Attachment Part I

When babies are tiny, they rely on their parents for everything: physical needs, mental stimulation, emotional warmth, cleanliness, interactive modeling. Some babies have the luxury of having a consistent, attentive parent. These children are said to develop a secure attachment to their parents. They also are the most likely of any attachment type to have secure, long lasting relationships.

Sometimes a child's caretaker is "on" and sometimes they're "off" (absent somehow). So while the parent is present, the child's needs are met. The rest of the time they pine for their parent, wishful, tearful, and worried that they'll be abandoned and miss out on their parent's love forevermore. These children grow up to be people pleasers or clingy partners who frequently wonder whether or not they are truly loved or secure in the relationship.

Children whose parent doesn't seem to recognize their needs, or who doesn't give eye contact or attention, often form something called an avoidant attachment style. Perhaps the parent is an alcoholic or has a mental illness and can't give a child the attention she needs. But that little girl learns quickly that no matter what she does, she can't get her mother to connect to her. So she quits trying. The problem is that she assumes that she can't get anyone else's consistent attention either so she becomes a loner.

There are other reasons why children form certain attachment styles. A child can tend toward an anxious or avoidant attachment style if they have frequent hospitalizations that keeps them separated from their parent. This is through no fault of the parent--it is just how life happens. It can happen as a result of abuse, divorce, or other family disruption such as incarceration or service in the war. The child may have recalled happy, secure days. But the sudden change and emotional disorientation leads to an anxiety that is manifested in future relationships as fear that it will quickly change for the worst, too.

The kinds of attachments that we facilitate with our babies and young children become templates for how they relate to significant others as adults. It is a serious thing to have children and to raise them to set in place lifelong relational trends. God must really love parents and have mercy on those little ones who depend on them.

Who Are You?

We went to a potluck today after church. It was a very small group of people who sat around in the lower level of someone's home and chatted over plates heaped high with good food. A young couple sat near Sam and I, and we fell into conversation with them. She is a medical student and he is a grant writer for a large corporation. Sam, ever the chatty, friendly man, shared about his job as a patient representative at the medical center. Somewhere in the conversation he made reference to either speaking Spanish or having a disgruntled patient call him an epithet in Spanish. The girl laughed. Sam asked her about any Spanish connection she may have. In a few minutes, their voices were shrill with excitement as they recognized that their families go way back. The girl's mother and Sam used to live next door to each other in a duplex in East Los Angeles, 50 years ago. He knew her parents when they were dating in college. And then I used to live across the street from them. Her mother is a singer and so am I. There were many days when I could sit in my upstairs apartment over Mr. Cole's garages and hear Lina vocalize across the street in her duplex. As her voice would soar, I often listened to see how high she could go. Hearing her sing in church was a delight.
Now, here was her beautiful daughter. She has her mother's personality and her father's looks. She became an entirely different person, chattering away with Sam, so excited and referring to us as "family." Sam, on the other hand, couldn't wipe the grin off his face. He loves keeping up family and friend relationships.
But what was this? Her husband's uncles used to be students of my father in New York, years ago. After discovering this, it seemed as though we had stumbled upon our long lost family members. Being part of a close knit, small demonimation that is world wide means that anywhere I go, I will find someone that knows someone I know. It is truly a family that we belong to.

Say What?

Sedum, found here

I was grading papers over the weekend and came across some comments that brought forth a chuckle:

"Her asthma was exasperated by stress." [exacerbated]

"All my uncles had prostrate issues." Does this mean all the men in that family couldn't get off the floor?

And this on an instruction sheet written by a voice teacher who is trying to help me get better breath control when I sing: "Wrap something snug around your waste like an ace bandage or a sweater." Yick.

I just love it when people tangle up their words like this. It can be especially challenging when the wrong thing is said in a setting where you can't laugh.

The husband of one of my father's dying patients once tearfully confided in him, "I was the one who broke her hyphen sixty years ago" [hymen]. Daddy bit the inside of his mouth trying not to react to this remark.

