The Mother Who Cannot Let Her Daughter Bloom

Posted on by helpingsoul

Maternal Envy, the Daughter’s Emerging Sexuality, and the Slow Work of Naming What Most Mothers and Daughters Will Not Name Aloud

A substantial revision of an earlier 2010 post on mother-daughter envy. The original was a personal reflection. This version is clinical, drawing on cases at appropriate distance and on current research that the 2010 piece did not yet have access to.

In my clinical practice, I have sat with a particular kind of grief many times. The grief of an adult daughter who has slowly come to recognize that her mother envied her. That the mother who was supposed to celebrate her emerging womanhood instead competed with it. That the mother who was supposed to teach her that her body was good was the first person to communicate, through small gestures and large ones, that her body was a problem. That the mother who was supposed to want her flourishing instead, in some difficult-to-name way, needed her to not flourish quite so visibly.

This pattern is not rare. It is not, despite the cultural insistence that all mothers love their daughters unconditionally, a marginal phenomenon. Maternal envy of daughters is a well-documented dynamic in clinical literature. It just is not often discussed openly, because it violates one of the most protected cultural narratives we have — the mother as the unconditional source of love for her child.

This article addresses what the pattern looks like, where it comes from, how it affects the daughters who lived through it, and what the work of recovery and repair can look like for both parties. The territory is sensitive. It deserves both clinical precision and the recognition that mothers who envy their daughters are themselves usually carrying significant unprocessed material from their own lives. The work is not to identify mothers as villains. It is to name a dynamic clearly enough that the people who lived through it can recognize themselves and begin the work of healing.

What maternal envy of daughters looks like

The dynamic shows up in many forms. None of them is universally diagnostic on its own. The pattern emerges from accumulation rather than from any single behavior.

The mother who criticizes her teenage daughter’s clothing not for actual modesty concerns but because the daughter’s emerging body is genuinely attractive and the criticism is the mother’s way of damping the attention the daughter is receiving. The criticism is framed as protection. The felt sense underneath, often unconscious to the mother herself, is something closer to resentment.

The mother who, when men in public respond to her teenage or young adult daughter’s appearance with attention or cat calls, shames the daughter for inviting the attention. The implicit message: your body is the problem. Your appearance is the problem. The fact that you are being noticed in ways I am no longer noticed is a flaw in you rather than a function of biological aging in me.

The mother who undermines her daughter’s accomplishments with subtle critique. The straight A’s that are met with concern about the daughter’s social life. The scholarship that is met with comments about how lucky she was. The successful relationship that is met with skepticism about whether the partner is good enough. The pattern is not consistent criticism. It is the precise targeting of whatever the daughter is most flourishing in.

The mother who competes with her daughter for the attention of the same men. The father whose attention the mother needs and who is suddenly noticing the maturing daughter. The boyfriends or husbands whose admiration the mother monitors for any indication that they have noticed the daughter. The dynamic produces specific kinds of damage in the daughter, who learns to dampen herself in male company in order to avoid triggering the mother’s reaction.

The mother whose stated values and lived behavior contradict each other around female sexuality. The mother who preaches abstinence while the daughter knows the mother lost her own virginity at fifteen. The mother who shames the daughter for sexual exploration while the mother herself has a complicated sexual history that is not openly acknowledged. The hypocrisy is its own teaching — it communicates that female sexuality is shameful for the daughter while available for the mother, that the rules apply differently in different generations, that the mother’s right to her own sexual history does not extend to permission for the daughter’s.

Where this dynamic originates

Maternal envy of daughters does not come from nowhere. The mothers who carry this dynamic are not, with rare exceptions, monsters. They are women carrying their own significant unprocessed material from their own lives. Understanding where the dynamic comes from is essential to the work of recovery, because it allows the adult daughter to name what happened without having to demonize the mother who happened to her.

The mother who was not loved well by her own mother often carries a particular kind of injury that surfaces when her daughter reaches the age the mother was at when the mother’s own injuries were forming. The daughter’s blooming activates the mother’s unhealed adolescence. The mother does not consciously decide to envy her daughter. The envy arises as a somatic response to seeing in her daughter what she did not get to have in herself.

The mother whose own youth was traumatic or curtailed often experiences her daughter’s freedom as an unbearable contrast. The mother who married too young, who became pregnant before she was ready, who had no opportunity for education or self-discovery, who was sexualized as a child — these mothers may genuinely love their daughters and may also carry a specific grief about what they themselves did not have, which makes the daughter’s having of those things activating.

The mother whose marriage is unhappy, whose own sexual life has been disappointing, whose physical body has aged in ways she has not been able to accept, often finds her daughter’s emerging sexuality intolerable in a way she cannot fully articulate. The daughter has what the mother is losing. The daughter is at the beginning of what the mother is ending. The biological mathematics of aging produces a felt sense in the mother that, unprocessed, can manifest as competition with the very person she is supposed to be welcoming into womanhood.

The mother whose cultural and religious framework treats female sexuality as dangerous often has more conscious access to her envy because the framework gives her permission to express it as concern. The criticisms can be delivered as protection. The shame can be delivered as moral teaching. The mother can simultaneously envy her daughter’s freedom and condemn her for having it, without having to feel the contradiction directly.

None of this excuses the harm. Naming the origins is not the same as forgiving. It is the recognition that the mother who envied her daughter was usually a woman who herself had been failed by the women who came before her, and who has not yet done the work that would let her break the pattern. The recognition allows the adult daughter to hold complexity — both that her mother caused real damage and that her mother was herself damaged. Both can be true.

How the envy affects the daughter

Daughters who lived through maternal envy carry specific patterns into adulthood. The patterns are not unique to this dynamic, but the dynamic produces them in characteristic shape.

Self-dampening. The daughter learned, early, that her flourishing produced consequences. The good grade led to subtle critique. The boyfriend led to undermining. The accomplishment led to attention being shifted away. The adult daughter often unconsciously continues the dampening. She underdresses for events where she might shine. She undermines her own accomplishments in conversation. She makes herself smaller in the presence of women, particularly older women, who feel similar to the mother.

Sexual ambivalence. The daughter learned that her body was simultaneously something to be protected and something to be ashamed of. Her emerging sexuality was met with both watchfulness and condemnation. As an adult, she often carries complicated relationships to her own sexual desire, her own body, her own right to pleasure. The straightforward access to her own erotic life that her mother did not allow her to develop in adolescence has to be developed, painfully, in adulthood.

Difficulty receiving from women. The daughter who experienced her mother as a rival rather than as an ally often struggles, as an adult, to fully trust other women. Friendships with women carry an undertow she may not be able to articulate. Compliments from older women trigger old wariness. The capacity to receive care from female mentors, female friends, female therapists has to be built deliberately because the original maternal template did not allow it to develop naturally.

Hypervigilance to other women’s reactions. The daughter learned to monitor her mother’s emotional state continuously, because her mother’s state determined how the daughter would be treated. The adult version of this is the woman who is exquisitely attuned to how other women are responding to her — who notices, before they themselves notice, when another woman has registered her in some way. The capacity is genuinely useful in some professional contexts. It is also exhausting, and it reflects a developmental history in which female regard was always conditional and never safely received.

Difficulty with her own daughters, if she has them. The pattern is intergenerational. The daughter who has not done significant work on the dynamic she lived through often passes some version of it forward. The work of breaking the cycle is conscious work and is rarely complete in a single generation. It requires recognition, grief, often clinical support, and the deliberate development of capacities the original conditions did not produce.

