I Am Not in Love with You

Posted on by
Reply

“I am not in love with you anymore.”

If “I love you” are the three words every lover wants to hear, these eight words are the polar opposite, and for many seem to be the death knell of the relationship.

“Why did you leave him?” I asked a client.

“I wasn’t in love with him anymore,” she answered. As if that explained everything.

Another time the woman of the couple comes to me, crying, “He says he’s not in love with me anymore!” As if nothing could be done.

Others tell me it’s a natural thing. You meet. You fall in love. You have amazing sex. And then it all cools off and you become roomates. The only solution seems to be to go online or to a bar, meet someone new, and do it all over again. As if falling in love is something you can do only once per person, for a limited time only.

Is it so?

I grew up in a different time and under the influence of different people. Like Bill Cosby. Bill Cosby once did a comedy sketch that began this way: “In every relationship there are times when you wake up in bed in the morning, you look at your partner sleeping peacefully on the pillow beside you, and you think, ‘You parasite.’” I heard this sketch before I had had any relationships of my own, and so I went into my first relationship expecting that there would be times like that, times when I would look at my par–tner (Freudian slip there – I almost typed ‘parasite’) and think un-in-love-like things. But Cosby’s sketch went on with the parasitic partner telling him to take his daughter to the football game, so they – Cosby and the partner – were obviously in a committed relationship and, presumably it got better again, later in the game.

That’s what I expected would happen in my relationship. We would meet, fall in love, have amazing sex, have parasitic moments, and it would get better.

So I met and fell in love with this woman in 1980. And I have to say, we’ve had our moments of amazing sex and not-so-amazing non-sex. But I’m here to tell you that falling in love isn’t something you have to do only once for a limited time, and then you have to change partners.

Falling in love is a feeling. Like anger. Ever been angry? Sure. Were you only ever angry once with a given person, and never had the feeling again toward said person? Probably not. So why, then, should you fall in love once, and once you fall out of love, expect never to fall in love again with that same person?

Just saying.

It Was There All the Time

Posted on by
Reply

It was quiet today. Just one student to see in the morning. My afternoon clients had cancelled. I was wondering what to do with this gift of time and found myself thinking about the mess in my garage. Maybe I had enough time to get it clean today.

Mostly this required a trip to the dump. There was some garbage and there was some recycling, a soil bag to return for refund and, oh yeah: the beer bottles.

I don’t drink. Well, you will catch me putting some Irish Cream in my coffee at Christmas. And occasionally at other times. But my stay in a Presbyterian seminary cured me of beer drinking, years ago.

Presbyterian seminarians drink beer – at least they did in 1982. I wasn’t even a seminarian myself then. I was a senior in physiology.

Although I was a senior I was new to the residence, and so I was expected to participate in the frosh exercises. The major frosh exercise involved climbing each staircase in the seminary, and at each landing, there was a choice of beverage: beer or salt water. I chose the salt water. Which I began to associate with beer, after that. Which is why I don’t drink beer.

But my daughter and her boyfriend do drink beer, on occasion. And they had left a small case of beer bottles in the garage, months ago.

Today, then, the dump, recycling, the soil bag – and the beer.

Made it to the dump. Did the recycling. Returned the soil bag. Now, where did I see a beer store?

I was certain that I had seen a beer store on Upper James. I drove there. It was an LCBO. That’s not the same as a beer store, right? I’d better keep looking.

Meadowlands. I’m sure there’s a beer store in Meadowlands. I drove there next. If it wasn’t another LCBO. But the sign said, “Spirits, wine, beer”. Maybe they took empties.

They didn’t. They did however tell me how to find the nearest beer store. In the next town.

I drove there and finally found the beer store. I must have been in a hurry by then because I scared a lady in the parking lot who thought I was going to crash into her. She honked her horn. As I got out of my car, swinging my beer bottles, I flashed her a grin and said, “Hey lady, I’m not going to hit you!”

Not sure that swinging the box of empties improved her confidence in my statement, I tried to walk steadily into the beer store. Thank God I’m not coming out with a full case.

A clerk saw me coming and asked, “Just returning? I’ll take you over here.”

He gave me $1.50. Significantly less than I got for the soil bag. I think I used more than that in gas, finding the beer store.

Oh well. I was satisfied. Garage is clean. Now I can go home and cook dinner.

After dinner, I drove my daughter’s boyfriend to the bus stop. If there wasn’t a beer store across the street!

You know, sometimes you travel the world over, looking for something, and it’s right beside you all the time.

Try Before You Buy

Posted on by
Reply

You see a car you like in the lot and the salesman, all smiles, hands you the keys and says, “Take it for a test drive. No obligation.” You’re delighted because you know you’re not really going to buy the car, just take it for a spin, and it’s not going to cost you a dime.

You climb in and there’s that new car smell. The engine leaps to life at the turn of the key – not like that clunker you’re driving now. The acceleration is quick, the steering smooth. You head for the highway ramp and for the first time in years you’re not flooring the gas to merge with traffic. “This is nice,” you say out loud. But you’re still just taking it for a “free” spin, planning to drop the keys back in the salesman’s hand when you return.

