Why, you may ask? Because, after the frenetic activities of the holidays, the lack of partners’ focus on each other, and the tendency to put each other on the back burner due to other activities going on, intimate relationships in January tend to feel depleted and partners may question their bond and their feelings for one another. Love relationships suffer at this time because the holidays may have brought a lot of excitement and newness with travelling; celebrating with friends and family, gift giving and holiday cheers, and now all this is gone. So, if you and your partner feel down, facing the relational doldrums of everyday life with little excitement and not much to look forward to, you are not alone

It is easy to displace frustrations and lack of enjoyment from the loss of sensational and extraordinary activities in our lives to lack of excitement in our primary relationship. While you may feel disappointed about what’s gone, however, you need to turn the situation around by creating renewed freshness and enthusiasm about each other again.

It is quite possible that you may want you partner to be emotionally and physically available to you, with a positive, caring and responsive attitude and a willingness to respond to your demands and needs, but perhaps your partner wants and needs the same from you and neither of you is getting what you want and need. Typically, when this happens each partner will do one of two things: he or she will either become louder in asking for what’s needed, or shut down and disconnect. Though understandable, it goes without saying that neither of these reactions produces healthy results, because neither provides what one partner is looking for from the other.

So, make sure you devote the time, attention and care to your loved one by setting up New Year’s resolutions for your relationship. By the way, had you ever heard of New Year’s Resolutions for couples? If not, you are not the only one, as most of people’s New Year’s resolutions tend to be about individual goals – losing those extra pounds; plan to exercise more and more regularly; take care of what you have been ignoring or procrastinating; create more balance in your life, and so on – but what about setting up a New Year’s resolution about your relationship with your life partner? Being in a healthy intimate relationship is a very foundational part of being happy. So, taking care of what’s going on with your partner is a very important task.

Think about your own love relationship and see if you can see where more attention and care are needed at this time. Write a list of things you are willing to do in areas where you would like to see improvement, and begin to be more aware of what you may be doing to contribute to the current situation – you being part of the problem – as well as to improve it – you being part of the solution.

In the next blog I will list some specific ways in which you can begin to feed your relationship and get it out of the current sad state it is in and into a more exciting and healthy one. So, stay tuned!

Susan and I worked like two little ants for months and months to get our book, “Couples at the Crossroads. Five Steps to Finding Your Way Back to Love” ready for you. Then, when we finally thought it was ready, we “snuck” it in and, voila, here it is, on Amazon.com.

How do we feel about it? Almost like we had to let go of a dear friend who had been with us for years. We knew all along that one day we would have to let go of this friend; that we would have to push our feelings of wanting to be together forever aside and support his move toward independence, but it was difficult nonetheless to say goodbye. With letting go of the book, it was difficult to stop our tendency to make one more revision, one more comment, one little correction here or there, one more clarification; one more idea… Once the book was finished, we knew we had to let go, and we finally did.

It also feels a little scary, as you and everybody else can now buy our book, read it and make comments on what we said, how we said it; what we left out and what we said more than once.

But, above all, we feel excited and very, very happy. We truly believe our book can provide help for couples like you who struggle in their relationships and are desperate to understand how they got where they are; how they can find a clear path to follow and acquire the necessary tools to move out of the pain. We know the book will be helpful to you because it contains a lot of the same things we speak of in our clinical sessions with couples. And we see how these couples, slowly but surely, begin to move from their place of pain to a place of gradual openness, as they become more hopeful. We see them when they begin to look at each other with different eyes; reverse the previous patterns of mutual hostility and disconnection, and find love for one another again.

What do you think? Interested? Do you want to check our book out? Click on the link below and the book will open in a new window or tab. Just open the first page and scroll through its Table of Contents, Preface and Introduction. This brief preview will make you want to know more…

Couples at the Crossroads: Five Steps to Finding Your Way Back to Love – Preview

Why?

Old habits are hard to shed, no matter how much you try to motivate yourself by convincing, cajoling and blackmailing. Our brain tends to repeat what’s familiar and comfortable, even if dysfunctional, so new habits are difficult to stick to, particularly if we don’t pay all the attention required to keep them in the forefront of our minds. And when I say we need to pay attention, I mean paying CONSTANT attention, at least at the beginning, until these habits get established and become like second nature. So, you can’t do one thing and think about the next one, for instance, because this would mean that one thing will get done automatically, while your mind is engaged in something else. So, whatever you chose to do, you need to be mindful of what you are doing at the moment, and focus on it at the exclusion of everything else until you are done.