The work of recovery for the adult daughter

If you recognize yourself in this description — the adult daughter of a mother who, in retrospect, envied you — the work of recovery is real and possible. It is also slow. Several elements support the work.

Grief is the first task. The adult daughter must allow herself to feel the specific grief of having had a mother who was not capable of unconditional welcome of her flourishing. This is harder than it sounds, because the cultural narrative around mothers protects them from this kind of recognition. The grief includes the loss of the mother the daughter needed, the recognition that the actual mother could not be that mother, and the acceptance that no amount of effort on the daughter’s part as a child could have produced the welcoming response she needed.

Naming what happened, clearly. Not to confront the mother — that may or may not be appropriate depending on the specific relationship — but to name it to herself, with someone who can hear it. Often this is in therapy. Sometimes it is in journaling, in conversation with a trusted friend who has lived something similar, in the slow private work of articulating to oneself what had not previously been allowed to be named.

Working with the somatic legacy. The dampening, the sexual ambivalence, the hypervigilance to women — these live in the body. The work of restoring access to fullness in adulthood requires somatic attention. EMDR for specific memories that carry the weight. Somatic experiencing for the chronic patterns of holding back. Parts work for the internal voice that has internalized the mother’s criticism. Attachment-focused therapy for the relational template that filters all current female relationships.

Rebuilding the capacity to receive from women. This often happens through specific relationships — a female therapist who consistently welcomes the client’s fullness, female friends who do not require dampening, female mentors who genuinely celebrate the client’s accomplishments. These relationships are corrective experiences. They slowly teach the nervous system that female regard can be unconditional, that flourishing in the presence of another woman does not have to produce consequences.

The relationship with the mother, in real time, becomes its own ongoing question. Some adult daughters find ways to maintain limited contact with the mother while protecting themselves from the worst of the dynamic. Some choose more substantial distance for periods of time, or permanently. Some find that the mother, herself doing her own work, becomes capable of a different relationship in later years. There is no single right answer. The right answer is the one that allows the adult daughter to continue her own healing without being repeatedly retraumatized.

On the rare possibility of repair between mother and daughter

In some cases, repair is possible. It is rare. It requires the mother to do her own work, to recognize what she did, to take responsibility for it, and to find a way to genuinely welcome her daughter’s flourishing now even though she could not welcome it then. When this happens, it is significant. It does not erase the original damage. It does add a new chapter to the relationship that allows both women to continue knowing each other on different terms.

More commonly, the mother is unable or unwilling to do this work. She may deny the dynamic entirely. She may agree to it superficially without changing her behavior. She may simply not have the resources to face what she did and what her own life produced in her. In these cases, the adult daughter does her own healing without the mother’s participation. This is possible. It is also harder than healing with the mother’s participation would be.

The cultural pressure on adult daughters to maintain close relationships with their mothers regardless of the cost is one of the things that prevents necessary healing for many women. The right amount of contact with the mother who envied you is whatever amount allows you to continue your own work without being repeatedly returned to the original wound. For some daughters, that is regular contact with appropriate limits. For others, it is significant distance. For others, it is no contact at all. None of these is morally superior. They are different responses to different relationships with different mothers.

A closing thought

The mother-daughter relationship is one of the most consequential in any woman’s life. When it goes well, it shapes the daughter’s capacity for self-love, for trust in other women, for owning her own flourishing without apology. When it goes badly, particularly through the specific dynamic of maternal envy, it shapes the daughter’s life in ways that take years of adult work to unwind.

If you are the daughter of a mother who envied you, the work of recovery is real and worth doing. You did not deserve the dampening. You did not deserve the shaming. Your flourishing was always welcome by the universe, even if it was not welcome by the woman who was supposed to welcome it first. The work of recognizing this, of grieving what you did not get, of slowly building the capacity to flourish in spite of it, is the work of becoming yourself.

You did not deserve to be dampened. You deserved to bloom.
It is not too late.

Further reading: Estela Welldon, Mother, Madonna, Whore: The Idealization and Denigration of Motherhood. Rozsika Parker, Torn in Two: The Experience of Maternal Ambivalence. Terri Apter, Difficult Mothers. Adrienne Rich, Of Woman Born. Phyllis Chesler, Women and Madness. For clinical support with attachment and maternal trauma in California or Florida, visit thecourageousself.com.

April Wright, MA, LMFT is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist in California and Florida specializing in EMDR, sex therapy, and couples counseling. She trained in sex and couples therapy at AACAST at UCLA. She blogs about attachment, healing, and the courageous arts of becoming oneself at courageous-arts.com and sees clients at thecourageousself.com.

Love Is a Capacity, Not Only a Feeling

Posted on by helpingsoul

What Eighteen Years of Clinical Work Have Taught Me About How the Capacity for Love Is Built, Blocked, and Restored

A substantial revision of a 2009 post on love. The original was a young writer’s reflection. This version draws on what clinical work has taught me about why the capacity for love develops easily for some and is significantly compromised for others, and what kind of work restores it.

Most writing on love treats it as a feeling. The intoxicating rush of new attraction. The steady warmth of long partnership. The fierce protectiveness toward a child. The bond with a friend who has known you through years. The reverence for whatever you understand as larger than yourself. All of these are real. All of them are part of what we mean by love.

What is less often written about is that love is also a capacity. The feelings we call love require a particular kind of internal architecture to be felt, received, and given fully. The architecture develops, or fails to develop, based on the conditions a person has lived through. Some people arrive in adulthood with the capacity for love largely intact. They can feel love when it arises in them, receive it when it is offered, give it without the felt sense that doing so will cost them something dangerous. Others arrive in adulthood with the capacity significantly compromised. They may experience strong feelings that resemble love — attraction, longing, attachment, even devotion — without being able to fully receive love when it is offered or give it without protection.

This article is for the second group, and for the clinicians and partners who love them. The capacity for love is not a fixed trait. It can be rebuilt, slowly, in adulthood, when it has been compromised by early conditions. The work is real. It is also possible. What follows is what I have come to understand about why the capacity for love is compromised in some people, what blocks it specifically, and what kind of work restores it.

What love actually requires of the nervous system

Before discussing what blocks the capacity for love, it helps to name what love asks of the body. This is more than feelings. It is the specific somatic conditions that allow love to occur.

Love requires the capacity to remain present in your own body during emotional contact with another person. When someone you love looks at you with care, your nervous system must be able to receive that look without flinching, dissociating, or deflecting. The eyes meeting the eyes. The face responding to the face. These small relational moments are not decorative. They are the substance of how love is communicated between bodies.

Love requires the capacity to feel emotion long enough for the emotion to be received and integrated. The warmth that arises when someone you love walks into the room must be allowed to be felt. If the system reflexively dampens warmth before it can fully register, love does not land. The feelings may exist briefly. They do not accumulate into the felt sense of being in love with someone.

Love requires the capacity to remain in connection during difficulty. When the other person is distressed, your nervous system must be able to stay near them rather than fleeing into protective distance. When you yourself are distressed, you must be able to reach for the other rather than withdrawing into self-sufficiency. The capacity to remain in relationship during the hard moments is what distinguishes love from preference. Preference is easy when conditions are good. Love is the willingness to stay in connection when conditions are difficult.

Love requires the capacity to receive what is offered. The compliment that lands rather than being deflected. The hug that lasts rather than being cut short. The act of care that is allowed to register rather than being countered with reciprocity. Many adults who have spent their lives giving but not receiving find that the capacity to receive is the part that needs the most work. The giving is familiar. The receiving feels foreign or even dangerous.

