Headlock Dentistry

Found here

These two refined gentlemen are demonstrating a headlock. There is no way for the man with the bulging veins in his temples and the cauliflower nose to get away from the bemuscled, bearded man holding him captive in a sterroid haze. It is testosterone at its best.

This image that flashed through my mind the other day when I walked in to the dentist's office to get a crown. I have a tooth that cracked around a filling and after putting it off for about four years, it was time. I felt sick with worry and had a lapse in judgment that allowed me to comment to the hygienist about it.
"I have really dreaded this!" I remarked as I sat down on the surprisingly comfortable dentist chair.
"Wow," she said sarcastically. "I've never heard that one before, in eleven years!"

Okay, then. I brought my remarks to a rapid close.

Arranging myself in the chair under the light with the side handles on it, I remembered sitting under one of these in Minnesota. It was when the headlock occurred. Instantly, I found myself having a hard time distinguishing between the events in Minnesota and these taking place in California.
There I had sat, in the chair in Minnesota, my Middle-Eastern dental resident at the U of MN dental clinic, looking grimly down at me.

"Please deaden the tooth well because I'm really sensitive and also really nervous."


"I will give you two shots and that will be enough." Not even a flicker of kindness or sympathy could be seen on her face.

Of course, it wasn't enough. I found this out when she began tapping my tooth with the end of this long metal instrument. It was all I could do not to fly through the ceiling.

"Grmwph!" I moaned.

"Now stop it," she barked. "Just let me get this tooth done. You have nothing to worry about."

"It is very painful, still," I said plaintively.

"Relax!" she said to me in a scolding voice. "If you don't relax, I'll have to take a long needle and shoot the medicine straight down into the head of your tooth. Do you want me to do that?" It was a tone of voice that one might take with a naughty child.

At that point, I didn't care what she had to do to numb the tooth. Just stop tapping on it with that instrument.

"Please give me more deadening medicine before you continue," I choked out.

That's when the headlock happened. As quickly as I could say it, she had me in a headlock and was drilling down into that tooth. The nerve sang out and I pressed my head back into the chair headrest, as if that would help me get away from her. But I couldn't. It was awful. I couldn't scream--I had a mouthful of dental dam and one of those extensor things that held my mouth open. No, I couldn't do anything about any of it except to hang on to the sides of the seat while she drilled into my very sensitive tooth. There was no dental assistant to recruit as an ally. Just me and the heartless dentist.

At the end of the session, I jumped to my feet, went out to the front desk and reported this woman to the receptionist. She looked alarmed and now that I think about it, it could have been either because of my story, or how I looked. I was crying, talking excitedly, and must have had a wild glare in my eyes. I was thoroughly traumatized by this experience.
The dental intern was reported and it was said that she had received dire consequences for her behavior. I hoped so, because I have also experienced dire consequences for her actions, specifically, my irrational tears and panic whenever I sit waiting for my dentist.

My dentist could not have been nicer. He didn't seem to mind that I was crying and trying to look brave. I never felt even one of the many injections he gave me. As my face became numb and my goofy muscle-less grin made me feel like I had only half a head, he smiled and told me stories in a most reassuring way. I drooled out my headlock story and he explained how many ways he could numb up my tooth and whole head if needed. So I sank back into the chair, shut my eyes, and waited for the job to be done. I never felt a thing. What a miracle of modern dentistry and kindness.
I'm going back to have the permanent crown placed this afternoon. There are no headlock jitters. Praise be!

Stages of Love--Stage III

The third stage of love has a double-barreled name: Acceptance and Commitment. It comes to members of a couple slowly, one at a time. The realization and acceptance of one's imperfections, propensities, and limitations seems to help couples turn the corner from the Anger and Resentment phase to this stage. It is not an overnight epiphany that leads people to lean a bit closer together, but something might happen that helps a recalcitrant marriage partner to realize that their spouse has excellent qualities that are either hard to come by elsewhere, or that far outweigh the negative features that have been in such sharp focus in previous months or years.

So, he picks his teeth at the table. By now, he knows that you don't like it and will probably comment on it. But he also knows that you're on his side and are not trying to be mean spirited when you tell him that it turns your stomach to see him do that.
She realizes that when her husband launches into a list of instructions and solutions in response to her expression of a feeling, that this is his way to express protectiveness and care for her.

During this phase, couples seem to settle into a more predictable way of relating. Some couples become more companionate within this higher level of commitment. They don't automatically think of revenge or divorce when they are annoyed at their partner. They accept that relationships and people are not perfect, but that by focusing on the good qualities and negotiating more difficult elements of behavior, there is a good and comfortable fit. For some, it is a fantastic fit and the relief of coming to this conclusion is almost visible. Since they are not putting forth so much energy to contend with one another any more, they can relax and enjoy each other for qualities that may have been previously obscured because of their criticisms of one another.

