As we continue to explore the facets of marriage that can cause difficulty, don't be surprised if you recognize the pattern of issues that continually pop up in your relationship. The thing about these recurring issues is that they never seem to get totally resolved when they are your hot spots. They will surprise you as they reappear from time to time. But if you remember that every couple encounters at least one or two of these throughout their relationship, usually even before marriage, perhaps you'll be more accepting of this phenomenon and better able to cope.

     Last week I spoke to IN-LAWS and SEX. Today,

 MONEY:

     Most people are more comfortable discussing their sex life than their bank account.What is it about how much money we have, or how we choose to spend or save it, that raises our anxiety level? Ask a person how much money s/he earns and in most cultures s/he’ll decide you are a rude dweed.

     Money is one of the most powerful elements in our social structure, yet also has some weighty emotional ramifications that are both positive and negative. Depending on our cultural background, we associate money with security, freedom, control, power, love, self-esteem, embarrassment, dependency, and happiness.

     Each family has its own unique history and meaning related to money. Growing up in your family has instilled in you an entire set of attitudes and beliefs about the significance of money. In some families

money is for saving, in others it is for fighting, or winning, or hoping, or worrying, or for keeping secret. Whatever your conditioning has been, this

transmission has induced you to either imitate your parents’ attitude (if you are a compliant type) or to go completely the opposite way (if you are rebellious.)

     No wonder money can be such a hot spot for couples. Just the factor of coming from two different families, from two different points of view, even from two different genders or cultures can imbue a relationship with potential conflict.

     Next time we'll examine CLOSENESS/DISTANCE and TIME TOGETHER/TIME APART. Two juicy and complex hot spots.

   Meanwhile, I wish you a wonderful week.

All the best,

Dr. Rita

     Ever wonder how relationships seem to get botched up so easily? Sometimes you're up and then before you can say "thunderbolt" you are fighting, crying, ready to walk out and call it quits. You may even notice that there is a pattern to the ups and downs of your relationship, and if I were a betting person, I would bet that there is always a third person, or issue, that sets things off.
     Let me give you an example.
     One of my clients, Jerry, called me because his relationship with his fifteen-year-old daughter cycles between, "Daddy, you're the best!" and "I hate you, I never want to see you again."
     Jerry and I examined the pattern of that cycle and noticed that the trigger to the anger that his daughter spews is connected to his marriage. The last time he and his wife argued over his perception that she was over-spending, and her belief that he was a tight-wad. They had harsh words, there was yelling and door-slamming, and then as he passed her room he saw his daughter crumpled-up in her bed in a fetal position. He felt bad about that, he told me, because he knew that their fighting upset his daughter.
     Soon after he over-heard his wife telling his daughter, "Daddy is cheap as a bank-teller, I sure hope that when you get married you find yourself a sugar-daddy, or else become a lawyer or something so that you're never dependent on a man."
     Let me tell you of another couple.
     Bev and George have been married for about three years and inevitably they fight about his relationship with her sister, whom he dislikes intensely, and makes no bones about. Bev thinks that George should learn to love her sister as much as she does. George thinks his wife’s sister is a parasite, who sucks her sister dry for handouts and a warm shoulder to cry on. They fight over this issue on a weekly basis. It so happens that when they are not fighting, they’re happy and have a fulfilling sexual connection.

     Both Jerry and his wife, and Bev and George are playing “Monkey in The Middle.” They use a third person to take them off track of their relationship. Everyone suffers. Jerry, his wife and his daughter are all miserable. Jerry and his wife are hurting their daughter by turning her into her mother’s confidante. The teenager is being cheated of being able to love both her parents equally, and is angry and depressed. Bev and George could have more consistent peace and contentment if George would be more accepting of his wife’s family, and if Bev would accept the reality that her husband could never feel the same kind of unconditional love and acceptance that she feels for her own sister.
     Both couples are doing something devious and hurtful. By focusing on a third party, they are avoiding the real issues that are strictly between them. For instance, Jerry and his wife allow their dog to sleep between them in their bed. Their sex-life is non-existent and bringing their daughter into the mix and then fighting over her, money and the dog too, is creating a smokescreen that allows them to avoid the mention of the lack of emotional safety that they both feel in their relationship. Bev and George fight over her sister in order to avoid dealing with the stress they both experience because of Bev's recent breast cancer diagnosis

