grown up, married and gone, the hurry and bustle of life in a measure over, when the hands are weary of active service, when the old armchair and the fireside are chosen resorts, then men and women alike must fall back on their own resources. There is a solitude which each and every one of us has always carried.... more inaccessible than the ice-cold mountains, more profound than the midnight sea; the solitude of self. Our inner being, which we call ourselves, no eye or touch of man or angel has ever pierced."

2007-02-24T16:37:00.000-08:00

What are the Foundations of a Successful Marriage

2007-02-24T15:57:00.001-08:00

What distinctions create a successful relationship. Is it luck, good karma, or are there some specific observable reasons a small minority of people find happiness with an intimate partnership?

Obviously luck and karma may play there part, but observation does indicate that good relationships have three essential components buried deep within them. Trust, honesty and complete communication are requirements if one wants to find happiness in a relationship.

It amasses me that most couples would tell an outside friend information about intimate aspects of their lives before they can share this information with their partner. This unhealthy state exists because trust, honesty and complete truthfulness have not been established, or once the relationship progresses, fear hinders clean open communication. The problem usually goes back to judgments made between lovers, then defensiveness and fear enter the equation. When humans are intimate, it is essential that judgments be held in check. With judgments come disapproval and anger, hurt and defensiveness, all the negative qualities that deaden intimacy.

What to do if you are not honest, trusting and completely open with your partner? First question is this is an appropriate relationship for you? If not, then deal with that. If it is appropriate, and if you are feeling judgment or experiencing being judged by your partner, talk about it. Honest communication is essential for success. Without complete truthfulness, how can trust be established? Without trust, how can love survive? Without love, how can your intimacy continue?

I am sure you have heard the three rules for buying good real estate. “Location, location, location.” Relationship rules are similar. “Communicate, communicate, communicate.” Communication is not just what is said, but just as important it includes what is not said. If you have a breakdown in communication, it becomes essential that you immediately fix the problem. If you cannot fix it together, seek outside help. Mediation, spiritual counseling, marriage therapy are all possibilities to helping you get back on course.

Success in relationship occurs when you are in love with your best friend. And if they are your best friend, you can and will tell them everything. If you cannot share important data with your marital partner, you have a serious problem, and you need to do some hard soul searching to find a way to remedy that condition.

So, success is found in couples that can and do talk regularly about everything and anything. And if you cannot and will not talk to your best friend, find out what is the blockage and do something about the issue, before the matter strangles the love that is left between the two of you.

Surviving Divorce

2007-02-24T15:23:00.000-08:00

A friend of mine who has been married for over 25 years wrote me this email today.

Guess I'd better get this over with. Told most of my friends and so here goes. I'm going to join the ranks of the newly divorced. My husband doesn't want to be married. He's really tried but he can't keep up this lie anymore. Don't have a whole lot to say but don't mind in the least answering questions. I'm still in that blessed numb state. But we have talked and talked and talked and I do understand it.

Yes we have talked to somebody, yes I will talk to somebody and I know we will both be alright and I also know we will stay friends. I'm just tired right now so write back and tell me what you think.

I wrote back.

.....so sorry to hear that it is your turn in the barrel. Divorce is a horrible process to go through....unfortunately probably necessary for far too many of us if we are going to be honest and live authentic lives. When so many people get divorced we have to ask what is wrong with the task, rather than what is wrong with the people. Not that mistakes have not been made. Rather, marriages do end, more often now before the death of one of the partners. When Paula and I got divorced my mother never blamed either one of us, she just expressed sadness about what was happening. She did not pick sides. She remained compassionately detached, which gave me the opportunity to work through my own feelings without having to work through family feelings as well.

Beware of blaming yourself, or your husband. That will only distract you from what you need to do right now. Blaming is useless, and merely perpetuates the simplistic game of victim and perpetrator. Life is never so simple as to find one person right and another person wrong. Blame goes on and on forever, never allowing you to come to peace and forgiveness. Perhaps the hardest person to forgive when divorce occurs is yourself. With blame, you are always opening yourself up for self hatred. The process is about forgiveness and letting go, not about making other people wrong, and continuing the anger. Eventually if the anger is not forgiven, it will eat you up inside.

After ten years, I have finally come to the place where I believe Paula and I had a fabulous marriage. We had troubles like all marriages have troubles, and we ended those struggles by the divorce process. But I now realize that we did marital relationship splendidly for 25 years and we are now great friends. It is the going through the adjustment of divorce that is hard. It is like pulling a fully grown tree out of the earth and replanting it. The tree suffers, goes into shock, but it is necessary for the survival of the tree, and so the tree endures. With age unfortunately comes sadness. We have to surrender the idealism of our youth and we have to accept reality as it is rather than as we wish it to be. With this surrender comes growth and new life, new awareness.

So you have embarked upon a journey that I found very difficult to travel, but after many years I have found it gratifying to have found so many lessons from such a difficult and painful process. What I have learnt that carries me forward is that if I can get through a divorce and be as loving and peaceful at the other end as I am towards myself and Paula about our marriage, then I have learnt something very special. I also know if I can endure a divorce, I can continue to grow no matter what the difficulty. I know you will also learn this truth. I know that on the other side of this pain is a joy that matches this hardship, because that is the way life is designed.

All my love,

Stephen

Returning the Magic into the Relationship

2007-02-24T14:25:00.000-08:00

If you have been in a committed relationship for any length of time, you have probably faced the loss of enchantment most relationships experience as time marches on. How to return the magic is a common question presented in marital therapy. What can be done?

Whenever I go to the circus I am always impressed with the work of the trapeze artists. Their grace and timing is impeccable. Their beauty mesmerizing. A group of people dancing in mid air with only a safety net to protect them from total disaster.

I see the beauty of the trapeze as a striking metaphor for couples who are willing to perfect their relationship. The ease and grace witnessed by the audience does not tell the complete story. The dedication to their work, and the amount of time they practice goes unnoticed once the circus begins. But we all can guess how hard they have worked.

Truth is they have practiced, practiced and then practiced some more. So with a good relationship, time is spent acquiring skills that gives them the beauty we all enjoy to behold. Practice is required to create a magical relationship. It never happens effortlessly, it just looks like it is without exertion. It happens out of dedication and resolution.

Magical relationships have the timing and grace of the trapeze artist. The timing comes from practice, learning new skills, and putting yourselves in the position where you can be couched. People ask me all the time, does therapy work for couples? The answer is yes, but it takes commitment, dedication and practice. I have seen many couples transform dysfunction systems into graceful works of art, but only with hard work, practice and good communication skills.

