good communication?
didn’t think so.
Tag Couples Communication Workshop
How you listen corresponds to levels of
information, intimacy, and trust.
COUNSELING CAN REVIVE YOUR DYING MARRIAGE.
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.
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.
A FATHER’S DAY FANTASY
Fantasy’s a powerful thing. It fuels the head trip of desire and compels the illusion of feeling good, even when there are no hands on. Multi-billion dollar industries – from publishing to prostitution to porn – start here first.
But how does the brain distinguish between what’s real and what’s imagined? Scientists’ hypotheses point to the involvement of different areas of the brain and the multi-directional processing among them.
Sexual fantasies are a solo adventure usually leading to release through orgasm. For some the mind’s eye is enough to induce a significant physical event like orgasm. Actual visual stimulation is so powerful that doctors’ offices getting sperm samples provide men with sexually explicit magazines as a way for patients to get it up and over with. Humans are not alone: Species that are down the evolutionary ladder from us also purposely seek out ways to feel good “down there”. Elephants rub, monkeys twiddle away the hours masturbating, and male dogs lust after people’s legs.
Sometimes fantasy goes wild and boundaries are blurred, creating a new “reality”. One example is the substitution of social bonds created by in-person interaction with texting, sexting, and hook-up sites. We’ve always looked for love in the wrong places but it’s easier now; you don’t have to take a shower to “chat”. Carried to extreme, fantasy never becomes reality: the lure of being anyone you choose, often without consequence, is a strong inducement to stay impersonal.
It’s long been known that our brains are hardwired for pleasure, with specific neural pathways acting as highways. As with anything pleasurable, the possibility of overindulgence, abuse, is possible. While most brains have stopping, or surfeit, mechanisms, other brains are glitched to go wild. Especially worrisome is the effect on young brains of unrelenting and ever-more-present societal messages about sex. Young brains are not yet equipped with that Jiminy-Cricket-battle between the super-ego and the id; with this age group (and for some adults), the id wins almost every time. Understandably there is concern for young people among parents, educators, and the mental health community.
The mental health and medical communities are concerned about the rise within the broader population of sexually identified mental health diagnoses as well as the rise in sexually transmitted disease. It’s no longer unusual to know someone with herpes; it’s even been authoritatively predicted that in ten years over half of women and 40% of men will have contracted genital herpes.
Fantasy enables our addiction to the belief that if we can imagine it, we can make it real. It sounds snappy when Sony says it, but those are dangerous words. Not only because that’s not always true, but because it shouldn’t always be true.. Powerful as it is, sexual fantasy is just that. Many of us are still hanging with Freud rather than updating our belief that it’s abnormal not to fantasize when bringing about orgasm.
In praise of sexual fantasy:
-
Leads to sexual activity, conjoint or solo, and that’s a good thing;
-
By inducing orgasm the body rids itself of stale sperm, an evolutionary advantage;
-
Orgasm reduces blood pressure, aids sleep, counts as exercise, lowers heart attack risk, lessens pain;
-
Can infuse a dulled relationship with newness;
-
Takes us on a journey we probably otherwise wouldn’t be capable of;
-
Stimulates creative thinking;
-
Enables us to practice social skills;
-
Offers an escape from criticism that may induce self-consciousness or an inability to function sexually;
-
Makes us feel good about ourselves, powerful, potent, and desirable;
-
Enhances relationship;
-
Mostly, sexual fantasy Is fun.
Sex is the adult version of play and fantasy is our way of looking forward to playing. As thinking beings we need fantasy, daydreaming, and imagination as a pathway to our best self. Fantasy is a pleasure in itself.
Kathe Skinner is a Marriage & Family Therapist whose private practice focuses on couples, especially those whose relationship is impacted by visible or invisible disability or illness for whom sexuality is often a significant issue. It’s probable that childhood exposure to an overly enthusiastic dog is the reason she’s a cat person. Then again, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. With their two hooligan cats, Petey and Lucy, she and her husband David live in Colorado Springs where she maintains a private practice and where she and David co-instruct Couple Communication Workshops.
Copyright 2015, Being Heard, LLC
RUNNING BLIND
Super-star athletes are polishing their personas with the advent of the Summer Olympics to be held in Rio de Janeiro in 2016. One of them, Jamaican mega-medal winner Usain Bolt, has the gracefulness of a natural athlete. With his perpetual smile and generally good nature, Bolt is no pushover.