    Take a look at your relationships and see if there are issues that you might be avoiding, or ways that you might be sabotaging your intimate connections. Is there a triangle that keeps showing up? Someone or something you are always fighting about?  It might just be less painful to deal with the real problem.
All the best,
Dr. Rita

     Stuff happens. What starts out as starry skies and holding hands at midnight, sometimes turns into sour grapes. Not too unusual is a situation like this: You fall in-love with Mr. or Ms. Right, the wedding is fabulous, the children are amazing - parenthood is the most fun you ever had, but the pink haze of couplehood and happiness is gone after just a few years of distraction, hard work and life stressors. There is no dirth of stress for any of us. If it's not the economy or taxes or loans, it's illness or business. It's hard to find time to make yourself happy, let alone to feed and nurture your marriage which needs as much as care to survive as any other living, breathing thing. Most of us neglect our marriages nearly as much as we neglect ourselves. What to do?

     Janice was in just such a mess. Arfter fifteen years, the fun was gone. The children and the big career just weren't enough for her to feel fulfilled. Not only that, but she was exhausted. Not from the job, but from what felt like hard work that never amounted to much in the marriage.

    In working with Janice we quickly realized that there was not enough quality of life for Janice as a person, as a woman, as an individual. When I asked her what made her happy that didn't have anything to do with the children or her work, she was stumped. When I asked her what she liked about herself, she was equally baffled. "For certain," she said "I don't like myself as a wife, all I do is karp at him, because he's always criticizing me, raging at me, and I can't stop making hate-lists in my head." 

     I asked Janice to come up with five things she likes about herself that are only about her. With a lot of prodding and brain-storming we came up with this list:

1. I like that I'm taking time out of my busy schedule to give myself this therapy.

2. I like that I work out three days a week, even though I could be spending the time cleaning closets.

3. I'm happy with myself that I stay connected to my mother, my sister and my close friends. I take the time to make phone calls to the women in my life.

4. I'm happy that I keep a journal - it keeps me sane and connected to reality.

5. I enjoy the fact that I give myself the pleasure of a bath once a week.

     This short list was very difficult for Janice. However, she was really proud of herself for having been able to come up with it at all.

     When I asked her to come up with five things she liked about her marriage, she thought I was hilarious. She ended up with a homework assignment we decided would be useful, that she would give her husband five compliments in the coming week.

     The reason this is important, is that it's a way to shift the emphasis from a negative mind set about the marriage, to one that has more mercy and gentleness. What we think and what we tell ourselves influences our attitude, as well as the outcome. When Janice began to think more positively about her husband, and actually validated him for the good things that he did, things got better. Not only did she perceive them as better, but he was inclined to feel more positively about her and about the marriage, and lived up to her expectations of him. With that, there was room for the relationship to begin moving on a new axel.  

All the best,

Dr. Rita

     Kudos to Elizabeth Weil for the courage of exploiting her marriage so that the rest of us can look at what we have, assess what works and what doesn't work, and decide what we can change and/or accept as is. 

