YOU’RE NOT THE PERSON I MARRIED; WHO ARE YOU?

June 18, 2019June 8, 2019Kathe Skinner, M.A., L.M.F.T. Leave a comment

Romantic.

Considerate.

Attentive,

Interested.

Communicative.

Eager.

Exciting.

Are these qualities the used-to-be’s, when the real world was substituted for a secret place only you two inhabited?

What is it about now that lacks the luster of then?

Each stage of life has both challenges and joys. The ways we cope with a variety of experiences – the birth of a child, a sudden and severe illness, an empty nest – account for our growth. As we mature everything about us and around us changes: our bodies; who and what we like and why; what we’ve experienced – both happy and sad, perhaps even our priorities. And our patience for it all.

Meantime, our partner is doing the same thing.

It’s no wonder, then, that losing track of each other and what brought you together in the first place is inevitable. Quite honestly, rediscovering each other is a very good thing.

Stagnating, staying stuck, seeps in when attention is elsewhere. It’s difficult to be attentive, exciting, romantic or communicative when the focus is on ourselves. Feeling alone can often reinforce itself. The result can be distance, resentment, silence.

We’re challenged to find the luster again and again because marriage is not a given; it’s a living thing that needs nurturing, empathy, warmth, companionship.

That’s the thing about life and marriage and why marriage is a journey within the larger Journey, How does marriage work when both partners are changing, sometimes in opposite ways?

Realize your discontent.
Relinquish what no longer fits; you’re a grown-up now.
Recognize what’s good, not just bad.
Remember the sweetness of your marriage.
Re-Discover yourself and your partner.
Remove outdated expectations, assumptions.
Re-Connect with each other.
Re-Commit to Life together.

The never-ending challenge, then, is to remodel togetherness’s fit, accounting not only for each partner but for the in-between-ness, too.

Kathe Skinner is a Colorado Marriage & Family Therapist in private practice, specializing in couples therapy. Her understanding and passion come from her own marriage of 33 years.

Everything Date Night Should Be

March 5, 2018March 6, 2018Kathe Skinner, M.A., L.M.F.T. Leave a comment

I wanna be smiling. Like this, see?

I wanna have fun.

I wanna be with grown-ups, talk about grown-up things, like love..

I wanna look nice. Smell nice, too.

I want some good, lip smackin’ eats.

I wanna build a better relationship.

I wanna understand my partner.

I wanna do some give and take with other people.

I wanna talk about anything but the kids. Or the job. Or the weather.

I wanna be a watcher. Sometimes I just wanna take it all in.

I wanna relax. No pressure. I got pressure all week.

I wanna make you glad to be with me.

Date Night premieres Saturday night, 3/17/18 with John Wayne as The Quiet Man. Check show time, location, cost. Registration required. Professionally guided for couples by Kathe Skinner, Marriage & Family Therapist, Certified Relationship Specialist. ©2018, Being Heard, LLC.

MOST MARRIAGES GET STUCK ON ONLY HALF THE PROBLEM.

January 26, 2016Kathe Skinner, M.A., L.M.F.T. Leave a comment

When we were in school, most of us had to do “word problems” in math class. Like this one: Stan starts out for home,16 miles away, at noon on a hot day, carrying 39 jelly beans in his pocket. Within 5 miles of home he notices there are no jelly beans left, although Stan swears he hasn’t eaten any. How many miles has he travelled?

The first step in solving any problem is to figure out what’s really the problem. There may be lots of information, some important and some not very. Some information seems important but doesn’t apply to the question.

Or does it?

In relationships there are often two or more different views of what’s important: jelly beans, distance, heat, Stan’s track record at telling the truth. Lots of marriages get stuck when one is talking about Stan’s fondness for jelly beans and the other finds a solution in the day being hot.

In this scenario people are talking past each other; each interprets something different even within the same situation.

A husband might pass off Stan’s love for candy as no big deal, while his wife might see Stan’s behavior around candy as disgusting and weak-willed.

Soon it’s no longer about Stan. Husband says wife is too uptight and judgmental. She’s that way with the kids; never lets them have any fun and keeps them on a short leash. Even does it to him. Dragging their children and pets into this marital dust-up, husband declares that everyone is fed up! The final shot is his suggestion, delivered in an ominously quiet voice, that even her mother agrees with him.