By the end of the test drive you’re not so sure, your face falls as you catch sight of your rusting heap waiting to reclaim you, and you’re mentally making readjustments to your budget. The salesman has the paperwork out – low monthly payments from now until eternity – and before you realize it you’ve tied the knot on a new car. Sure there were two or three models you were going to test drive besides the one you just bought, but you’re here and it’s suddenly a lot harder to get out of the feeling that sometime during the test drive you fell into a commitment with this particular vehicle, and what’s one car compared to another, anyway? Sigh. Here you are. Here you will stay.

“Try before you buy” looks like a buyer’s dream but it only works if the buyer has a very strong constitution. You have to have the guts to say “No thanks” if you think that this isn’t the best deal for you. It means shouldering disappointment, having to wait longer for the new item, and accepting a certain amount of implied guilt: the other party, even though they promised you a no-commitment trial, is now looking reproachfully at you as if to say, “If you weren’t going to buy in, why did you lead me on?” There’s a reason that “Try before you buy” is so prevalent in the marketplace: it encourages consumers to buy, even when buying is a bad choice for them.

However just because something is bad for you, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have the right to choose to do it. And you might or might not want to be informed of the risks. In the past, Statistics Canada has been a good place to go for information on risk, but StatsCan today is facing severe cutbacks. The census is shorter, ostensibly because Canadians have a right to privacy, the government says. I think that StatsCan is being reigned in because people don’t want to be told about the risks inherent in what they choose to do.

For example, most of the people I come in contact with in my practice believe that living common-law is a good idea, a sort of “try before you buy” into a marriage. But the facts say otherwise:

“Living common-law is … strongly associated with a first marital breakdown. In fact, the risk is 50% higher among people who lived with their partner before the wedding than among those who did not. This finding is supported by recent Canadian research which clearly shows that marriages preceded by a common-law union are distinctly less stable than those that began at the altar, possibly because the tradition of marriage is less important to people who have participated in non- traditional conjugal relationships.” (1)

Living common-law before marriage makes the marriage more likely to fail – fifty percent more likely. Thirty-eight percent of all marriages in Canada eventually end in divorce (better than in the U.S., where the divorce rate is closer to 50%). If you live common-law before you marry, the chances of your marriage ending in divorce increase to 57%.

I think the problem here is “Try before you buy”. Moving in together seems a relatively easy thing to do, sort of like a free test drive. But as soon as you move in together, you give up your independence. Maybe you sold your home or let your lease go, and got rid of that extra bed, stove, and fridge. So now you’re sort of stuck together. If it doesn’t work out, you’ll have to buy a new stove and fridge. Who has that kind of money? Then, like the customer at the end of the test drive, you’re committed to a Ford, even though you’re starting to wish that maybe you’d held out until you tried the Jaguar down the street.

If you’re already living common-law, what should you do? Have a strong constitution. Don’t just fall into the commitment. Think about it. Thinking it wasn’t such a good idea? Start saving up for your own fridge and stove, and hold out for a better vehicle.

This is a controversial topic, I know. I publish my thoughts with some trepidation. StatsCan lost their budget after publishing such things. Have I offended you? Do you think I make a point? What’s the upside of living common-law? Email me. I’d love to hear from you.
____________________________________

1. Warren Clark and Susan Crompton (2006), Til Death Do Us Part? The Risk of First and Second Marriage Dissolution. Canadian Social Trends Summer 2006, p. 24. Available online, http://www.statcan.gc.ca/access_acces/archive.action?loc=/pub/11-008-x/11-008-x2006001-eng.pdf

Kar-ma

Posted on by
Reply

Some years ago in Guelph, I stopped to get gas. Because I run a business I keep a vehicle log, and I was filling out the details of the gas purchase in my log after I had filled.

A pickup truck pulled up behind me and honked his horn. I noticed that several of the other bays were open and, naturally defiant in response to the horn, I took my time filling out my log.

He honked again. Finally he came up to my window and said, his voice dripping with sarcasm, “Pardon me, but would you mind moving your vehicle some time today so that the rest of us little people could get our gas?”

I said, “Sure.”

And then, as he walked back to his truck, I lost it.

When people “lose it” they are usually referring to the felt sense that they have lost all ability to reason, and suddenly find themselves in the throes of some far more ancient part of their brain. I fondly refer to this part as the “old brain”. It’s also called the amygdala, an almond-shaped part of the mid-brain that takes over in times of danger. It shuts down the reasoning power of the cortex and activates the heart, the lungs, and the large muscles. Its goal is “fight or flight”. It says to the rest of the brain, essentially, “Let’s think about this later and do something about it now.”

I lost it because I realized that I was in danger of losing a “pissing contest”. By backing down, I had acknowledged that he was the head dog. I was parked in the front pump position: farthest right, closest to the store. He barked, and I was going to move so that he could take his place at the head of the line. That was why he wanted that pump, even though the other bays were empty. I was getting ready to demote myself until my amygdala took over and said, “You don’t have to take this. You have a university degree. You can gain the upper hand here.”

Perhaps you can see that this isn’t going to end well.

He was already walking back to his truck when I leaned out my window and called back to him. “You know,” I said, “You’re a very nice man.”

It worked. He stopped and turned.