Remember one thing: the more you try, the more you will increase your chances to succeed. And, even if you don’t succeed as much and for as long as you would like, you will still be ahead than if you had done nothing, so acknowledge that to yourself and try again.

Before getting started, it is important to take inventory of your assets and liabilities by looking at your history: how successful have you been in the past when you set goals for yourself? What seemed to increase your chances of succeeding, and what held you back? What happened that made you lose your initial motivation? Was it something in particular that got you discouraged, like achieving your goal was taking longer and was more difficult than you had anticipated, or you became distracted along the way by some external stressor that took precedence and sidetracked you?

Write down as much as you remember from previous experiences where you failed, or were only partially successful. Then, using that information, set out to create new goals fro yourself, by using past experiences as a benchmark for your current goals. So, for instance, if you were more successful in staying fit when you went to the gym in the morning prior to going to work, rather than in the evening, set your schedule up that way again.

Create accountability and a reward system for yourself. Having a trainer, for instance, a person who weighs you regularly, a neighbor who walks with you daily, a partner willing to set similar goals with you, or signing up for a class increase your chances of succeeding because these joint activities make you accountable not only to yourself but to others as well. People who set up to achieve their New Year’s resolutions alone have a success rate of only 29%, versus the 59% success rate of people who do so with others. Involving others increases motivation because you may not want to lose face or let the other person down. You want to be admired and looked up to; you want to be respected and liked, or like the challenge of competition.

Keep track of your successes as you go along, as this reminds you of how much you have already achieved, creating added incentive to continue on the same path.

And now that you are ready to get started, set your goals for 2012 and go, supporting yourself along the way!

Why is that so?

Let’s start from the very beginning, from when we are still in the nice and warm cocoon that is our mother’s uterus. From there we can hear her voice (at birth, infants are already familiar and recognize their mother’s voice;) we can feel her hand rubbing her tummy, connecting with us, and we are affected by her feelings and moods. At birth, she is usually the first face we fix our gaze upon, once the hoopla of the actual birth process is over. And it is her face we see over and over again, day after day, or the face of the person who will mother us, whether our biological mother or not. So, we can say that, from the very beginning, our lives are social in nature. From people around us we learn to interact, to smile, to fret, to be anxious and scared, but also to be comforted, reassured and made to feel safe. We watch these people in order to learn how to be in this world and how to deal with our emotions and those of others. Our early experiences of interactions shape the way we see ourselves and people around us and, to a great extent, determines the quality of personal relationships we will develop throughout life. If we were lucky enough to have good interpersonal experiences with the people who took care of us as infants and children, we are more likely to develop trust, have a positive attitude and be open and comfortable with emotional and physical closeness. If not, we may suspicious of others and uncomfortable with intimacy, distrusting partners and keeping them at a “safe” distance.

Social connections allow us to regulate our emotions, magnifying pleasant ones and making more manageable the uncomfortable and painful ones. When we are not in a good relationship, or when we are uncomfortable with closeness and intimacy, we may use other means of regulating our emotions, such as FOOD, ALCOHOL, WORK, EXERCISE, DRUGS in compulsive ways. These become our emotional regulators. However, they create dependency, adding a new set of problems.

So, let’s open our hearts to good, healthy emotional relationships. These will improve the quality of our lives, will reduce feelings of isolation and loneliness and make us more comfortable with ours and other people’s emotions.

Connections help make life less scary and overwhelming for all of us, starting from infancy and continuing throughout life. They also allow us to share its beauty with people we love. Above all, connections help us regulate each other’s emotions, making them more manageable. We all had the experience of being scared about something. We cannot calm ourselves down, no matter what we say to ourselves. We call a trusted friend, or our emotional partner, or a family member with whom we feel safe. We tell them what is scaring us. They seem to find the right words to calm us down, soothe and reassure us. Chances are they are not saying anything dramatically different than what we could have said ourselves. And yet, when it comes from them rather than from us what they say has a healing quality that our self-talk lacked. Influenced by their words, we calm down: we breed slower, we feel our body relaxing, we feel our heart to quieting down and returning to beat at a normal rhythm again.