Couples therapy is only one of the tools available. I have seen spectacular results from marriage encounter weekends. Check with your local minister to find such weekend retreats for couples. I have seen seminars and workshops produce transformation. I have watched couples grow just by going to group sessions for couples. Any arena where you get to practice and learn new skills will improve your relationship.

The main point I want to make is that if you want to have a powerful relationship, you will have to work at it. Not just when you are in trouble. But before the magic wears thin. While you are still able to hold the special feelings of appreciation and love that create the magic in the first place.

Maybe having a great relationship is not important to you. Maybe the trapeze artist is a totally pointless craft. Maybe you prefer to just have an exchange of services in your marriage. If so, do nothing. But if you yearn for more, and if you long for the magic to return or increase, you will have to be committed, you will have to learn new skills and you will have to practice these skills within your relationship.

Supportive Relationships verses Competitive Relationships.

2007-02-24T14:22:00.001-08:00

Supportive Relationships verses Competitive Relationships.

Is your relationship competitive or supportive? Do you have tension between the two of you that expresses itself as a constant battle, or are you both working in harmony to become the very best individuals and couple you can be? If you are competitive, you will tend to become fatigued and worn out by the constant fighting. If you are supportive, you will not grow as much from the tension, but you probably will be more content with each other.

Competitive relationships fight and struggle constantly with the goal of striving to better your partner, or win in some concocted competitive battle. The battle can be over anything. The real issues are not the issues you fight about, the issues are who wins and who loses. Then the game moves to assigning blame. Most competitive relationships do not even understand how they have developed these disruptive patterns. Often oldest children, who are programmed to be in control of their siblings, will get together and struggle for power among themselves just as they did in childhood. This can be a nasty arrangement.

A supportive relationship on the other hand is a relationship where both individuals want their partner to win at the game of life. They do not think in terms of competition with each other. They see themselves cooperating and helping whenever needed, rather than struggling to win and better their companion. The goal is to be as supportive as possible, so your partner can achieve everything they wish for themselves in this life.

Rumi the great Persian poet of the thirteenth century said, “When I love you, I love myself. When I love myself, I love you.” Very simple, yet so profound. If two people can do that in love, or a family could do it, and then a village, eventually the entire world could live that way and we would all be at peace. Cooperation in relationships is much healthier than competition.

Capitalism as an economic model thrives on competition. Capitalism is the equivalent of the animal kingdom, “eat or be eaten”. It strives for the few to get to the top and dominate the many who live under the kingmakers. Competition brings out the best in people economically; however, capitalism is a very poor model for human relationships.

What works well to produce wealth (capitalism) is often destructive in intimate relationships. Competitive principles work well in sports and business, but will create a lonely intimate relationship. Support and cooperation will produce feelings of harmony and tranquility.

The way out of a competitive relationship is to see the competitive game you play with your partner and learn new patterns of behavior that will shift the dynamic so that love can flourish and cooperation can shine. This requires couple examine the ways their relationship interacts. This becomes impossible if competition between the two of you is your primary objective, because to find these patterns demands a level of cooperation that will set the stage for growth and change.

Eventually competitive relationships wear themselves out. The fighting, the winning and losing, become very exhausting. Often, the relationship becomes so exhausting that the couple will seek help in finding ways to change the dynamic of their relationship. A good marriage counselor can help if you are willing to look at the nature of the relationship. In truth if the problem has existed for many years, you will probably find it impossible to break these bad habits without some outside intervention. Seeking intervention requires that both of you come to see the competition as destructive, and you find someone strong enough to engage your style, and suggest changes.

The Experience of the Mystical

2007-02-24T14:08:00.000-08:00

The Experience Of The Mystical

“The most profound emotion is the experience of the mystical.” Albert Einstein.
The wisdom of Einstein is remarkable. The physical scientist who treasured the spiritual. The creative thinker who both pushed and understood the limits of human understanding. The most brilliant mind of the past century who asked us to appreciate the experience of the mystical.

To see life as ordinary is boring. It leaves one with a sense of meaninglessness. To look for the mystical, to search for the divine, gives hope and courage, purpose and aliveness. Of course to believe you can fully understand the mystical is arrogant and very shallow. Truth is, the best we can do is appreciate the questions, and be content with not knowing answers to the most important questions of our existence. But in the search of the mystical we place ourselves in appreciation of the magnificence of life, and become open to what has become known as “thinking outside the box”.

How do you search for the mystical? The mystical is all around us, if we have ‘eyes to see, and ears to hear’ as Jesus suggested we needed to develop. Watching plants grow is mystical. That is the secret within gardening. As a young boy I couldn’t understand why my father would go into the garden after work and pull weeds. A successful Judge by day, he would come home, put on old cloths and spend time in his beloved garden. Now with age I can understand what he was doing, because I have found the same love. He was not just “pulling the weeds” he was watching the plants grow, feeling the soil between his fingers, and taking in the entire experience of vegetation growing. It was watching life that intrigued him.Native American Indians have always been special to me. It is their spirituality that I admire most, their peacefulness with the cycle of life. They respectfully worshipped the animals they killed for food. They walked quietly upon the earth disturbing as little as possible. They lived with such dignity, even though they were no match for the weapons and savagery of the European who came from the East.

Mystery is all about us. It is in the sunset. It is in a babies smile. It is present when humans laugh. It is seeing the ordinary with fresh eyes. It is observing life and appreciating the majesty that is always present. Human emotions are mysterious. Permitting yourself to explore your feelings is one of the most joyful ways we can experience the mystical. Yet many of us are afraid of our feelings because we do not know how to handle the range of our feelings. We feel both harsh, angry feelings, and the soft and tender sides as well.

We fear vulnerability, not realizing that humans are strongest when they are vulnerable. Being vulnerable is being open to the mystical. To be open to life is to be vulnerable and strong, to attempt to control others is ultimately weak. To be totally present with everything that is happening is to experience the mystic. This I believe is what Einstein recommended. To be open to life and the magical forces that are present is the mystic’s path.

6 Infuriating Truths about Marriage Counseling that Drive Couples Crazy

2007-02-24T14:05:00.001-08:00

“The Six Infuriating Truths About Marriage Counseling That Drive Couples Crazy”

I have practiced the art of marriage counseling for thirty years. During that time I have observed that several basic concepts that come up during marriage counseling seem to be difficult for many couples. The commonality of these issues makes them worth examining as they can be places of friction many marriages experience.

I do not believe in a trouble free marriage or partnership. Just as a beautiful garden is tended to by a diligent gardener, so a good marriage has unseen labor that produces the outcome we observe in good, easy relationships. The hallmark of a good relationship is the presence of trust, harmony, respect, good communication and of course love.

I have designated these six areas as “infuriating truths” not because I believe them to be truths, but rather because I see couples being irritated by the same issues, and so not knowing what else to call them, I have called them “truths”. Perhaps “concepts” is closer to the mark?