I can control people with my voice, I thought. This is cool. My amygdala was pleased. I was fighting, and winning.

“What did you say?” he asked, returning to my window.

I was going to milk this for all its worth, see how far I could go with him. A very bad idea. But I smiled sweetly at him and said,

“I said, you’re a very nice man. A very very nice man.”

I was basking in my achievement: totally innocuous words, said with such sweet, dripping sarcasm that a) he knew I meant exactly the opposite and b) he couldn’t be sure that I wasn’t coming on to him (bonus points: I had guessed correctly that he was homophobic. The beads of sweat were starting to appear on his forehead.)

Now I don’t need to move my truck. I exalted silently. I was the top dog. It didn’t occur to me that in the real world, combat is not usually settled solely by words.

“I’m going to hit you,” he said.

I thought about threatening him with charges and a jail sentence but I realized that he was thinking with his “old brain” at this point. His cortex would have to be working for him to process the words “jail sentence” before hitting me. Meanwhile my cortex was working again and finally, almost too late, I took the higher road.

“I believe you might,” I replied. “I’m going to move my truck now.” And I did.

My therapist later remarked that I had taken a foolish chance with a “man in a truck”: “Men with trucks, Carl, are used to having things their way. They had their way with the vehicle they purchased. Don’t piss them off.”

Yes, I drive a truck too. But it’s not that kind of truck. My wife helped me pick it out. It seats 8.

——-

Construction on Bay Street. Two lanes northbound and normally I look well ahead of my vehicle to avoid potential obstacles. But this time I missed it. I found myself in busy traffic with the lane immediately ahead of me blocked.

Beside me, a monster truck. I sighed. Since my close call in Guelph I had sworn off toying with truck drivers. I resigned myself to waiting until I could somehow find a gap to change lanes.

Suddenly the guy in the monster truck honks his horn, rolls down his window, and gesticulates. Warily I roll my window down.

“Want to go ahead of me?” he calls.

“Would I ever,” I reply.

“Be my guest,” he smiled, and he let me pass.

He was the top dog, and although he was behind me, he was ahead of me.

—–

I was thinking about Bay Street as I was bumper to bumper on the 403 heading toward Ancaster on Friday, August 5th. The Festival of Friends had recently relocated to the Ancaster Fairgrounds to accommodate a bigger crowd. What a crowd. The newspaper reporter the next day estimated that 20,000 people attended on Friday night. The fairground has parking for 5,000. But my daughter wanted to go on the rides.

Being stuck in traffic is always a study in morality for me. It’s a test of how well you passed Kindergarten. In Kindergarten they teach you to line up for the water fountain and for recess. You’re supposed to stay in line and wait your turn – not butt in. I think that most people with driver’s licenses never attended Kindergarten.

On the 403 there were two lanes westbound, and as I saw it the the left lane was for traffic bypassing the fair, perhaps heading for Brantford or London. The right lane was the line for the water fountain. I was in the right lane, waiting my turn.

And a car pulled up beside me in the left lane, with its turn signal on, wanting to butt in. “Old brain” activates: “This is a threat, Carl. This car wants to get ahead of you. Then you will no longer be 17,289 in line – you will slip back to 17,290! Danger!”

I’m getting older and I’m realizing that I’m going to die eventually in spite of my “old brain”‘s best efforts, and I’m beginning to use my cortex more. And I was having a good night with my daughter and her boyfriend in the car, and although it was August I was strangely seized with a Christmas-like spirit. The driver of the car wasn’t even looking at me, wasn’t even hoping for mercy. Just sitting there. I honked, rolled down my window, and waved her in, thinking as I did so that I was repaying Monster Truck guy from Bay Street. She stopped, rolled down her window, called, “Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!” and quietly slid in ahead of me.

“What did you do that for Dad?” my daughter moaned. “Now we’re going to be even later.”

“No we won’t,” I cheerfully replied. “It’s going to get better now. It’s karma. Get it? Car – ma.” Daughter moans at bad pun and I wonder why I am spouting totally insane rhetoric. And then, a miracle occurs. I gasp. The traffic begins to move. I cover up my gasp with a smile. “See?” I said. “Car-ma.” Daughter moans again.

How Not to be a Terrorist

Posted on by
Reply

Ted Kaczynski was a third-generation American of Polish ancestry, born in Chicago in 1942 and isolated in hospital at the age of six months of age because of hives. Though reunited with his family in his second year of life, he was considered almost autistic afterward, and extremely bright. He was accelerated in school because of his intelligence. This made him even more socially isolated: he could not relate to the older children, and they bullied him. He went to Harvard at the age of 16. He was further traumatized by one of those psychology experiments they don’t allow anymore, in which they recruit subjects under false pretenses in order to study their reactions to something unexpected. In Ted’s case he thought he was volunteering for a philosophy study. He was instead strapped to a chair and interrogated for allegedly seditious behaviour, so the experimenters could study how he dealt with impotent rage. Though he completed his PhD in mathematics at the University of Michigan after these traumatizing experiences, he had one of the youngest and shortest careers at Berkeley. At 25, he became a math professor. At 26, he resigned and fled to his parents’ home, and then to an isolated cabin in Montana. He failed to thrive in society, and so he retreated from it. But society came to him, in the form of ever-expanding urbanization. He became enraged when one of his favourite wilderness spots was blemished by a road. “It was from that point on I decided that…I would work at getting back at the system. Revenge.” (1)

The rest as they say is history – the history of the Unabomber, as Kaczynski came to be known.

