The sad season of the global Pandemic and its devastation in our nation prompts many questions and offers new opportunities. For the Coupledom and for adult children everywhere, the mortality reality accentuates the limits of “time” and the unpredictability of loss. In my work, I encourage couples and individuals to be curious about their parents’ […]
Have That Conversation
Conflagration or Communication: Shielding Vulnerability
Words can be incendiary. Words can be inviting. Words can be soothing or exciting. Words can be informing or confusing. The power of words fueled by tone of voice and facial expression, highlighted by hand gestures and body movement, can open up a communication or shut it down. Fact or fiction or subjective interpretation, words […]
In The Coupledom Grownups Need To Talk Like Three-Year-Olds
Many years and many blog posts later, I am thinking about the word redundant. Will this next blog post that I am tempted to write be redundant, as in no longer needed or superfluous? Haven’t I published ad nauseam, meaning to a sickening or excessive degree, the topic of communication in the Coupledom? Well, yes […]
Communicate the Mundane and Avoid the Pain
While doing couples therapy, I am often struck by how much is left unsaid between couples, both of a factual and feeling nature, that emerges in sessions days, weeks and sometimes months past the actual situation. The back and forth which typically ensues when reviewing transactions that have caused trouble stimulates in each partner the […]
Assumptions and Projections: A Corrosive Influence in The Coupledom
In my practice over the years, I have watched couples behave toward each other in ways that scream “unhealthy.” Often, these behaviors are the outcome of two mental activities that we define in our dictionaries as “assumption” and “projection.” In this context, the relevant definition of assumption is: “A thing that is accepted as true […]
Don’t Wait – That’s The Biggest Mistake!
When asked what is the most serious mistake that couples make, I answer, they wait too long to get help. The energy required to sustain a disabled Coupledom and avoid facing the realization that “we have problems that need professional expertise” could be channeled into using that “help” to improve the marriage. In fact, problems […]
As The Toilet Paper Rolls: The Domestic Challenge
A close up view of the daily goings on of a typical American Coupledom resembles a made for primetime series or a daytime soap. And that is what the most successful series chronicle – the minutiae of lives joined together. Could be Friends or Modern Family but the humor tends to be built upon […]
Fates Entwined: Now Take Care of Yourself
The Unspoken Contract That Needs To Be Spoken: Decades ago my husband told me a funny anecdote about one of his aunts. She was a mother of four and her husband passed out in front of her. Not that funny? But what he quoted that she said both jolted me and made me laugh, as […]
Fusion Confusion: Fighting for Identity in The Coupledom
Me/Us? Personal identity, the self-defining kind, helps us to make the big life choices such as college, career, mate, when to breed, as well as small ones such as shoe selection, hair color and movies. Each time we say yes or no to something, we are giving off a whiff of who we are. When […]
Tone, Look, Word (TLW): Stop the Poison Communication
A Volley of Gunfire Or A Conversation: Negative Communications. There are endless reasons why couples find themselves choosing tones, looks and words that insult, mock, tease and demean their partner. Hurt and angry feelings are no strangers to any relationship. The sarcastic tone, rolling eyes, mouth twisted in a smirk, and words that sting, all […]
Married to Wikipedia: The Evolving Marriage
The Expert: About a decade ago, I worked with a May-December Coupledom, the wife almost twenty years junior to her hubby, who were at a marital crossroads. The images each had originally held of the other were now anachronistic. The husband seemed trapped in the patriarchal position of most knowledgeable, the decider and the protector. […]
Note To My Ex: What To Do With All That Stuff
Bitter Twitter: On August 22, the highest trending tweet was #NoteToMyEx. Thousands of tweets spewed across the Twitterverse with such as: I can be happy without you and I’m doing so much better then when I was with you. let’s clarify: you were LUCKY to have me. I was the one settling. So shut up. […]
Sexual Pain Or Impaired Performance: No Shame, No Blame
What Is Not Spoken: As a couples’ therapist I am accustomed to learning from my patients that they have not experienced sexual intimacy for months or years leading up to their visits with me. Numbers of years. What is equally significant is the common admission that paralleling the absence of physical contact has been the […]
An Article Worth Sharing: Pre-Marital Cohabitation
This Merits a Perusal: I am about to take a journey with my spouse which will include an abundant amount of “quality time” together, some of it on the road. Hence I am sure that upon my return home, I will have ample material to ponder and share. I had no plans to post anything […]
The Un-Romantic Bed
Bill Maher: If ever there were an unromantic guy, it is Bill Maher with his surgeon-like skill to slice away all artifice and get to the earthy or seamy underbelly of so much of life, political and otherwise. Recently, he made a comment about sleep which got me thinking about the unromantic aspect of sleeping […]
“Money Matters” in The Coupledom: Budget 2012
Money Is Big: As the New Year confronts us, money matters can loom large in the line-up of Coupledom challenges: What are the expenditure priorities this year? Who manages the finances? Who pays the monthly bills, or not? Who brings home the dough? Who decides on how it is spent? Who knows where the money […]
The Coupledom Dreams: Using Our Unconscious To Communicate
Talking In Our Sleep: Lying next to each other, so near yet in our own worlds, The Coupledom dreams, every night in fact, during what is called the REM stage of sleep, which amounts to approximately 25% of sleeping time. Yet what do we do with this rich resource of mental activity as a couple? […]
Bully Wives? Yes, But They Don’t Know It.