Love requires the capacity to give without expectation of immediate return. Not in some saintly self-sacrificing way. In the simple sense that love offered with the felt requirement of being returned in kind is something other than love. The system that has learned to track every act of care to make sure it is reciprocated cannot fully love. It is in a state of chronic accounting that love cannot survive.

What blocks the capacity

Several patterns can produce significant compromise in the capacity for love. The patterns often overlap. People rarely show only one. Recognizing the patterns is part of how the work begins.

Insecure attachment from childhood. The infant who was reliably met learns that reaching produces reception, that the other is available, that connection is safe. This learning becomes the somatic foundation for adult love. The infant who was not reliably met learns something different. The system that learned, in childhood, that reaching produces inconsistent or harmful response carries that learning into adulthood. The capacity for adult love is shaped by what the original attachment relationships taught the body to expect.

Trauma that has not been processed. Sexual abuse, physical abuse, severe neglect, witnessing of violence, sustained emotional cruelty, and other traumatic experiences produce specific compromises to the capacity for love. The body that has been hurt by intimacy learns to defend against intimacy. The capacity for love can remain, but it operates under the constant supervision of a protective system that interrupts love before it can fully arrive. EMDR, somatic experiencing, internal family systems, and other trauma-focused approaches address this directly when the underlying material can be processed.

Defenses against affect. Some people develop, in childhood, a phobic relationship to feeling itself. The protective system intervenes preemptively to prevent any emotion from becoming fully felt. The dissociation, intellectualization, performing, or somatization that results blocks not only difficult feelings but also love. You cannot fully feel love if your system reflexively dampens feeling itself. The work of building affect tolerance, which I have written about elsewhere, is a precondition for the capacity for love to develop.

The parentified child or deity child pattern. The child who was assigned, explicitly or implicitly, the role of caretaker for a parent who could not be the caretaker often grows into an adult who cannot fully receive love. The internal architecture is organized around giving. Receiving has not been allowed to develop. The capacity to be loved, in this pattern, is compromised even when the capacity to love others may be intact. The work involves the slow restoration of the capacity to receive.

The internalized critic that interrupts love. Many adults carry an internal voice that responds to moments of being loved with shame, doubt, or the conviction that the love will be withdrawn if the loved person learns the truth about them. The voice was usually learned from a parent or caregiver who treated love as conditional, who criticized rather than supported, who communicated that the child was lovable only when performing acceptably. The adult version of this voice interrupts love in real time, often before the love can be felt. Working with this voice — naming it, understanding what it is protecting, eventually softening its automatic activation — is part of the work of restoring the capacity for love.

Performing identity. The adult who has lived in conditions that required constant performance — professional contexts where evaluation is continuous, families where being lovable required being impressive, relationships where love was conditional on output — often loses access to the part of themselves that could be loved without performing. Love that requires the beloved to keep producing in order to deserve being loved is not quite love. The performing identity has to learn to relax for love to be fully received.

What restores the capacity

The capacity for love can be rebuilt in adulthood. The work is slow. It is also genuinely possible. Several elements support the work.

Therapeutic work that is itself loving. The therapeutic relationship, when it works, is one of the most reliable conditions under which the capacity for love can be rebuilt. The therapist’s consistent presence, the reliability of being received without judgment, the willingness to stay in connection through difficulty, the genuine care that is professional and bounded but real — these provide the corrective experience that the original conditions did not. Many of the most meaningful changes in my clinical practice over the years have happened not because of any specific technique but because the client has experienced, over time, the felt sense of being loved by a therapist whose care for them was genuine and reliable. The therapeutic relationship becomes the laboratory in which the nervous system learns that love is possible.

Somatic work that builds the underlying capacity. Hand on heart practice. The slow rebuilding of interoception. The deliberate practice of remaining present in the body during emotional contact. The capacity to feel without dissociating, to receive without deflecting, to give without immediately needing return — all of these are developable through somatic practice. The body learns what it was not allowed to learn in childhood, in adulthood, with patience.

Trauma processing where unprocessed material is blocking the capacity. When specific traumatic experiences are interrupting current relationship, processing the underlying material through EMDR or other trauma-focused approaches often produces noticeable shifts in the capacity for love. The work is not about love directly. It is about clearing the protective system’s continuing alarm response to material that has not yet been integrated. As the alarm quiets, love becomes more available.

Parts work that addresses the internal architecture. The critic that interrupts love. The protector that defends against intimacy. The caretaker who cannot stop giving. The deity child who cannot receive. Each of these parts has its own history and its own protective function. Recognizing them, naming them, developing relationship with them rather than trying to eliminate them, allows the system as a whole to soften. The parts that have been blocking love do not have to be destroyed. They have to be heard, honored for what they have been protecting against, and slowly released from the protective duty they no longer need to perform.

Corrective relationships in adulthood. The friend who consistently shows up. The therapist whose care is reliable. The partner who remains present through difficulty. The community that welcomes you without conditions. Each of these relationships is a small repetition of being received. The repetitions accumulate. Over months and years of being consistently met, the system updates. The body that learned not to expect love begins to expect it. The capacity grows.

Time. The work of restoring the capacity for love is not quick. The protective system that has been running for decades does not soften in weeks. The body that learned, early, to defend against love does not relearn in months. The capacity grows over years of sustained work. Patience with the timeline is part of the practice. The work is real. The capacity is genuinely developable. And it requires the kind of patience that the protective system itself often makes difficult.

What love looks like when the capacity is functioning

People who have built or rebuilt the capacity for love describe specific qualities to their experience of it.

Love arrives without effort. The warmth toward the beloved is just there. It does not have to be summoned or produced. It is the steady underlying quality of the relationship rather than an intermittent state that has to be regenerated.

Giving does not deplete. When you do something for someone you love from a place of full capacity, you often notice that you feel more connected and alive afterward rather than less. This is the signature of love operating from genuine fullness rather than from depleted reserves.

Receiving is possible. You can be cared for without immediately reciprocating. You can hold a compliment without deflecting. You can be the recipient of attention without managing it. The body has learned that receiving is allowed.

Difficulty does not collapse the connection. When you and your beloved are in disagreement or difficulty, the connection remains underneath the conflict. You can fight and stay in relationship. You can disappoint each other and still know that the relationship holds. The capacity to repair rather than to flee or destroy is built in.

Presence is available. You can be with the person you love without performing, without managing your appearance, without monitoring how you are being received. The capacity to simply be there with them, in your body, fully present, is one of the gifts that comes from doing this work.

Love feels like coming home. This is the phrase that many of my clients have used over the years, after years of work, when they finally arrive at the felt experience of being able to receive and give love from a capacity that is genuinely present. The home is in the body. The home is in the relationship. The home is in the capacity itself, which once felt foreign and now feels native.

A closing thought

If you have read this far and recognized yourself as someone whose capacity for love has been compromised by the conditions of your earlier life, the work is real and worth doing. You are not broken. You were not made in conditions that allowed the capacity to develop naturally. You have lived a life in which love has been complicated, difficult to receive, difficult to give, or different in some way from what you have read in the books and seen in the films.

The capacity can be rebuilt. Not perfectly, not all at once, not in a way that erases the original conditions. In a way that allows you to experience, over time, what love can be when the architecture is functioning. The patience the work requires is real. The reward is also real. And the experience of being able to fully love and be fully loved, in adulthood, after the work has done its slow rebuilding, is one of the genuinely sacred experiences available to a human being who has done the work to deserve it. You deserve it. You always did.