I thought about him this morning in the wake of the terrible tragedy in Oslo. Anders Behring Breivik has already appeared in court, charged with massacring nearly a hundred people on July 22nd – mostly children. He was getting back at the system too. In his case he was expressing displeasure with Norway’s immigration policy. He quoted Kaczynski extensively in his manifesto. There was no need for his writing to be original, as neither were his actions.

In the ensuing months we will probably find out that Mr. Breivik also suffered trauma in his life, as Dr. Kaczynski did. We’ll find out that he was isolated as a child, perhaps bullied and teased, maybe rejected by a girl. We’ll study his background in an attempt to make sense of this horrible thing he has done. This will help us to understand him, but ultimately it will not excuse his behaviour: more bad things happen to some people than to others, but everyone is responsible for their own choices. These men chose to hurt others to try to make things right for themselves.

I found it a little frightening thinking about Kaczynski this morning. The frightening thing was that I could see a little bit of myself in him.

I have suffered trauma and isolation. I have felt mistreated. I have felt passionately that others – sometimes whole organizations – were doing the wrong thing and I have wanted to right the wrongs. Haven’t you?

My favourite professor used to say, “Never underestimate the therapeutic value of revenge.”

Question: Why did the woman spit in the ocean after her husband drowned?

Answer: Every little bit helps.

Why shouldn’t a person take justice into their own hands?

I deal with this every day in my therapy room. People come to me, traumatized by others. They are angry and rightfully so. They have been mistreated by their families, their spouses, their employers. They want justice.

Should they protect themselves from further mistreatment? Absolutely. But, are no holds barred?

Let’s say my wife has an affair. Should I have an affair to get back at her? An affair causes enormous trauma to a couple. Yet many of the couples I treat can recover from an affair. But two affairs are twice the damage – can we recover from that? If you hurt me, it would seem fair that I hurt you back. But could we survive?

Separating couples become preoccupied with the “custody” of their children: if she has the kids for a week then I should have them for a week too. Fair is fair. But what form of care is in the child’s best interest? If you live in one school district and she in another, should you yank the kid away from his friends for a week at a time just so that you can have a “fair” custody arrangement?

Of course there is a wide gap between terrorists and domestic disputes. But we’re heading down the same road as the terrorists if we nurse our need for revenge or our thirst for justice at any price.

If you have been hurt there are some things you can do for yourself so that you don’t become a terrorist.

First, if we can learn anything from the Unabomber, and supported indirectly by the studies of others (2), is that isolation is not good for you. People tend to become psychotic in isolation. Each of us has his private thoughts: it helps to talk to other people on a regular basis, so that the private thoughts we have, even though not shared, are kept in check by thoughts about the real world around us. Socializing keeps us real. Dialogue keeps us normal. Go out and talk to people about what has happened to you. It will help you just to be listened to, and it will help keep you sane.

Second, recognize that you can’t always get what you want. But if you try, maybe you can get what you need (3). Try to see your trauma in the big picture, and try to see what effect “getting what you want” will have on your partner, your children, the world. If you are going to hurt others in return, stop and think about that. Maybe you can do something less forceful that helps without making things worse.

Everyone has a sense of moral justice and a need to promote their belief of what is right in their world. But we live in community with others who either don’t share our sense of “right” or who make mistakes. Either way, their behaviour offends us from time to time. We could fight back and try to make them do the “right” thing. Or we could let it go, and not become terrorists.

Women already know this. Notice that there are very few female terrorists. Men could learn from women, that preserving the relationship is sometimes more important than being right.

You can be right or you can be married. And revenge is something best left to karma, the universe, God, whatever – it’s too big for a human being to do in a way that makes anything right. What has happened in Montana, and in Oslo – let’s not do this at home.

________________________

  1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Kaczynski
  2. Michael P. Maniacci (1998), The psychotic couple. In: Jon Carlson and Len Sperry, eds: The Disordered Couple. Bristol, PA: Brunner/Mazel. pp 57-81
  3. Even Mick Jagger knows this. http://www.lyricsdomain.com/18/rolling_stones/you_cant_always_get_what_you_want.html

Road Rash

Posted on by
Reply

Six p.m. She left him six months ago for his best friend but for the sake of the children she kept the house and he moved into a small apartment. He has just driven back to his own house to pick up his own children for the midweek visit. To add insult to injury, she greeted him at the door with a reminder that his child support cheque was overdue – again. At least his children are happy to see him. He loads them in the car and drives down to the main street. The light is red, the crosswalk is clear, the traffic is heavy. He inches out to watch for a break in the traffic so he can turn right. Here it comes. The next car is turning right. He steps on the gas.

As soon as the engine accelerates a voice from heaven yells, “Hey! Jesus!” He snaps his head around from the left, where he was watching for traffic, to the front, where his car is headed, and he sees Jesus airborne in front of his car. Did he hit him? “Oh my God,” he thinks. “My wife left me, I’m behind in my child support, and now I’ve killed Jesus.”

