Put yourself in this scenario: your wife leaves you alone in the room while she goes and takes a shower. You’re sitting there doing nothing until you notice it: her cell phone. It’s just sitting there innocently, right next to you. And she’s in the shower, so there’s no chance she’ll walk in. And you’ve…
It’s challenging to learn new talking and listening boundaries in recovery. In fact, it’s evolutionary. Our efforts to learn how to talk and listen to the people we want to be intimate is generally interrupted by internal signals within that get transmitted to us from our past. Many of us read these signals as we…
One of the biggest challenges that recovering people deal with are relationships. It is important to realize that building a relationship in recovery is a difficult and complex process. Almost a fault, I hear people oversimplifying relationship problems by using slogans to instruct recovering people about recovery and relationships. Slogans like “Turn it Over!”…
Politics has been at the forefront of nearly everyone’s mind lately, with protest gatherings on both sides across our country. Typically, when couples go to bed they are sheltered from the political barrage of news, but they may not be as insulated in the bedroom as they once thought. Pillow talk between spouses and lovers…
Relationships are baffling. The baffling part is how we can both love and hate the person we love the most. I remember when Yael and I started dating I was baffled by the strange reversals of some of our dates. I remember the date would start out full of excitement, curiosity and passion and end…
A lot of heterosexual relationships go off the deep end because partners are engaging in vicious interpersonal battles out of a mystification with love, co-creating a relational atmosphere of sadomasochistic intimate terrorism … instead of real love. One of the dangers of patriarchy for men and women is blind obedience, i.e., never questioning what is…
What does it mean to be human? This is a frightening question these days. Wouldn’t it be easier to stay on the surface of things and medicate ourselves rather than deal with stimulation, titillation or unpredictability in relationships; with whatever it is we do that allows the present reality to be produced over and over…
Do you sometimes have trouble seeing how your behavior impacts others? Do you rage at your partner and after you calm down apologize and brush it off by saying, “That was my alcoholic/addict behavior?” Do you have trouble communicating your fears, disappointments and desires to your partner? Do you obsess about your ex-partner’s and your…
Attempting to take one’s life over a break-up might seem dramatic and perhaps over the top to some people, but if you’re someone who grew up in alcoholism it may not seem that far fetched. Having protected our families by keeping secrets, we continue to act in certain ways to get approval. We take responsibility…
There is almost no bigger challenge in recovery than being married or in a committed relationship. I say this having worked in the field of mental health and addiction recovery for many years. During that time I have come across hundreds of recovering addicts and non-alcoholics who have struggled to maintain a loving relationship. From…