Love is not only a feeling. It is a capacity. And the capacity is yours to build.

Further reading: Sue Johnson, Hold Me Tight. Bessel van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score. Richard Schwartz, No Bad Parts. Stan Tatkin, Wired for Love. For clinical work in California or Florida that addresses the capacity for love specifically, visit thecourageousself.com.

April Wright, MA, LMFT is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist in California and Florida specializing in EMDR, sex therapy, and couples counseling. She trained in sex and couples therapy at AACAST at UCLA. She blogs about attachment, healing, and the courageous arts of becoming oneself at courageous-arts.com and sees clients at thecourageousself.com.

What Actually Builds a Lasting Partnership

Posted on by helpingsoul

A Therapist’s Reflections on What the Research and Eighteen Years of Clinical Work Have Taught Me

A substantial revision of an earlier 2009 post on meeting and marriage. The original used a prescriptive timetable that real relationships rarely follow. This version draws on current research and clinical experience to describe what actually produces lasting partnership across many forms.

In 2009, I wrote a post that mapped what I thought of as the path from meeting someone to marrying them. The post laid out an eight-step timeline — meet, build friendship, set boundaries, develop respect, love revealed at nine months, marriage at one to two years. The framework reflected what I believed at the time about how the strongest relationships developed.

Sixteen years of clinical work later, I would not write that post the same way. Several things have changed.

The most important change is the recognition that relationships do not follow timetables. The couple who knew they were going to marry within three weeks of meeting can have as durable a partnership as the couple who took five years to decide. The couple who lived together for a decade before committing to marriage may have stronger fundamentals than the couple who married within months. The timing varies. The fundamentals do not.

The second change is the recognition that lasting partnership takes many forms. Marriage is one. Long-term cohabitation without legal marriage is another. Partnerships within queer relationships have their own histories and forms. Polyamorous and non-monogamous structures, when they work, work according to similar fundamentals as monogamous partnerships. The legal and cultural form of the relationship matters less than the underlying dynamics. The work of building something that lasts is recognizable across forms, even when the forms differ significantly.

This refreshed essay describes what I have come to understand about those underlying dynamics, drawing on current research and on the work I have done in my practice with couples across many configurations.

The conditions that produce lasting partnership

Several conditions, present together and developed over time, produce the kind of partnership that endures.

Friendship as foundation

This was true in the 2009 post and remains true. The strongest partnerships have a deep friendship underneath them. The capacity to enjoy each other’s ordinary company. The genuine interest in each other’s inner lives. The willingness to spend time together that is not about romance or sex but simply about being with this particular person.

John and Julie Gottman, who have studied couples in their laboratory at the University of Washington for decades, identify friendship as the foundational element of relationships that last. Their research consistently shows that couples who maintain what they call a sound relationship house — the underlying friendship and shared knowledge of each other — weather conflict and transition far better than couples whose connection is primarily passionate or primarily logistical. The friendship is not opposed to romance. It is what allows the romance to continue across decades.

Secure attachment within the relationship

Sue Johnson, who developed Emotionally Focused Therapy and has spent her career applying attachment theory to adult couples, identifies the felt sense of secure connection as the central work of lasting partnership. Each partner needs to know, in their body, that the other is reliably there — that emotional reach will be met, that need will not be dismissed, that distress can be brought to the other and will be received.

Building this kind of security is the work of years. It develops through small repeated experiences of being met. The partner who turns toward you when you reach out, even when they are tired. The partner who returns to repair after a conflict rather than letting the disconnection settle. The partner who notices when something is wrong before you have named it. These small moments accumulate into the felt sense of being securely held by the relationship itself.

For partners who arrived in the relationship with insecure attachment patterns from childhood, the work is more demanding. The nervous system that learned not to reach has to learn to reach. The nervous system that learned to defend against connection has to learn to receive it. The relationship itself, when it is functioning, becomes the corrective experience that updates the original conditioning. This is slow work. It is genuinely possible, particularly when both partners understand what they are doing.

Respect as daily practice

Respect is the felt experience of being treated as someone whose thoughts, feelings, and choices have weight. It is not the same as agreement. Two partners can disagree substantially and still treat each other with respect. They can fight hard about what matters to them and still convey, throughout the fight, that the other person remains worthy of consideration.

The Gottmans’ research identifies contempt — the felt sense of looking down on the partner, dismissing them as beneath you — as the single most reliable predictor of divorce in their studies. Contempt is the opposite of respect. When it enters a relationship and is not addressed, the relationship is on a trajectory toward dissolution that is statistically very difficult to reverse.

Maintaining respect requires daily attention. The small ways you speak about your partner when they are not in the room. The small ways you respond to them when they share something with you. The small ways you handle conflict when you are tired or activated. Respect is built or eroded in these small moments. It is rarely built or eroded in dramatic events.

The capacity for repair

All relationships experience rupture. The strongest relationships are not the ones in which rupture never occurs. They are the ones in which both partners have developed the capacity to repair after rupture has occurred.

Repair is its own learnable skill. It involves the willingness to recognize when something has gone wrong between you. The capacity to take responsibility for your part without becoming defensive. The willingness to make a genuine acknowledgment of harm caused, however unintentional. The patience to let the other person have their own response to the repair attempt without controlling how they receive it. The follow-through that demonstrates the repair is more than words.

Stan Tatkin, who developed the psychobiological approach to couples therapy, writes extensively about repair as one of the central practices of lasting partnership. His framing — that secure functioning couples treat each other’s regulation as their joint responsibility — points to something important. The repair is not just about the specific rupture. It is about the ongoing maintenance of the relationship’s underlying safety. Each successful repair tells both partners that this relationship can hold difficulty. Each failed repair, particularly accumulated, communicates the opposite.

Differentiation alongside connection

Esther Perel has written extensively about the tension in long-term partnership between connection and otherness. The relationship needs both. Partners who completely fuse — who lose their individual identities into the relationship — often lose desire for each other over time. Partners who remain too separate, who do not actually allow themselves to be known and to know the other, miss the depth that long partnership offers.

The work is holding both. Maintaining your own friendships, interests, and inner life that are separate from the relationship. Continuing to develop as an individual across the years rather than freezing into your role within the partnership. And also doing the work of genuine intimacy, allowing yourself to be known and to know the other deeply, building the shared history that only long partnership can produce.

Differentiation is not coldness. It is the capacity to be fully present in the relationship while remaining recognizably yourself. Partners who maintain this capacity often find that their desire for each other endures across decades, because the other remains genuinely other rather than dissolving into a version of the self.

Shared sense of meaning

Lasting partnerships typically develop a shared sense of what the relationship is for beyond the immediate enjoyment of being together. This may be raising children. It may be building a business or pursuing creative work together. It may be participating in religious or spiritual community. It may be navigating significant challenges — illness, loss, large life transitions — that the partnership has helped both partners through.

The shared meaning is not always articulated. Sometimes it lives in the unspoken understanding that this relationship has been the container for the life both partners have lived. The relationship is not just a source of pleasure or companionship. It is the structure within which a life has been built. That kind of meaning, accumulated over years, produces a depth that newer relationships cannot match no matter how passionate they are.

Commitment as ongoing choice

The 2009 post talked about hundred percent commitment as the defining feature of marriage. I would say something slightly different now. Commitment in lasting partnership is not a one-time decision made at the altar or at the moment of agreement to be exclusive. It is a daily choice that gets remade across the years.