His wife is openly shocked, confused about how they went from Stan’s behavior to a personal attack on her. She righteously challenges her husband’s values and parenting. Somewhere she alludes to his sometimes wearing the same underwear for two days. As for her mother’s opinion, well, that’s a whole other fight.

Neither partner is being heard nor hearing the other. If you don’t see dark storm clouds you’re probably not married.

When it was legal to advertise cigarettes in the media, one brand’s tag line was “I’d rather fight than switch”.

Maybe fighting rather than switching is about appearances — smoking the most popular brand. It’s possible defending your cigarette brand is like defending yourself; your inalienable right to protect your choice against all others’. At a certain tipping point, not switching is inversely proportional to the quality of the smokes; said another way, the likelihood of fighting has more to do with ego than it does with fine tobacco. Nevertheless, it’s hard to picture two dudes duking it out in the break room over smokes.

This same effect happens with couples. Call it what you will — false pride, stubborness — It’s more likely that each partner feels threatened in some way; so much so that disagreement turns vociferous, personal, and mean.

Unhealthy communication within marriage guarantees an unhealthy marriage. It’s what husbands and wives do when they aim to save position within the relationship, not in saving the relationship itself. Sort of like ignoring the larger issue of smoking to argue about cigarette brands.

Before you know it, there’ll be fighting in the streets over jelly beans.

Kathe Skinner has been a Colorado Springs Marriage & Family Therapist for over 20 years with a private practice specializing in couples work. She and her husband, David, are counting down the months to their 30th anniversary.

CAN COUNSELING SAVE A DYING MARRIAGE?

September 17, 2015September 15, 2015Kathe Skinner, M.A., L.M.F.T. Leave a comment

Does it feel like the feeling’s gone?

Your partner isn’t the person you fell in love with.
The communication gap between you widens every day.
Your partner won’t talk about it.
You’ve been unhappy for so long it feels like it’s too late.
Your relationship feels dead.

Since you’re reading this article, it’s likely you still care enough about your partner and your relationship to want to help it — if you only knew how.

Most marriages should be given a chance to succeed.

Marriage counseling can help you restore the trust and intimacy your relationship once enjoyed so that you’ll both have a secure place to learn techniques and tools that can actually make a difference.

Resolve past hurts and painful memories
Put an end to endless arguments
Overcome differences in parenting styles
Improve your intimacy and sex life
Heal from an affair
Grow closer together
Take an active, involved and interested role in the life you’ve created together

Behavioral research is often focused on the clinical effectiveness of couples therapy but the subject of couples therapy is in the out-loud American mainstream, too. Attention runs the gamut from on-line and print articles, to films like Couples Retreat, to playing supportive roles in television dramas like The Sopranos.

Most marriage counselors would agree that a couple’s motivation to make their relationship work is the single most important factor in determining the success of couples counseling. Beware the seduction of obtaining a promise from your partner to “work on the relationship” if one of their feet is out the door. Breaking up is hard to do, there’s enough hurt to go around, so sometimes one partner “buys time” by agreeing to couples counseling. Therapy also seems to be less successful for couples who wait too long before seeking help. Unfortunately, the average number of years a distressed couple waits before seeking help is 6 years.

If you and your partner are serious about creating the best relationship possible, marriage counseling is an excellent way to explore your relationship and help each of you uncover and overcome destructive relational patterns. Hopefully, before 6 years go by.

Kathe Skinner has been a Marriage & Family Therapist for 20 years. She specializes in couples work, especially with relationships where invisible disability is part of the mix. She and her husband David have been married for 29 years and together provide a Secular Couple Communication Workshop throughout the year. They live with their 2 hooligan cats in Colorado Springs.

CARRY MARRIAGE SOMEPLACE NEW.

August 6, 2015August 4, 2015Kathe Skinner, M.A., L.M.F.T. Leave a comment

In life, bridges connect us to the future. They provide passage to carry us forward to new discoveries, new opportunities, and renewed relationships.

But crossing a bridge means making a change, and change can be uncomfortable. We’re torn between staying where we are or venturing into the unknown. And often, when given the option to turn back to what is safe and comfortable… we do.