     As a NYC Marriage Therapist, in practice for nearly thirty years, however, I would argue with several of Ms. Weil's points. First, the assertion that, "by the time most couples get to...therapy-it is too late." In my experience there are three types of couples who seek couple counseling.
     The first are people like Elizabeth and Dan who are relatively happy, but would like to get more out of life, out of their marriage, where the outcome for success is high. Although it is true that when you open Pandora's Box things come flying out that you didn't want to know were there, it is also true, that just because you are unaware of what's inside, doesn't mean that you are not effected by it. Most of my couples fall into this first group. We spend a great deal of time highlighting the positive so that they cushion the challenge of the negatives.
     The second type of couple that comes to see me are those that are well aware that they are unhappy, and have issues, but truly want to be happy together, preserve and improve their marriage. These people have a definite advantage over the first group because they have faced what's inside the box, are willing to acknowledge its existence, and have the fortitutde to repair the tears in their intimacy.
     The third type of couple are those that are nearly ready for divorce court. One of both are having affairs, often they have already seen lawyers, or said the "D" word with meaning., and this is true whether they are married or living in committed relationships. Such couples have a lower chance of success at repairing their jintimacy, yet often do well when they remain open-minded about their own personal goals, baggage and individual issues. 
     It is truly difficult to predict how to choose the right therapist, just as it is how to choose the right partner, and yet we all do it and base our decision-making on an array of insights, personal chemistry, emotional and intellectual common-sense. In this day of internet viability, a lot of us choose therapists based on their own profiles and websites that  consumers can peruse at leisure as they look for a match based on some logic that is often ephemeral. Yet, after a phone consultation that usually precedes a first meeting, one can make a better choice, and then after one or two sessions, people can come away with a pretty good reading as to whether the therapist is in fact someone who is wise, sane, warm and understanding.
     Ms. Weil explores the idea that a marriage only has to be "good enough" as per John Winnicott's prescription that a mother need only be good enough, and I think they are both right. That takes a lot of pressure off of us perfectionists, doesn't it?
     What I finally love about Ms. Weil's final realizations that I'd like to paraphrase, and that I agree with, is that, our own individual goal in marriage cannot necessarily be to be happy - which is an almost impossible ambition, but rather to have the capacity to live one's life while being true to oneself, with flexibility and courage. In order for a marriage to work well BOTH individuals need to be able to grow, where marriage serves the safe haven we can come home to from the sometime unfriendly world we live in.
All the best,
Dr. Rita

     In this age of technology, high speed everything, and a dirth of time for anything extra, it is pretty difficult to hold on to your job, carve out time for yourself, let alone for your relationship. And yet, time, the most precious commodity that any of us have, is the golden oil that greases the squeaky wheels of a marriage.

     We are here on earth for a precious few years. No wonder that what I hear most in my practice is that there is no time. No time to spend together relaxing or talking. No time to make love. No time to work on a budget. No time to resolve problems. No time to exercise as much as one would like. No time to see all the friends who are important. No time to help a child with homework. No time to see one's family. Somehow time runs most of us more than ever, and yet everything is faster and takes less time.

     I remember my first personal computer twenty-five years ago had 256KB of memory, and ran on DOS 2.0. It was so slow, that I could have a conversation with my father while I waited for the processor to format a document, change the font, or print a small job. Connecting to the internet in those days was a thrill, yet every function was slower than snow, but we didn't know better, and loved this brilliant technology. Now I have a 16GHz Core 2 Duo processor, graphics, a built-in HD-DVD drive, and a webcam. My current computer is hundreds of thousands of times faster than my first pc, and I often feel that it's too slow. I'm spoiled. We all are, and want everything to speed up.

     Unfortunately, we are rushing our lives as well, yet drowning in the process of creating pleasure, love and intimacy in our important relationships which are often relegated to text on a screen instead of face or phone time.

     And when patients tell me that they are at a loss as to where to create more time for their precious love life, for their children, or even for themselves, we wonder together as to what it's all about anyway.

     One couple tells me that they have no time to check their son's homework even though the boy is struggling in school and isn't doing a good enough job of remembering to do homework or study for tests. They both old high power positions in business, feel a great deal of stress about finances, have little time for each other, and communicate to friends through facebook because it takes less time to give an update that dozens of people can read, than to contact each one separately.

     People have to re-prioritize their time and their lives. Is writing that email that takes five minutes really that important? Is talking to your boss after the night has grown cold really necessary? Does Blackberry have to run your life or can you shut it off at a reasonable hour? Do you truly have to be available to your clients and friends 24/7?

     To help make time more manageable. I believe in the 4 D's:
Delay
Drop
Do
Delegate

      This refers to making choices - deciding whether you really have to spend your time doing a particular task, and realizing you always have these four alternatives. You can DELAY the task for another more convenient less pressured time. You can just DROP the task and not do it at all. You can DO it now. Or you can DELEGATE it to someone else to do so it's off your shoulders.

Think it over, and take care,
All the best,
Dr. Rita