Category / Attachment / Marriage / Parenting
-
![]()
Get Real! How Lovable Are You Being?
Life’s lessons from our best friends. What can we learn about love from dogs…who make it look so easy. No one can get close to you if you growl and show your teeth all the time. Do you bark at those you love? Are you unpredictable? Are You Playful? Have you become way too serious to play with anymore? Are you spontaneous? Always up for an adventure? Do you try…
-
![]()
Why Valentine’s Day is So Complicated
Most of us were raised by human parents, with their human failings and they raised us with less than perfect emotional responses. Whether they were neglectful or distant or critical or inconsistent or overbearing or intense, there were times when their feelings interfered with their ability to be appropriately responsive to your feelings. (I know- we screw this up with our kids pretty regularly and we’re working on that, too.)…
-
![]()
Feeling Great about Parenting My Kids…this week
Knock on wood Getting my kids to the teen years has been a huge relief. Not only do I get to go out without a babysitter but finally have a sense that some of my parenting actually took. After 33 years and lots of well earned grey hairs, I actually feel confident teaching parenting classes. I know my boys can stand up for themselves and fight for what they believe…
-
![]()
Sex in Marriage in the #Me Too Movement
We all feel it. Something has shifted. While I expected 2017 to be the year we got to experience the amazing journey of our first female president, instead we got this. The Trump election was a terrifying statement about racism and sexism in our society. Much has been revealed. This is a time of intense social change. #MeToo #NoMore- They’re talking about it in Hollywood and on Wall Street and…
-
![]()
The Best Self Help Book of 2018… so far
My New Year’s resolutions is to read fewer books in 2018. Really…fewer. Last year I read 61 books. A good friend encouraged me to join GoodReads, to keep track of what I was reading. In January of 2017 I publicly declared on the site that I wanted to read 30 books. Well, 2017 was a super boring year because I met that goal by June… doubled it and completed the…
-
![]()
Marriage Geek’s Serenity Meditation
Grant me the serenity to accept the truth about the people I love, the courage to ask for better behavior from them, and the wisdom to know where to put the bar. Marriage is tough because each of us, deep at our core, want to feel unconditionally loved and accepted. Criticism feels like betrayal or abandonment. Yet, to create a loving environment for our spouses, we must learn how to…
-
![]()
Being 3 is Hard…and Everyone I Know is Still Kind of 3
Being three is a year of big feelings. I wonder what it must feel like to spend years learning to communicate, only to find that people just don’t do what you tell them to do. It must be endlessly frustrating that we don’t cut their toast right, can’t repair their broken bananas, make them wear clothes, want them to sleep, and repeatedly say no to every simple request. How can…
-
![]()
Never Forget How Lucky Your Kids Are- to have you
Parenting matters. Of course it does. I love being a parent. Last week I celebrated 33 years of mothering…happy birthday Nate! I love teaching parenting classes but I struggle both personally and professionally to keep it in perspective. First- let’s look at what childhood is like in our country. Almost half of our country’s kids have experienced at least one or more types of serious childhood trauma. This is the…
-
![]()
Feelings, Shmeelings, What’s so Great about Feelings?
I have spent my whole life working on being great with feelings- oh, I mean other people’s feelings. My feelings… yeah… maybe that’s a second half of life project. When I was a much younger woman, a guy I was dating argued that the problem was that I whispered my feelings. How was he supposed to know it was important if I only whispered my feelings? I ditched the guy…
-
![]()
Into the Marriage Votex
I love doing marriage work. It is deeply rewarding to be trusted with a couple’s most valuable resource at a time of fear and hurt. For 15 years I have studied the patterns, the stages relationships go through. I see how they get built, how they break down and how they heal. I ask people to give me months. I have to walk them slowly out of a mess that…
