“Expectations are agreements we never made.” Unmet expectations are one of the great banes of intimate relationships. Any two people can have such different understandings about what constitutes a request that it’s no wonder the couples counseling business is...
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We see things not as they are but as we are. ~ The Talmud Phenomenon vs. story According to the Mirriam-Webster dictionary, a phenomenon is “an observable fact or event,” “an object or aspect known through the senses rather...
“If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn’t part of ourselves doesn’t disturb us.” ― Hermann Hesse I must have heard the above, or something like it, at least 20...
Relationship experts observe that even in long-term relationships described as “successful,” differences and conflicts may exist that are never fully resolved. How is this possible? It’s possible because the failure of relationships lies not so much in the existence...
Trauma 101 Peter Levine, Ph.D., a pioneer in body-oriented psychotherapy, describes an epiphany he had while treating a woman who suffered from excruciating agoraphobia (an extreme or irrational fear of entering open or crowded places) and a host of...
My experience as a therapist, educator, and self-reflective human being reveals a paradox of people routinely employing unhappiness as a strategy to attain happiness.
Masculine and Feminine Reflecting on the relationships of many of my young clients and even my kids, nieces, and nephews, I think this is an interesting era we’re living in when it comes to human pair-bonding. While us older...
At the heart of Imago Relationship Therapy is the idea that unresolved wounds of childhood have a way of programming us–patterning us–with an internal blueprint for a partner. The partner who fits this blueprint has the capacity to wound...
I hear and read so many things that extol the ideal that we are—or should be—complete within ourselves and that we must achieve autonomy (e.g., merge our inner feminine and masculine, achieve enlightenment, overcome the need for others, etc., to...
My favorite marriage experts agree on at least one thing: The modern marriage is front-loaded with so many expectations for personal fulfillment that marriages often collapse under their own weight. In her popular TED talk, psychotherapist and author Esther...