Cally was rushing. She was making something that had to get put in the oven in just 15 min in order to come out on time for her to dash off to do carpool. Hopefully, the baby wouldn’t mind being awakened from her nap at that point. Her days—and nights—were always like...
In psychological terms mixed messages are called “double binds” and they were discussed extensively way back by Gregory Bateson (http://www.anecologyofmind.com/). Analytical people will enjoy Bateson. Let’s look at Mary Lou, who delivers mixed messages. We met...
By the good fortune of technology, we can enjoy Abbot and Costello’s famous routine, “Who’s on first. What’s on second, and I-Don’t-Know is on third.” Those guys are still funny today. It’s just not so funny when you’re married to someone who is sending mixed...
Something you need to do before you decide the marriage is really over: Get to a baseline of who you really are and how you really treat others. Then you can know for sure if there’s something there or not. No! Go further: Take your spouse out on dates and get...
True intimacy doesn’t cut off who you are or who your partner is. True intimacy includes your mind, heart, and intellect as well as your body. Sex becomes so much more enjoyable that...
You thought you had an identity. Actually, you have many of them. This is not my original idea. The idea was first proposed by Kenneth Gergen 20 years ago in a book he wrote called The Saturated Self. I just came across some thoughts I had on it which I want to share...
Is it normal for one person’s happiness to be dependent on another person? Isn’t that co-dependent? In my last two blog posts I addressed codependency. I explained that a key to understanding co-dependency is that while one person does something destructive, the other...
In my last post, I defined co-dependency. The key ingredient in it is that the supposed “victim” gets something out of the spouse’s bad behavior. Today I want to look at it from a different angle. Above all, a marriage is meant to be a friendship. It cannot be a...
It’s always bad to put labels on people—especially yourself—just by looking at the outer behavior. For example, a person with a tremor could have a brain dysfunction, a motor problem, delirium from a life of drinking, or plain old fear. How can you know which it is by...