There is another type of commitment and acceptance that is less satisfying but probably more common. Individuals who find it difficult to be emotionally engaged at a deep level with another person will often use bickering and irritability to maintain a degree of emotional distance from their partner so they do not feel threatened or vulnerable. Such individuals are often married to a partner who can't tolerate high degrees of emotional intimacy either, even though they complain about their partner's beligerant or distant behavior. Both spouses have predictable ways of avoiding physical and/or emotional intimacy with one another: abuse, rescuing, affairs, apathy, and polyamory, to name a few common patterns. Other couples' ways of relating may be quite cerebral, foregoing physical affection or tenderness. The begging and pleading of a partner who wants more demonstrates a reciprocal response to the withholding partner. Even this distancer-persuer dynamic, as unsatisfying as it is, can be accepted as the way life will be, and can mark the behavior of couples over the course of their marriage.

Couples come to marriage with explicit and implicit expectations. These are tested and strengthened over the first few years of life together. By the Acceptance and Commitment stage, the emotional marital contract has been worked out or accepted as "as good as it gets."
Explicit expectations may be agreements about who will work, who will raise children if there are any, and who is going to be responsible for what household responsibilities. These may cause disagreement, but are generally open to discussion one way or the other. It is the implicit expectations that contribute to the uproar in the Anger and Resentment stage, and that finally are somehow managed satisfactorily by the time the couple reaches the Acceptance and Commitment stage.

Implicit expectations involve things such as what Paul Rosenblatt of the University of Minnesota calls shadow realities. These are issues that if openly addressed, could undermine the functionality of the relationship. An example is the unspoken expectation that one partner will behave in a dependent and helpless way so as not to show up the other partner. Or that one partner will be a caretaker for the other and will not place any demand for his or her needs to be met by the care receiver. There is considerable positioning and one-upsmanship that occurs as couples go through the process of working out these implicit marital contracts without discussing them overtly. Those couples, in which one partner has succumbed to the pressure of the other spouse to conform to some expectation or behavioral pattern, have arrived at the Acceptance and Commitment stage.

Still others recognize that their marriage might not be a case of immortal lovers, but it is a good-enough marriage that meets the majority of their needs. They will often settle into the predictability of a devitalized marriage without the interest or willingness to improve it. Such marriages can be quite stable for years.
nb: marital stability does not equal marital satisfaction.

So the love relationship continues to move on through time. Research reveals that about every seven years or so, the relationship is renegotiated on some level or in some area, in order to accommodate the growth and experience of each partner. Growing pains would be a good way to describe these little upheavals. For some, personal growth and variation can be like a mudslide, catapaulting the relationship into the sea.But for those whose marriages are satisfying, and who are able to be flexible and accommodating, the marriage sails on to newer levels of understanding and shared intimacy.

Christmas Celebration

It has been a good Christmas season. I took Mother and her good friend, Evelyn, to a Christmas concert that was great. They are so cute walking together: holding hands and leaning against one another as they walk down the street. Best friends--that's them.

One of my students from Kenya came over to help me make Christmas goodies. She is a star student and a wonderful person. She made coconut macaroons for our celebration.

These two little livewires hailing from Jamaica and Haiti added quite a bit of zip to the evening. They gave us unending entertainment in the way of impromptu performances of their [sometimes incomprehensible and partially shouted] songs. Here you see them clowning around with my kayak hats which provided no end of amusement for them.

Of course, what would the evening be without involving Sam in the wild goings on? These boys and Sam kept up an almost continual taunting and goofing off. I was relieved to finally have silence after these little characters lurched off out the front door into the cold darkness that night. Sam collapsed into the chair. Mother began laughing and said, "You know how, when you're a young person you can't understand why old people don't like kids?" She paused and threw her head back against the couch. "Well, I never understood that. But tonight I did and I now I realize that I'm old!" and she howled with laughter.

We had laughed, eaten goodies, talked heart-to-heart, played, run, and sung together. I had even had a running obligato accompaniament when I played for us to sing. It was a nice evening when we welcomed Christmas to our home.

Stages of Love--Part II

Found here

Resentment is the next stage of marriage. Oh no, it doesn't come out of left field or shock partners when it does hit. There have been little indicators that they have differences and really don't care for some behaviors or comments of the other. But in the Dopamine-induced (pleasure hormone) haze of positive feelings that occurs in the Limerence phase and beyond, these objectionable things have been brushed aside, rationalized, idealized. But at some point, the glassy eyes of love give away to glares of resentment and shock.

