Thoughts on Relating with Men

Relating with men feels like a mixed bag to me.  “Some of my best friends are men!”  In fact, a lot of them are!  I have two sons that I really enjoy relating to.  Of my colleagues at RRC, I feel most comfortable with the men in many ways.   On the other hand, I feel closer in some ways to my daughter-in-law than I do to my sons.  I do more things socially with my women friends.  And I experience a deeper level of intimacy in talking with my close women friends than I do with the men in my life. Our relationships just happen differently.

What is the difference?  I think that, when I’m with women, we talk more about our personal lives – from clothes, to relationships with others, to our feelings about ourselves and our lives.  It feels “juicy”. This certainly doesn’t happen with all women but, in relationships where this doesn’t seem to flow, I find myself moving away from the relationship.   With the men that I choose to spend time with, I find that we talk much more about ideas – from philosophy, to politics, to movies or books.  There’s something that feeds me about these conversations also.  AND, especially in mixed groups, I begin to get bored and feel disconnected when this goes on too long.

So, what does this say about men and women relating in general?  I’m not sure.  Does it mean that we are just very different and have to accept this?  When I say that I realize that, to me, this means that I have to be satisfied doing relationships with men their way!  I seem to believe that I have no right to expect, even ask, that they come in my direction!  I wonder if this position/belief is common in women.  It worries me that, even with all my experience with men who value me and want to be relational with me, I still feel that I must adapt!  Is this particular to me and my dynamic, or is it still part of the cultural norm and expectation?

Mary Simon, Psy.D.

Moving Beyond the Power Struggle

MAKING 2012 YOUR BEST YEAR YET

One of my favorite poets, Mary Oliver, once posed the poetic question, “What will you do with your one wild and precious life?” I have found this to be a wonder-filled, thought and action-provoking question, and one that is particularly poignant as we leap into 2012 (which coincidently happens to be a Leap Year).  Another similarly provocative question that I like to ponder around the New Year is, ‘What would you do if you had no fear and you knew that you could not fail?’

A colleague of mine (and an excellent writing coach), Andrea Costantine, recently asked the question, “What would it take to make 2012 your best year yet?”  As I consider my answer to this question, I recall the notion that what you focus on expands. In other words, if I focus on what I fear, or what I don’t want (my “NO”), I will tend to move in that direction, and that will play a large role in determining what I create and draw into my life. If, on the other hand, I focus on what I love, on what is life-affirming, and on what I do want in my life (my ‘YES!’), that will be the direction I will tend to move. As my daughter, at age 4 wisely proclaimed, “Peace attracts peace.”

 With this in mind, I challenge you to consider the following questions:

• What is your vision of the best year ever?
• What would you do if you were to focus on what you truly want in your life in 2012? How might that look, feel, sound?
• Who is the person you will need to be or become in order to bring this vision into reality?
• What support might be helpful (e.g. a friend or relative, a coach, a therapist) as you stretch into your new vision?

 As you enter the portal of this New (Leap) Year, I invite you to discover your “YES!!!” and then take the leap!

~ Suzanne Mariner 

Being Present: Avoiding the Reactivity Trap

Here’s a concept that I’ve been finding really helpful of late.  It’s called “The Shelf,” and it’s the place where I can rest my “baggage” when I find that my buttons are getting pushed by something.  The best example I can think of is when I’m trying -  REALLY trying – to listen to something that my partner is explaining, and I find myself getting triggered.  The idea is that I go, ‘Aha!  I’m about to fall into the “reactivity trap.” I need to take “my stuff” and put it on the shelf, so I can be truly present here.’  It’s an active decision to not pay any attention to my own internal triggering.  Maybe later I can take it down and explain my side of things.  Or maybe I can just leave it up there  . . . ?

 Mike Misgen, LPC

Conversations for Connection:
Cultivating Community in the 21st Century

Hello and welcome to the RRC blog community! Now that we have launched our new website, we will be adding new and thought-provoking blog posts on a regular basis. Our aim is to bring a fresh perspective that will inspire you to see your life and relationships through new eyes. As this is an interactive blog, we invite you to join this evolving conversation, and become part of our growing online community. As our world becomes increasingly digitized, we risk the loss of deep, authentic, soul-nourishing connection. So how might we cultivate a sense of community in the 21^st century? Our hope at Relationship Resource Center is to provide many, varied opportunities for conversations that spark profound and meaningful connections. We encourage you to enrich this conversation, by adding your voice!