So here are the six issues.

1. The truth in a relationship has two viewpoints. Therapists are not “relationship police” who judge who is right and who is wrong. There is just your truth and your partner’s truth, and together the communal reality is an agreed-upon consensus. Finding a compromise that works for both is the process of achieving harmony and peace within your relationship. Demanding your partner accept your perception as “the truth” produces a power struggle.

2. Your greatest strengths and those of your partner are also your greatest weaknesses. We first fall in love with what we experience as the strengths in our partner, and then we experience the shadow side of these same qualities. For example, strong-willed people are first viewed as clear-minded and determined, but eventually this strength reveals its dark side as our awareness grows. The strength is then seen as stubbornness and inflexibility. Every coin has two sides. In truth we need both sides, for only with contrast can anything exist. Good is good because bad is bad. Beauty is beauty because ugly is ugly. Paradox demands tension between opposites. Handling the paradox is the key to contentment. Managing the tension determines a good relationship.

3. You are rarely angry about what you think you are angry about. Beneath the anger, hidden from your consciousness, is the feeling that must be dealt with. It is necessary to look under the anger to find the unseen feeling you need to resolve. Anger is more often fear or sadness, insecurity or despair. Expressing anger for most men is socially safe because our culture views anger as strong, while sadness is seen as insipid and weak. Getting in touch with your anger is far more important than expressing it. Once you understand why you are angry, you can handle the real issue and not strike out at the nearest target.

4. Emotions generally affect decision-making more than logic does. To handle conflicts you must first understand the emotions, then attempt to add “reasonable” to the equation. Most of us drift between emotion and reason and get confused in the process. Finding harmony within a relationship requires that you deal first with the emotions and then explore reasonable accommodation for the partnership. We need rules for fair fighting. We need boundaries around discussion. If you cannot provide yourself this safety, you will need an outside mediator to facilitate your discussions that generate deep emotional responses.

5. Jealousy is never proof of love. Jealousy is evidence of personal insecurity, and most couples avoid other relationships that trigger jealousy, thus submitting to insecurity. Love contains freedom and trust; jealousy is about control and ownership. Many people who experience jealousy want their partner to feel the same feeling believing that the jealousy proves love and desire, when in truth it is insecurity and a lack of trust. There are always two reasons trust does not exist. The evidence shows trust is inadvisable, or the one not trusting has lost their ability to trust anyone due to excessive pain from past traumas.

6. The purpose of marital therapy is not to change your partner. Rather, it is about accepting that which cannot be changed, and finding new ways that have more flexibility for the couple than the previous systems. Surrendering to who we are is the royal road to harmony. Harmony has greater value than being right or winning the argument. Competition may be good for capitalism, but it is destructive to a loving relationship.

Surviving in a Time of Anxiety

2007-02-24T14:04:00.000-08:00

Surviving in this Time of Anxiety.

The millennium has begun with a lingering uncomfortable feeling of anxiety. The Y2K problem was a fizzle, but the stock market crash that began in March of 2000 was not. We have entered a time of anxiety and uncertainty. The economy hit a wall, job lay offs have arrived, tech companies are down and people’s retirement accounts have taken a serious hit. Just another small down turn or the beginnings of something far more serious? This is the question that produces the anxiety, and it is this anxiety that thoughtful people need to manage.

Scott McNielly, the head of Sun Microsystems, was recently asked if he saw a bottom to the turbulence. He responded, “how can you predict the bottom, when nobody saw the cliff”. And it was a cliff. The NASDAQ index and the technology stocks have been hit much harder than the general market and in real terms, the debacle for the NASDAQ has been worse than the stock fall during the great depression. What is happening? What is coming next?

Retirement income has been lost. Millionaires on paper with stock options that are now worthless have become ordinary people. Not that they were millionaires in reality, but it is a major lose to find yourself adjusting to a reality that you believed to be true. It is one thing to imagine and plan that you have assets, only to wake up one year latter and find that all those paper profits have disappeared. And for others, the paper profits are deeper wounds. Some have lost houses they purchased, retirement accounts that they saved for retirement, while others have financially been wounded so deeply that the anxiety has created serious depression and deep cynicism.

How to survive in this age of anxiety? How do you master the feelings that are associated with the uncertainty. These are the challenges that many people now have to face. Veterans of economy cycles have greater security than new comers. They prepared for the worst and hoped for the best. But in reality, everyone is confused about the future and all of us have to cope with feelings of insecurity. Even if we go untouched, we have to watch friends and family struggle. It is a lot easier to collectively ride the good times, than manage the downturns.

What is important is that we assess the situation and learn to accept what has already happened. Being angry with yourself because you didn’t foresee this downturn, and prepare accordingly is expecting you should be a perfect prophet. Very few people know when or how to ride the waves of economic upheaval, and believing you should have had such insight is to expect far too much from yourself. Such self anger leads to depression. Acceptance of the current situation as it is, and making adjustments is a much better use of your time.

These are times when resourcefulness is needed. Resourcefulness is the ability to respond quickly to changing times. Too many people allow the fear coming from the uncertainty to paralyze them. Assess the situation, take charge and act accordingly. Movement is imperative. No movement products depression.

When economic conditions become difficult, it is an opportunity to reassess priorities. Unfortunately the dark side of capitalism is the need to consume. But consumption in down times may be unwise. And thus the cycle can be prolonged, because capitalism to survive needs consumption. Tax cuts and lowered interest rates are designed to produce more consuming.

Prioritizing your assets, means you value love, hope, joy, friendship more importantly than “things” or possessions. Finding inner peace is coming to terms with what is, rather than struggling to accept what has already happened. Seasons of economic charge are inevitable. Winter follows summer, and the happiest among us learn to value all the seasons, and accept the beauty within every time of year. With winter comes cold, but the cold has within it an opportunity to produce inner family warmth.

Anxiety will come and go, but the transition from living abundance to conserving can produce inner balance. It is finding this balance that is important. When the movement within the transition is strongest, the anxiety is most powerful. Riding the waves of change is perhaps one the tasks of life. Mastery in handling the difficulties of changing seasons is perhaps course 101 in the university of life.

Victims are powerless

2007-02-24T14:03:00.000-08:00

Perceiving Yourself as a Victim Creates Powerlessness

Nothing inhibits the potential for human change more than the concept that people are divided into victims and perpetrators. This mentality emasculates those who believe they are “victims”. Let me explain how this works against positive growth.

Once you experience yourself as a victim, you automatically create a perpetrator who has wronged you. The perpetrator then becomes the focus of your attention. Now you spend all your energy attempting to change the perpetrator, or having revenge, and forget that the only real potential for reorganization in your life is transformation within.

