I’m super excited to be reading from my new book Make Love Better: How to Own Your Story, Connect with Your Partner and Deepen Your Relationship Practice, at the Process Work Institute at 7pm on Thursday September 19th. I’ll share about my writing journey, talk about some of the key concepts, and read excerpts from the book.
To give you a sense of what’s really important to me, here’s a short excerpt from the end of the Introduction.
Read More
The Message in a Smile
I haven’t changed nearly as much as I’d hoped.
A couple of years ago, I made some short videos about various relationship topics. Recently, after I announced the upcoming publication of my book Make Love Better, some of these videos have circulated on social media. It’s always been challenging for me to watch myself on video—not sure if that will ever change. But what struck me most in this video (topic: navigating relationship when your partner’s political beliefs are antithetical to your own), was not so much what I said, but how I said it.
What struck me was my smile. Which made me smile. And blush in front of myself.
Allow me to explain.
Read More“The belief that one’s own view of reality is the only reality is the most dangerous of all delusions.” Paul Watzlawick, 1976. From Forward to How Real is Real.
George Carlin put it like this: When you are driving behind a slow person who you want to pass, they are an asshole. When someone behind you tries to pass you, they are a maniac.
We laugh—because it’s true; we see ourselves. In this case it’s especially embarrassing (even idiotic) that we believe we are right, whatever our position. And it does nothing to help us get along or understand our lover or our neighbor.
As the old AA saying goes: Would you rather be right, or in relationship?
Multiple versions of reality, some contradictory, all are the result of divergent experiences and communication processes, none a reflection of an external, eternal, objective truth.
Read More
I’m desperately upset about the president-elect of the United States, and the children in Aleppo, and our fragile planet, and so much else. I wake up in the night, scared or angry or hurting, and I can’t get back to sleep. I get obsessed with hating him for so many things, not the least of which is his abhorrent use of power.
So the other night, in the middle of the night, I got to thinking about my power—and how I use it. And then I did some inner work—a simple thought experiment that I’ll share with you here.
Read MoreWhen I’m upset, it’s always physical. My heart actually aches. My stomach comes undone. I feel a knife stabbing my back or twisting into the base of my neck. I’ve always been that way.
So it was no surprise that when Jerry and I arrived home on the evening of November 8th, 2016 after having witnessed the devastating, disorienting election results at the house of close friends, I climbed the stairs, brushed my teeth, walked towards my bed, fell to the floor and moaned. This went on. Apparently, I made a lot of noise.
Read More
Power is a huge source of conflict in the world. Intimate relationships have great potential to play a strong part in leveling playing fields.
Romantic love relationships between men and women reproduce sexism and gender inequality. Romantic love between black and white Americans reproduces racism and brings up the trauma of slavery. Romantic love between Jews and Christians of German descent or between American and Japanese people reproduce agonies from WW2. Because of the intimate context, these cross-cultural relationships provide fertile ground for the disruption of historical wounds.
Read More
It is never easy to be criticized or accused. If our inner world is filled with self-dislike, any outer challenge is a double whammy to our fragile sense of self. So we shut our ears and hearts. We defend. We protect ourselves. Or we get mired in our own defeat.
Read More“Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.” Scott Adams
In the creative fields and in entrepreneurship, it is vogue to fail and iterate. Design thinking luminaries like IDEO founders Tom and David Kelly urge us to embrace our failures, to own them and to use the learning on our path to doing great and original things. But failing in relationship is not generally held in quite so high esteem; rather the contrary, even today in the US where divorce rates hover somewhere between 40– 50%, people who have more than two or three long term relationships or marriages under their belts by mid life are looked at sideways. We cluck our tongues, call them unlucky in love; we label their deeply personal experiences failed relationships.
Read More