But Jesus is not dead. He continues jogging up the street leaving a startled, shell shocked, single father in his wake. If his kids tell their Mom about this, he’ll lose the midweek visits next. What else could go wrong?

Six p.m. I’ve been an avid runner since I was 13. I ran the Bay Race when I was 17 and my first and only marathon six months later. University made it hard to keep a regular running schedule and marriage and kids even moreso, but still I keep coming back to the pavement. When I lost my job a few years back and my children started going through adolescence, I needed it even more. I injured my knee a couple of years ago but recently found that I could run if I walked in between. I’m up to a comfortable pace of three minutes running, two minutes walking, repeat. I can keep that up for many kilometres.

I’m not so stressed as that guy in the car. Getting fired was a blessing: it took me out of an impossibly stressful situation, paid me severance, and allowed me the freedom to pursue my practise full time, which, now, six years later, is doing quite well. My children are settling down, becoming adults in their own right. Tomorrow I will have been married to the same person for twenty-seven years. Happily. Not doing badly for a guy my age, I am grateful.

But I also have a thing about drivers not following the rules. Especially when I am running. I believe that pedestrians should have the right of way, and take it by force, if necessary. Give drivers an centimetre, and they’ll take the whole kilometre. Just the other week I was running along, the light was green my way, and a car was coming off the highway. The driver was turning right, intently looking only left for a break in traffic, and I was coming up on her right side to cross in front of her. Alright, I think. She’s young. New car. Not used to looking for pedestrians. I stop and I wait to catch her eye. But she’s not looking my way and I want to keep running. “Hey!” I call out. “Over here!” And I inch out in front of her car.

At the sound of my voice she snaps her head around, sees me, and her eyes go wide. Her mouth opens too, and letting out a silent scream she steps on the gas. I yank my body back quick and she takes off in front of me.

Dammit, I think. The next driver that does that to me is going to have to stop. I’m not going to give him a centimetre. I have the right of way.

He was the next driver. On the same busy street that the woman ran me down a few weeks ago, a half a kilometre further on. The light is green my way, he’s turning right, I can see he’s not looking my way, and I’m thinking, Not this again. Enough. I’m crossing. It’s my light.

Not totally demented, I give him a wide berth. And I’m alert. When I hear the engine rev I yell, “Hey!” And as the car comes at me with greater acceleration than I had anticipated I launch into the air to get out of the way and yell “Jesus!”

And then he turns and stares at me and we make eye contact for a microsecond, and my mind registers his kids in the back of the car, and I think to myself, “I’m right, here, but I’m wrong, and oh so stupid.”

And as I jog down the road I utter a silent prayer of apology to the startled Dad driving the other way, and I think, I tell everyone about my wife running out of gas. Perhaps I should tell them about my playing chicken with cars, too.

Don’t do this at home.

Managing Your Defiant Spouse

Posted on by
Reply

First of all, let me say that I have my wife’s permission to write this blog. I told her the title I had planned, and I told her the content. I explained that it was a metaphor for something else, perhaps for parents struggling with defiant teens. No one actually has a defiant spouse, I said, especially not me. Would she give me her permission to write such a blog, for the benefit of the larger world?

“I think I had better not read what you write,” she said.

Which means yes.

So here I go.

My wife has been very successful. She is smart. She has worked hard. I am very proud of her.

I have a theory for why she has been so successful. My theory is that someone, somewhere along the way, told her that she wouldn’t be successful. And she went out of her way to prove them wrong. So whoever you are, thank you for telling my wife that she couldn’t do something. She proved that she can. To defy you.

But there are some unfortunate side effects to her defiance. One in particular is the way that she drives her car.

Her car has a gas tank. And the gas tank has a gas gauge. And the gas gauge, well, you know, it tells you how much gas is in your car. And as you drive your car, of course, the amount of gas decreases. And when the amount gets low enough, well, these new gas gauges, they start ringing bells and flashing lights and essentially tell you, “Put gas in your car!”

But no one is going to tell my wife what to do.

The first time she ran out of gas it was on a stretch of lonely road after dark. She let a strange man pick her up and drive her to a gas station. It all worked out okay. But I was beside myself. “What were you thinking?” I said when she got home. “How could you let a car run out of gas,” I asked.

I never run out of gas. I never let my car tank go below half full. How could she do this? And let a strange man pick her up?

Then she did it a second time. I lectured her again.

When it happened a third time, I had a revelation. I realized that my wife is who she is. When she was a toddler and her mother put her in her playpen outside, she climbed out and ran away. When she was placed back into her playpen and tied to it with a long tether she climbed out and ran away again, dragging her playpen down the street behind her. When she grew up, she decided all manner of things on her own. Which church to attend. Where to go to school. What to do for a career. In my own way, I am as defiant as she. Possibly that is what we respect in each other.

So I have come to accept that it is unlikely that my wife is ever going to let a car tell her what to do. Laws of physics being what they are, her attitude is going to cause her some difficulty from time to time.

When she gets into difficulty, I have a choice. I can help her, or not help her.

