Category / Attachment / Marriage / Parenting

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  • 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…

  • Can Your Partner Find You?

    Mom…MOM….MOM…MOM!!! When our kids can’t find us, they yell. Sometimes we are sitting right there, distracted, on our phones, thinking thoughts not about them, trying to work… but they can’t make a connection so they GET YOUR ATTENTION. In marriage when we don’t feel heard sometimes we get loud. Sometimes we get mean. Sometimes we get sullen. When we can’t find the connection we use whatever coping skills we have.…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • The Price of Privilege- a rough month…year…decade…for men

    I walk a fine line in my work. I want to honor and support all my clients. Most couples I see are heterosexual so that means there are two women in my office and one guy. And I know therapy is based in more traditionally female skill sets- vulnerability, communicating about feelings, focusing on relationships are not always an easy choice for men. But I also know that 2/3rds of…

  • What if You Can’t Get Through to Him?

    If you’ve been following me for awhile, you know I love The Gottman Institute’s research.  John and Julia Gottman have conducted over 40 years of breakthrough studies on marital stability and divorce prediction. The one statistic I seem to quote every week is “there is an 81% chance that a marriage will self-implode when a man is unwilling to share power. The problem is that even the most thoughtful, progressive,…

  • When is it Time to Go?

    Rumor has it that divorce is too easy. Rumor has it that people don’t try hard enough. Rumor has it that people treat marriage like it is disposable. I know some silly celebrities (and politicians) have a string of exes but I don’t know real people who do that. Ok Huff Post does have a Starter Marriage page. (A starter marriage is a first marriage that lasts five years or…

  • 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…

  • Just a bunch of divorce musings…. When is it time to leave?

    (If you see yourself in this week’s newsletter, you’re right…all of you who can’t decide, who want me to tell you what to do, who are waiting for a sign, who are so unhappy that it can’t be good for anyone. This time I really am talking to you…oh but not all of you…) I went to this fantastic training sponsored by Erickson Mediation last week. http://ericksonmediation.com/resources/emi-newsletter/ I trained with…