One church service in my memory has taken on a life of its own. During the morning prayer my pastor decided to weave the title of his sermon into the prayer in a rather clever way. The title was, "The Plight of the Clay Pot" and was based on Romans 9:21. As everyone was carried along with the pastor's prayer, he uttered these enigmatic words:
"And Lord, as we consider the clight of the play plot...the plate of the clay clot...the plight of the ply plot...the clate of the pie plot...." I snuck a look at the other pastors. Two of them were covering their mouths and one was shaking with laughter. I shut my eyes as the pastor said with real emotion, "Oh Lord, you know our hearts..." and moved on in his prayer. There were a lot of twinkling eyes at the end of that prayer!

Another time, I excused myself from the church pew to make a quick bathroom stop before the service began. When I stepped back into the pew the organ was playing. Mother and my friend, Pam, however, had their heads in their hands and were laughing so hard they were wiping tears off their faces. I'm not sure how much they got out of the sermon because they were laughing off and on throughout the morning and it seemed that one didn't dare look at each other.

They later told me that as they had been waiting for the sermon to start, they commented on the hill ascending from the garden that could be seen directly through the floor to ceiling window behind the altar.
"What would you do if you could landscape that, Pam?" Mother asked.
Pam looked at the hill, devoid of much vegetation, and stated that she'd put spring flowers at the base of it and maybe a fountain somewhere nearby.
Reflecting momentarily on her love for seadum, Mother announced, "If it were up to me, I'd love to see an avalanche of semen out on that hill."
Pam sat immobile, staring at Mother in what she later called "therapist face" and nodded woodenly. "Really?"
My father suddenly took an interest in the conversation and turned in the pew to look at Mother. Was she all right?
As she heard her words ring in her mind, she suddenly realized what she said. "Did I say what I think I said?" she asked, horrified.
That was when the giggling started. We have never let her live that one down.

Once, Dr. Spooner, after whom the term "spoonerisms" was named, offered a salute to the Queen of England by saying, "Three cheers for our queer old dean!"
He later tried to comfort his students with patriotic rhetoric: "When our boys come home from France, we will have the hags flung out!"

A radio announcer who had recently visited the queen reported that he had been met "with a twenty-one son galoot." Indeed.

We humans need to express ourselves. Delightfully, some do it with real creativity!

For my friend

Today I heard from a friend who is struggling through her difficult battle with chemotherapy for cancer. It is a very difficult experience. Please keep her in your prayers.

When stormy winds against us break

Stablish and reinforce our will;

O hear us for Thine own name's sake,

Hold us in strength, and hold us still.

Still as the faithful mountains stand,

Through the long, silent years of stress;

So would we wait at Thy right hand

In quietness and steadfastness.

but not of us this strength, O Lord,

And not of us this constancy.

Our trust is Thine eternal Word,

Thy presence our security.

Amy Carmichael

Tips for Later Life

Being a therapist who often provides sex therapy, this story absolutely cracks me up. It just shows that it is good to check out what we see and hear. (My apologies to those readers who will find this to be a scandalous tale).

The husband leans over and asked his wife, "Do you remember the first time we had sex together over 50 yrs ago? We went behind this very tavern where you leaned against the back fence and I made love to you.

"Yes, she said, "I remember it very well."

"Ok," he said, "How about taking a stroll around there again and we can do it for old time's sake?"

"Oh Charlie, you old devil, that sounds like a crazy but good idea!"

A police officer sitting in the next booth heard their conversation and having a chuckle to himself, he thinks to himself, "I've got to see these two seniors having sex against a fence. I'll keep an eye on them so there's no trouble."

So he follows them.

The elderly couple walks haltingly along, leaning on each other for support aided by walking sticks. Finally, they get to the back of the tavern and make their way to the fence.The woman lifts her skirt and the man drops his trousers. As she leans against the fence, the old man moves in.Then suddenly they erupt into the most furious sex that the policeman has ever seen. This goes on for ten minutes while both are making loud noises and screaming. Finally, they collapse, panting, on the ground.The policeman is amazed. He thinks he has learned something about life and later years that he didn't know.

After about twenty minutes of lying on the ground recovering, the couple struggle to their feet and pull their clothes back around them properly. The policeman is still watching and think to himself, "This is truly amazing, I've got to ask them what their secret is."

So as the elderly couple walks by him, he says to them, "Forgive me for noticing, but I saw what happened over there against the fence, and that was something else. You must have had a fantastic sex life together. Is there some sort of secret to this?"

Shaking, the man is barely able to reply, "Fifty years ago that wasn't an electric fence!"

