Sublime

Just as surgeons must first learn anatomy, the future “Angst doctor” must first understand the relationship between the one who counsels and the one who is counseled. And, if I am to contribute to the science of such counseling, I must learn to observe the counseling relationship just as objectively as the pigeon’s brain.

I had begun therapy to work on issues in my marriage. I couldn’t figure out why being such a Nice Guy didn’t make my wife happy or make her want to have more sex with me. No matter how hard I tried to please her, keep the peace, avoid conflict, and hide my needs, she was still frequently moody, angry, critical, and sexually unavailable.

A central premise of the partner-as-child theory is that it’s not an aberration or unique failing of one’s partner that they retain a childish dimension. It’s a normal, inevitable feature of all adult existence. You are not desperately unlucky to have hitched yourself to someone who is still infantile in many ways. Adulthood simply isn’t a complete

Again, we must constantly remind ourselves: In a true partnership, both partners view it as their responsibility to ensure the other’s emotional well-being.

Here at last was Motherhood, and though it was not for all of them personally, it might—if the power was inherited—found here a new race.

The Passion Trap: How to Right an Unbalanced Relationship by relationship therapist and psychologist Dean C. Delis. This was given to me by

Over time, we have seen the feminine instinctive nature looted, driven back, and overbuilt. For long periods it has been mismanaged like the wildlife and the wildlands.

the therapist wondered why, of all the members, it was invariably Elena who revealed first and most. Why did Elena so often put herself in the role of the group member whom all the members must nurse? Why must she always display herself as vulnerable? And why today? And that last meeting! So much conflict! After such a meeting, one might have