There is a powerful story I once heard about a woman who was raped. When asked if she was still angry about the crime committed, she replied, “that man took five minutes of my life, and that is all he will ever get.” Of course, she took the road less traveled, however for her this belief was empowering. I am not suggesting society should not seek redress for wrong doing, what I am suggesting is that focusing all your energy upon anger against wrong done to you, will keep you stuck and unhappy.

This concept works not only with individuals, but also for nations. I am incredibly impressed with the new government in South Africa. Rather than focus upon punishment for the past, and making perpetrators pay for their crimes, they established a Truth and Reconciliation Commission so that they could get on with building a new and better future. Of course this is a difficult course of action, but it is a revolutionary concept, and it is working. Crimes committed under apartheid are forgiven once acknowledged (truth), then there is reconciliation. This is an incredible paradigm shift in thinking.

Victimization focuses upon revenge. Moving on, is a process that builds positive spirit into the future. Desmond Tutu who lead the commission in South Africa explained that the process did not require the victims who forgave become friends with those who had done them wrong, rather he emphasized moving forward into a brighter future. Punishment and getting even, appear to make the perpetrator pay for their crimes, but in reality they produce years of hatred that we have witnessed in Kosovo between the different religious groups. Ireland has also wasted years of hatred between Catholics and Protestants. Unable to reconcile, the country has been consumed with violence.
On an individual level, it is disempowering to picture yourself as a victim of your parents. And yet many people continue to be stuck in this story of the past. Forgiving your parents is not about letting them off the hock for their crimes against you, rather it frees you up to have powerful relationships in the present. Anyone who harbors hatred against their parents cannot move into the future without a scare so deep that all their intimate relationships are affected. Of course, what needs to be done is teach human’s how to let go of the past, and how to reconcile with past perpetrators. That is the skillful art of psychotherapy.

Parenting as a Team

2007-02-24T14:02:00.001-08:00

Parenting As A Team

Planning whom to marry is probably one of life’s most difficult tasks. What criteria do you use to make such a decision? I would suggest that the choice of a marriage partner is not as important as the choice of the partner you have children with. Marriage if troubled, can find a conclusion in divorce. However you are bound for the rest of your life to the person with whom you share children. You may get a divorce from your children’s other parent, but you must interact with them for the remainder of your life if you want your children to have a viable family after a divorce. Divorce ends a marriage; it does not end a family. Responsible parents, who need to get divorced while they have underage children, do so because they wish to save the family the burden created by a painful marriage. There is no more important task than parenting, and yet there is no training available for parents who unfortunately do not need to prepare before creating children.

I have watched over the past 25 years parenting styles change from being lenient, to strict, back to lenient, then back again to strict. Soft love, tough love, compassionate boundary setting, harsh discipline, it all changes from time to time. I have heard all sorts of experts tell us how to be a good parent. But parenting styles differ, and the secret to having a healthy family is in cooperating with each other as parents when guiding your children.

Where do you go to learn how to be an effective parent? We only have general principles to assist us in the task of parenting. For example, the most important rule of parenting is ‘love your children’. But it is pointless to state this, because parents either love or don’t love their children, and all the preaching in the world will not create parental love. Parental love occurs instantly at birth for the vast majority. We call this primal bonding. Some parents find love for a child at a later stage, if that parent is temporarily troubled and disoriented. But some parents are so emotionally disturbed that they never find love for their children. Such parents force their children to become their own parent and to learn to love themselves without parental love as a foundation.

Another general principle about parenting is ‘children need boundaries’. But who is to say where are the boundaries. A liberal household will have fewer boundaries than a conservative family. Is one right and the other wrong? How much control should a parent have? When do you begin to allow the child to make their own decisions, and when do you allow them to accept the consequences of their behavior? These are tough questions and the answers are varied. Parenting as a team necessitates that both of you agree on the broad framework of these issues.

Another basic principle about parenting is ‘children need attention and support while growing up’. But too much attention in the teen years can be very controlling, creating disobedience and defiance, while too little attention can produce humans who are hungry for love and then search for that love in all the wrong places. When do you surrender control and guidance, and when do you insert yourself right in the middle of their lives? Again, parents need to have general consensus in this area if you are going to work as a team teaching your children.

Parents in a troubled marriage will need to keep as much of the differences between them to private discussions. Children who sense that their parents do not respect each other will attempt to divide and conquer, thus invalidating their parents as their guides. This sets up a confusing family atmosphere. Better to be in some form of agreement around parenting values, even when two adults who share the responsibility of children cannot get along in other areas. Save your disagreements for private, and attempt to be a team even though you do not respect and like each other.

Parenting is a task no one is adequately prepared for, nor adequately trained for. Life does not begin with an owner’s manual. We are left to struggle with these issues. When we accept this, we have the best chance at being successful in the parenting game. It is normal for humans to feel overwhelmed by the task, uncertain how to proceed, and unsure that you are doing the right thing. But it is imperative that parents find as much agreement with each other as possible when dealing with their children.

Life in the Rear View Mirror

2007-02-24T14:01:00.000-08:00

Life in the rear view mirror.

"And if life is just a highway, then the soul is just a car. And objects in the rear view mirror may appear closer than they are"
Meatloaf.

Object in the rear view mirror always appear closer than they are. It is an optical illusion. It not only is an illusion when looking in a rear view mirror, it is as Meatloaf suggests, an illusion relevant to human life and our personal history. The incidents of the past appear closer than they are when you feel distressed and horrified by your personal history.

What are the issues associated with looking in the rear view mirror of life? Life must be directed by looking backwards to get some idea how we should operate in the present and future. Life is guided forwards, by looking backwards. But looking back has dangers that need to be understood and we need to remember that the perception of the past distorts the reality of the present, just as objects in the rear view mirror appear closer than they are.

As a psychotherapist with 26 years of hands on experience, I know you must look in the rear view mirror of life to heal. It is absolutely true that some digging into the past is essential for emotional healing. The issue is how much digging, and how much exploration is essential. And once begun, how do you stop the endless obsessing over the past having uncovered the secrets.

Woody Allen has made a career out of digging into his past. He has found the funny side of his neurosis and used it to make movies that are witty and entertaining. But how much of his behavior is valuable for the rest of us who have no need to make funny movies about neurotic people?

Why look backwards, and how far backwards do you need to look? Unless you have learnt from the past, you are bound to repeat the same mistakes. That is the human way. Unconscious behavior repeats itself over and over again, until we have integrated the lessons of the past and we no longer need to repeat them. This is the case for looking in the rear view mirror of life.

But having learnt from the past, when do we cease looking backwards? When do objects in the rear view mirror appear closer than they are? I suspect once you have become obsessed with the past you have gone too far. If the objective is emotional healing, and the behavior of searching through the past has become obsessional, then I would assume looking backwards has gone way too far.