And that’s why we must reach deep inside and gather up the courage to burn some old and useless relationship habits and beliefs so that we can move forward and cross bridges into new ones.

When you cross a new bridge….or burn an old one…you are growing, changing, and evolving. Sure, it’s scary not to know exactly what lies ahead, but as C.S. Lewis said, “There are far, far better things ahead than any we leave behind.”

What bridges do you need to burn? And what bridges are waiting to lead you to new discoveries? There are many opportunities that lie ahead for you – all it takes is having the courage to find which bridges to cross… and which one to burn.

Kathe Skinner is a Marriage & Family Therapist specializing in work with couples. She and husband David teach Secular Couple Communication Workshops in Colorado Springs throughout the year.

August 6, 2015August 3, 2015Kathe Skinner, M.A., L.M.F.T. Leave a comment

How you listen corresponds to levels of

information, intimacy, and trust.

COUNSELING CAN REVIVE YOUR DYING MARRIAGE.

August 3, 2015September 14, 2015Kathe Skinner, M.A., L.M.F.T. Leave a comment

Ever feel like the love is gone?

Your partner isn’t the person you fell in love with.
The communication gap between you widens every day.
Your partner won’t talk about it.
You’ve been unhappy for so long it feels like it’s too late.
Your relationship feels dead.

Since you’re reading this article, it’s likely you still care enough about your partner and your relationship to want to help it — if you only knew how.

Most marriages should be given a chance to succeed.

Marriage counseling can help you restore the trust and intimacy your relationship once enjoyed so that you’ll both have a secure place to learn techniques and tools that can actually make a difference.

Resolve past hurts and painful memories
Put an end to endless arguments
Overcome differences in parenting styles
Improve your intimacy and sex life
Heal from an affair
Grow closer together
Take an active, involved and interested role in the life you’ve created together

Behavioral research is often focused on the clinical effectiveness of couples therapy but the subject of couples therapy is in the out-loud American mainstream, too. Attention runs the gamut from on-line and print articles, to films like Couples Retreat, to playing supportive roles in television dramas like The Sopranos.

Kathe Skinner has been a Marriage & Family Therapist for 20 years. She specializes in couples work, especially with relationships where invisible disability is part of the mix. She and her husband David have been married for 29 years and together provide a Secular Couple Communication Workshop throughout the year. They live with their 2 hooligan cats in Colorado Springs.

Which AGE is a Romance Killer? You May Be Surprised.

July 30, 2015July 30, 2015Kathe Skinner, M.A., L.M.F.T. Leave a comment

No matter what your age, assumptions, generalizations, and expectations (AGE) will kill romance, and even the relationship, just about every time.

Human beings, male or female, are complex outcomes of how they’re hardwired, the meaning they make of themselves and their place in the world, and the world in which they grow up. I’m not a fan of statistics but I do know enough to say the combinations are endless — finite, but endless.

In other words, no two people are exactly alike.

Maybe because of our need to manage those unmanageable numbers we make generalizations about “what is a man” and “what is a woman”. As a therapist I sometimes fall victim to simplification myself rather than taking the elements of a couple as two different people and not the generalized version of their gender descriptions, e.g. men are stoic and women are emotional.

I’m not the only perpetrator. Societies generalize all the time, with changes usually coming over time, and in sometimes cataclysmic ways. In American society think women getting the vote, same-sex marriage, or race relations.

Some generalizations take their time dying. For example, every newly married couple — and some long-term ones — have expectations based on generalizations. Same with expectations each gender has about the other. Our society generalizes about roles, sex, happiness, conjointness, privacy, emotionality, rationality, areas of competence, and so on.

Otherwise life is way too complex.

Take sensitive men, for example, with their thoughts, feelings and behaviors contrary to the alpha model. Or women whose thoughts, feelings, and behaviors run to competitiveness and control. It’s not just men who have to wear a mask, women do, too. A guy might get away with wearing a pink shirt if he’s otherwise kick-ass. A woman CEO has to wear more than perfume in order to be relabelled from pushy, bossy, or bitchy.

Expectation-based thinking is insidious in most of us, hetero- or homosexuals alike. That’s trouble.

