Emotional abandonment is one of the silent killers of relationships. Its anthem is an ice cold, white noise that is ultimately impossible to compartmentalize. Its color is the darkness of a deep hole. Its smell one of a deserted coal mine. A partner can provide money for rent/mortgage, gifts for Valentine’s, put you on their…
After the initial parabola of passion, infidelity can be a crashing into a particular kind of hell. A roller-coaster ride that burns our heart. Infidelity scalds us with guilt and grief in the after-shock of transcendent bliss. In virtually every marriage code in virtually every society, infidelity is unequivocally prohibited. In a lot of places…
Do you know what keeps conflict and the power struggle in place? Yep! Criticism. Criticism kills love. Criticism can kill a marriage. There is no such thing as constructive criticism in intimate relationships. When we criticize others we hurt them and we hurt ourselves. When we criticize our partner we freeze them in the very…
My husband walked out on me and our children six months ago. He sad he loved me but he was not in love with me, no passion, no spark, and no click. He said he was unhappy and felt I was too controlling. He also said he felt like he had a chain around his…
I have been with my partner for about 9 months now. He has a reputation as a womanizer, and of late has been showing me this side of his personality. It started with letters from ex-girlfriends that were descriptive of things that they would do to each other, and just today I found that he…
The word anger comes from the Latin “angere,” means “to strangle.” Defined, anger is a strong sense of displeasure and antagonism that arises when a need isn’t met or an expectation isn’t fulfilled. What typically gets us angry is being treated unfairly, manipulatively or with disrespect, especially if it’s intentional. Also feeling unappreciated, feeling threatened,…
Our society is in the midst of an emotional meltdown. We are restless, irritable, fearful, frustrated and our tempers are about to blow. None of this is how we want our lives to be, but our pressure cooker society has pushed us to the emotional limit. We deserve relief from getting tormented by daily stress. …
The “shadow” is a psychological term for everything we cannot see in ourselves. The shadow side are essential aspects of our personality that we have learned to hide or suppress in order to protect ourselves. I understood how important knowing my shadow was when I began my journey in 12-step recovery and again in my clinical…
There seems to be a common misconception that when we stop drinking and using, out of nowhere we will become these perfect people. Alcoholics and addicts (non-alky’s too) have an inner need for perfection. From time to time in recovery, I hear this thought-process: “I was only bad when I was out there drinking and…