In reality there is no past or future, there is only the present. Now is the present. The past is gone, and the future is undefined. There is nothing about the future that is real in the present. Yet we can become obsessed with the future and the past and miss the present moment. This is the great truth offered by Eastern religion. Western religion focuses upon the future (heaven and hell), while eastern philosophy teaches the value of living in the present moment, the “now”.

The concepts may be hard to grasp, but the consequences are large. All fear is a reaction to the past or the future. In present time nothing exists that needs to be feared. Yet we all live with fears. And all fears come from looking in the rear view mirror, where objects appear closer than they are. Fear is a clear distortion of reality, and it can only be healed by living in the present moment, which means giving up looking in the rear view mirror.
The important message to gain from this discussion is that while the past and the future may be intriguing, they are largely irrelevant. Present time is the only moment that exists and once you have gained that wisdom, you are capable of producing happiness for yourself. Without this understanding you are looking at life through the distortion of the rear view mirror. And you are driving your car forward while being distracted by the past.

Effective Communication

2007-02-24T13:59:00.000-08:00

The Seventh Key Principle: Communication

The seventh and final key principle that all successful relationships exhibit is the art of good communication. Communication is sharing verbally and non verbally so that the message is accepted and understood by your partner. Communication is not always agreement, rather it is talking plus listening and understanding.

Communication has been broken down into three components; content, tone and non verbal. Seven percent of communication is content, thirty eighty percent is tone, and fifty five percent is non verbal. Most of us would assume the content is the most important component when in reality, the non verbal messages are by far the principle ingredient.

Communication is a skill that can be learnt. The best way to learn this is to practice what is called the 'SRA' exercise. 'S' stands for statement, 'R' stands for restatement, and 'A' represents Agreement. The exercise begins with one of the parties making a clear and concise statement, while the other partner listens. Once the first party has finished, the listener reports back what they think they have heard. If it is not correct, the first person repeats their statement until the other has clearly received their message. Then the listener, finds some agreement within what is said. Perhaps all they can agree to is that that is how their partner feels. Perhaps they can agree to all that is expressed. The exercise is designed to build places of agreement so that the relationship can get back on course.

After the first partner has spoken, you change sides, and the other begins with a statement, while their partner listens, then reports back and then finds some point of agreement.

The hard part of communication is delivering anger and conflict. In order to handle conflict effectively couples need to establish ground rules for fair fighting. Such rules include taking time outs when emotions get too hot. Another rule could be always speak in "I" messages as opposed to "You" messages. "I" messages are statements about how "I" feel, while "You" messages are accusative and judgmental about the other. Good communicators learn how to create and develop grounds rules for conflict and abide by these ground rules whenever conflict and anger is present in communication.

Good communication is also enhanced with a clearing process. Clearing processes are scheduled appointments when couples agree to communicate about topics that they would rather not address. These times should be scheduled approximately once or twice a month. Begin by asking and answering the following questions. "What undelivered communications do I have with you?". "What hasn't been said that needs to be said?". "What do I want to be acknowledged for?". Scheduling times when you talk about what is difficult to talk about keeps the relationship healthy and open. Communication breakdowns usually occur from what hasn't been said, more often that what has been said. It is important to keep communication open, free, and healthy, and the clearing process will ensure that happens.

All successful relationships have these seven key principles. Good communication is perhaps the hardest and most important predictor of a long, lasting relationship.

How To Forgive the Unforgivable

2007-02-24T13:58:00.000-08:00

How to Forgive the Unforgivable

One of the most important keys to finding happiness is in learning the secret of forgiveness. Forgiveness is the art of letting your mind rest around issues that are troubling to you. When the mind is engaged with the tension about wrongs and hurts you have suffered in the past, your mind is in torment. And thus the ability to rest your thoughts about past hurts gives you inner peace and mental rest.

However, this begs the question, how do you learn to forgive? How do you bring your mind to rest about the past? How do you stop fearing the future? When in the past you have hurt another person, feeling guilt is the predominant emotion. When you believe others have hurt or wounded you, anger is the usual response. Either way, your mind is unsettled, and troubled. Forgiveness rests the mind and settles the past, allowing you to live in the present moment without the pain and the torment of those past hurts, and without fear of the future.

Many people successful use rituals to learn how to forgive. Some seek the use of confession. Others talk in therapy. Some write letters to people who have hurt them in the past, expressing all their feelings, and then never send the letter. This way, they can unburden their feelings about the past without involving all the people who have made up that past. Other rituals might be to dig a hole in the earth and shout your hurts into that hole, at the same time releasing the pain of that hurt. Then you can cover the hole, and send the hurt away. Such rituals are physical tasks to help you grasp the emotional aspect within the act of forgiveness. Forgiveness is the mind letting go of the emotional turmoil you are holding onto.

But the real key to understanding forgiveness is to recognize that you as a human have no ability to forgive anyone but yourself. Only God can forgive people. You are not righteous enough, to forgive. As all religions express, we are human, sinners, and live in glass houses, thereby making us incapable of the divine capacity to forgive other humans. Your forgiving another is not about them at all, it is entirely about you and your mental process. You let go of the tension you hold in your mind about that person. You let go the inner turmoil you feel, and thus you allow yourself to experience emotional rest and mental peace. You don’t even need them to ask forgiveness, or to apologize.

This is so hard to grasp, because we have been taught that when another wrongs us, we have the power to forgive them. Not so. Only they can forgive themselves, as only you can forgive yourself. On a spiritual level, only God can forgive human’s of transgression. Not that we should not have the courtesy of a social interactions that when wronged, we ask another to apologize. Not that another cannot ask you to forgive them, or excuse them for a transgression they have made. It is just that forgiveness on the divine level is not within the capability of humans to do. And the miracle of this is that we do not need another to repent of their sins to forgive. For forgiveness is merely empting our minds of the obsessive thinking we run though our brain when angry and upset at others.

To forgive is to bless yourself. To forgive is to grant yourself freedom. To forgive is to give yourself the gift of happiness, because when you release the inner tension, you release your mind from the torment you have been carrying by not forgiving yourself or another. To forgive another does not require that they apologize, or repent. To forgive is to release the inner tension you carry when you hold hatred within your heart for those who have wronged you.

Forgiveness is letting go. Forgiveness is moving on. Letting go of the mental torment you have because you are unforgiving. The key to learning how to forgive is to learn how to let go of the anger and hurt, revenge and disgust you feel towards others. When your mind comes to this peace, you have learnt how to forgive, and you can then live in peace. At this point forgiveness is simply releasing your own inner torment you experience towards another you believe has wronged you.

