Dear Becca,

Sometimes my mind just won’t shut off when things aren’t just right with Michael. I practice discussions with him in my head over and over and over again and, frankly, it tends to make matters worse because I can’t sleep, which makes me worry more, which keeps me up, which makes me… well, you get the idea. What can I do to keep things from going round and round in my head?

Sincerely,

Jennifer
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Dear Becca,

To rebuild a wounded relationship, is it more important to carefully unravel problematic events or to explore the emotions of the situation?

Sincerely,

Michael

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Dear Michael,

To repair a wounded relationship, the first step is to prioritize the relationship. It’s the relationship that needs repair.

Often when we want to repair, we want our partner to heal us, to comply to what we think needs to happen to repair trust or to be convinced we really matter and are important to our partner.
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Understanding is scaffolded in part by our accumulated cultural metaphors. For better or for worse, I must confess that many of my internalized metaphors came from watching Star Trek. And these days I’m thinking a lot about Vulcans.

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In so many couples, one person seems to be getting more than enough physical touch, the other partner is starved for more. In both cases, the parties involved often take the demands or rejection of the other very personally.

This got me thinking.

Does anyone know if there has ever been a study that is essentially the other end of the scale of the Harlow Monkey contact comfort experiment? In this study, researcher Harry Harlow effectively showed that physical contact with a soft mother was actually more important to the monkey than food.

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What does it mean to be "sad?"

Is sadness the opposite of happiness? Clinicians, do you have a real definition? It seems ridiculous, but I’m not entirely sure I know.

During some quiet time, my wife and I were sharing answers to a few of the questions I’d read while flipping through the Love Maps app from the Gottman Institute.

The question for me was, “What was your partner’s happiest moment?”

That one was a easy – our wedding day. If you saw the smile on her face that day, the choice was obvious. Her face literally hurt at the end of the day. We talked about why that day made her happy. She talked about feelings of love, joy, accomplishment, and even relief. Like I say, an obvious choice.

But then the obvious discussion point coming back to me was “What was the saddest day in your life?” (more…)