What is this power from loved ones that affects our bodies and minds? It is the feeling of security that comes from the relationship that determines how we respond to their interventions. In other words, it isn’t so much what they say to us, but what their words reflect that is healing. Their words reflect closeness, trust, love, concern, presence, attunement and, ultimately, security. When we feel secure we are no longer scared. This process is not unlike what happens between a parent and a toddler. The toddler falls, and immediately starts screaming at the top of his lungs. The parent comes close, picks him up, holds him close and starts talking to him in a calming, soothing voice. “Don’t worry, you did not get hurt. You are all right. I am here now. Nothing bad will happen to you.” Like magic, the toddler stops crying because the danger is no longer present, as the parent reassures him he is not alone. The physical proximity of the parent provides the feeling of safety the toddler needs to stop being afraid.  The danger is gone. The toddler feels safe again.

Nothing can take the place of these precious connections. Valuing the people we love and keeping them close is very important. Getting involved in the community is a way of developing connections when we live alone, reducing isolation and increasing a feeling of belonging and being useful.

At times, when we don’t have an opportunity to connect with another human being, a close connection with a pet provides comfort and companionship, reducing isolation and disconnection. Everybody can benefit from a close relationship with a pet, but in particular older people who live isolated and only children.

What are the connections you value in your life?

There are many parallels between what happens in nature and what goes on between two people who love each other. In both situations there is a need to have strong roots that can spread wide and deep into the soil, providing stability, strength and security.

This need for security, both in nature and in love, cannot be overemphasized. Without security, fear creeps in and affects our view of reality both around and within us. When in fear, we search for protection. We don’t make ourselves vulnerable because it is not safe to do so. We don’t take risks, like opening up to our mate and sharing thoughts and feelings about us, because this would increase vulnerability. When fear is present, therefore, closeness and intimacy are impossible to achieve and maintain.

Trees need to develop strong roots in order to withstand nature’s storms and other calamities, just like love has to develop deep and strong roots in order to withstand the storms of life.

What are the human roots? They are the many ways in which two people in love maintain connections with one another. These range from remembering each other’s special days to favorite activities and interests, to being aware of a partner’s points of hurt and trauma.

Storms are unpredictable in their power and destruction. We can never fully predict when they will occur and how strong they are going to be, nor will we ever be able to be fully prepared for them, but we certainly can improve the odds of withstanding them.

Storms are particularly dangerous if they strike in areas where there already is weakness. A tree that is bent, or whose roots are exposed is more vulnerable to storms than a tree that is strong and solidly planted.

In love too we are most affected by the storms of life when they hit us in our weakest areas. These are areas where wounds from the past may not have fully healed yet. These become “faulty lines”, points of exposure in our emotional lives. As in trees, these areas of weakness reflect past experiences that wounded us and created a fragility that now makes us more vulnerable.

Storms, both with trees and with love, can happen suddenly, without forewarning, with a powerful, destructive force that kills.

In love, likewise, some storms are so powerful, sudden and destructive that everything on their path gets destroyed. A sudden illness, as addiction, violence and other traumatic experiences are examples of these powerful and destructive storms. Other storms are not so totally devastating, though they also cause damage, particularly if not addressed and dealt with.

In nature, storms erode the soil and wash it downhill, exposing the tree roots.

As tree roots become exposed, they are no longer able to anchor trees to the soil. Trees are no longer as protected.

When trees are no longer firmly grounded, strong winds and rain can become much more destructive. While they do their best to stay anchored to the ground, trees progressively lose their strength. Resisting storms becomes a tough battle for them to win.

As we can see, the more exposed the roots, the weaker and the more vulnerable trees become.

The same is true for couples: weakened by the stresses and pressures of life, what provided security and strength to them – romantic partners’ connections to one another – are increasingly less available. With each new storm, the unhealed wounds from the past get re-opened and they fester. Couples disconnect in order to protect themselves, increasing the distance between them and further reducing communication. And this happens at a time when both partners need each other and the power and strength of their love in order to better cope with whatever problems are facing them!

If nothing is done to remedy the situation, both trees and love will perish.

Couples at this point may feel there is no love left for one another. They become overburdened by challenges that feel insurmountable. Each partner feels abandoned by the other. Both are ready to give up and go their own separate ways, or settle for a miserable, loveless life together.

But there is still a possibility for renewal, both in nature and in love.

