Why Do Couples Grow Apart and What Can You Do About It?
When we all seem to be spending considerable energy trying…
What Attachment Styles Are Most Compatible?
Are you anxiously attached? Avoidant? Disorganized? What do all of…
When You Hate the One You Love – Managing Complex Feelings
We’ve all been there. You’re in the middle of a screaming fight (OK, some of you are probably not screamers, so maybe a glowering fight) with the exact person that just 24 hours earlier you were feeling so incredibly in love with. Or you are furious with your 15 year-old for breaking curfew YET AGAIN when just last week you were sharing a touching moment with them where they thanked you for being such a great parent. And now you want to kill that same child. Not literally, but…Yes, it happens […]
The Care and Feeding of Your Wave (or Loving Your Angry-Resistant Partner)…
Some time ago I published a blog on the “Care and Feeding of your Island/Avoidant Partner”. For those of you unfamiliar with the Psychobiological Approach to Couples Therapy (PACT), “Islands” and “Waves” are the terms coined by Dr. Stan Tatkin to help people understand attachment styles and how they show up in romantic relationships.”Wave-ish” partners have a few hallmark qualities that can help you identify them. They tend to like to talk, especially at night as they ar […]
How To Get Your Partner Into Couple’s Therapy
I get this question a lot. So I decided to write a blog post about it. Now, of course first you need to realize that you cannot control another person. Believe me, I have tried and tried hard. I like to say that I am just stubborn enough and strong-willed enough and persistent enough that if anyone COULD control another person it would be me. And I have always failed every time I tried. So please realize that. You cannot force another person to do anything, least of all couples therapy. […]
What is Love Addiction?
One of the clearest definitions of love addiction I have seen is “a compulsive, chronic craving and/or pursuit of romantic love in an effort to get our sense of security and worth from another person.” Or, if you prefer something more pithy, author Ethlie Ann Vape calls it “affection deficit disorder”. She goes on to say that “Every woman with an absent father– whether through divorce, death, disease or distance– is going to associate feelings of affection wit […]
Victim-Perpetrator-Rescuer Triangle
VICTIM. RESCUER. PERSECUTOR. That about covers it sometimes, right? Ever feel like you are in some weird play where there are always the same three characters? One person is getting screwed, one person is the hero trying to rescue that person and one person is the villain who is always seen as the bad guy. Which one do you most often get cast as? And how can you get out of that dynamic?That dynamic is called Karpman’s (Drama) Triangle. I would love to say that I invented t […]
When the Past is Present
What do you see? A cute puppy with floppy ears? Or two cats with a hear hovering between them? Or both? And what might predict which image you see first? Growing up with dogs? Owning a cat? To me as a therapist one of the most useful things about optical illusions is to show us that we can’t necessarily trust our perceptions. Remember the blue versus brown dress controversy? I would have sworn on my life that dress was a golden color and had not a hint of blue in it. The actual statistics on wh […]
The Power of Hope
Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if…
Is It OK To Ask A Partner To Change?
I get this question a lot. Usually framed as “you…