Relationships: Relationship Building & Management

Lasting Love, Love Lessons

Roberta and Burt maintained a Friendship on Fire for forty-five years. They laughed, declaring that they HAD to learn to work things out because the world felt too darn cold when they were at odds.

When Burt was dying of cancer, Roberta still saw the young man she first met. Although he weighed only ninety-five pounds and had an ashen color, she still felt their love. As he was dying on a Monday afternoon in the living room filled with memories, she expressed, "We have always worked things out together. I am with you now and I will find you again."

THE ENERGIES OF LOVE

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Dr. Linda Miles, our official Marriage & Family Therapist Expert

The New Marriage - Part Three of Four

Harry Stack Sullivan, in The Interpersonal Theory of Psychiatry, argues that human beings have a biological drive to develop and establish interpersonal relationships. In Biological Basis for Human Social Behavior, R.A. Hind suggests that a person’s “attachment style”—the way in which they relate to other human beings and form relationships with them—is developed mostly during childhood. The attachment style tends to persist into adulthood but is not fixed and can be modified either positively or negatively as the result of further interactions.

I have had the joy of seeing countless adult clients consciously change their attachment style. This is a practice that takes time and is not easy to do. However, I have seen many people move from a victim stance to living more fully by changing their attachment style.

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Dr. Linda Miles, our official Marriage & Family Therapist Expert

Relationship Heartbreaks - Part Two of Two

The rapture phase of love gives each partner a feeling that is buoyant, lively, and fulfilling. You project onto your partner images of beauty, goodness, and love as if your partner were a canvas waiting to be painted on. The energy of this consciousness shines a bright light across the world, obliterating all the differences in your characters, lifting you and your partner to a higher state of being. You are atop the summit, and you sparkle to one another like diamonds with many facets of light.

This is as it should be. Robert Johnson observed that falling in love is meant to be an initiation into a world much greater than the individual: an introduction to the ideals of love, truth, and beauty that transcend the personal ego and ordinary life.

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Dr. Linda Miles, our official Marriage & Family Therapist Expert

Friendship on Fire: Hot Is Not Enough

 HOT IS NOT ENOUGH

There are countless couples with hot chemistry who cannot face challenges of daily life together. Fire is not limited to the erotic beginnings of a relationship and, without a foundation of friendship, it can burn out.

I recall a mom who was very distressed when her seventeen-year-old daughter fell for a handsome and charming boy who sold drugs at school. It turned out to be a great lesson for the teenager about what it was like with someone so undependable. HOT WAS NOT ENOUGH. However, past relationships that you consider failures may have helped prepare you for Friendship on Fire.

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Dr. Linda Miles, our official Marriage & Family Therapist Expert

It is always about me, isn't it?

A characteristic of childhood thinking is the child’s assumption that whatever happens “is all about me.” The tendency of children to blame themselves for their parents’ difficulties causes them great pain, and if this kind of “it’s all about me” thinking persists into adulthood, it can do considerable harm to their personal relationships. As adults, many people still believe they are defective and that if people really knew them they would be rejected.

Children under the age of ten have yet to develop a concept of multi-causality. Consequently, they explain out-of-the-ordinary phenomena as having occurred because they made them happen.

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Dr. Linda Miles, our official Marriage & Family Therapist Expert

Live in the Present Moment

"Do not seek perfection in a changing world. Instead perfect your love." --Master Sengstan

Charlotte, a forty five year old computer analyst lived in fear, trapped in a prison cell of negative thoughts. As she learned how to calm down and focus on the present moment she described how good it felt to do something as simple as get a big whiff of the grass in her yard. Like many people who experience anxiety or panic, Charlotte could not enjoy the world around her. She often focused on fearful thoughts, which made things worse.

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Dr. Linda Miles, our official Marriage & Family Therapist Expert

Relationship Heartbreaks - Part One of Two

The rapture of first love is a tremendously powerful experience that affects us biologically, psychologically, and spiritually. Robert Johnson writes of love in We, Understanding the Psychology of Romantic Love, as an initiation into a state of higher consciousness. It seems no less, but we receive this initiation at such a young age that usually we are without the life experiences that instruct us in the management of the powerful force that love is.

In the 1960s, Dr. Jerry Stern gave a lecture on the poet William Blake, explaining the importance of having a lived experience. To represent the innocent phase, Blake wrote about little lambs and the world of the child.

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Dr. Linda Miles, our official Marriage & Family Therapist Expert

Eight Keys to Heat-up a Cool Relationship

1. Celebrate Valentines Day Every Day: Love is a practice. Say I love you in the morning and at night....more is better. Share with one another the things that give you the greatest pleasure and help one another's dream come true. For example if you partner loves music, bring home CDs or tickets to concerts often. If your partner loves football, watch with them on a regular basis. Remember these are GIFTS, done without resentment. You are dream-makers. A good relationship is like good sex---both partners give and receive what they want.

2. Heat-up The Bedroom: Since most men are visual, they appreciate lingerie. Women tend to need to be "talked up" during the day. However, everyone is different so you need a love map to one another.

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Dr. Linda Miles, our official Marriage & Family Therapist Expert

The New Marriage - Part Four of Four

When we are children we do not yet have an identity. We learn about who we are through the mirroring that we get from our parents. It is called mirroring to describe the ability of good parents to gently hold up an imaginary mirror in front of the child until they learn to see themselves clearly without harsh judgments. If we do not get enough realistic mirroring during the years we live with them, we remain pretty clueless about who we really are.

I am always so pleased to see parents who appropriately mirror their children. By providing them feedback about their behavior without shame or blame, parents help children grow up with a realistic self-image and the ability to operate from a strong sense of self.

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Dr. Linda Miles, our official Marriage & Family Therapist Expert

The New Marriage - Part Two of Four

When we fail to get the response or connection with our partner that we want, perhaps we should stop and look at our own thoughts and behavior. It may remind us of frightful tigers from our past stalking the room. Sometimes a calm and collected exterior hides demons lingering from childhood. But how do we uncover the real person underneath our sophisticated facade? We climbed that mountain so long ago; the path we took may be lost in the undergrowth.

Our ascent of the First Mountain begins at birth.

Read Dr. Miles' entire article The New Marriage - Part Two of Four

Dr. Linda Miles, our official Marriage & Family Therapist Expert