Confused Dreams

Found here

So I went to bed last night feeling quite tired. It has been an exhausting 10 days since I stopped in here. I was so tired that I couldn't make it back to the hospital to do my rounds and see my patients. Just completely wiped out. As I was leaving the hospital, I checked in to one department to introduce my intern to the staff and tell them what medical family therapists do and that we are available to them should they ever be interested. The woman in that office smiled a rather stiff smile and made a comment about me not stepping on the toes of social workers. Yes, of course, I reassured her. We stick pretty close to psychiatry, whose service we are part of. Something about the way she spoke to me and the look in her eyes made me wonder if she could be trusted. I've already been lambasted by social workers and a chaplain who did not appreciate the overlap in our various jobs and set out to defend their turf in a most unfriendly manner. So I've kept a very low profile and taught my students to do the same. We see the patients who we are assigned, and that is the size of it. There is plenty of work for us and I'm not looking for more.
So I came home, ate a light supper and climbed into bed. Very, very tired. My plan was to sleep early, then go in to the hospital first thing and make rounds--to see those three additional patients who really needed sessions. I know the units where I need to make myself scarce, and because I'm not one to make a row, I had a certain amount of dread to do my work. With a head full of thoughts, I drifted off to sleep.

Funny, what our minds do when we are anxious. Sometime this morning, I dreamed that I was on a blind date with one of the chaplains--someone I have no attraction to. We went to a dinner party and I was seated at a table with two other women and this man. Off to the side at another table (we were suddenly in a restaurant), a woman sat who had previously dated him. She stared daggers at me. It was really uncomfortable. Just when I thought it couldn't get worse, here came Sam. What in the world was I doing with this chaplain if I was married? But was I married to Sam in the dream? I couldn't tell. I did know that I was living with him but I wasn't married to him. Or was I? Why would I live with someone if I wasn't married to him? That was not something I would do. As Sam herded me off into the party, my date wandered out of the building and into the garden. He seemed utterly confused himself. He kind of wandered about, chatting aimlessly with people, looking forlorn and distraught. I guess I had really hurt his feelings. Or had I? He is a friend of Sam's, so he would have known that I was at least living with him. But was I?

Somewhere in that morass, I ran into his sons. They were pretty friendly to me and in fact, behaved as though I had some sort of relationship with their father. As I was talking to them, I could no longer see Sam and Sir Chaplain stepped up to my side. Leaning toward me, he whispered a most tender and riveting comment to me. I could feel a surge of warmth toward him when he made this remark and could smell his cologne and feel the warmth of his face on my cheek. Then he seemed to drift off again and here came Sam, jaunty, familiar, but somehow disconnected and out of place. I stood there then, completely confused.

Then I woke up. Disoriented, perplexed, bewildered, and with a sense of urgency to do something. That was 4:30 a.m. Sleep came and went until 6:00 when I finally dragged out of bed feeling disconcerted about all of this.

What did it mean? I didn't have time to think it through this morning, but the emotional impact of it kept me preoccupied most of the day. There was a really bad feeling that went along with it.

Interestingly enough, the dream was symbolic of my anxiety and feelings of not fitting in at the hospital--behaving somewhat surreptitiously, unable to read the meaning of people's actions, aware of hostility and resentment, but so off-balance that I don't know what to do about it. I am intimidated by the treatment of a few aggressive individuals, and instead of focusing on the appreciation that is expressed to me about my team's work, I have allowed the words and actions of others to cow me into a corner.

My work is good, and valuable to the psychiatrists we work for, and for the patients and their families. We do good work. Ours is a good service and we have a legitimate place at the table, so to speak. We come highly recommended to patients. And I am shaking in my boots to go over there and have to run into a few people who have been less than welcoming.

I've noticed this about myself in the past. The first class of students to whom I taught Group Therapy was composed of clinical psychology students. They laid into me for everything I did: they disliked the experiential component of the class. They didn't like my choice of words. They didn't appreciate the way I graded their papers and they didn't like my lectures. They told me that I didn't understand their patients and I didn't know what I was doing. I was flabbergasted, because for the last four years I had been teaching Group Therapy class to students at the University of Minnesota and had received excellent evaluations. Was it that these psychology students didn't like MFTs? Yes. But it was more than that. There was something condescending and accusatory about them all at the same time. No matter what I did I wouldn't be accepted by them. By the end of the quarter they all hated me. It was devastating.
Fast forward a year. I did a Gestalt therapy training in Prague for 9 days. Most of the people in the training group were clinical psychologists. Although none of them treated me the way these students had, I was almost completely immobilized and could hardly function. I cried in my room, avoided being called on in the group, and in a word, was miserable the entire 9 days.