Human interaction is expectation-based, often uneducatedly expectation-based. We generally modify expectations about the physical world based on trial and error — that’s called learning. But when it comes to couples, for instance, generalization-based assumptions are wedged tightly into our psyches and seldom disappear for good.

In other words, a failing grade is earned in Relationship 101.

Relationships don’t have to die, or even fail. Examining automatic thinking is work. There’s another way; it’s harder, but it works. Paying attention to gray matter chatter is the first step in breaking an AGEing brain away from automatic thinking. Automatic thinking is a passive process; no thought goes into it at all.

The more active (read “aware”) the process of thinking, the fewer assumptions, generalizations, and expectations we hold about our partner and our partner’s role in the relationship. It’s active thinking that can give partners insight into each other — the real other, not the generalized versions.

If a relationship stands a chance, AGE has to be put aside.

Kathe Skinner is a Marriage & Family Therapist specializing in couples. She and her husband, David, teach couples how to avoid the destructiveness of AGEs. They offer a Secular Couple Communication Workshop throughout the year; the next one begins September 25th. Check it out!

THE CROCK-POT MARRIAGE: TASTY LOVE IS SLOW-COOKED

July 7, 2015July 7, 2015Kathe Skinner, M.A., L.M.F.T. Leave a comment

“You Can’t Hurry Love” sang The Supremes in their 1966 hit, covered in 1982 by Phil Collins and in 1999 by the Dixie Chicks. Love that’s instant is often short-lived, more lust than length. To await the outcome of something not ready in a jiffy is the practice of relationship . . . love at its most tasty. While many of us search out the searing heat of newness, turns out successful love is cooked in a crock-pot.

That familiarity breeds attraction has been a theme celebrated for at least a century, from George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion as inspiration for the Broadway hit musical My Fair Lady to Oscar-nominated Bridget Jones’ Diary. Guys might not worry about big girl panties, but it’s not just plus-size gals who love the possibility that love conquers looks.

Despite what mom said about a good personality and a great smile, it seems the pretty ones have a shapely leg up when it comes to finding a likewise gorgeous mate; in evolutionary terms it’s called “high mate value”. Notwithstanding friends with benefits, turns out mate value increases the longer people spend time together before dating. In other words, the more you get to know someone, the more attractive you find them.

Turns out mom was right.

It stands to reason that the perception of mate value might also increase once people are permanently paired, irrespective of the amount of time spent getting to know each other in a non-romantic way.

Several factors may be key:

Realistic expectations might mean having few, if any, expectations at all. Of course that means that long-term togetherness is best viewed as a box of chocolates; understanding that the twists, turns, and adventures of even one life are unpredictable that double goes for any couple. Shared values can feed into the predictability that increases the more that’s known about each other. An acquaintance’s behavior doesn’t carry the same weight as that of someone we’ve committed to, probably because the expectation of a friend’s behavior doesn’t matter as much even though the behaviors might be the same. For example, when a friend gets drunk it may be humorous; when a mate does, not so much.

No one has a plan for change, even though change is on the short list of life’s certainties. The story of the spouse who left when the other developed cancer is apocryphal but is only a segment of our fear that when we’ve grown older, rounder, or more wrinkled our mate value is lost. But the more you know someone, really know someone, the less likely change is upending. True as well is that knowing and planning require learning and practicing. Despite a feeling of instant connection, relationship is, well, work. Just when a couple feels the hard part’s behind them, then whammo change happens again; it’s not so much planning for particular changes (as if that were even possible) it’s having the ability to have a plan for change in general. As difficult as it might be to achieve, couples who can reach consensus about a plan of action are couples who are successful at riding out change together.

Communication is about more than talking and listening. Communication that works is an active process that builds on itself over time. Attentiveness, thought, understanding, and active involvement are marks of partners who continue to know each other. Think of friends you’ve had, male or female, to whom you felt comfortable talking about anything. Expectation, judgment, and vulnerability seem to increase with romantic closeness when the truth is that you may already have trusted a friend with lots of the same things. The effort each of us puts into “communicating” seem inversely proportional to time: listening and talking to new mates is more intense than listening and talking to new friends; while the same behaviors are more intense with older friendships than with long-standing mates.