One doesn’t get the impression that Usain Bolt would promote something disagreeable.
Despite his gifts, or maybe because of them, Bolt also demonstrates a remarkably generous spirit, e.g., his 2012 embrace of double-amputee Oscar Pistorius, who competed against Bolt.
At a recent promo event, Bolt paired with Brazilian Paralympic multi-medalist Terezinha Guilhermina as her guide runner. Vision-impaired para-athletes compete under strict guidelines that may include use of sighted guide runners. Guilhermina trains and competes with guide Guilherme Soares de Santana; tethered at the wrist, she runs blindfolded as they match each other in speed and timing.
This high-speed dance is like a successful relationship: Trust is essential. Good communication is quick but subtle, successful only with lots of practice. Even when a compatible partner is found — no easy task in itself — the tasks are twice as difficult, twice as demanding.
If you’ve ever run a playground race with one leg joined to another person’s you begin to understand how tough it is to run as one.
Even so, Bolt expressed concern that Guilhermina would fall over or be unable to run fast enough. Both fears were unfounded.
Like running in synch, when an able-bodied athlete joins with a para-athlete, one shadows the other. Both understand the effort, sacrifice, and ability that has brought them to the medal podium. As in a good marriage, there is mutual admiration and respect; knowledge that the differences are not diminishments.
Now for the preachy part: There are two separate and unequal worlds when it comes to sport. Usain Bolt, personable as he is, sells because of his able-bodied ability, not his smile. Paralympic athletes sell to the larger audience only when paired with Olympic athletes; it doesn’t matter that their talent, drive, focus, and commitment to excellence are the same.
“Blade runner” Arthur Pistorius got more ink because of his fall from grace than from his rise to it.
Societal disequity is an old story and not just one about disability. Overcoming innate human suspicion and dislike of what is different requires conscious and concerted effort. The nudge may come from decades’ worth of disabled vets with their can-do mentality, greater numbers, and the societal bequeathing of a high moral ground.
Personally, I’ll take it any way I can get it: If the result to being paired with an able-bodied celebrity is lasting inclusion and a broader definition of human value, then drop the red flag and let the sports begin.
Kathe Skinner is a Marriage & Family Therapist whose private practice focuses on couples, especially those whose relationship is complicated by invisible or visible disability. Diagnosed with multiple sclerosis for nearly 40 years and understands that athletes go beyond themselves to compete. With two world-class cat nappers, Petey and Lucy, Kathe and husband David live in Colorado where she doesn’t ski.
Read more about their Couples Communication Workshops at www.BeingHeardNow.com. While you’re at it, check out our newest site, www.CouplesWhoTalk.com.
SOMETIMES YOU OUGHTA BE SCARED
Bells should go off in your head if you’re walking in the woods and a clown in a bunker’s offering free hugs.
Or when your guy grabs your shirt, slams you up against the wall, and says you don’t wanna make him angry.
And the whole theater’s screaming at that dumb young thing not to open up when the doorbell rings at midnight and nobody’s expected.
I’m not generally an alarmist although my husband David would disagree. I do worry about fire starting in a trash barrel where he’s dumped grass clippings. Or being afraid things are gonna blow up. Or when I feel eyes on me when I’m working late by the open window in my first floor office and I can’t help myself I just have to look.
One summer my panties started disappearing off the clothesline, hang-up calls began right after my soon-to-be-ex left the house, and the guy across the street would make a racket so I’d look up to see him standing naked in his doorway. When the phone rang at 2 one morning and the soon-to-be hustled me into the dark backyard I thought yeah, sure, I’m gonna get whacked — he had lots of, uh, connections; I didn’t for a second believe the police were evacuating the neighborhood. But they were. That spooky ass guy shot a neighbor who was coming home from shift work.
A bit after I rented out my condo, the woman whose doorway was a few feet away from mine was strangled at home then dumped in the woods. The daughter’s boyfriend went to prison for murder in a sordid story worthy of a bestseller.
Like people in an abusive marriage or those who return from war, I can talk about what’s happened to me as if it had happened to someone else. Traumatic stress is often numbing and, whether the stress is long- or short-term, the need for self-protection can make us look (and be) detached and dispassionate.
Danger exists in trusting others even as protection is so desperately needed. Laying down the guise, being vulnerable and exposed, is almost literally a deadly challenge that many won’t choose.