I think the world is full of people who are cranky, who act superior, and who posture for power. To my credit, I have carried on in each of these situations as though nothing was wrong and with the dignity and self regard that was required in each setting. But it ate me up on the inside. If someone intimates that I don't belong or am inferior in some way, and if they have social power, I am deeply wounded and shut down. Even though I do good work and am a nice, collaborative person who is eager to learn from other people. Even though I treat others in these situations as I would wish to be treated, and I try to cultivate connections to these people.
Sam says I need to toughen up.
I need to get over it.
Parts of life are not for the faint of heart.

Dissertation Blues

One of my students called me from Chicago tonight, crying.

"Dr. H, I can't focus on my research analysis. I just can't make myself do it any more."

She is overwhelmed: family members have come forward as victims of crime. Her brother had unexpected open heart surgery and on the way to visit him, her grandmother had a massive heart attack and died. My dear student is working with traumatized children for her internship--a very emotionally expensive endeavor.

No wonder she can't focus on her dissertation.

There is something about writing a dissertation that people don't understand unless they have been down that road themselves. When you are analyzing research data and trying to write about it, you have to isolate yourself from everyone and everything else--to completely immerse yourself in your data so you can write what is necessary and expected. It is a very difficult process. I remember having to do it when I was a newlywed. Sam would be in the other room, handsome, delightfully available, interested in me. And there I was, two weeks after saying "I do," locked into the study hammering away on the computer for hours at a time.

"Honey," I'd yell through the door.

"Yes?"

"Are you still there?"

"Yes."

"Will you be there in 20 minutes?"

"Yes....why?"

"Because I'm coming out of here in 20 minutes to take a break."

"Yipee!!!"

Bless his heart, he never complained that I was holed up in there for most of the first two months of our marriage. I hated it. But the more time I spent alone in there, the sooner I'd be done. Until I was done, I was doomed to be alone with columns of numbers and the frustration that my dissertation chair expected me to make yet another set of revisions. I could hardly stand it. For someone like me who doesn't struggle with writing, it wasn't such a terrible experience. But for some people who have trouble putting sentences together or who can hardly understand the statistical analyses they are reporting, it is painful.

My student is exhausted, overwhelmed, and fearful of how I will view her if she takes some time off to get her feet back under her. This is a very familiar concern to me. Another of my students is trying to time her dissertation defense to be held the week before she is due to have her baby. Yet another student is trying to work around his wife's medical residency. They're all tired and frustrated. They hate going off by themselves, getting a babysitter in some cases, and confining themselves to the library, study, or computer lab.

For some reason, students think that they're supposed to love the entire process and that if they admit that it's hard to manage the process, the faculty will think they're not worthy somehow. Well, it's not true. When I tell them that they'll hate the last couple months of the process, that they'll become angry at me and resentful of my request for revisions, they relax. A little bit. But it's really not over until it's over.

I imagine that writing a dissertation is like having a child somewhat. Days of anticipation, fantasizing about how life will be when it is done and how you will enjoy the fruit of your labor for the rest of your life, how your life will be better somehow, and the things you will get to do. But before it is over, you have to work at it in ways that are painful.
It reminds me of what Paul said in Romans, that "all creation groans and waits for the redemption of our bodies." So did I, writing my dissertation. So do my students.

So I'm thinking about several stalwart souls today, in the throes of writing, analyzing, trying to conceptualize what they are doing, looking forward to the day when they will be finished. In the meantime, she is doing what she has to, just to survive. My student is one woman whom I will be happy to call my colleague. She's almost there.

Change in the air

It is a Monday morning at 8:55. We are standing in front of the bank in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, waiting for the doors to open. It is Mother and me, and she is holding baby brother, who is asleep. Next to the door, off to one side, is a Black woman with several small children. They are quietly peering out from behind her. Everyone in their group looks apologetic.

