GOAL ORIENTATION

Thinking about how intimate bonds are cemented by sharing vulnerable feelings brings us to perhaps the ultimate act of intimacy: fighting. Many people believe that fighting between partners is to be avoided at all costs, but most relationship therapists disagree. Fights between partners appear to be a universal experience: not many people actually

It is important to distinguish between starvation economies and real-world limits. Time, for example, is a real-world limit: even the most dedicated slut has only twenty-four hours every day. Love is not a real-world limit: the mother of nine children can love each of them as much as the mother of an only child loves her one.

Scheduling fights has the added advantage that you can prepare for them, organize your thoughts, and know you have a time when this particular issue will be dealt with. If you feel upset about the grocery bills on Tuesday and you know you have a date to fight about it on Thursday, it’s pretty easy to put your stuff aside until then. Most people

“We hate boredom. We are people who are greedy to experience all that life has to offer and are also generous in sharing what we have to offer.”

We recommend that you look for these differences and question your judgments. Is that person who seems too loud actually able to be more expressive than you? Does that quiet person notice more? What’s the intelligence of a person who hasn’t read a lot of books but understands how your car or your computer works? Who are these friendly people who

The mythology has it that once you start having sex, it will all come naturally—and if it doesn’t, then you must have some deep-seated psychological problem, right?

Many of us start out paralyzed by shame and embarrassment, even after we figure out that we don’t want to be embarrassed by sex. The beliefs we were taught—that our bodies, our desires, and sex are dirty and wrong—make it very hard to develop healthy sexual self-esteem. Many of us spent our adolescences consumed with guilt for our sexual desires,

First you may need to vent some anger, which will include finding a safe and constructive way to experience it and release some of it. You’ll probably need to make agreements ahead of time about how to do this: Not at your partner? Not in front of the kids? Not behind the wheel? Not after getting high or drinking? Where is it safe for everybody for