Traumatic stress is so often unexpected — who would set themselves up to be traumatized? — we cannot prepare or protect our psyches from it. A system-wide shock indicates that everything in our world — most especially those to whom we are vulnerable like spouses, parents, children, friends as well as surroundings that once felt safe — is now suspect. Add to that the invisibility of chronic, traumatic stress and the difficulty of recognizing or relating to it adds to misunderstanding and further isolation and loneliness.
Traumatic stress can be vigilance run amok.
The experiencing, fearing, seeing, remembering of violence and harm can derail our thoughts and emotions, often forever. Like someone who puts and keeps themselves in line for abuse, or those who think themselves immune to repeated horror, all of us need to realize that horror commands a price. Similarly, we need to know that sometimes, not always, we can predict nasty experiences and seek to avoid them. Problem is, the invisibility of stress disorders can mean that some people are less in control than it seems. The creed of healthcare workers, protectors of public safety, combatants, and others who serve reinforces our expectations — and their own — about invulnerability.
Sometimes, vigilance is underrated.
Putting ourselves in charge, like not hanging out with somebody who slams you against a wall, is a proactive step to avoiding traumatic stress in the first place. And when you can’t avoid getting bummed out, talking with a professional helper can expiate what may be stuck in your head. That’s necessary if you want to be able to live your life without looking over your shoulder for clowns.
Kathe Skinner is a Marriage & Family Therapist in private practice who specializes working with couples, especially those for whom invisible disability — like PTSD — is part of their relationship’s mix. She and her husband David hold Couples Communication Workshops that help inoculate couples from the stress that a poor relationship can bring. Register now for the lateswt workshop at www.BeingHeardNow.com
© 2015, Being Heard, LLC
3 WORDS MEN HATE TO HEAR
Women, can you think of the last time your man brought up something that bugged him about you?
Maybe it was that you talked to your friends too much, your mother too much, or him too much.
But unless really, really pushed – like during an argument – men aren’t usually relationship-complainers; at least mine isn’t.
It’s not that women do more talking than men – that truism got debunked (by male researchers, interestingly enough) – it’s how and what they talk aboutthat seems to make a difference. Follow a husband and wife through any department store: listen to what each points out and the descriptive words each uses. Are both genders equally engaged and expressive? I hang with my husband at Home Depot but the reverse isn’t true at Ross Dress for Less.
Men are finicky about stupid things, like artichokes or wearing turtlenecks. Lots of things aggravate women, too, starting with men’s inability to recall what they do that women don’t want them to do anymore. Hence the phrase “How many times do I have to tell you?”
Now, I couldn’t swear to it, but I’d bet my last carton of yogurt that men forget things on purpose, even at the risk of appearing stupid, which is actually pretty smart.
How else to explain men who feign ignorance about where the kitchen towels go when enlisted in putting away the wash?
Or men who fix diesel engines but can’t remember to put down the seat?
While the splash of a fanny hitting the water at 3 a.m. isn’t enough to strike fear in a man, three words are: Can we talk?
That same carton of yogurt rides on my belief that when a woman says those words, it’s like a guy’s thrown into the deep end with shackles binding his wrists and ankles. It’s not that women bowl guys over with the quantity of words – the sexes actually say about the same number of words in a day. It’s the kinds of words used, the language that’s spoken.
Women generally have it over men in “feeling-speak”. So when a woman wants to talk, bet your yogurt it’s in the language of feelings. And even if both partners are talking about the same thing their understanding and expression of it are very different.
Just like being in a strange land where we don’t sprechen the language, we show our frustration with each other in the same ineffective ways:
- Talk louder and louder;
- Throw up our hands in disgust;
- Think how dense the other person is;
- Walk away, muttering.
Just as tourists in a different land need more than passports and sensible shoes, couples often leave behind what’s most basic to their enjoyment and success. Translator app, anyone?
Kathe Skinner is a Marriage & Family Therapist and Relationship Coach specializing in couples work, especially with those relationships impacted by invisible disability. She has a firm belief that the quality of a couple’s communication skills have a significant impact on their own, and their family’s, health. Kathe and David have been married for almost 30 years and live in Colorado where they teach Couple Communication Workshops and continue to unravel Petey’s and Lucy’s cat-speak. Discover more about Kathe Skinner and the Couples Communication Workshops at http://www.BeingHeardNow.com and be sure to check out more of Kathe’s blogs at ilikebeingsickanddisabled.com.