In nature, from what looked like a dead stump, at times new growth starts to appear

This is a new beginning, a renewed opportunity to grow and become strong. In love, if couples don’t give up and give in to their feelings of powerlessness, discontent, disappointment and hurt, they may be able to rebuild their relationship, just like trees that are born out of old, dead stumps.

New growth in trees is an indication that, even though on the surface everything seemed dead, there was still a spark of life somewhere deep down in the roots. From this little spark of life, a new beginning is generated, a renewed life that derives its energy from what was there before.

In love the spark may still be rekindled if partners believe in its power. Most of the time, it’s not that love for one another is completely gone. It is just no longer accessible, buried as it is by layers and layers of emotions – anger, frustration, fear, disgust, disappointment and other emotions – that lead to emotional disconnection.

It is possible to rekindle the feelings of love if, and only if, we are willing and able to face the issues TOGETHER, get in touch with our emotions and share this experience with each other. Love is resilient. Our openness – or closeness – to it facilitates or excludes the possibility of feeling it again. Both trees and human beings can thus grow healthy and strong.

A new road opens up, full of possibilities

And, with it, a new way of looking at life, as the sun comes out for a brand new day

Of course there is. In fact, many people have more than one pet, particularly a dog or cat. These animals enrich our quality of life, provide companionship, reduce loneliness and, in general, keep us happier and healthier.

In study after study, pet owners scored higher in all measures of happiness, adjustment and good health compared to those without pets. In particular, the elderly who are pet owners fare much better in most areas than their peers without pets, including increased survival from coronary artery disease!

The notion that pets are good for people who live alone is known to be true, but pet owners fare better whether or not they live with other family members. So pets improve their owners’ lives under any circumstance.

What is it that makes relationships between humans and pets so important?

Humans have a need to be emotionally connected with other individuals in attachment bonds that get stronger with increased exposure. This is why people banded together since the beginning of time, and humans and pets have been living together for thousands of years.

Attachment to another human being provides a sense of inner well-being and emotional security for all of us, particularly at times of stress, when the comfort and reassurance provided by this bond reduces fears and makes anxieties easier to contain.

Pets in a lot of ways are like little children, who need someone to protect and look after them. As children they respond in ways that are cute and charming, reinforcing our need to care for them. Pets are our children who never grow up and leave us, as they continue to need our care and affection throughout their lives.

Human relationships with dogs and cats also contain elements of attachment, as we protect, nurture and love them and they provide us with acceptance, constant proximity, responsiveness and unconditional love. All this reduces psychological distress and increases our feelings of happiness.

While all this is true at any time in life, pets are particularly important at times of grief and sorrow, at times of transition and at times of loneliness caused by a major loss.

So, do you have a pet? If so, how do you feel about your relationship with it? Do you have stories to share about your experiences as a pet owner?

This is my pet, Mozart.

Because I want to remember this date by offering something that hopefully can shed further light on some of the repercussions of the fateful events of ten years ago.

As a psychotherapist, I am deeply aware of the importance of traumatic events that occur unpredictably and seemingly without any logical reason, such as the events of 9/11 ten years ago. These events affected each of us individually as well as collectively.

We know that the goal of terrorism isn’t only or even primarily to cause physical destruction, but mainly and more subtlety to cause psychological damage to the people targeted by these heinous and random acts.

The main psychological damage of the 9/11 events is that it forever changed the sense of security each of had prior to that day.

Feeling safe is an important need that all humans have. We seek security from birth on, by developing attachment bonds to people we believe will protect us and take care of us, thus creating and preserving a sense of security and emotional and physical safety that we all need. As we grow up, we continue to maintain this need for safety and achieve it by creating relationships and environments around us that keep dangers at bay. In this way, we can keep fear and anxiety under control.

Prior to 9/11 most of the people living in his country felt safe. Though aware of dangers in the world, in fact, most of us in this country nonetheless felt we had a level of safety that allowed us to pursue our goals and interests. After September 11, however, this sense of safety disappeared and our views of life and the world changed forever.

So, what happens when this feeling of security disappears?