Every long-term partnership goes through periods when one or both partners genuinely consider whether they want to continue. This is not a sign of failure. It is a sign that the partnership is real and consequential. The partners who continue across these moments do so because they have made the choice to continue. The choice is not always certain. It is often made in conditions of doubt. But it is made, and remade, and remade again across the years.

This framing changes how we understand commitment. It is not the absence of doubt. It is the willingness to act in the direction of the partnership despite the doubt, and to bring whatever the doubt is about into the relationship rather than carrying it alone. The strongest partnerships have rooms in them for the difficult conversations about the partnership itself.

What I would tell a younger version of myself

If I could speak to the therapist who wrote the 2009 post, I would tell her several things.

The timeline does not matter. What matters is what happens within whatever timeline the relationship actually unfolds along.

Marriage is not the goal. The goal is a partnership that allows both people to live in a way that feels genuinely theirs, with someone who knows them and is known by them, across the long arc of a life.

Friendship matters more than passion. Passion comes and goes in long partnership. Friendship, properly tended, deepens.

Repair matters more than avoiding conflict. The couple who never fights is rarely the couple whose relationship lasts. The couple who fights and repairs is.

The work continues. There is no moment when you have arrived at a lasting partnership and can stop building it. The building is the partnership.

If you are in the early stages of a relationship

If you are in the early period of a relationship and trying to determine whether this person could be a lasting partner, here are the questions worth asking yourself. Not on a timetable. Whenever they become relevant.

Is there a genuine friendship underneath the chemistry? Do you actually enjoy this person’s company when you are not romantically engaged with them?

Can you imagine being known by this person at the depth that long partnership requires? Are they capable of receiving you, and are you capable of receiving them, beyond the surface?

How do they handle conflict and repair? Are they capable of taking responsibility for their part in difficulty? Can they offer genuine acknowledgment without becoming defensive?

Are their values and life goals genuinely compatible with yours, or are you assuming compatibility that has not actually been tested?

Do you feel respected by them in the small daily moments, and do you respect them similarly? Is there any contempt in either direction that has begun to enter the interaction?

Are there patterns from their family of origin or yours that you can see playing out in the relationship, and is there room to work with those patterns together?

Do you both have the capacity to maintain your individual lives within the partnership, or is one or both of you losing yourselves into the relationship?

These questions take time to answer honestly. The relationships that last typically allow the time for these questions to surface and be addressed. The relationships that move too quickly past these questions often arrive at the larger commitment with answers that have not been earned.

If you are in an established partnership

If you are in an established partnership and reading this article, the questions are different. The work is not whether to commit. The work is how to sustain what you have built.

The same elements apply. The friendship needs continued tending. The attachment security needs daily renewal. The respect needs to be protected from the small erosions that accumulate over years. The repair after conflict needs to remain a practice rather than something that has become rare. The differentiation needs to be preserved so that you do not lose yourself into the relationship. The shared meaning needs to be allowed to evolve as the lives you are living evolve. The commitment needs to be remade rather than assumed.

Couples therapy can be useful at many points in lasting partnership — not only when the relationship is in crisis. Working with a clinician who understands attachment, who can hold both partners’ nervous systems at once, who can address the somatic dimensions of long partnership rather than only the verbal ones, often produces real growth in relationships that are already functioning. The work is not about fixing what is broken. It is about deepening what is already real.

A closing thought

Lasting partnership is one of the most demanding things a human being can attempt. It is also one of the most rewarding. The partnership that endures across decades does not endure because it was easy or because both partners are uniquely well-suited to each other. It endures because both partners have done the daily work of building and rebuilding it across the years.

If you are in a relationship that is working, honor it. Tend to it. Notice what makes it real, and continue investing in what makes it real. The relationship is not a destination you arrive at. It is the daily practice of choosing to remain in it, to develop with it, to be changed by it across the years.

And if you are searching for a lasting partnership and have not yet found one, the search is real and worth doing. The conditions that produce lasting partnership are recognizable. With enough self-knowledge and enough willingness to do the work, the conditions can be met. The path is rarely linear. The destination, when it is reached, is worth the journey.

Further reading: John Gottman and Julie Gottman, The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work and What Makes Love Last. Sue Johnson, Hold Me Tight. Stan Tatkin, Wired for Love. Esther Perel, Mating in Captivity. For clinical work with couples in California or Florida, visit thecourageousself.com.

April Wright, MA, LMFT is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist in California and Florida specializing in EMDR, sex therapy, and couples counseling. She trained in sex and couples therapy at AACAST at UCLA. She blogs about attachment, healing, and the courageous arts of becoming oneself at courageous-arts.com and sees clients at thecourageousself.com.

One Woman’s Perspective on her Sex Addiction and Recovery

Posted on by helpingsoul

The  following is an interview with a woman who self-identified as being in  recovery from a sex addiction.  She is in her 40’s, professional, and  married with children.  She asked to remain anonymous for the sake of  her privacy; she used the pseudonym “Nora.”  I asked her about her  addiction and about being a woman and sex addict.  I began by asking her  to describe her sexual addiction:

Dr. S: How would you describe your sex addiction?

Nora: At this point in my recovery, many previous problematic  behaviors have dropped away, leaving only the core of my addiction –  which started in early childhood – masturbation with disturbing fantasy.   So in describing my sex addiction, I would say that I have been able  to let go of all my problem behaviors without great difficulty but  struggled to achieve abstinence with masturbation with those  fantasies.  I am currently sober and have been for some time, one day at  a time.   My addiction started in early childhood, and later was  obscured by the acting-out I was doing with men.  But it was all deeply  influenced by the control and rage-based fantasy world which started in  my childhood.

// Dr. S:  How did you know it was an addiction?

Nora: I was unable to stop my behaviors on my own.  I would  make promises to myself to stop having one-night stands, unprotected sex  and falling in desperation (love) with unavailable men.  I would be in  one desperate relationship, and cheat on that person, intrigue with  other men, or cheat on him in my fantasies, and go from one bad  situation to the next – from my teens until my late 20’s.  I started  therapy because I was terribly unhappy, and early-on in treatment my  therapist told me to go to Al Anon because I had a family history and  relationship history being with others who struggled with alcohol and  drugs.  I began understanding I was a co-dependent but I wasn’t able to  yet accept my own sex and sex and love addiction issues.

Dr. S.: What made you accept that you were powerless over it/that it was an addiction?

Nora: Accepting my powerlessness has come in stages in my sex  addiction recovery.  About a year or so into individual therapy my  therapist, who had already told me to go to Al Anon, next told me I  needed to go to SAA [Sex Addicts Anonymous].  I was angry and refused.   I am surprised that somehow I didn’t quit therapy.  But later I was a  bit more open because I could see my inability to stop acting-out  sexually and with love addiction.  I hit bottom.  Prior to my bottom, I  was sure I had met the love of my life: a seminary student who was  moving out of the country in a week.  I was certain I would be able to  convince him to stay and be with me!  When he left and I never heard  from him again I came crashing down.  I remember looking around and  seeing natural beauty, and happy people, and I was miserable.  I  remember thinking that I had to quit these behaviors and get a grip.  I  went into to therapy deeply humbled and told my therapist I was going to  go to SAA meetings.

Dr. S.: What made you feel like you needed recovery?  What did you do for recovery?

Nora: I went to SAA.  Unfortunately I didn’t continue to go to  Al Anon.  I didn’t understand at the time the struggle I had with  co-dependency was as serious as my sex addiction problem.  I was still  confused and thought that now that I was in SAA that would take care of  everything.  Of course it didn’t and later I realized a lot of my  inability to get completely sober in SAA was because I wasn’t working on  my co-dependency.  After a while I returned to Al Anon and remain in  both programs now.  I am not in AA but I understand from AA friends who  also go to Al Anon they consider themselves “double winners”.  I hope  that is true for me as well.

