Have You Turned Your Partner Into the Villain in Your Inner Movie?
Married for 12 years, Lisa and Cliff were enjoying a fun date night out. Back at home, Cliff wanted to be physically intimate. Lisa, usually game, was exhausted and told Cliff that sex wasn’t in the cards that night as she could barely make it to the bedroom without collapsing. Cliff immediately became angry and sulky. He accused […]
What Do You Want in a Relationship? A Partner or Parent?
What happens when we realize our partner is not the parent we wished for? If we’re very fortunate, we have a parent who is 100% devoted to us, unconditionally. We experience a caretaker whom we believe (whether true or not), is entirely selfless and exists only to take care of our wants and needs, whose needs are indeed synonymous with our own. Many of […]
Why Our Expectations of Marriage Must Change: A Lasting Marriage Means Learning to Live With Broken Promises
When we get married, we make all sorts of promises. The marriage contract, by its very nature, is a series of promises. But, when you really think about it, the institution of marriage, what we assume and expect of each other within a marriage is, if not ridiculous, certainly in conflict with reality. I say this as a […]
Why Trying to Be Understood Is So Exhausting: Rethinking our Response to Daily Hurts.
Kim came downstairs for breakfast that morning only to find the coffeemaker full of old coffee. Yesterday’s brew sat in the pot, looking stale and dead. Her husband had always woken up earliest and was the designated coffee-maker in the family. Kim could count the number of times she’d made coffee on one hand in the nearly two decades of breakfasts […]
Why It’s So Hard to Build Healthy Relationships After Growing Up in Chaos
When we grow up in emotionally chaotic households, we face challenges in establishing healthy adult relationships. When chaos is the norm, we get accustomed to living with what feels bad and scary. We learn to silence our experience because it feels too dangerous to speak up for ourselves or call anyone out on their behavior. As children, […]
Are Your Thoughts True? Do You Even Believe Them?
I was recently taking a walk with my closest friend, hand in hand, enjoying each other’s company and kidding around as we usually do. My friend, who is a bit of a loner, made a joke that he doesn’t make friends easily, to which I sweetly and playfully replied, “Well you made friends with me, a long […]
Are Healthy Relationships Possible After Growing Up in Emotional Chaos?
When we grow up in emotionally chaotic households, we face challenges in establishing healthy adult relationships. When chaos is the norm, we get accustomed to living with what feels bad and scary. We learn to silence our experience because it feels too dangerous to speak up for ourselves or call anyone out on their behavior. As children, […]
Parenting 101: Love Is In the Details
Pam was crying tears of happiness and relief, but also sadness. The man she’d been dating for six months had asked, “How do you feel about what’s happening in the news, given what happened to you in middle school?” Her boyfriend had remembered a small detail about her, something she had mentioned in the first week of their […]
Freedom: Taking Ownership of Your Own Happiness
“Lily doesn’t listen,” had been Shelly’s refrain about her partner for years. She had complained many times to me about this issue, and yet somehow her wife’s behavior didn’t change, and Shelly’s anger and frustration about it also didn’t change. Lily’s inability to listen had created tremendous conflict in the family. A conversation would happen over dinner, […]
How to Make Every Day Matter
“Oh! It’s today. My favorite day,” Winnie the Pooh once said. 29,200 days. That’s how many days we’ll get if we’re lucky enough to live to 80. I think about that a lot, not to be morbid or frighten myself, but to remind myself of the importance of each day I get to be alive. The knowledge of […]