Social psychologists tell us that we tend to react to the loss of perceived security in two ways: by feeling “moral outrage” and a need for “moral cleansing.”
Moral outrage is triggered by ANGER, which pushes us to seek vengeance, to direct our feelings toward the people whom we believe responsible for the terrorist attacks, or to people who are close to them (like people of the same ethnic background, of the same religion, similar political views, and so on.)
More cleansing is triggered by FEAR, which pushes us to adopt those behaviors that tend to reduce our fear by recreating a belief in fundamental goodness and in positive values (offering help, volunteering, getting closer to family, friends, community and people directly affected by the attack.) If we look back at the last ten years, we can see examples of both.

Ten years on, what can we do with what we have learned from this horrific tragedy?

If I were to summarize in a few words the biggest lesson of 9/11, this is what I would say: We learned that we need to acknowledge both our fears and our anger, and channel these legitimate feelings in behaviors and public policies that acknowledge our emotions and express them in healthy, balanced and constructive ways by reinforcing physical and emotional security. We also learned that we need to keep the memories of that day fresh in everybody’s mind, so that we strengthen and reinforce the ties that were built on the loss of many lives and the pain of those left behind.

Be it as it may, June has historically been and still is the most popular month for weddings. In fact, there are more of them in June than at any other time of the year. The influx of June weddings seems to be a testament of how important these events still are to a lot of young couples today. Their popularity is both not surprising on the one hand and startling on the other.

Why is this not surprising?

June is one of the most beautiful months of the year, with longer days, flowers in bloom, warm temperatures and lots of sunshine. These are some of the most immediate reasons why some couples choose this month to create life-long romantic memories they hope they will cherish together. In addition, there are a lot of historical reasons why June, throughout history, was chosen as the most popular month to get married.

Most societies, not only the US, have maintained this custom of June weddings and a hugely profitable industry has grown to cater to these traditions. This is evident in the number of businesses – magazines, wedding planners, flower shops, catering and clothing industries, photographers, and so on – that are making a profitable living by designing, planning, and executing weddings, in this way translating couples’ dreams into reality.

So, why is the continuous popularity of this tradition so startling? Because, at first sight, it seems to be in contradiction with the major changes that the institution of marriage is undergoing in this and other Western cultures. These changes are reflected in the number of romantic relationships where partners live together outside of marriage. These unions have, for the first time, outnumbered marital unions. Some people would go as far as claiming that traditional marriage is dead, and new ways of being together are replacing it and predict this trend will continue.

So, on the one hand, we have the maintenance of a tradition – June weddings – that goes back thousands of years. On the other, we have major changes that deeply affect traditional views of marriage. And these two trends seem to coexist. In the following blogs I will discuss in detail each of these trends.

If you are reading this blog, it is quite possible you are interested in this topic. Perhaps you are a prospective June bride yourself, or one who was married in June. Or perhaps you don’t want to get married in June nor at any other time. You may view this tradition as obsolete and out of step with current times. Whatever your position, please share your thoughts about this subject, and tell us how you think the June weddings tradition fits of fails to fit with the current social and psychological changes of the institution of marriage in this country.

I am re-designing my blogs in ways that, hopefully, will increase their value and make them more interesting for you. Wider and deeper discussions are sought, as well as a wider choice of topics, reflecting what most of us struggle with and strive for.

In order to achieve this, there will be a shift from single weekly blogs to several blog mini-series which will focus on the same subject. Every mini-series will be composed of up to 4-6 individual blogs. Each of these blogs could stand alone but, together with the others on the same subject, will allow for more in depth discussion on selected subjects.

If you have a subject that interests you and would like to know more about, please contact me with your suggestion.

Here is what you can look forward to:

For couples:

1.   The June Bride: Is this still what women want today?

2.   The Value of Friendship

3.   Why am I struggling so much with my body image?

4.   How to foster and maintain intimacy in relationships

5.   Is technology interfering with or enhancing our lives and relationships?

6.   I am right and you are wrong. Now what? How to reconcile differences in love

7.   The ups and downs of sexual desire

8.   The key to successful relationships

9.   What happens when the in-love feeling begins to wane.

10.  Internet affairs: how similar and how different are they from other affairs?

11.   Long distance relationships: increasing their chances of survival.

For individuals:

1.   The psychological consequences of job loss.

2.   Is stress getting to you?

3.   The stories we tell ourselves

4.   Is social networking truly a social activity?

5.   The challenges of middle age.

6.   The challenges of retirement

7.   The beauty myth: how we can free ourselves from it

8.   Using the brain to make lasting change

9.   The power and value of dreams

10.  Healing from depression