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 […]
counseling
The Senior Coupledom*: Like the Elephant, Majestic and Scarred
I am impressed by the sheer physicality of a couple who have spent four and more decades married. There is something implacable, massive, monumental, well worn and a bit weary in their presentation. I see them in my office, town events, airports and cocktail parties. Like the elephant whose swaying bulky splendor moves towards the […]
Strangers On The Couch: Couples Therapy
In Translation: “Let me introduce you to your mate.” This is what I would like to say to my patients “on the couch” more often than not. Have you met before? I feel as if my job as their therapist is to be translator, interpreter, facilitator and teacher to two people who at times speak […]
Healing The Coupledom: Neurobiology and Couples Therapy
The Refuge of Stories: Steve Almond, the son of therapists, author and writing workshop teacher, described in a New York Times Sunday magazine article the mushrooming popularity of today’s writing workshops, which he views as a version of the old “talk therapy”, so popular prior to the psychopharmacological and managed care revolutions in mental health. […]
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 […]
Couples Counseling: A Tool For Life?
Checking In: When a couple comes in for counseling, they are motivated by a personal crisis, either within The Coupledom or one pressing on the Coupledom. Typical triggers are a particularly volatile fight, an encounter with relatives/in-laws that leads to a clash of attitudes, a financial crisis, a child’s acting-out, loss, an affair, a suspected […]
Nailing Down The Perfect Match
Hocus Pocus: Two articles appeared in the New York Times in the last week on couple compatibility. The M.R.S. and the Ph.D. article tracks the changing attitudes towards women’s educational achievements and marriageability over the decades. The early 1900’s through the 1950’s warned that “educated women” were less likely to attract husbands and were cautioned that […]
The Affair: A Symptom of Marriage Rot or A Rotten Spouse?
Affairs Come In Colors: Not all infidelities look alike. The red-hot mega-media adulteries are not the prototype for most unfaithful Coupledoms. The shades of color for the common household variety of betrayal are in grays, not black, white or red-hot. Yet folks on either side of the betrayal highway feel more comfortable thinking in black, […]
50% Of Us Is Done: Marriage Over?
The Unfairness Factor: One of the more profoundly emotional experiences in couples work is watching the demise of a Coupledom when only one of the partners is “done.” The spouse who wants to keep the marriage alive is outnumbered. Yes outnumbered because it only takes 50% of the vote to emotionally dissolve the marriage. How […]
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, […]
The Divorced Coupledom: Milestones Celebrated In Court
Back To Court: Several times a year, whether I am in session with a patient, or bumping into friends, acquaintances or former patients in the aisles of the local supermarkets, the phrase “He/She is taking me back to court,” is whispered to me in tones of distress, anger, irony or weariness. Weariness often more than anything laces […]
The Coupledom Contract: Who Gets Thrown Under The Bus?
The Costs Of Accommodation: There are many unspoken and even unconscious clauses in most Coupledoms. They may include never confronting your partner with the reality of their tone-deaf singing or limited grace on the dance floor. Perhaps the overcooked spaghetti goes unmentioned, or the gardening attempts that are less than stellar. None of these accommodations […]
Great Father/Great Mother: Failed Coupledom?
The New Yorker Captures The Coupledom: If ever you need a visual for what is happening to your Coupledom, pick up several copies of the New Yorker Magazine, and flip through the pages. Inevitably you will find the very image that corresponds to your moment. I did. While preparing my thoughts for this post, this […]
The Coupledom: Is It Too Late?
Inspiration: This post was inspired by a friend. He calls it “Nurture the Coupledom.” He and his wife arranged for their child to be left with grandparents for her first overnight to enable them to “go out”, as in a “date night.” I could hear his pride both in his daughter’s readiness for this big […]
Owning Your Stuff Builds Coupledom Trust
Trust Busters: There are ample ways to mar and maim belief in someone’s regard for you. Trust marring can be as fleeting as overhearing a derisive comment about you, or as weighty as discovering romantic texts and hotel charges. Like the derma that covers our organs, we have muslin-like layers of protection covering our emotions; […]
Weight Gain, Sex, And The Coupledom: Weight Tells A Story
Weighty Topic: In recent days I read an alarming article on newly published obesity statistics nationally, glimpsed a Today show segment on a book about post-its to make overweight folks feel beautiful, and browsed through a piece in The New York Times Magazine on retail’s struggle to provide a profit margin in dressing the overweight […]
Husbands Have Changed: Have Wives Noticed?
Time Out to Consider Dad: Saturday’s New York Times (6/19/10), in anticipation of Father’s Day, published an article by Tara Parker Pope entitled “For Fathers, A Tough Balancing Act”. The article and a similar piece in the New York Times November 2, 2009 by Laurie Tarkan “Fathers Gain Respect From Experts (and Mothers)” inspired me […]
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 […]
ToolKit of New Years Vows for Relationship 2010
THIS NEW YEARS EVE, SUGGESTED VOWS FOR THE COUPLEDOM Take Time: Each day, by email, cell phone or in person, touch base on how your partner is doing. Be Curious: Just a simple inquiry, how has your day been? No distance or work load or diaper pile is far enough, big enough or deep enough […]