©2014, Being Heard, LLC
WordPress Tags: words men hate to hear, argument, relationship, differences between men and women, verbal differences, couples, languages couples speak, feelings, partners, marriage, marital therapy, couples therapy, relationship, Marriage & Family Therapist, Kathe Skinner, translate,couples speak, communication,Couples Communication Workshop
IT TAKES TWO TO DO-SI-DO
Doin’ the do-si-do’s impossible to do by yourself.
I spent lots of years hanging out with girlfriends or not hanging out at all, which was more likely to be true. Most times, none of us even had someone who filled in for love. I’m not ashamed to say there are times I would’ve settled – my need for affiliation was that great – at least for awhile. Although I did draw the line at that Mafia guy.
Being un-paired suggested to me that who I was was unacceptable; someone whose standards, suggested Mom, were sometimes too high. This time she was right.
The upshot was a 10-year marriage I never wanted and that didn’t work, anyway.
And when, post-divorce, I found someone to love, conundrums followed double-behavioral-messages and I was as heartbroken and needy as if I were one of those women who stand uncomfortably on the periphery of social situations. How humiliating that, when I bought myself a dozen roses to make him jealous, he knew no one else had done that but me.
If you haven’t been there, done that, and are newly-bummed by Valentine’s Day, here are some thoughts:
1. Scoundrels are plentiful. Scoundrels will always be scoundrels. Scoundrels become scoundrel-ier the more you like them.
2. Singles gatherings are very sad. While such encounters are billed as “fun”, they never are. They’re too often a forum for people to tell their bad/sad story. While good forums for social science researchers, mixers like this can suck the breath out you for weeks.
3. Visit the zoo. Animals who live in enclosures have other fish to fry so they’re not upset when your dump truck of emotions backs onto their turf. Just don’t dump on their food.
4. Develop a mental solidarity with women who become collectors of cats. Every cat-loving woman I’ve ever met understands how this happens, and is comforted by knowing that homeless felines are plentiful if all else fails.
5. Diet only if you want to. A hungry person is a grouchy person, not at all lovable. By the same token, if you’re ashamed of evidence of those ice cream orgies, remember that a shamed person often lies.
6. Going to a bar is noisy, phony, expensive, sometimes dangerous but often depressing, especially when your friend gets hit on and you don’t. People sucking up the bar scene are generally alcoholic, shopping for a good cut of meat, or both.
7. At the first sign of abuse run. Fast and far. Never look back.
8. Everything you’ve ever heard about kissing frogs is true. These days you really can get warts.
9. While the world feels like Noah’s Arc. fact is that with the divorce rate at 50%, out there’s a pretty big pool of people rejected by someone else. And they’re yours for the taking.
10. A clean bill of health is as important as it was to have a passport in Nazi Germany. The consequences are about the same, too.
Pairing up is about lots of things, many of which we have no control over, like the biological imperative to reproduce our species, and to protect what we create. Humans are meant to affiliate; we’re social animals who rely on, and need, each other. The herd is enormous – 7 billion and growing.
The odds are in your favor.
Kathe Skinner is a Marriage & Family Therapist and Relationship Coach who’s been in private practice for the last 17 years. She works especially with the invisibly disabled. Kathe finds real-life adventures in Front Range Colorado, where she lives with husband David and their hooligan cats, Petey and Lucy. Neither of them has square danced since they were in 6th grade. Learn more about Kathe & David Skinner and the Couples Communication Workshops they teach at http://www.BeingHeardNow.com and be sure to keep visiting Kathe’s blog at ilikebeingsickanddisabled.com. P.S. Pass it along!
©2014, Being Heard, LLC
WordPress Tags: meat market,Develop relationship,Noah’s Ark, two by two,double messages,self,affiliation,reminder,upshot,marriage,messages,edges,world,version,Noah,Valentine,scoundrel,news,Singles,forum,science,breath,Visit,Animals,truck,Just,food,Develop,woman,Diet,person,dough,container,lies,friend,Chances,meat,Fast,relationship,health,passport,Nazi,Germany,consequences,species,odds,Kathe,Skinner,Therapist,Coach,life,Front,Range,Colorado,husband,David,hooligan,Petey,Lucy,Neither,Learn,Communication,Workshops,Pass,conundrums,situations,Scoundrels,forums,mixers,enclosures,emotions,collectors,warts,Humans,women,cats
Couples Who Talk 