Dr. S.: What have you come to understand are the origins of your sex addiction?

Nora: I believe that its origin was in my early childhood.  I  was raised by two parents both with significant mental illness.  My  mother had a severe anxiety disorder and my father struggled with  depression and rage.  There was a tremendous amount of tension, rage,  and fear present at all times in my family.  My father had been a war  veteran and it was only later in his life that I suspected he likely had  PTSD.  He was also a high functioning alcoholic.  He was terribly  violent and for some strange reason, I took on the role of standing up  to him and often bearing the brunt of his violence while no one in the  family stepped-in or defended me from it.  So I was an extremely angry,  fearful, and anxious kid.  I think my anger saved me but it became  eroticized and the root of my sex addiction.  I had all this anger  directed at wanting to save my mother and defeat my father.   I was  never going to let a man or anyone have power over me and I was never  going to let anyone’s anxiety intrude on me – at least that was my power  fantasy, which of course isn’t – and wasn’t – reality.  I wanted to  have power over men and women.  And in my mixed up thinking thought I  could do that sexually.  Unfortunately my concern about power was not  just with men but in all areas of my life and these issues kept me from  being close and intimate with family, friends, and my partner.  At its  root, I was terrified of intimacy.  My “savior” anger has probably at  the same time turned out to be my worst enemy.  It remains a central  part of my recovery work today.

Dr. S.: What made your recovery different as a woman than  it would be for a man?  Why do you think more women don’t get help for  their sex addiction?

Nora: I think that some of the differences have been that  there are far more men in [SAA] meetings than women.  There have been  more women who identify with the “love addiction” side of things and  sometimes I feel they don’t recognize that “love addiction” is often  eroticized fantasy of power and that has to do with sex as well.  I  sometimes feel isolated and alone, and that there still is as much  social stigma about women being sex addicts as there has been  historically about women being open about having sex.  “It’s just not  done.”  I see all the statistics that show women are becoming addicted  to internet porn in larger and larger numbers, but I am not seeing these  women in my meetings.  It makes me sad.  I have seen a tremendous  increase in attendance in the conference call, women-only meetings but  perhaps that still suggests we women are afraid to go to face to face  meetings?  I am glad for the support of the conference call meetings.

Dr. S.: Have you had any relapses?  How do you think about relapse?

Nora: If you are referring to my inner-circle, or bottom-line  behaviors, I have had no slips in areas such as sex outside of my  relationship, affairs, and intrigue.  But I have had slips with  masturbation and fantasy.  Sometimes I understand the slips and  sometimes I have to work to get it.  I have done a fair amount of  therapy and work the 12-steps and understand that I have to practice my  program, one day at a time.  I don’t believe I can promise never to have  a relapse, and that is not about having one foot out the door or making  excuses.  But I think with regards to my core sex addiction, if I stop  taking care of myself and/or stop working my program, I can find myself  in trouble.  Sometimes I feel I am in my addiction even though I am not  acting-out.  This is when I have lost my grip on the “here and now,” and  I confuse where I am powerless and where I have power.  If I think I  can deal with my addiction or stress by myself, then I am in trouble.  I  know I am powerless over addiction, so one day at a time makes me more  responsible to do everything I can do to stay honest and work the steps  and choose to bear the hard stuff that I used to act-out over.

Interests and Behaviors in Sexuality

Posted on by helpingsoul

Sexuality ContinuesSexuality between consenting adults is a natural and healthy experience and expression of sexual involvement.  It is important to view sexuality positively; respecting and accepting  diverse values and beliefs.  Individuals, communities, and society reap great benefits when  attitudes of tolerance and acceptance of sexual preference is openly discussed.  Internal and external peace are exuberant and social connection harmonizes.

Attractions, desires, fantasies, and life choices vary from person to person and understanding the fluidity of the life cycle and personal choices can unite us.

Sexual preference transforms in various forms such as heterosexual, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, fluid, and queer.  There are also several types of sexual activity and classifications; for instance sexual intercourse, oral sex, mutual masturbation, S&M, bondage, and tantric.    These identities are valid and completely normal.  It is just as typical to be attracted to both genders, engage in heterosexual and homosexual activity as it is to be attracted to just one gender.  It’s a matter of genetics, personality, personal choice, and can even change over time.  It is fluid and evolves as we change throughout our lifetime.  It is an individual predilection and genetic make-up that cannot be affected by the influence of others.

Sexual identity naturally changes as our drive and desire transforms as much as humans logically change over time.  It is dependent on our psyche, life experiences, self exploration, belief systems and personal acceptance.  What attracts us and arouses us is extremely variable. At various stages in one’s life, a person may identify as heterosexual, only to get to a point later in life where they can acknowledge that they are also attracted to members of their own gender. At that point, they may decide to identify as bisexual.

Similarly, someone who has identified as gay might discover that they are attracted to someone of another sex, and their self-identification may change because of their experience. It is common and not strange or uncanny to change sexual identity.  Sexual attraction is a personal endeavor and cannot be converted or influenced by anyone else.  Biology, physiology, and psychology components make it difficult to change an individual’s sexuality.  Gay or lesbian sexual orientations cannot be transformed to heterosexual and vice versa.

Sexual studies have proven that people’s sexual attractions and sexual identification cannot be changed by peer or societal pressure. It is an assumption that everyone is born heterosexual, and that it takes an experience with someone who is already gay, lesbian or bisexual to “convert” a person to being gay, lesbian, or bisexual. Many gay, lesbian, and bisexuals are aware that they have non-heterosexual attractions from the age of three with no adaptation or sexual experiences necessary.

Bisexuality is having the ability to find people of more than one sex attractive.  It’s the capability of being attracted sexually and/or romantically to members of more than one sex. You don’t need to have had sex with someone of the opposite sex to be a heterosexual, or to have had sex with someone of the same sex to know you are a homosexual – you just know what you like and what you find attractive. If you know that you find people of more than one sex to be eye-catching and sexy, you may call yourself bisexual, whether or not you ever have sex with partners of more than one sex.  It’s all a matter what we accept about ourselves and our willingness to express it within our community or to society. Bisexuality is also varied in terms of attractiveness.  Some people find themselves equally attracted to men and women, but many bisexuals find that they are more attracted to people of their own sex, or more attracted to people of another sex. It’s a matter of identifying what group or particular community; straight/heterosexual or queer/homosexual you can relate to most.   The attraction to one or more genders is proportioned differently for each person and can change with time as well. A person may be attracted to one sex forty percent of the time, and members of another sex sixty percent of the time when they are sixteen and then change at the age of thirty-five to seventy-five percent and twenty-five percent.   Bisexuality is not an excuse or a prerogative to have sex with whomever and whatever you want at any given opportunity.  Bisexuals are not sex fiends and just as normal in their sexual frequency as homosexuals, heterosexuals and other Trans identity.

