Imagine a mountain.  Seen from a great distance, the presence of the mountain is otherworldly, majestic. It’s obviously there, yet a mirage-like unreality hovers around it. Coming closer to the base of the mountain, activity is energized. Springs and streams flowing down from the mountain make the soil abundantly fertile. It’s easy to sustain life, so many have settled here. Over time a city has grown, complex and rich with possibility for success in industry and commerce, in technology and in arts, in social life and individual activities. One can choose any number of pursuits here—artis ..read more

Gary thought Carol knew how much he loved her, because of how well he maintained the yard. The closely-mowed lawn, the precisely-bordered beds, the profusions of seasonal flowers, all were intended to speak of his love. Or so he thought, because he never actually said anything about it to her. Carol, for her part, didn’t really care about landscaping, but she knew Gary did, so she occasionally praised his efforts. Meanwhile, she waited for a hug (reserved for Mother’s Day and birthdays), waited in vain for him to notice her trim figure (why else all of that dieting?), waited for any questions ..read more

Silence is never the answer – Elie Wiesel Every relationship has subjects which aren’t talked about, topics one or both partners have decided are taboo. These could be simple issues like cleaning up clutter or more difficult concerns like chronic illness, overdrinking, or having another child. Sometimes these untouchable topics have been arrived at by trying to talk about them and running up against intense fights or cold silence. Other times the subjects seem so volatile that they don’t get mentioned in the first place. The result of having these subjects not talked about is that they begin t ..read more

Hal and Cindy often have variations of the same conflict. He wants to go to the beach they went to last year, she wants to go to Brazil. He likes the restaurant where they met for their first date, she wants to try the new Japanese-Peruvian place. He likes to visit his college friends at least once a year, she would rather meet new people. This isn’t only about making different choices. Every couple has to reconcile those. Hal and Cindy have a deeper difference: he’s a conservator, while she’s an adventurer. Conservators seek the security of stability. They enjoy sameness and continuity. They ..read more

One comfort of being in an ongoing relationship is eventually coming to know your partner. When you have been together long enough, you will have gone beyond many of your fantasies about the person you are with and feel you really know them. You know their habits, the ways they usually think and feel, the ways you can depend on them and the ways you can’t. You know how much they will work with you toward mutual ends, and the ways they will be unavailable. Good and bad, your relationship is stable, reliable. Sometimes you can settle into feeling the secure attachment of your relationship enough ..read more

We each have this one life to live. It’s our opportunity. But our opportunity for what? On the face of it, the opportunity is clear. It’s simply the opportunity to be living, to experience this moment. And this moment. And this moment. We can string them together any way we’d like, or any way we have learned to value. We have collectively spent thousands of years developing intriguing, often captivating ways to string these moments of our lives together into stories of meaningfulness.  But as we live, the stories fade into just that, stories, and we are left with what we began with, this ..read more

Every relationship happens in two dimensions. One dimension is our outer life of activity in the world. The other dimension is our inner life of emotional engagement. Our outer and inner lives are both always going on, but we don’t have equal degrees of attention for them. Some people prefer to focus on activity and accomplishment. Others prefer to focus on feelings and meaning, which in a relationship is about awareness of our connection to each other. Still others work to balance the two. Many people choose partners whose balance of attention between outer life and inner life is similar to t ..read more

The first time Hayley was in my office talking about her marriage, she had a simple question: “Why can’t I leave?” She had been married to George for more than 25 years. Outwardly their relationship looked good, with equally successful careers, two grown children, and enough money to afford whatever luxuries they desired. But their real closeness had ended years ago, and now they avoided each other in any personal way. George had been clear with her: “For me, marriage is forever.” This left the decision to stay or go as all Hayley’s, and she wanted to go.  Hayley had already looked at th ..read more

Love, love, love! We have it or we want it. We chase it or it finds us. We ‘get it’ or we don’t know if we’ve ever felt it. We talk about it endlessly, or we keep it so private that we imagine no one else knows.  But what is love?  We often talk about love as a special emotion, but love isn’t an emotion at all. Emotions are strictly internal experiences. We might take actions toward people because of the emotions we feel, such as yelling at someone when we are angry, but the emotion itself is only our own. In contrast, love is not internal. It always happens between two people. Becau ..read more

As many couples do, one thing Jim and Joanne readily agree on is that they don’t communicate well. Difficulties with communication in relationships may come and go, but they don’t seem to go away for long.  While we often talk about this as a communication problem, the actual difficulty couples have isn’t usually about being understood. As with Jim and Joanne, their problem is that they each don’t like what the other is saying. This is what leads to the contentious arguments or withdrawal into sulking or punitive silence, which is what people are usually referring to when they say they ha ..read more