Tag: intimacy
Can You Give Me what I need? Being in a committed long-term relationship is the hardest thing we do. Individuals in a relationship boil down into two distinct categories. You can call them Pursuers and Withdrawers, Minimizers/Maximizers or the-one-who-is-eternally-Disappointed and the-one-who-lives-in-fear-of-eternally-Disappointing. It all boils down to the same fears: “I am never going to be […]
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Are you Really There for Me? Why are some couples so quick to respond to their partner with anger or defensiveness? How can we break the cycle of extreme arousal, pain and more wounding that some couples experience with nearly every interaction? “We can’t stop fighting,” I hear. “Everything turns into a major blow-up!”. According […]
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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 realize our human potential.) Interdependence is forgotten in the pursuit of autonomy. What if the opposite […]
READ ARTICLEInteractions with other people wire the brain for resilience. This dharma talk parable illustrates how interactions can be positively and negatively encoded in the brain. A seven-year-old boy and his family are having dinner at a local restaurant. The waitress, addressing the boy, asks “What would you like, hon?” And the boy cheerfully answers: “I […]
READ ARTICLEMy 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 Perel observes, “So we come to one person, and we basically are asking them to give […]
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