Life, Refracted

On relationships and more.

Roni Beth Tower Ph.D., ABPP

3 Family Styles: Which Best Describes Yours?

Can you identify your family's style? How do you use time, space, energy? And why do you do it the way you do? Consider three styles of organization and their consequences.

Know Thy Couple: The "We" as Its Own Entity

Try considering your relationship as having a reality beyond the individuals who form it. Examine intimacy dynamics, boundaries, strengths, vulnerabilities, and healing.

Know Thy Partner: Temperament as a Key

Mystified by your partner's reactions or behaviors? Consider thinking about them through the lens of temperament. It can bring insight into why they respond as they do.

Know Thyself: Bring Back Temperament

How well do you understand your own and a loved one's impulses, motives, behavior? Consider the nine dimensions of temperament and ways in which they affect us to provide insight.

7 Steps to Sane Seasonal Celebrations

When seasonal tasks and events overwhelm your natural spring optimism, take a deep breath and try these seven strategies for preventing or mitigating overwhelm.

7 Reasons Why Even a Committed Partner Can Cheat

Triggers that can lead dedicated lovers to betray a partner abound.

Are Your Valentines Up-To-Date?

Valentine's Day prods us to question ways in which we express our love and through which others experience it. Here are some thoughts about keeping your love language fresh

The Joy of Keeping a Promise to Myself

I fulfilled a 2017 New Year's Resolution to myself and now reflect on three benefits of having made the commitment. Next year I will rely on knowing I have done it to do it again!

52 Ways to Show I Love You: Getting Ready Together

Often a couple faces an important change, perhaps of role, of home, or of responsibilities. They show love when they prepare for the transition and impact together. Here is how.

52 Ways to Show I Love You: Prepare for Change

When change is thrust upon us by internal shifts, the contexts of our lives, or conditions in the larger world, we can show our love by ways we confront challenges together.

52 Ways to Show I Love You: Receive Graciously

Childhood experiences with our caregivers and feelings of guilt, embarrassment, fear, and disappointment can influence the ways in which we receive others' expressions of love.

52 Ways to Show I Love You: Provide Pleasure

We can give a gift that costs money, time, or energy, to fulfill an expectation, provide delight, underscore our recognition of who a loved one is, or to recognize a bond.

52 Ways: Learn How to Deal with People Toxic to Your Couple

After you identify a third-party threat to your couple, you can take several actions to limit current and prevent future damage. Many describe expressing love to the third-party.

52 Ways: Identify Threats to Your Relationship from Others

Identify behaviors that undermine the integrity of your love relationship, create conflict between partners, or destabilize one member in a way that throws a couple into chaos.

52 Ways: What Motivates Others Who Threaten a Relationship?

A couple's relationship can be threatened by others. To minimize potential damage, explore conscious or unconscious motives that a third party might have.

52 Ways to Show I Love You: Transform a Negative Experience

Negative moments are inevitable, whether they come from outside ourselves, our perceptions, or our interpretations. Transforming them with creativity or kindness shows love.

52 Ways to Show I Love You: Imagine Talking to Yourself

Are you stumped about how to act or respond? Try an interior monologue to help you expose unconscious beliefs, pause, accept responsibility, and move on in a loving manner.

52 Ways to Show I Love You: Imagine an Invisible String

An imagery exercise can help us explore how we feel about a loved one and our connection to them.

52 Ways to Show I Love You: Look at the Big Picture

Daily events can derail a relationship all too easily. Remember the reasons why you came together, appreciate the glue that maintains your bonds, and understand what threatens.

52 Ways to Show I Love You: Address the Conflicts

Addressing conflicts in a relationship is essential to maintaining trust that love can endure, emotion can flow freely, challenges can and will be addressed.

52 Ways to Show I Love You: Create the Right Rituals

Meaningful rituals can show love by reflecting commitment, defining relationship boundaries, providing comfort, provoking memories, anchoring expectations, and providing pleasure.

52 Ways to Show I Love You: Dinner at Home or Do We Go Out?

Cultural and generational changes in how we approach food color how we use food to express love. We can choose to cook, or gather, organize or ignore opportunities for feeding.

52 Ways: Cultural Variations in Offering Food to Show Love

Cultures vary in attitudes and beliefs about the role of food in nourishing body, mind and soul. As we express love through feeding, we must remain mindful of those differences.

52 Ways: A Story of Showing Love Through Food

Feeding others shows love by providing for, nourishing, seducing, or delighting.

52 Ways to Show I Love You: Honor the Irreplaceable Moments

Moments in our life that are unique and memorable bring opportunities to show love of our self and of another. They require us to slow down, allow the mystical, and be authentic.

52 Ways to Show I Love You: Accommodate Differences

Differences between two people in a romantic relationship sometimes force them to accommodate each other's limitations, preferences, needs, wants, or distance desired.

52 Ways to Show I Love You: Responding to Silences

Identifying a silence's meaning and responding according to its underlying intent can be a powerful way to show love. Matching the response to the meaning reflects intimacy.

52 Ways to Show I Love You: Identify the Meanings of Silence

Silence between people who share a close relationship can have multiple meanings. Decoding them accurately is an act of love of great magnitude, permitting a loving response.

52 Ways to Show I Love You: Caring and Caregiving

Providing care to a loved one who is dependent, fragile, or in need shows love in a basic way. Those who give with generosity and reliability rewards themselves as well as others.

52 Ways to Show I Love You: Expand the Circle

Others may feel threatened when you form a new love relationship. With perspective and integrity, do what you can to include them in your life, now that you are part of a couple.

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