Your Family

My Husband’s Narcissistic Mother

By Dr. Jordan / January 18, 2018 /

You married a man who has not yet separated emotionally from his mother. How can you tell? One very obvious sign is she (mother) will be trying to control her son, you, your marriage, up close and from a distance not long after you’ve married her son. The message to you, his wife (or lover,…

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Teach Your Children About Love

By Dr. Jordan / October 9, 2013 /

Have you noticed we teach our children all kinds of things about everything except love. And if you remind me that ‘sex education’ takes places a lot these days, I’ll make a face at you. Love is not covered by sex education, enough said. We could sit around all day trying to figure out why…

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What Did Your Family Teach You About Love?

By Dr. Jordan / June 1, 2013 /

Do you know what your family taught you about love? All families teach their children about love during the course of childhood and adolescence and sometimes beyond. The best you can hope for is that the love lessons you learned were positive and useful. Unfortunately, this is not always the case. Mostly because we can’t…

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My Possessive Mother

By Dr. Jordan / November 29, 2012 /

I love my mother like most people. But she has not always been good for my love-life. I now realize that ‘mothers’ are often the primary cause of difficulties in the love-lives of their adult children. How and why? The evolution of a person’s love-life from childhood into adulthood requires both attachments and separations. To…

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Incest In Your Family Of Origin

By Dr. Jordan / November 2, 2012 /

Scientists remind us that there are compelling genetic reasons why incest leading to pregnancy must be avoided, and the legal system has determined that childhood incest is a crime. Our focus in this post will be on the emotional reasons why childhood incest must be avoided. What does incest do to the mind of the victim? What…

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Your Absent Mother & Your Love-Life

By Dr. Jordan / October 21, 2012 /

To be sure, our mothers have a very powerful influence on our love-lives. Why? Ideally, they are the first to teach us about love. For the most part I’ll be talking about your ‘biological mother.’ That’s the mother who gave birth to you. Even though the role of mother has more to do with which…

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Intrusive Mother-in-laws

By Dr. Jordan / May 21, 2012 /

This classic picture depicts the true state of affairs when it comes to the ‘intrusive mother-in-law.’ This is a mother who is still psychologically merged with her daughter at the time that you, the husband, take her as your wife. Just like in the sketch, if you look at it one way, you see your…

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Sick Mother & Her Daughter’s Love-Life

By Dr. Jordan / May 8, 2012 /

This post is about the possible effects of a ‘sick mother’ on a daughter’s adult love-life. My female patients often see a connection between the difficulty they are having in their love-lives and the fact of their own mother’s emotional sickness when they were growing up. This state of ‘sickness’ includes either or both physical and…

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Absent Father & His Daughter’s Love-Life

By Dr. Jordan / May 6, 2012 /

This post is about the possible effects of an emotionally absent father on a daughter’s adult love life. Many women see a connection between the difficulty they are having in their love lives and the fact of their own father’s absence when they were growing up. The state of ‘absence’ I am talking about includes both…

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Absent Father & His Son’s Love-Life

By Dr. Jordan / May 5, 2012 /

This post is about the possible effects of an ‘absent father’ on a son’s adult love-life. I meet men who can trace some of the difficulty they are having in their love-lives to the fact of their own father’s emotional and physical absence in their lives. Unfortunately, emotional absence and its close relative ‘neglect’ can…

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