I am not a big fan of the concept of enabling. I think it takes just too much thinking to sort out whether any particular choice or action I make is going to make someone else more or less defiant, more or less addicted, or more or less dependent on me.

I don’t think that my behaviour makes that much of a difference in the behaviour of others, so I can stop worrying about it. What matters is discerning what I can control, and what I cannot control. I cannot control my wife’s attitude toward people and things who tell her what to do. I can only control my behaviour toward her.

The last time she ran out of gas I went home, got the jerry can, filled it, and drove out to where she was stranded on the highway. I quietly filled her car.

“I owe you big time,” she said.

“No you don’t,” I said. And that’s all I said.

I was thinking, however, You have this temperament that makes you you, and I accept that. And today I choose to fill up your car. And I accept my choice.

No lectures. No anxiety. I felt particularly peaceful. Although nothing apparently had changed, except my attitude.

But she hasn’t run out of gas since.

Making it Work

Posted on by
Reply

This May my wife and I will be celebrating our 27th anniversary. I’d like to say that our marriage has lasted because I am such an expert on interpersonal relationships, but the sad truth is that it’s a whole lot easier to help others than to deal with my own family problems. So I’d have to say that the main reasons that we are still together are: 1) we promised, 2) we can’t keep our hands off of each other, 3) we like each other, and 4) we forgive each other a lot. In short, after all this time, we’re still good friends (and we can’t keep our hands off each other). It’s the good friends part that my wife highlighted when our son left home. As he went out the door, she said to me, “You know, it’s a good thing that I still like you.” That’s important especially after the children, if you have them, are no longer a going concern (the son has since moved back home, but I’m still glad that she likes me). As John Gottman says, “Happy marriages are based on a deep friendship.”<sup>1</sup>

John Gottman is perhaps one of the world’s leading researchers on healthy relationships. He offers some warning signs that your marriage or long-term relationship may be in trouble, and several principles for making your marriage work.

The first warning sign is harsh startup. If you begin a discussion with your partner with sarcasm or criticism, you’re heading for trouble. Say something nice instead.

The second warning sign is actually a collection of four that he calls “the four horsemen” (yes, warning you that an apocalypse is coming): criticism, contempt, defensiveness and stonewalling.

Criticism is attacking your partner’s personality. Complaints are fair game. If you have an issue with your partner, talk about it. But keep to the issue and don’t make it a global attack. “You were late coming home and we missed the movie”: fair game. “You’re always late, you don’t care about me:” not helpful.

Contempt is the emotion that goes with rolling your eyes or wrinkling your nose: it literally means “bad smell”. It’s what you do to protect yourself from bad food. If you’re treating your partner this way, well, enough said.

Defensiveness is when your partner complains and you protect yourself instead of addressing the complaint. “You were late coming home and we missed the movie,” she complains. “It wasn’t my fault,” you say. Wrong answer. “I’m sorry,” you say. Better.

Stonewalling occurs when you “tune out” your partner, perhaps because you’ve been hearing too much criticism, contempt, or defensiveness. Sure you’re protecting yourself by ignoring your partner. How’s that working for your connection? Not so good. When I hear couples tell me that they have “grown apart”, I’m thinking that they’ve probably been stonewalling each other for a long time.

Too much of the four horseman can lead to flooding, where you’re just feeling overwhelmingly threatened by your partner and unable to focus on what’s wrong in the relationship. You shut down and back away. This is stonewalling on steroids. Not so good for connection.

Finally your body signs may be signalling an impending divorce. Fighting with your partner is physiologically distressing. Your heart rate goes up, adrenaline gets released in your bloodstream, and you gear up for “flight or fight”. When you feel physically threatened by your partner, you can’t solve problems, let alone stay connected. That said, all couples fight. Just don’t do it all the time. Do apologize afterward. Healthy couples don’t fight a lot differently from unhealthy couples. But healthy couples repair their relationship after each fight.

Now, what works?

Rule 1: have and rub each other’s backs. Gottman calls this “enhancing your love maps”. I love that my partner knows who I am, the good and the bad, the strong and the weak, and that she protects me. I try to do the same for her. This means that we talk a lot, share each other’s stories with each other, and are discrete about what we share outside of our relationship (of course, I put it all in my blog…). And we touch each other a lot.
Rule 2: nurture your fondness and admiration. My wife is an amazing person, personally and professionally. When others tell me how wonderful she is, I agree. A side benefit of this is what they call the idealizing transference: if she’s such a great person, and she’s married to me, then I must be pretty good myself.
Rule 3: turn toward each other instead of away. Sure I have friends outside of my marriage but there are some things that I only get at home, and frequently my wife gets the right of first refusal.
Rule 4: let your partner influence you. It is not a sign of weakness to do what your wife tells you. In most marriages, women are more sensitive to the issues that need fixing and most likely to bring up the issue. Listening to your partner is like having an extra radar, or an early warning system. Don’t ignore her or pretend that you are “stronger” when you make your own decisions unilaterally.
Rule 5: solve your solvable problems. Not all problems in a relationship can be solved. Figure out which ones can and work them out. Figure out which ones can’t and accept them.
Rule 6: overcome gridlock. See his book for ideas on this.
Rule 7: create shared meaning. What is the story of the two of you? For my wife and me it’s a complex myth of healing, spirituality and family: we’re both healers, and both dedicated professionally to making the world a better place, and personally dedicated to supporting our children to being the best people they can be. It’s a combined story of love and work that works for us and gets us out of bed in the morning (and frequently keeps us up till all hours of the night). What’s your story? Make it meaningful. And give it a happy ending.

