Sublime

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.

we help couples change their interactive behaviors—rather than how they feel, think, or remember—they feel connected and begin to have new thoughts and create new memories.

Maturity comes when we tend to our inner children and don’t inflict them on our partners to care for.

He missed the point because he wasn’t thinking relationally. Like so many of the men I treat, Stan was being instrumental. His focus was on the task at hand, not on the subjective feelings of his partner. He was looking after her; he was not attending to her emotional needs.

louder and louder

85 percent of heterosexual marriages, the stonewaller is the husband. This is not because of some lack on the man’s part. The reason lies in our evolutionary heritage. Anthropological evidence suggests that we evolved from hominids whose lives were circumscribed by very rigid gender roles, since these were advantageous to survival in a harsh enviro

Functional actions in a relationship are moves that empower your partner to come through for you. Dysfunctional actions are those that render your partner paralyzed.