There are several people waiting to get inside and conduct their financial transactions. I eye the children with the woman, interested as all children are, in others their age.

The doors open and we walk inside. Several White folks walk right up to the teller's windows. The Black woman and her children sit off to one side on a wooden bench. It is only then that we can see she is pregnant. Mother motions for her to go ahead of her. Mother always had painful varicose veins during pregnancy and knew how uncomfortable it was to stand for any length of time. Let this woman go ahead and go home to get off her feet.

The woman smiles sadly and shakes her head, "no." The teller glares at Mother and says, a little too loudly, "What do you want here?" Mother deposits Daddy's check and turns to leave. She smiles again at the woman on the bench, waiting for all the White people to be served first. The lady looks down at her hands. Her little ones are sitting next to her, a little too quietly for small children. No kids should be so self conscious that they squelch the happy abandon that comes with being naive observers of the world.

The teller yells coarsely across the bank lobby to the woman, "What's your business, now?"

We leave the bank and Mother is angry.

"Mommy, why did that lady have to wait?"

There's a question that has rung in my head for decades and caused me to feel guilty for being the member of a group who so persecuted another group.

You see, whatever happens to one group in society has implications for other groups in society as well.

It is like having a child with cystic fibrosis in the family. The entire family reacts to it, and the emotional and psychological symptoms are not limited to the ill child. The illness becomes something that the family organizes their activities and emotions around. Parents worry that they will overlook symptoms of a relapse. Children worry that they will play too roughly and cause the child to become ill again. They worry that their sibling will die if they say mean things to her. They wonder why she gets all the attention and their accomplishments and needs are overlooked so many times. The parents wonder if anyone notices how hard they are working to preserve her life, and are grateful that the other children do not require the level of intervention that she does. The marriage can become neglected as they focus on the endless round of postural drainage,nebulizer treatments and trips to the E.R. Yes, everyone is affected in such a family.

The Civil Rights Movement affected us all, too, whether or not we were from the North or South, or were Black or White. There is nothing in my White experience that can compare with the hatred I witnessed in the South towards Blacks during those, and subsequent years. I have rarely ever been in a position where I was discriminated against or felt like an unwelcome minority. But I was affected by the weekly horror of seeing hideous acts that were flashed across our television, by hearing people--Christians--refer to Blacks by a variety of cruel and prejudiced terms, by seeing pictures of the waterhoses turned on defenseless people, hearing adult men and women screaming epithets at a little Black girl who only wanted to go to school. My parents' outrage and commentary about what was happening was unrelenting while we lived in the South. That stays with a person and plays out in interesting ways over life. The Black students relegated to the back rows of classrooms, who tried to maintain their dignity whilst nothing else in their surroundings supported that, parents who had to be denigrated and humiliated in front of their own children--these crimes are seared into my mind's eye. Even though the abuse didn't happen to me or people who look like me. We all still are still paying for it.

Yesterday was a historic day in America. We don't know what President Obama will do, how he will manage the impossible economic problems we face in this country, or how he will be able to keep his sense of ethics in the face of pressure from all sides and the lure of being at the top. But yesterday was one step toward the healing of this enormous wound our country has sustained. I cried as I watched him take the oath and heard Aretha Franklin singing where decades ago, she would not have been allowed to linger because of her skin color. Seeing the tears of so many in the crowd, and noticing that enthusiasm was expressed by people of all races, it seemed that over the course of a few hours something shifted. Unfinished business for victims and observers of the Civil Rights struggle came one step closer to resolution. It's not done, but I, along with many others in this country, slept a little better with last night.

I only hope that pregnant woman in the bank was able to witness the innauguration yesterday.

God bless our country.

Junk

This week I have been trying to get caught up around the house with the multitude of chores that have been put off for months. It's a great feeling to go through boxes of saved stuff and sort it out. That's what I've been doing for the last couple days. Beside being more organized now, it has been therapeutic. I can't work in a mess, and if I can't find belongings that are packed away, I feel out of sorts. So everything has been pulled out of the garage and the McGee's closet that has developed where we hang our coats has been emptied and turned into an orderly and proper coat closet.