Learning How to Communicate Gently

2007-02-24T13:55:00.000-08:00

Learning to Communicate Gently

When young couples come into marriage counseling, I often shudder when I hear them
talk to each other. The power struggle stage of their relationship causes them to speak so
harshly, so dogmatically, so authoritatively that they are unaware of the damage they do
when they talk in this tone.

I ask the husband, “is she your princess ?” Invariably, he say “yes”. I reply, “Then why do
you talk that way to her”. They never have a good answer. They seem unconscious of
how harsh they sound. I then ask the wife, “Is he your prince ?” and of course I get the
same reaction.

Why would couples take a new love and deal with it so harshly ? Because they are in the
power struggle stage of their relationship. During this stage, both parties are struggling to
dominate, struggling to be recognized, struggling for independence. This is an important
adjustment stage most young couples visit. Most marriages stay in this power struggle
stage for years and do serious damage to their communication system by speaking from
anger and domination, rather than respect and honor.

Chances are one or both of the partners witnessed their parents speak in this tone to each
other. But in business, if employers spoke with such force, a lawsuit would be forth
coming, so I find it hard to believe couples do not know better. Bad habits and
unconscious behavior catch couples off guard.

If couples are unconscious about how they sound when talking to each other, I
recommend they tape record their disagreements and then listen to how they sound and
work towards finding new ways to speak that accomplish the task without destroying the
love. Football players watch replays so they can improve their skills, and if couples are
serious about building a better marriage, they could also use a replay system to improve
their communication.

No one would dream of taking a brand new baby and handling it harshly. The same
should be true for a new love. It is new, impressionable, and needs tenderness, care and
gentleness. Harsh communication from anger destroys love and builds resentment.
Caring communication needs to be present if you want your new love to grow.

How to Set Appropriate Boundaries in Relationships

2007-02-24T13:54:00.001-08:00

Setting Boundaries

The trendy newest concept in psychotherapy is the issue of setting appropriate intimate boundaries in relationship with others. Boundaries are the border of your psyche as they come up against the emotional exterior of another. This is where you begin and another ends. Boundaries are the cup or container that holds the liquid. Boundaries are the fences that determine you as opposed to them.

The problems associated with boundaries usually occur within families, or between very close friends. Boundaries are an intimacy issue. Husband and wives frequently have trouble setting boundaries. Parents and children are notoriously troubled by inadequate boundaries, according to the latest thinking in psychotherapy.

The key element in this discussion of boundaries is always the distinction that there is a good and a bad boundary. Boundaries are either right or wrong, or using psychological language, appropriate verses inappropriate. This duality between right and wrong assumes someone knows what is appropriate and what is not. Socially, culture has developed very sophisticated boundaries for people so we can live in peace. Society has established these boundaries, and defines them as law. You are not allowed to harm another and avoid social consequences. It is only when we live in harmony that we can create a peaceful and prosperous society, so social boundaries have been defined by laws. But in families or with close intimate friendships, boundaries are not easily defined and are left to individual discretion to define.

What I find troubling in the current social discussion of boundaries is that one who criticizes another for inadequate boundaries is making the assumption that they know the difference between appropriate and inappropriate in intimacy. In matters of law this is clear. Society has established the rules that define appropriate and inappropriate over thousands of years of experience. But in family relationships, the area of contention is beyond the law.

Today each family member has to negotiate these troubled waters alone. Some families are described as ‘enmeshed’ (meaning the boundaries are porous and not firm), while others are very loose and distant. Enmeshment leads to fighting, while distance in relationship leads to feelings of not being special or loved. Who is to say what is appropriate if it does not harm another. Families often have disagreements about the topic of family boundaries.

For example, I had a client who was told by numerous people including psychotherapists that he idolized his mother, and that he needed to set stronger boundaries with her. They claimed he was lost inside the relationship with his mother. He concluded from this common wisdom that he should stop visiting his mother (he would see her one night a week), and only telephone her occasionally. His mother accepted this behavior but was confused by the logic. She felt sad missing the weekly visits, but resigned herself to this new behavior.

After pursuing this new behavior, the son sank into a deep depression. He had artificially withdrew from his mother because other people had convinced him to set stronger boundaries between himself and his mother. He felt while exercising these new boundaries with his mother withdrawn from all socializing. He felt emotional pain, sadness, and despair. Finally he asked himself “why I am doing this?” Realizing it was other people who were defining what was appropriate for him, rather than trusting his own instinct, he began to change back to the way things were. He began seeing his mother one night a week again.

After a few weeks his depression began to lift. His mother who was in her eighties also began experience more vitality, seeing her son every week. In time, my client realized that he and his mother were both happier. And so he concluded that this concept that he needed to establish firm boundaries with his mother was an individual choice, not a socially acceptable decision. Finally he realized that the real issue was that his wife didn’t like his closeness to his mother, and it was to please his wife that he had set boundaries that did not work for him or his mother. His wife was attempting to control his behavior using psychotherapy talk to change his behavior with his mother.

The point to this story is that boundaries are important, but be careful whom you listen to when attempting to find the appropriate boundary level with your family members. Outsiders do not always have the magic answers. Outsiders may have alternative motivation that needs to be understood when the discussion of boundaries is on the table. The key to finding what is right for you, is looking inside yourself and finding what is best for you and your family, rather than reacting to what others define as right and wrong for you.

Boundaries need to be understood. But the topic is not easily definable; so beware of outsiders who seem to have simplistic answers to complex relationships.

Sacred Sexuality

2007-02-24T13:51:00.000-08:00

Sacred Sexuality

As a marriage and family therapist, I find the lack of responsible sexual education a national disgrace. By default, the entertainment industry has become the national creator and distributor of our sexual education. The Church has abandoned the job. School will not touch the topic for fear of parents. Parent’s claim it is their responsibility, yet do very little to teach their children about human sexuality. And thus by default, the Internet, movies and television fill the void. We learn more from entertainers like Britney Spears about human sexuality than we do from all the other experts in the field of human psychology. We have allowed the teaching of human sexuality to be the domain of Hollywood.

The Catholic Church teaches their 1.6 billion followers that sex for any purpose outside of procreation is a venal sin. A venal sin is a minor sin, not bad enough to assign you to hell, but certainly no sin is good. This means deeply religious Catholics cannot use birth control and can only have sexual intimacy if their purpose is procreation. Most Catholics do not follow their churches teachings, so the church has dismissed itself as a serious communicator of human sexuality in the 21st century. The Catholic Church also refuses to sanction the use of condoms by married men with their wives in Africa, who use condoms to prevent the spread of aids. Sexual ideology within the church takes precedence over human needs when it comes to teaching sexuality.