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(Click “Join the Conversation” for any blog post you’d like to respond to.)

In gratitude for being a part of our community,

The Relationship Resource Center team

Stuck Pain vs Growing Pain

It seems to me that, although we often don’t have a choice about whether pain comes into our lives and relationships, we do have a choice about whether that pain becomes “stuck pain” or “growing pain.” We can choose to just endure the pain that comes our way and try to ignore it and/or numb it as best we can. We can blame others or the world and wait for them to change. This path keeps us stuck and stagnant. On the other hand, we can get the support we need in a painful situation and put forth the effort of understanding what in us may be causing us to experience the situation as painful. We can then look at how we might grow through this experience into being stronger, more fully alive and more deeply connected.
Mary Simon, PsyD

PRESUMING SANITY

We have probably all had the experience of being in the middle of a fight with our partner and thinking to our self… “That is absurd. How can you possibly think that? You have got it all wrong.” It is my contention that those thoughts are an indication that I have totally lost my neutrality and that my non-verbal behavior is about to become dismissive, invalidating and maybe even condescending.
I generally know my partner to be thoughtful and reasonable. Why do I doubt that now? Well it is probably because she is disagreeing with me. She sees something differently from me. My sense of self is threatened and I feel an urge to fight back and assert my superior knowledge or right to my own opinion. It is actually my own insecurity that is taking command of the ship.
If I presume that everything she says, thinks and does makes total sense (to her) from within her own perspective I would never look down on her and become arrogant and dismissive. If her ideas do not make sense to me it means that I have not taken the time to inquire into her world view to see how it makes sense to her. That needs to be my next job at those moments.
When I say, “You are not making sense!” I am actually saying, “You are not making MY sense.” How pompous I must sound at those moments.
~ Dr. Howard Lambert

The American Dream as the cultural ‘fit’.

A recent article in Psychology Today titled ‘the American nightmare’ (March/April, 2011) caught my attention. I realized ‘oh wow, the American Dream that most of us aspire to is actually the cultural fit that Mary and I are addressing in our upcoming book, Happy Misfits!’ Our thesis is that to fit or aspire to fit into any cultural track indeed can become a nightmare! We need to become conscious misfits with respect to the cultural dreams and aspirations that we tend to swallow whole. This doesn’t mean that we throw out the baby with the bath water. There is much about the American Dream that is deserving of our discriminative attention. The dream marriage that fulfills each partner body and soul until reality sets in, the two point two children and parents that comprise the nuclear family that may be stressed to the breaking point, the McMansion in the suburbs that is elaborate and elegant and contributes to suburban sprawl and isolation. These are all part of the cultural fit that many Americans (and others around the world) often aspire to and may be part of what inspires others to become happy misfits who challenge or at least modify the American Dream in their lives.

Everybody’s blogging – is anyone reading?

As a friend recently opined, “Everybody’s blogging.  Nobody’s reading!”  It strikes us that this may be true in our case.   So, our next step in blogging is going to be reaching out via email to friends, colleagues, clients and other possibly interested parties to let them know about our blog and invite y’all to join us.  If you have been reading, give us a shout (make a comment) and let us know what you think about what we’ve been saying.

Our Vision of the Growth Path

What are the advantages of describing a growth path as moving from Adapted Child to a mature Adult state – in compari son to other, perhaps more familiar, ways of looking at change and growth? 

The first thing that comes to mind is that Adapted Child is synymous with the ways we learned to survive.   Survival is both a personal, individual issues and an issue for cultures and societies.  That is to say that individuals must learn how to adapt in order to survive in our families, culture and society.  At the same time, cultures and societies strive to survive in a world of inter-related, and sometimes competing, cultures and societies. 

The process of moving from and Adapted Child to a more mature Adult state both honors how we have learned to survive and exhorts us to move beyond our survival adaptations.  In order to function well in an increasingly relational and interdependent world, individuals, cultures and societies must be able to value both their own and others’ ways of being.  This is only possible when we can access the most mature, Adult capacities available to us as human beings. 

Thus, one of the advantages of describing a growth path in this way is that it enables us to see individual growth in the context of larger cultural and societal issues.

This is important because what we have classically and historically done for survival, both indivividually and culturally, now is destructive to the very  survival it was intended to ensure.  We now recognize that our old short-term survival strategies are most likely to lead to long-term extinction.  

Another advantage we see to this way of describing growth is that it combines a descriptive with a prescriptive ways of looking at this rich and complex subject.  More about this next time.