Bisexuals may even be celibate.   Bisexuals in conjunction with any other kind sexual identity have a variety of kinds of relationships over the course of their lives; from one-night-stands to long-term, committed relationships, and they are just as likely to be responsible, loving, faithful partners as anyone else.   Bisexuality doesn’t mean you must have a male and a female partner to feel fulfilled. While some feel best in unconventional relationships where they have more than one partner of whatever sex or gender; it’s not a requirement for being bisexual.  Bisexuals have the same feelings and emotions as all humans.  Persons who consider themselves bisexual bond, fall in love, and have committed relationships.  And like everyone else, bisexuals are capable of being fulfilled or unfulfilled in their relationships dependent on the health of the relationship. Being bisexual doesn’t mean you are hiding the fact you really are gay or lesbian.  It’s still as difficult to pass or identify yourself as gay, bisexual or transgender in our society.  Heterosexuality is falsely accepted as the norm.

People of bisexual nature are not the same as individuals who consider themselves straight.  It may be confusing at times to see a person romantically involved with a person of the same sex and then a few months or years later romantically involved with a person of the opposite sex.   There shouldn’t be an automatic assumption that same-sex partners are gay and a bisexual person with an opposite-sex partner is straight.  A bisexual person doesn’t change their identity from gay or lesbian to heterosexual, they are bisexual consistently.

Having sex with a person of the same sex, doesn’t mean you are gay or bisexual.   The way you choose to identify yourself is up to you. The only person who can determine personal labels is you.

Be realistic and truthful about what that may mean for you in terms of knowing how to have safer sex with someone of the same sex as you.  Bisexuality is not the determent to spreading STI/HIV/AIDS because people of such orientation have sex with homosexuals and heterosexuals.   Sexual preference is not the culprit; unprotected sex with infected partners and passing it to an uninfected partner is the origin of the problem.  It is the responsibility of each person to be honest, conscientious and make healthy sexual choices.

Love, Jealousy, Rejection and Control

Posted on by helpingsoul

Love is an expression of our emotions, feelings and affection toward someone. When it comes to a spouse, love can bring to life our full potential and creativity. When love proceeds with abuse, it can be debilitating and demeaning. Love is a choice followed by action. Our personal values, beliefs and actions determine what is real love versus fantasy and abusive “love.”

Love is not ownership. Humans are not pieces of property, objects, nor possessions. When mates consider lovers “theirs”, it leads to abusive, imprisoning and damaging behavior.

In moderation, jealousy can be healthy. Suspicion can signal we feel threatened. Feelings can be useful to alert us that we need to investigate and evaluate the particular situation at greater length. Healthy love involves asking questions and honestly sharing concerns and fears with our loved one.

Jealousy becomes destructive when assumptions overrun any reality or truths. Envy overrun goals of connection and real intimacy. Jealousy usually comes from hurt, neglect, or sense of abandonment. When we react to those feelings with jealousy and don’t address core issues, pain continues to spiral downward.

Further investigation into understanding our jealousy may reveal personal insecurity, unworthiness, fears, unhappiness, and false beliefs projected on our partner. The solution begins when we become aware of our reactions and instead response mindfully. Confront jealousy by labeling and noticing feelings and thoughts and then nurture those feelings of hurt with self-care and finding the facts.

First gain personal power and gain control of your emotions by acknowledging them. Refrain from reactive, abusive behavior.

Second, shift the focus and examine other perspectives. As we look at the situation from the other person’s point of view, we give ourselves time to access the condition from several outlooks.

Next identify core beliefs that are creating the reaction and determine any truths and falsehoods. Remember insecurity and low self-esteem can create false images.

Call a friend, talk to a therapist, or contact a neutral, unbiased person to aid in awareness and broaden perspectives. Communication with uninvolved friends, family, or professional can help us validate reality, confront inadequacies and develop control. Finally, we can consciously choose the most logical approach for the most effective and kind response.

If it comes to fail, our jealousy is warranted, and we feel rejected, it hurts. Rejection stings and it burns a lot. However, it is no excuse to cause harm or react with vengeful words. It is an opportune time to practice self-love and nurture. Most times rejection is not personal even though it may feel that way.

When we are enmeshed rejection feels like abandonment, primarily when we abandon our truth and feelings. When we deny our thoughts and feelings, we usually then say hurtful things. We may blame our partner and portray the image that their decisions control us. However, we are responsible for our actions, our feelings, and our choices. Sometimes it is difficult to bear personal responsibility but turmoil only succeeds. Many people falsely assume that “she makes me happy” or that he “needs” her to be happy. Enmeshment presents this falsehood and limitless boundaries.

Our most intimate relationships often, trigger childhood memories of abandonment, hurt, or abuse. Enmeshment and no individuation position our lover on a pedestal to control how we feel about ourselves.

It takes time to build self-esteem, self-love, and acceptance to be entirely independent. We no longer need someone else to show us our value and worth. We know that we matter and treat ourselves respectfully and create healthy boundaries and tolerances of weakness and strengths. We mature into an independent, loving, kind and accepting adult. We can regulate our emotions by reaching out to a friend and taking care of ourselves with kindness.

Jealousy can be useful and with awareness we can use this natural feeling to our advantage by practicing self-care, reaching out, and exploring alternatives. We can choose to be happy independently regardless of how someone else behaves. Don’t let jealousy enter unhealthy false beliefs, and controlling behaviors enacted through fears and hurts.

If we feel jealousy or rejected, it is a good time to reflect upon ourselves, analyze and access the events. Evaluate from different perspectives, outlooks and points of view. It can be painful emotionally but also a time for growth and maturity.

We all make choices for many reasons. They may be due to a means of survival; to learn, to grow, to experiment. Whatever the reason, it is not a time to judge or demean.

We all make mistakes, and different choices than what we think are best, regardless it is not a time to judge. Our best solution is to look within and control the one thing we can; ourselves. We are all independent. Our happiness and emotions are independent of anyone else. We choose how we respond and not react. Choose with awareness and calmness. Remember, no one makes us do anything. Accept responsibility for our actions, emotions and behavior. There are always consequences when emotions such as jealousy, anger, and envy act outward or inward negatively. Focus on the positive and have the courage to ask for help when feelings reach adverse outcomes with drugs, alcohol, overeating, workaholism, gambling, and abusive relationships.

Mindfulness Mediation

Posted on by helpingsoul

Sometimes it takes hardship to get to know yourself in a real way, and within a coherent framework.  I got lost in a relationship but now I am stronger, more self assured, and have improved insight.

I am proud of my new found knowledge about myself through mindfulness mediation and writing.  I have a gift now to share to other women; helping them to achieve more healthier relationships, self-respect, confidence and boundaries.

With mindfulness meditation, you can re-wiring your brain.  You can literally change and grow neural connections which support finding and creating better relationships. It is possible for your brain to become more like those who grew up knowing how to love and be loved in healthy, sustainable ways.

We are all not so fortunate to grow up with healthy, attuned attachments. Childhood attachment is the emotional bond that typically forms between infant and caregiver, usually a parent.  It stimulates brain growth, affects personality development and a lifelong ability to form stable relationships. Neuroscientists now believe that attachment is such a primal need that there are networks of neurons in the brain dedicated to it, and the process of forming lasting bonds is powered in part by the hormone oxytocin.

Even though we may not have had childhood attachment, we can re-wire our brains for better relationships.  Mindfulness mediation can help with the nine essential characteristics for healthy relationships.

1. Better management of your body’s reactions; stress and anger management.

2. Emotional resiliency; regulating your emotions and restoring an unpleasant mood back to baseline with ease and efficiency.

3. Better, more adaptable, agreeable communication.

Mindfulness meditation helps you to be a more attuned communicator and it can be contagious to loved one as well. Good communication entails listening and understanding without distortion, and responding in a way contingent upon your partners needs instead of your own inner filters and desires.