The remaining Christian Churches in America believe sex within marriage is permissible, but teach very little about the sacredness of sexuality. Rather than teach their people about a divine purpose for sexuality, most churches ignore that topic for what they consider to be a more important sexual issue, gay marriage.

So who is to teach human sexuality to our youth? Is sexuality only for procreation or is it also for our well being? Does it have a spiritual purpose beyond procreation? What is sexual intimacy really about? The entertainment industry is happy to fill the void. There is big money to be made in sexual content. Most of money made from sex is hidden from public consciousness. It is ‘dirty’ sexuality. Nasty. Bad. These are the current predominant sexual morals, created in Hollywood by our entertainment industry, and pushed upon the public through the media. Not that ‘nasty’ isn’t a fun sexual game to play, but when that is all you have, it becomes obvious that more substance is needed.

Eastern religions are not as repressed sexually as are Western religions. Western religions emphasis ownership in sexuality, rather than teaching pleasure and purpose. And thus all the rules of sexuality we have been taught by western religion are based on the principles of property rights and ownership. Eastern tantric sexuality is a centuries old discipline that teaches the purpose of sexuality is in exchanging male – female energy. Tantra teaches the male to exchange his maleness with the female, and the female her femininity with the male. This exchange of energy is healing and life sustaining. As a marriage counselor, I know that sexual intimacy is a critical healing tool for couples. Without sexuality, many marriages would not endure the difficult times. These couples find that when everything else is going wrong, at least they can communicate sexually, and let the other know how much they love each other.

Sacred sex, erotic loving, sexual healing, and divinity are all aspects of sexuality that need to be taught. Where are the serious advocates for sacred sexual intimacy? Where are the role models? Where are the examples? Where is the serious education? Hollywood has left us with Janet Jackson, Britney Spears and Madonna. Movies teach humans how to make love. The entertainment industry educates us about what men want and what women want sexually. Are we really certain we wish to abandon the responsibility for sexual education to Hollywood? Could not someone from a spiritual prospective step forward? Or is sexual education to be left to humorists, entertainers and the Internet?

Something is amiss within sexual education, and no one wishes to discuss the matter.

Marriage is like a three-legged race

2007-02-24T13:42:00.000-08:00

Marriage: a Three-Legged Race.

When I was a child I remember picnics where we ran the three-legged race. Two people had their middle legs attached, and the objective was to run in unison with your middle legs tied together, so that between the two of you the couple had three legs. The race required coordination so the couple ran together in harmony. It was not an easy task, but eventually the couple learnt how to run together by coordinating their bodies as one.

Marriage requires a similar skill. Marriage is a team effort, where the two of you are stronger than each alone. A good marriage can be defined as a union where two people are stronger as a couple, than as two separate individuals. If however, the two are divisive, and competitive with each other, you weaken the team. And thus a poor marriage is where two are worse for being a couple, than being a coordinated team.

The secret to running as a three-legged team is collaboration. Being critical of your partner only slows the team down. It is like your right hand hitting your left hand and pretending your body is not hurt. When you attack your partner, you attack yourself. If after running a three-legged race, you lose and criticize your partner for not helping, you are guaranteeing that the team will fail. Better to look at the problems that caused you as a team to fail, than criticizing your partner individually. In a three-legged race you either win together or you lose together. So too in marriage. You either both succeed, or you both fail. Blaming your partner for a marriage failure is like the left leg criticizing the right leg for not winning the race. It may make the left leg feel better, but it will not remedy the failure.

Marriage is not for everyone. Some people prefer to be single than to work together as a team. Unfortunately we as a society have pathologies singleness. We assume single people are lonely, unhappy and looking for a marital partner. This is simply immature, excessively romantic and idealistic. I know many people who are happier as an individual than as a couple, and assuming this is unnatural for humans is ridiculous.

If you wish to be married, then you must work at becoming a team. You must learn how to be a couple, as two people have to learn how to run a three-legged race as one. The key to running a three-legged race is to move your combined middle feet together as a unit, not separately as an individual. This requires coordination, a spirit of teamwork, and patience as you learn how to support each other rather than criticize and tear each other down.

All team sports require the individuals give up most of their personal ego for the benefit of the team. For example, on a football team, it is imperative for a quarterback to be blocked by his front line. Every successful quarterback always congratulates his front line when they win, and when they lose they are very discrete about criticizing in public their team members. Successful football teams work together as a group. With group sport teams, they all succeed or they all fail together.

Marriage is the same as team sports. Team is the essence of marital success. The team cooperates, coordinates and collaborates. In so doing they either succeed together or they fail in their mission as a team.

Biography at end of article.
Stephen Martin, MS. MFT, has over 25 years experience as a licensed marriage and family therapist. In that time he’s helped thousands of couples heal their marriages. As a recognized leader in his field, Stephen Martin served a term as President of the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists, the largest association of marriage and family therapists in the world.
Stephen can be reached at (650) 726-1212 or by email at stephen@healmarriage.com.

Can Men Ever Understand Women?

2006-06-23T11:58:00.000-07:00

Can Men Ever Understand Women?

When men talk about women, the most baffling aspect for the male of the species is understanding female emotional reactions. Not that men don’t feel even though I know quite a few women who come close to believing that. It is just that the depth of female feelings sends men into a quandary to understand. And this is especially true around the topic of “PMS”.

Well, I have discovered a fool proof way for men to understand women’s emotional reactions, and the female dread of PMS. When men develop prostate cancer, hormone therapy is often used to reduce the size of the prostate and to reduce the cancer. These hormones act as blockers of testosterone, as this male hormone can create prostate cancer. Without testosterone, men would never get prostate cancer. And, once on these drug therapies, the side effects are both humorous and enlightening. Swollen breasts, night sweats, and emotional roller coaster rides are all reported by men who take these hormone drugs to fight their cancer.

I have been on this drug regime for six weeks now, and let me tell you, I think I understand PMS better than I could ever understand it listening to women try to explain the experience. Let me try to explain. In my life, I have emotional swings that follow events and facts. For example, if I make a mistake, a feeling is associated with that mistake. Or if something happens to someone I love, emotions appear around the facts of the incident. Before taking hormones, I could always tell how far the emotional swings would take me. After living as long as I have, I am reasonably clear how far the emotional roller coaster takes me. I knew the bottoms. I knew how long the feelings would last. I had come to accept the emotional components associated with my day to day living.

But with a change of the hormonal balance in my system, I have found that I can no longer predict how far the emotions will take me. This is new for me, and can be quite unsettling. I like to know the bottom of my feeling states. I have been there before and I know how long the feelings last. I have become over the years accustomed to my emotional swings and that knowledge gives me comfort. In the certainty, I could handle the predictable ranges.