Powerful Impact: Women are depicted as the “weaker sex”; have been for centuries. And in so many ways the inculcation of that notion, along with certain biological and physical realities, has successfully rendered them so, a state many of us fight each day. Yet there are times when sitting in my office, or out socializing, […]
What Is The Media Doing To Our Marriages?
The Famous Unfaithful: A couple recovering from an infidelity described being rattled by the constant news reports of the famous unfaithful. The upside of the battering ram of infidelity reminders is that the husband is regretful and pained by his actions, which bolsters his commitment to working on his marriage. His wife sees his struggle […]
What Are The Daughters Thinking? DSK, Schwarzenegger, Clinton
Imagine: Can anyone imagine DSK’s lunch with his daughter 17 minutes after he left the Sofitel Hotel and his encounter with a hotel housekeeper? Whatever that moment was in the Sofitel, DSK shifted to dad mode within minutes of being “someone else.” His daughter Camille is a 25-year-old Columbia University graduate student. After her dad’s […]
Addressing “Married, with Infidelities” within The Coupledom
Taking a break from taking a break, I couldn’t resist commenting on a very interesting article in the magazine section of today’s NY Times, Married, With Infidelities, by Mark Oppenheimer, who writes the Beliefs column. (Especially in the light of all the recent conversation about infidelity surrounding former NY Congressman Anthony Weiner and his Sexting escapades, […]
Levels Of Betrayal: I Did Not Have Sex(t) With That Woman
Defining Betrayal: The over-active Anthony Weiner, whose nimble fingers have twittered him into some pretty deep you know what, has added a new twist to the ever popular presidential pronouncement, “I did not have sex with that woman.” What is infidelity and what grade are these men in when they come up with their personal […]
Maria And Arnold: A Rorschach Test
Separation Tremors: The announcement that Arnold Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver are separating after 25 years married and four children may be sending out tremors beyond the confines of the couples’ California home. What can have gone awry? Mid-life crisis; infidelity; anorexia; male or female menopause; the end of a political marriage matching the termination of […]
Bickering and The Coupledom: Read This Together
Two articles from the NY Times to think about: Therapists Report Increase in Green Disputes More Men Marrying Wealthier Women We are Fighting for…??? Embroiled in battle, couples can tap a useful tool, self inquiry Self Inquiry: It goes something like this: “Self, what am I trying to win here?” If you come up with […]
To Marriage Therapy or Not To Marriage Therapy
Elizabeth Weil’s clever cover story in the New York Times Sunday Magazine, “Married With Issues” raises three critical questions for all couples: 1. What should couples expect from their marriage/relationship. 2. How can they tell if it is “good enough” as is or deserves attention. 3. What do they do about it? The answer is […]
Triangle Traps
No relationship is an island unto itself: There are in laws, children, friends, political parties, neighbors and pets, all of whom can serve up a poisonous stew of triangulation unless a couple is trained to look out for this vile brew. Typical triangulations are: a child and one parent talk negatively about the other parent […]