4. Response flexibility.

Mindfulness meditation improves response flexibility and creates an emotional regulator where space and time allow careful thought for a more positive mindful, conscious response instead of just crying whenever receiving criticism or blaming others and yelling when you feel ashamed.

5. Improved empathy.

Mindfulness meditation improves the ability to identify with and understand somebody else’s feelings or difficulties but without losing your awareness of your own state of mind.  It’s the ability to separate a desire to support and feel affinity with but still remaining constant in your state of mind; without their solemn mood affecting yours.

6. Improved insight (self-knowing).

Mediation practice improves self awareness within a logically and aesthetically consistent credible and harmonious whole.  Mediating and writing regularly allows us to practice our ability to notice what our brain is thinking.  An increased knowledge and capacity to tell the difference between momentary and ever-changing events, and who we really are is achieved.

7. Better modulation of fear.

Mindfulness mediation allows you to soothe your feelings and be more comfortable when you’re afraid.  You are able to regulate things which once scared you (He’s going to leave me; I’m not enough for her).  It’s important in relationships to have ready access to being able to calm yourself when you’re anxious, so that your reactions and interactions aren’t overrun by your fight-flight-freeze response.  Once you are not as reactive to emotional fear, you change your entire experience of being in an adult-to-adult relationship.

8. Enhanced intuition.

There’s actually increasing neurochemical and cellular evidence of a second brain in our viscera; internal abdominal and intestinal organs. Our viscera, and the rest of our body – our muscles, eyes, ears, skin, and so on – are telling us something. If we pay attention to the messages our body is telling us, the mindfulness practice enhances the ability to be attuned to yourself, and what you unconsciously know – what we can refer to as “intuition.”  Becoming emotionally aware and act rationally and logically in conjunction with our body enhances your ability to be in conscious relationships with yourself and with others.

9. Increased morality.

Evidence shows that when people learn to meditate and practice regularly, their perceptions of their place in the world begins to shift – something corroborated by family members. They become more broadly compassionate, more likely to act on their highest principles, and demonstrate greater interest in the social good – what can very reasonably seen as living with higher morals. It’s like having a healthier relationship with your whole community, not just the people closest to you.

Try mediating for twenty minutes and open your mind to your thoughts, feelings and emotions.  Pay attention what is consistent and what fades.  Learn about who you are and the goals you want to achieve. Spend another twenty minutes and write down what you have learned.  Keep a journal and awaken yourself to a whole new awareness and brighter self.

Great Quote

Posted on by helpingsoul

“The relinquishing of judgmentalism greatly increases the capacity of Love, as does surrendering the wanting of anything from others. Thus, people are not perceived according to what they have or do but by appreciation for what they have become.”

~ “Transcending the levels of consciousness” – subtitle, The stairway to enlightenment. written by: David R. Hawkins, M.D., Ph.D.


Sex is not a Relationship

Posted on by helpingsoul

Sex is not a relationship.  Sex is a physical, biochemically driven act.   There is no evidence that chemicals are released in a woman’s brain that initiates a bonding with a man she has sex with.  Both sexes can form bonds from sex – or not – depending upon circumstances.  But the choice to employ intellect and see the act as purely pleasure, purely physical is a quality humans possess; otherwise each sexual liaison would lead to a relationship.   Taking it from there, relationships form from time spent with someone where spending that time together results in a mutual desire to spend more time.  It’s over time that a bond grows, not in an instant (or 30 minutes of sex).   Sex can be great (even better) when there are no strings attached.  Most men understand this too.

Our emotions come into play when we are feeling “underpowered” such as when we are sick, stressed, etc.  At those times we can view sex as an emotional event, when we are not already attached emotionally to the person, because we need and want the emotional support.  At those times the touch of another human can be comforting and soothing and make us feel (mistakenly) that we are emotionally attached (or could be) to the person providing it.

Many marriages are engaged in for this reason and then end (badly) because the two people find out later that they were just looking for a “port in a storm” and mislead themselves about their feelings.

Getting back to the “friendship rules” concept, it is completely true that a relationship is dependent on the many things that happen before and after sex – not on what happens in bed.  If we like the person, enjoy their company, conversation, value system, etc. then we can become “close” to them.  Sex can add to this but cannot make up for its absence.  We must learn to be friends and then a relationship builds.  Women need to understand this so that they can expect less and, thus, be hurt less.

See the world and its realities and the road to happiness is paved with a surface of realism.  There is great value to sex and the value of a good relationship and know that they are separate things.

Social Goggles

Posted on by helpingsoul

Society looks through the lens of social goggles; seeing the world as rules are laid out for them. Wandering through a life set by laws, being ‘good citizens’ they wonder why they are unhappy. If you look at the world realistically, consider that the rules are not natural human nature.

Little girls are preprogrammed starting at a young age to stay away from boys and they are bad. An example from my childhood was when I was four a boy similar in age and I was curious. We had never seen each others ‘parts’, slithered to the back corner of my bedroom closet behind the hanging clothes and slipped our pants down to discover the difference. It was purely innocent but soon my Mother discovered us hiding in the closet and yelled at the young boy to get out of the house. She embarrassed and shamed me in front of this blameless boy as he ran home.

Once he left, my Mom stood me in front of her in the living room as she sat on the couch and scolded and told me how wrong it was to pull down my panties in front of a boy. I would be thought of as a “slut” or “whore” and “We don’t want the neighborhood to think of you in that way.”

I remembered feeling horrified and so shameful for what I did. I was confused. I didn’t hurt anyone. How could it be so wrong just to look? I was just a curious little girl.

Perhaps my Mom was jealous, insecure or even selfish because she didn’t want the possibility for guys to like me and she would have to fend off men as I grew older. I know she didn’t want to take away my innocence that parent’s value yet envy so much. They live vicariously through the purity of their children hoping they will see hope ahead even if it is to children’s detriment.

Soon little girls and boys learn to think on their own and rebel from their parents. It is difficult as they explore and find out for themselves what the opposite sex is all about.

Rebellion though may not lead to learning and growing to come into your own. It takes many years to discover who you are. The more you interact and meet people, you learn about yourself and what you like in others but there is still conflict from our preprogramming.

Women are pressured to get married and feel inadequate if they aren’t. When they do get married, there is over a 50% chance you will get a divorce. Why is this? Do we marry and then give up as if we got our price and the competition is over so I don’t need to try anymore. Or do we marry too early, not knowing the person well enough or perhaps even ourselves? I don’t know the exact answer. All I know is that marriage is a value most women posses. Men don’t have the same pressure as females but it is there.

I foresee the solution is to seek outside the rules. Learn who you are first. Become aware of what you like, don’t like and be confident in all that you are. Find a purpose, live out your dreams, desires and fantasies and love will come naturally.

It’s better to live life in your personal set of values than remaining conflicted and angry resulting in a psychological state from unconscious opposition between simultaneous but incompatible desires, needs, drives, or impulses.

If parents just allowed their children to naturally explore the world on their own anger, envy, and rebellion is avoided. Children are innocent; it is a wonderful thing. Don’t take it away from them because you are ashamed of your acts of rebellion and resentment.

If children were loved, supported, and free to roam naturally, bitterness is prevented. Rules are needed for fundamental moral values and etiquette and punishing for demeaning or hurtful behavior and acting out. The best rule is to treat others as you would like to be treated; with mutual respect.

The golden rule is that a person attempting to live by this rule treats all people, not just members of his or her in-group with consideration. The golden rule, with roots in a wide range of world cultures, is well suited to be a standard to which different cultures could appeal in resolving conflicts even in our own head.