Not any longer. I find myself emotional during commercials. I find worry, fear and depression intensifying. Of course I know these are “just emotions” and that they will pass, but the unpredictable part of the mood swing is unsettling. I have listen to women tell me this for years, but now I have experienced the roller coaster. Like the Robert DeNiro character in “Analyze This” the emotional aspects of life have become both humorous and scary.

I have wondered if all men shouldn’t be placed on hormone treatment so as to understand what their female partners experience. Like the Indian proverb “may you walk a mile in his moccasins” to help understand one another better, having hormone treatment is not only good for battling prostate cancer, it may also be good for understanding the other sex. I also wonder if society should not place criminals on hormone treatment as testosterone is the male hormone that produces most of the negative male aggression.

My medical friends who understand the powerful side effects of hormone treatment, all laugh when I tell them what it is like. They have seen too many men experience these results. Handling life’s painful experiences with humor is the only sane way I know to get through the insanity. Looking for the positives within life’s lessons, helps me stay balanced.

So thank you hormone therapy, for now I think I understand what it is like to suffer PMS and perhaps even menopause. At least that is what I think I have gained, however I’m not too certain because this may all be an emotional reaction to the hormone treatment.

Fear Cripples The Spirit, While Love Opens Up the Heart

2006-06-23T11:48:00.000-07:00

Fear Cripples The Spirit, While Love Opens Up the Heart

A relationship between two people who love and support each other will open up the heart, let in the sunlight, and produce harmony for both. The other side of that equation is that fear cripples the spirit, shuts down possibility and destroys all that you dream and hope to achieve.

As humans we are extremely complex but within the complexity, some simple truths are self-evident. Such self-evident truths are, ‘love is healthy, hatred is destructive’. ‘Anger eats you up inside, while forgiveness bring peace of mind’. All faiths teach these basic truths because they are observable to reasonable people over time and have thus have become constant observable truths.

When you find yourself in a relationship feeling fear and anger, you need to find the causes of those feelings, and the pathway out of these self-defeating attitudes. Otherwise they will destroy yourself and the relationship you are hoping to build. Fear has many causes, but usually it is the result of attempting to control life so you will not re-experience a past event that produced the fear you fear to feel again.

Perhaps you have experienced a horrific event in the past, and are bringing the feelings of that occurrence into the present. By carrying the unhealthy experience within, you are probably hoping to stop feeling the feelings you felt when that experience occurred before. Thus you are unconsciously holding onto emotional junk as a defense against feeling it again. Better to let it go and trust that if it shows up again you shall know how to handle this one differently. Then you can really face your fears with a new power and with new vitality. Carrying the pain around inside is disastrous for you, your partner and everyone who is close to you.

An appropriate path away from fear is to surrender to what you cannot change, and accept the mystery of life and the gift that is beyond human understanding. But before we find this secret pathway out of fear, most of us get bogged down in the futile attempt to control life, other people, your lover, and even your own unchangeable nature, which will lead to frustration and more fear.

Fear is the great cripple. President Roosevelt (physically crippled, but emotional strong) during the great depression said that fear created much of the suffering of the time and added, "The only thing we need to fear is fear itself.” How true. How wise. Of course it has been said may times and in many ways. We must all face our inner demons that produce the fear and leads us to overly controlling our lives and the lives of our loved ones. Until we begin the battle and overcome the inner demons we become paralyzed by our own negative feelings.

In the second story of Star Wars, “The Empire Strikes Back”, George Lucas presented this simple truth so graphically when Luke had to fight Daeth Vader during his training to become a Jedi knight. Yoda sent him into the wilderness to face his demons. After fighting the evil Vader, and cutting off his head, Luke saw the enemy. Daeth Vader was himself. The head he had dislodged was his own face. Fear is our own worst enemy, and fear must be conquered if we want to have peace of mind, happiness and success in relationship.

The cartoon character Pogo expressed this truth so wonderfully when he said, “We have met the enemy and he is us”. Now that simple statement is a universal truth.

2006-05-31T19:03:00.000-07:00

Is Marriage and Family for Everyone?

Marriage and family is not for everyone. Those who marry should consider that you give up some cherished personal freedoms for the many benefits of being a couple. Humans need socialization, and being married can be the best way to fulfill that need. But like all human accomplishment, a good marriage is at times hard work.

For a moment, let us suspend the romance of marriage and look at the complex issues that need to be dealt with. If people did this before they got married, we would have far less divorce. Most divorces are the result of not understanding all the complexities of a marriage before entering into such a complex commitment.

We silently and consistently condemn everyone who fails at traditional marriage. We staunchly demand that marriage be workable for all, and yet we allow very little difference in the make up and structure of marriage. We demand romance, we reject arranged marriage, we dismiss homosexual marriage, and we have Dr. Phil and Dr. Laura give us simplistic answers to the complex demands of marriage and family life because we want it to be simple.

Marriage is perhaps the most complex of all human relationships. By it’s very nature, marriage is a struggle between two competing for power and domination, surrender and control. The woman’s movement began by rejecting marriage, only to find that the feminist movement lost its direction in the declaration that “a woman needs a man, like a fish needs a bicycle”. The woman’s movement is currently lost in its transition from being against something to being for something else, when it comes to marriage. In this current confusion, society has rushes back to old tradition values that may be outdated, unworkable, and unrealistic.

So lets go back to the basics. Marriage is not simple. It is very complex. The romantic image of marriage bears little resemblance to reality. Reality is that marriage requires constant compromise, frequent communication and lots of attention. The minority master marriage, and when they do they make it look easy. But that is an illusion. Successful marriages are created by hard work just like all successful human endeavors. Success is 90% hard work, and 10% luck. But we all want to believe in luck, because then we are not responsible for the 90% hard work.

A good marriage is essential for a successful family. In my estimation, this means both parents in the couple need to commit to being some form of a team until the youngest child is ready to leave home, usually at 18 years of age. If you consciously decide to be a parent, I submit you should decide to establish the necessary teamwork with the children’s other parent until the task is complete even if you get divorced. Wanting to have a child is not a good enough reason to have a child. Children are not dolls to be played with. They are little beings that need constant guidance and support for at least 18 years. Of course for this to be true, it would be helpful if humans had to qualify before having children. But nature has not set those parameters. Unfortunately children can be born to people who are unqualified to have them, while qualified couples sometimes are infertile. Evolution is not evolved in this regard.

If you decide not to have children, how you structure your marriage is your business. But when you have children, the partnership should succeed well enough for the two of you to co-parent the children even if you cannot live together in marriage. This responsibility of co-parenting with someone you are divorced from is what is missing today, and society is paying a large price for this condition.

Marriage as an institution is not for everyone. Society will be better served once we understand the hard work and commitment involved in marriage and family, and relinquish our romantic notions about how easy marriage is.