You hear references to this in those quiet whispers that a woman makes to her best friend--often tearfully or angrily: "I can't believe that he never learned manners growing up. It drives me nuts." Or, "I've got to figure out how to get him to--(any of these:) lighten up, be more romantic, brush his teeth more often, stop embarassing me with his critical comments in public..." ad infinitum. Friends listen sympathetically, suggest that the couple go to counseling, and the humiliated complainer brings her comments to a rapid close. "We're not that bad!" But he's driving her crazy because suddenly, all she can see are his faults. And there are plenty.

Why on earth did I marry this guy? she will ask herself. What was I thinking? How will I live the rest of my adult life tied to someone with these faults? And she begins grieving the rest of her life that she will live out encumbered by this man whose parents didn't raise him right, who has more character flaws than she knew existed, and whose imperfections are a continual, rankling source of embarassment and frustration.

Maybe if I try to change him I won't be so miserable. Out come all the self-help books and magazine articles. How about a Marriage Encounter weekend (if she can trick him into going)? So women typically, are the ones who are working very hard to try to turn their husbands into someone that they thinks they will be happy with, and there are all sorts of ways to go about this. But the bottom line is that he doesn't change. Interestingly enough, she doesn't change, either. She keeps hammering away at him trying to get him to be more of this and less of that, and in the end, there is either escalating conflict, overt power plays on the side of one or the other, or an emotional standoff. This marriage is just not what I thought it would be.

Meanwhile, he is frustrated with her. Why can't she be sweet like my mother was? Why does she have to gain so much weight? Why doesn't she want sex more often like she used to? Why does she have to get on my back about everything? I just want to enjoy my life: keep the yard looking good, come home after work and watch the game. After all, he tells himself, I don't go out and carouse. Or maybe he has started to, since being at home is irritating--kids crying, upset wife. He begins to withdraw and take less of an interest in her. He tries to remain calm, but he finds himself being put off by some of the things she says and does. It becomes easy to start ordering her around, or saying snide things about her weight, or making fun of how she looks. Of course, this does not engender a more intimate relationship, either.

These are more extreme accounts of what can happen, culled from a clinical population at my job. But I have to say that just about every marriage experiences some of these symptoms. It just depends on how well they are able to communicate, how much they are invested in the relationship, and how much they love one another. It can also depend on their religious commitment to remaining in the marriage. A series of interesting studies done by David Olson at the University of Minnesota, indicate that couples who do not consider divorce an option because of their religious beliefs, have less satisfying relationships overall. This is not surprising. They answer to God, but not to each other. They may be close to God but not necessarily to each other.

The frenetic efforts to change one's partner starts in about year two and hit its zenith around year seven. You've heard of the rule of sevens in marriage (every seven years a marriage is at risk to break down). It's true, and this is the first hurdle.

It is hard work to negotiate the relationship at this point, and to do it in a way that isn't shaming, guilt-producing, or forceful. It is equally hard to look at oneself and realize that while your partner has flaws you didn't know about when you married them and you certainly don't like now, it's even harder to realize that your own flaws make you a real piece of work, too. By year seven, your partner has seen you at your emotional and physical worst: you've been caught redhanded in your worst behavior, you've been very sick and vomited in front of your partner, and shown him some of your unsavory disposition when you're upset.

There are a couple outcomes of the Resentment Phase. One is simply that one partner acquiesces to the other and their poor behavior, thinking that they are impossible to influence or change. John Gottman, a famous researcher on couples, points out that in marriages at this point and in which the man will not speak with his wife about her needs, or who will not listen to her feedback about his behavior, are headed for grave trouble. If they hold together as a couple, the wife will eventually become quite depressed and unmotivated in the marriage. Or they both retreat emotionally and begin to live in parallel worlds, no longer willingly admitting their partner. In other words, the door closes.

Other couples start an approach-avoidance dance meant to keep the other somewhat nearby, but not too close. The goal is to diminish emotional investment but maintain familiarity and the benefits that can be gained in the marriage. These are the couples that you see in restaurants who sit at the table and say nothing but "Pass the salt."

Some partners put their spouse in the doghouse, so to speak, and there is nothing that the spouse can do to get out.

The final outcome is typically divorce or a seriously devitalized marriage.

Yes, they continue to live together and there are times when they struggle doing so.

But we're still together, they say.

Let heaven and nature sing...

The positive outcome of the Resentment Stage occurs when both partners take stock of themselves and begin taking responsibility for the behaviors and traits that are problematic. And happy couples ride out the waves, committed to each other, but not blindly ignoring the challenges that they face. They are able to negotiate how to relate to each other. They remain committed to honesty, while embracing the humanity of each other. Both are committed to the happiness of the other and both recognize their own contributions to the resentment of the other. About half of couples come through the Resentment Phase without getting a divorce. But a much smaller percentage actually move beyond the behaviors and manage to actually enjoy each other. Just look at the married people sitting in restaurants together.

Those who do make it through are very happy to get to the next phase.