It's amazing to have so much junk to store. Stepdaughter #1, who has moved in with us, has boxes of stuff from her dormitory room that got pushed up against a wall in the garage. It is right next to the stack of containers from Stepdaughter #2, who is teaching in Micronesia this year. Goodness knows she must have been in a real hurry when she threw her belongings into these plastic containers, because there is no rhyme or reason to how things are put in there. Then I have quite a few boxes of Mother's things that I'm storing: my father's bagpipes, her sewing notions, canning jars without number, my grandfather's concertina and nostalgic items galore. There is a big box of papers, TV cables and phone cords--all sorts of odd things--that Sam brought into this marriage. And of course, my stuff is out there, too, carefully packed and stored.

A few weeks ago I put up shelves in the study closet. Now we can store all sorts of things in there that were "stored" on the floor or in boxes for the last several months. I have more shelves to go up in the garage, and have put in big hooks to hang the bikes from the ceiling. I've got to figure out how to store my kayak in such a way that it doesn't get dented and is up out of the way.

I came across a couple boxes of china and antique pieces that were given me by my mother when I packed up her home last year. It all went up into my cupboards after a good washing. I'm delighted to have the little parfait glasses that my parents served us poached eggs in when were were kids. We only got to eat out of them on the Sabbath. It was one of my parents' ways to make the day special for us. Then there is a jelly jar of Nana's. She used to keep strawberry jam in it. And the cobalt Fiestaware platters and saucers Mother bought for me over the years are here, too.

I had a dream last night that there was a major earthquake and all my good Villeroy & Boch china that I bought in Germany crashed out of the cupboards onto the floor. So did my Fiestaware, my antique glass dishes, my crystal goblets, and all the cups and glass plates. But Sam and I were alive and well, delighted that we had survived and only our dishes perished. (Interesting dream too, after going to bed with PTSD remnants in my head!)

Looking over everything that we own, I have to remember that none of this will go with me into the next life. It is just junk: stuff, miscellaneous to what really matters. This is a particularly salient thought these days, as I have learned that a friend has advanced inflammatory breast cancer (IBC) and she is very frightened by this aggressive disease. She told me about it before she shared her diagnosis with her children over the weekend, so the burden of knowing was great and caused me to wake up during the night several times to pray for her. I know it is possible to defeat IBC, but the survival rate at five years is not very high. I'm really concerned about my friend and she is scared to death because she feels that life as she knows it is over. It will be a round of chemotherapy followed by a mastectomy, followed by radiation and other procedures.

Is my stuff really all that important? I've been throwing out and giving away everything that I haven't used in a year (except my dishes, of course). My junk really does not matter. What I do with it and how I feel about it does matter. But what matters more is how I treat people and how robust my relationships are with them. What will people remember about me after I'm gone? I hope it's not just my things. Sitting here in the disaray of half-packed boxes, stuff everywhere, (and I'm supposed to be at work all this week) it's good to remember that what a person is, is much more important than what a person has.
But since I do have all this, it needs to be put in order. I'm reaching for a big black plastic trash bag...

Meeting Myself: Coming and Going

Sam and I are in bed on a morning when it is late and we have slept in. He is lying with his hands behind his head and is looking up at the ceiling. He is sleepy-eyed and precious looking. I roll over toward him and gaze at him, admiring his classic profile and feeling fortunate that I married a good looking man.
"Honey, what are you thinking about?" I ask, eager for a soulful exchange that will unite our hearts during this luxurious, semi-drowsy moment in time. (violins, please).
Sam looks at me curiously. "What am I thinking about?"
I nod, looking at him with unveiled adoration, waiting for this man whom I love to share the depths of his soul with me, withholding nothing.
"Nothing. I just woke up" He looks at me, knowing that this is not what I want to hear.
"Nothing? How can you think about nothing?"
He sighs. "Well, that's what I'm thinking about. Nothing."
If he can't engage with me about his thoughts, at least I can get him to talk to me about something.
"Well, what are you feeling then?"
He suddenly sounds weary. "Nothing!" He regards me suspiciously. "Why do you have to ask me these kinds of questions?"
"Well, I just want to know you inside and out." I feel deflated and disappointed.
"Oh please!" Sam sighs, gets out of bed and stalks off into the bathroom to take a shower. "I don't lay around thinking and feeling stuff all the time." The shower faucett goes on and he steps inside.
I feel tears forming in my eyes, but I should know better because this has happened many times. Sam is a very concrete thinker and does not find it particularly stimulating to try to articulate his inner experience. The more I ask ethereal questions, the more ridiculous they seem. When we were dating he could string out some pretty compelling romantic remarks, but it is just not his preferred way of relating.