<sup>1</sup> John M. Gottman and Nan Silver (1999). <em>The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work: A Practical Guide from the Country’s Foremost Relationship Expert</em> (New York: Three Rivers Press), p. 19.

Under Construction

Posted on by
Reply

Like the new look of my blog? The mustard-yellow default skin for nucleus was starting to wear on me so I’ve opted for something brighter. Now the problem with changing my “skin” is that I have to remember how to change all the default content that appears to the left of this entry. When I get that figured out, the pictures will change, and you will actually see my name and contact information. So bear with me while I work on that…

In the meantime the content of my blog is all here, so enjoy.

Also, I should be writing something since I haven’t posted since the end of January. Where does the time go.

It’s a Delusion, Charlie Brown

Posted on by
Reply

The Great Pumpkin, according to Linus Van Pelt, brings gifts to good girls and boys at Halloween. You can even see the Great Pumpkin, if you are lucky: if you can find a pumpkin patch that is sincere enough, and if you are pure in heart. For this reason, Linus stakes out the most sincere pumpkin patch he can find, every year, and foregoing tricks and treats, waits to see if he can catch a glimpse of the great pumpkin.

wpid-Linus-2011-01-25-10-18.jpg

The question I have is, is Linus crazy for thinking that there is a Great Pumpkin, and for behaving in this fashion? And can we do something about it? And if we could do something about it, should we?

A word of caution in what follows. I teach a course in mental disorders, and I can share some information with you based on what I think I know. However in Canada, marriage and family therapists (like me) are not qualified to diagnose people. Only doctors do that. Not me. And just because your partner looks crazy to you, not you, either. I’m writing this in an attempt to be helpful, but if you think you know someone with a mental illness who is suffering or causing you or others suffering, take them to see a medical doctor. Or go to the emergency department at St. Joseph’s Healthcare Hamilton (in Hamilton, this is where emergency psychiatric treatment resides). Or call COAST, the Crisis Outreach and Support Team, at 905-972-8338.

One of the more difficult issues to deal with in a relationship is psychosis. Psychosis is hard to define, let alone treat.

Broadly, mental disorders can be broken down into categories of thinking, feeling and behaving. A disorder of feeling would be a mood disorder, such as dysthymia, depression, or bipolar disorder. A disorder of behaving would be a personality disorder, such as borderline personality disorder or narcissistic personality disorder (by the way, narcissists are being dropped from the next rendition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the DSM-5). A disorder of thinking would be schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, delusional disorder, brief psychotic disorder, etc.

But these categories are not clear cut, because the way we think affects the way we feel, and vice versa, and both affect the way we behave. A depressed person, for example, tends to exhibit what is called the cognitive triad of depression: they think funny. Depressed people tend to think that they are no good, that the world is mean to them, and that things will not get better. A manic person tends to think funny, possibly that they are able to do things that others cannot do. Mood affects thinking. Thinking affects mood, too: by changing the way you think you can treat depression. That is the basis of cognitive-behavioural therapy and other forms of psychotherapy. People with personality disorders also think funny and have mood problems: they may think, for instance, that they way they are behaving is normal, even though it may be causing them problems. and they may feel depressed because of their problems.

So psychosis, then, is a disorder in thinking, but you will also notice changes in feeling and behaviour.

A psychotic person usually has delusions, or hallucinations, or both. A delusion is a way of thinking that would not be considered normal by others in the same culture. A hallucination is a sensory experience – sight, sound, smell, touch, taste – that others don’t share. Linus has a delusion: he thinks there is a Great Pumpkin, while others around him do not think this is so. If the Great Pumpkin were then to appear to him, or speak to him, and not to others, he would be hallucinating.

Lots of people have delusions or hallucinations, and may not be considered psychotic, or at least not ill enough to require treatment. I may have the delusion that I am a pretty good therapist, for instance, while my clients think otherwise (even though they keep coming to see me). Am I psychotic? Good question. Probably only if my behaviour, based on my delusion, is causing me or others trouble – for instance, my business was failing or my clients were being harmed. Otherwise, you can be as delusional as you want, as long as no one gets hurt.

Same with hallucinations. Some individuals have religious experiences, for instance, which others may regard as hallucinations. Is that a problem? Again, not unless someone is being harmed.

Hallucinations and delusions seem to be related to abnormally high levels of dopamine, a neurotransmitter (chemical in the brain) that is involved with both thinking and movement. The first antipsychotics such as haloperidol can reduce abnormal thoughts and experiences, but may also cause a movement disorder: jerky movements, stiff limbs.

Another neurotransmitter called serotonin may also be involved in psychosis. Serotonin affects mood, and as we’ve said, mood affects thinking. Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors – SSRI’s – such as Prozac help to elevate mood. Atypical antipsychotics – Risperdal, Zyprexa, and Seroquel – work on both dopamine and serotonin and seem to do a better job of treating the faulty thinking without causing the movement problems.

