Dreams have been described as dress rehearsals for real life, opportunities to gratify wishes, and a form of nocturnal therapy. A new theory aims to make sense of it all.
The May 2012 edition of Psychology Today has an article featuring my work, describing how I deal with partners’ unacknowledged anger, hostility, and hatred. So I want to start off by telling you I’m actually a pretty nice guy. You can even ask my wife, daughter and parents. They are all honest, kind, decent people—arguably even more so than me—so they know the difference.
Want your partner to accept, validate and emotionally support you? Want hot sex too? In long-term committed relationships you're not likely to keep getting both. So what will it be? Have your partner inflate your ego, soothe your childhood wounds, or rub your erogenous zones? It's human nature to lose sexual desire for someone you have to constantly prop up.
Couples with sexual desire problems are often battling out the wars of autonomy, attachment and selfhood. You think you're just having sex problems. It doesn't help that your partner may be saying, "It's not about you, I'm just not into sex." Or, "All you want is sex!" Your partner is saying it too: it's about sex. That's what you probably want to believe too.
Sex is part of the "people growing machinery" of emotionally committed relationships. Sexual boredom and squabbles about sexual repertoire are normal, inevitable and potentially healthy developments that push us to grow into mature adults capable of durable love and hot sex.
The only way to cure sexual boredom is to expand your sexual repertoire. But don't expect your partner to applaud when you propose something new. Expect to hear, "That's a disgusting and perverted thing to do!"
People have sex up to the limits of their sexual development. The solution to sexual boredom involves stepping outside your familiar repertoire and creating novelty. This raises your anxiety, challenges your identity, and shakes up your relationship.
The most profound truths about relationships are often stunningly simple to articulate and incredibly difficult to live with. We're too ready to think we have "irreconcilable differences" or "sexual incompatibility" or we've "lost the chemistry." If you don't understand how sex really works, you're more likely to needlessly get divorced.
Interdependence as a concept has been around for years, but it is badly misunderstood. This is why people talking the most about it are usually unable to do it. The problem isn't that they have difficulty putting their ideals into practice (but which is often true). The problem is their idea of interdependence is systematically wrong.
Do your feelings and insecurities dominate your relationships? Do you always have to be right? These are signs of difficulty regulating and modulating your inner emotional world.
A brief review of my and Dr. Goulston’s posts reveals some interesting similarities. But my real and overriding concern lies in portions of Dr. Goulston’s article that are unquestionably his own authorship: creating an imaginary “secondary Asperger’s syndrome” and promoting it to the public as if it really exists.
The interplay of unique circumstances, common personal shortcomings, and normal relationship dynamics make affairs a particular problem for celebrity and wealthy couples. This is easiest to see if you consider the position of the wife of a powerful man.
Rich and powerful people cheat because they are just like everyone else, with flaws, blind spots, and lapses in judgment. One major factor is common dependence on getting a positive reflected sense of self from the people around us, the clothes we wear, the house we live in, and the car we drive. We light up when someone finds us attractive.
If you are having sexual desire problems, and there's a very good chance you are, do you feel inadequate, ashamed or embarrassed, in addition to feeling deprived, frustrated, or royally pissed-off? Even if you don't have sexual desire problems now, you can imagine how people feel. You know how you would feel, and you're normal, aren't you?
Every mother "loses it" sometimes. Even the best mothers do things they really regret. But some mothers do untoward things repeatedly, and some don't regret it at all. I've stopped taking the basic decency I grew up with for granted, and now appreciate how many people haven't had this
When you’re an author, you write with an audience in mind. I’ve written for couples, singles, gays, straights, therapists, physicians, nurses, students, teachers, and parents. But not once, in any conscious and deliberate fashion, have I written for my mother.