Each partner’s vulnerability to the other is possibly the most telling feature of mates’ mutual value. Belief in the relationship incorporates the needs for trust and safety we all have. With vulnerability (and the acceptance of it) there are no surprises, no hidden agendas, and not much left unsaid. Respect is a key element of mutual vulnerability; knowing that your partner – or your friend — will not seek to harm you intentionally. Both have a serious effect on self-esteem and our beliefs about our place in the future of others.

Kathe Skinner is a Marriage & Family Therapist in private practice who specializes working with couples. Cooking with a crock-pot every chance they get, she and husband David have been married for 29 years. Together with their 2 hooligan cats, the Skinners live in Colorado where they teach Couple Communication Workshops.

GENGHIS KHAN GOT A DIVORCE

May 16, 2015May 16, 2015Kathe Skinner, M.A., L.M.F.T. Leave a comment

It’s not that I don’t love you, Gengy. I do. But things just aren’t the same.

Used to be we’d talk ’til the yaks came home. We don’t talk like that anymore. Actually, we don’t talk at all. You’re distant and quiet, even with the kids. You’re never home at dinnertime and I can’t remember the last time we had a date night.

Other gals say it’s the same with them. You and your horde come home after conquering and slaughtering and a year’s gone by and you act like some bigshot who’s gonna take over where you left off, but guess what? everybody’s been used to fending without you. Know what else? we’ve done pretty good, too.

Whoa, Gengy; don’t get your temper up! You’re such a control freak, but you’re not gonna bully me anymore. I love you, I do. But I can’t — no, I won’t — keep taking it. You come off as so studly but I’m tired of sleeping by myself while you get wasted on that fermented crap. I’m really sick of all those concubines hanging off you. And I’m tired of entertaining all those brutes you call generals. Gengy, I’m just. plain. tired.

I’m done. I mean it this time.

Your moods don’t bother me anymore. I don’t give an ox’s ass about all that blood on your hands and those nightmares you have. Man up, Genghis! It’s a brutal world out there for all of us; but the Great Khan wants us to feel sorry for him like nobody else matters.

The saying is “love conquers all”, not “Genghis Khan conquers all.” Try thinking about somebody else besides yourself for a change!

It’s beyond me how you can get one end of your empire to communicate with the other but you’re in the dark when it comes to communicating with me. What do I want? I’ll tell you: I want you to tell me dinner was good. That I look nice. Tell me about your day; you know, like how’d it go out on the steppes. Some funny story about one of your generals. Like that.

Yeah, yeah, I know all about all the great stuff you do. You keep telling me, don’t you? You don’t listen, not to anybody. You do what you want, you get what you want, and thousands of people get hurt. If you put half as much effort into us as you do into work, we wouldn’t be so far apart.

Look, Gengy, we’ve been together a long time, since we were 12. Pretty good for an arranged marriage, huh? Remember our first night — all those stars! the music of shuffling ponies. And you couldn’t . . . well, that’s ancient history. After all, you were only twelve.

You once said you’d give me the known world but I didn’t think it meant you’d be gone all the time. It’s like you’re trying to prove something with all this conquering. And being so fearsome; what’s that about? Sometimes you even scare me. You don’t have to be a therapist to see what having a tyrant for a father did to you. And the way you treat me? Just like your father treated your mother. She took it for all those years, but I don’t have to.

I’m sorry; bringing your mother into it, that was a low blow.

Listen. Mongolia doesn’t feel like home anymore. You’re never around and when you are you’re all inside your head about who you and the boys are going to pillage next. The kids don’t need me; they’re all grown and scattered to the winds. You don’t need me, and I’m tired of doing this marriage by myself. I’ve got to think about me for a change. I’ve always wanted to travel — maybe China; I hear their silks are to die for.

Don’t act surprised, Gengy. We’ve both known this was coming. As brutal as you are, you never laid a hand on me. This is gonna sound strange, but you know what? I almost wish you had. At least that way you would’ve touched me.

Kathe Skinner is a Marriage & Family Therapist specializing in couples work, especially with those couples whose relationship is impacted by visible or invisible disability. She lives in Colorado with her husband David (whose latest conquered territory is the garage) and their two pampered yak-ity cats, Petey and Lucy. She and David hold a Couples Communication Workshop throughout the year. Check it out all the Workshops offered @ www.coupleswhotalk.com

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