Nor is it easy for a number of men, I'm learning.

Friday I worked with a couple who came into the therapy room and sat at opposite ends of the couch. She was sitting forward with her fingers laced around her crossed legs. Her brow was furrowed in a frown and she had tears in her eyes. He sat there, slouched back into the cushions, grinning at me, his arms and legs akimbo, his hair brushed to a point in the front (good grief, where did this style come from?) And guess what their great disagreement was? She pours out her heart to him when they lie down to sleep and asks him what he thinks. He tells her that she is "over-thinking again" and drifts off to sleep. So she stomps out of bed and down the stairs to watch TV until her indignation is spent. When she returns to bed, his blissful sleep is disturbed and he decides that this is a good time for a romp. She is livid and he can't figure out what he did wrong. So they have an awful fight and he sleeps on the couch.
"I must be clueless," he states. She shoots an evil look his way.
"I mean," he continues, "I know she wants something from me and I sit there trying to figure out what it is, knowing that I'm not going to be able to come up with it. So I make jokes or sing my school song to her: "Rah-rah-rah for the Delta Phi Ki Guys!""
I'm dying to laugh. "And how does that go over?"
She makes a disdainful sound. He looks down.
"Not good" they say in unison.
He is clueless. And so is she.
So we work it out that there is room for both of their perspectives and realities, but that since their relationship requires some sort of understanding, there are things they both need to do in order to respond appropriately to the needs of the other. She will cut out the cock-eyed, continual questions, and he will validate her feelings without having to have the same experience as she does. But, but, but....I can hear you saying. There is more to the story, but this was the bottom line for numerous reasons that can't be elucidated here.
I left that session shaking my head. It was awfully close to home.

I remember one morning getting in an argument with Sam about leaving dirty dishes in the sink. It drives me crazy to have yucky, smeary dishes with those awful smells sitting in the sink over night or all day while we're at work. It will attract ants. And since I do much of the yard work, I expected Sam to do much of the inside work. I don't think we ever talked about it, but I found myself getting really angry one morning as we were about to dash out of the house. I drove to work, consumed with passion about this.

My first session of the day was with a couple who were angry with one another because of the unspoken expectations they had of each other around housework. I mentally put my own unresolved housework argument from the morning on a shelf in the back of my head, and started delving into this couple's concerns. Yes, she was a stay-at-home mom who had a babysitter every day for four hours so she could have some time for herself. Yes, he worked 50 hours a week at a very demanding job and was the sole provider for the family. She told him that if she could just stay home from work, she would take responsibility for the house cleaning and management. That suited them both just fine. Until she got tired of it and changed the rules, unbeknownst to him. We had to sort that one out and it took over an hour to look at all of the old stories of offenses both had committed around this issue, and the secret motives that had become apparent through innumerable acts and words over the years. We renegotiated how the household duties would be done, noting that marriage contracts change over time and must be frequently revisited. I was particularly shocked to find myself supporting this man in his request not to have to put the dishes in the dishwasher. She thought that would be fine, after I helped make a case for him. He would however, keep the bathroom sinks clean--a major triumph for her.

So I limped out of the therapy room that day, shaking my head and wondering what I would be faced with in subsequent sessions. In fact, it was a 24-year-old girl who doesn't like her stepparent and secretly wishes that her parents would get back together again. Even though she knows it will not happen. Even though the divorce happened six years ago. "I would never choose to be related to that [stepmother] but I have to have a relationship with her...It sucks."

I am always amazed how therapist's own private behaviors, feelings, and thoughts can rise up and obscure the clients whom we are serving if we're not careful and scrupulous in our dealings. I bracket off my own experience so it won't interfere with my therapy, but I remain aware of my experience while I watch it wrestled over between my clients. Such lovely work, this. Real incentive to pay attention to my own issues and take care of them elsewhere. It's amazing how we are all part of the fabric of humanity, every one of us. So I'm grateful that these things are very familiar to me, and wonder what part of my life will be trotted out in the therapy room for me to dance with this week.