So Linus could be treated. He could be given a drug like Risperdal and quite possibly the Great Pumpkin would go away. Would that be a good thing? A lot of people would be disappointed if Linus stopped believing in the Great Pumpkin. But not Linus’s sister. She has to get up at three in the morning and go find him in the pumpkin patch, and guide him back to bed. And not Charlie Brown, who has to endure a lot of abuse from Linus for suggesting that his thinking is “stupid”.

And what about Linus’s wife?

“Psychotic individuals do marry,” says Michael P. Maniacci*. Linus will probably marry Sally, Charlie Brown’s little sister. She will forgive him for embarrassing her in front of her friends on Halloween. She thinks he’s cute if also a little eccentric: he looks like someone imaginative and not afraid to stand up (or stand out) for his beliefs. She believes he will go places, be successful, and be a good mate. And he might. But he might also get into great interpersonal difficulty because of his beliefs about the Great Pumpkin.

People who are predisposed to psychosis are frequently quite bright, sociable, and although a bit eccentric their “difference” may be appealing to a prospective partner. Later on trouble may start when the individual becomes stressed either because of normal developmental stresses – marriage, children, job changes, moves – or because of a tragedy.

The “psychotic” person doesn’t start out that way. Psychotically-prone individuals live relatively detached lives (Linus is pretty happy with his blanket most of the time). They know that the world has rules and expectations but they tend to step aside from such demands, perhaps daydreaming or seeming ambitious and hoping to attain some great goal. You marry someone like this, you have great plans for success, and what happens? The same thing that happens to the rest of us: reality sets in, some things are harder than they first appeared, and you adjust. Only psychotic people have more trouble adjusting. They have fairly rigid ways of thinking – by definition, a delusion is a rigid or fixed belief – and so they have trouble adjusting to life’s demands. They tend to retreat into their beliefs: the Great Pumpkin, the Great Pumpkin, the Great Pumpkin. When you’re trying to get your otherwise adorable Linus to come in from the pumpkin patch at three in the morning, only now you’re the wife with small children, not his sister, it’s not so much fun anymore.

Treatment can be tricky. If you have a floridly psychotic partner who is harming himself or someone else, call 911. The police can compel anyone they think is seriously emotionally disturbed to go to the hospital for a psychiatric examination. In Hamilton we have an additional option: the Crisis Outreach and Support Team, COAST, 905-972-8338.

And we also have a charter of rights and freedoms. So you can be delusional, or hallucinatory, and if you aren’t hurting anyone, you might not have to be treated. And if you’re in a relationship with such a person, and they will not seek treatment and aren’t sick enough to be forced into treatment, where does that leave you?

One thing you can do is seek treatment for yourself. Find a mental health professional who can educate you on your partner’s illness, and who can allow you to vent your stress. Maybe the two of you will come up with a way to help your partner. Maybe just it will help to have information, and some understanding.

Medication helps, and whenever possible the psychotic partner should be encouraged to see a doctor. If you can’t get a delusional person to see a doctor for the way they are thinking, you might be able to convince them to go because of the way they are feeling. For example, “Linus, you’re pretty upset because the Great Pumpkin didn’t show up again. Maybe you could see the doctor and get something for your depression” works better than “Linus, you’re crazy. You need to be on medication to change the way you are thinking.”

Another thing that helps is telling the truth to the psychotic partner. Speak from your own experience. “I have never seen the Great Pumpkin. I know that you believe in him but for my part I’m not sure that he exists, or that he is worth waiting all night in a pumpkin patch for.” You’re not forcing the other person to think differently: you can’t. But you can speak to your own truth, and just put it out there beside what he’s thinking.

Another thing that Maniacci points out is that hallucinations and delusions can be translated into commonsense language: meaning, purpose and response. He cites a woman, Jenny, who “believed the cups in her apartment were moving all by themselves. This hallucination had proven persistent, intractable, and unresponsive to medication.” By listening to Jenny, Maniacci learned that she had been greatly stressed by moving out on her own and the expectations that her parents had that she was doing well. He “determined, with Jenny’s help, the meaning of her symptom – that life was moving without human intervention. She was feeling out of control.” The purpose of Jenny’s hallucination was to alert her family to the fact that she needed help. The response from the therapist and the family was to tell her, “It’s okay to be frightened. How can we help?” The hallucinations ended soon afterward.**

If you find yourself in a relationship with a Linus, and his weird thoughts aren’t hurting anyone, you may just have to decide whether you can do 3am runs to the pumpkin patch or not. If you can, it helps to be honest, to try to understand the meaning behind the weird behaviour, and to get medical help for your partner, if you can. You may also need a safety plan: what to do to keep yourself, your children, and Linus safe, if and when the need arises. Talk to someone: family doctor, psychiatrist, therapist, COAST.

And go out and enjoy the beauty of the pumpkin patch, with or without the Great Pumpkin.

*Michael P. Maniacci (1998), The Psychotic Couple. In: Jon Carlson and Len Sperry, eds. The Disordered Couple (Bristol, Pennsylvania: Brunner/Mazel), pp. 57-81
** op. cit. p. 69