love-life
This post is for women who experienced some form of trauma earlier in their lives (emotional, sexual, physical trauma, or some combination) who now have a child and fear bringing a new man into their child’s life. You don’t want anything to happen to your child. You may have avoided dealing with this issue by…
Sex is fundamentally a biological function. The meaning it is given by people is the result of beliefs about sex, interpretations we’ve learned to apply to it. There are many different forms of interpretation possible for a sexual experience. Our institutions and families of origin teach us to think about sex in certain ways. They…
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…
The biggest problem with love is our tendency to avoid the feeling of vulnerability. The way we (humans) do that is to construct defenses to protect ourselves from the discomfort and expected dangers of vulnerability. To be vulnerable is to be open and receptive to what comes from the world and from inside of ourselves.…
For those of you familiar with Freud. Remember he supposedly said, it’s all about ‘love & work.’ Well, let’s modify that a little bit and say in some instances it’s about ‘love vs. work.’ In this world, if you are looking for a way to temporarily avoid something painful in your personal or interpersonal life,…
You’ve met someone you really like. You start dating. You enjoy each other’s company. There is plenty of talk and you’re excited about each other. The feelings are strong and consistent. You’ve been together for a while now. In fact, you’ve been waiting to have a serious relationship with someone. And best of all, you both want the…
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…
This post is about the possible effects of a ‘sick mother’ on a son’s adult love-life. My male 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…
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…
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…