Offer your dad your arm and link it with his.
With your arm tucked in his there’s nowhere you cannot go. There’s no place that is unsafe. There’s no destination too far and no journey (no matter how short or long) that is not worth the effort.
Walk with your father in this manner as often as is possible — it’s very good training for when you will have to walk alone and it is good training for when you will walk with another.
My son (8) recently asked me if girls can marry girls and boys can marry boys. I didn’t know how or what to answer and so I changed the subject. I know that avoiding his question is wrong and I am mentally preparing myself to answer his question soon. I am not homophobic. One of my close friends is a homosexual.
Relax, and then talk about anything
Tell your son that in South Africa (origin of Email) men and women can love and marry whomever they want to marry. Inform him that one day he will be old enough and wise enough to marry anyone he loves and who, in turn, loves and wants to marry him.
Now, before I am pummeled with both hate and love mail from all sides, please remember that your answer to your son’s question will not determine or change his sexual orientation. Parent-son conversations are simply not that powerful.
Your openness and comfort in having meaningful conversations about personal topics with your son will not determine his sexual orientation, but it might determine if he keeps talking with you and asking you questions about personal and important matters for many years to come.
Love is not possessive. It does not try to keep you from other important relationships. A person who tries to restrict your freedom does not love despite what he or she might say. Sometimes a possessive person will say, “I am just this way because we are not yet committed,” or “because you are so beautiful.” The truth is that possessive people seldom become less so. Their hold will only increase as you permit it.
Love is not jealous. A person who loves you will celebrate your strengths and successes. A person who loves also applauds you when others do. They work to enhance your popularity with others. Sometimes a jealous person will say, “I am jealous of you because I love you,” or “my jealousy shows I care.” Nonsense. People are jealous for many reasons and it is never a sign of love.
Love is not only a feeling. It is measured in financial, spiritual, and sexual fidelity. The loving person does not play games with your feelings, spend your resources, or keep as a secret from you, matters that pertain to your friendship. Love seeks the highest good of all the people in your family. It has no desire to exclude or separate you from you family.
Avoid
Gossip, rumor, and those who spread it
Disciplining, correcting others when I am annoyed or angry
Passing on hearsay as if it were fact
Following a compliment with a (subtle) insult
Carrying a hidden agenda
Embrace
Truth and praise that is sincere and accurate
Opportunities to speak up for the things about which I am passionate
Transparency, openness, and generosity
Flexibility, good humor, and opportunities to inspire others
Encounters that help everyone grow and change
“Every time I have to arrange a party for a family member I go into such dilemma about whether to have it or not. The fact that people might not attend and the basic mix of cultures further overwhelms me and depresses me and I no longer want to do it. I have married out of my faith to a Christian man who is a wonderful and dear person. My family is not totally thrilled with this and therefore my indecision! I once invited them to my son’s party and one responded saying that I put her in a predicament as she could not come. This hurt me and I shut them out for a while. This time it’s my birthday and I am afraid of rejection again.”
You are faced with a wonderful growth opportunity every time you celebrate an event. If you were strong enough to differentiate from your family by marrying outside of your faith then I’d suggest you are strong enough to plan and enjoy any party.
The invitation does not put anyone into any predicament. When issuing any invitation, always emphasize the freedom to decline so the less mature members of your family can stay home to revisit their unfinished business.
You may earn more than I do and live in a nicer house – but our loneliness is probably the same. When it rips us apart it doesn’t really matter who has the most cash or the nicest home. Loneliness doesn’t care where we live or about our financial status. Invite me in – perhaps we can be friends and ease our common pain.
You may be more educated than I am and you may have graduated from a respected university – but I know that if you regard anyone, anywhere with contempt, your education has given you little worth knowing. I may not be very bright by your standards but I do know that truly educated people never use it as a weapon. Talk to me – I might be able to teach you a thing or two.
You may be more travelled than I am and can talk about places I have not heard of or could afford to visit in my wildest dreams – but if travel has made you contemptuous of your homeland and its peoples then travel has not done its finer work in you. Citizens of the world find beauty and wonder everywhere. Come to my house – my culture is as interesting as any you will find on any distant shore.
Helpful METAPHOR….
(I am deeply influenced by Rabbi Friedman, Peter Steinke, and Murray Bowen – who have each written on these matters and written most profoundly so – Peter’s book “How your church family works” was my primary influence in revolutionizing how I see and understand my own brain. I give Peter full credit for any resemblance you may see to his work. While it is neither copied nor “lifted”, one cannot read something and love something so much without it reverberating in one’s work.)
Getting to BOX 3 ASAP will save you a lot of hardship
Think of your (human) brain as three living boxes, placed one inside the other, residing inside your skull. Mammals get the “inside” two boxes – reptiles, poor things, get only one.
The smallest box, the stem, doesn’t think. It works. Protects. It’s humorless. It’s not the “feeler” or “thinker.” It’s got no room for such nonsense. Every time you want to EXPLODE, when you get anxious, feel like hiding, or hitting, your stem is trying to dominate! The greater your anxiety, the more your inner-reptile will want to break out.
The stem, your primal, instinctual, reptilian center, serves to protect you and keep your vital organs running. It will throw you under a table if there’s an explosion and put you into attack mode if you (or someone you love) is threatened. Turtles, snakes, polar bears, and dogs have stems – doing as much for them as yours does for you. Your stem is not creative; it doesn’t have the brains to be.
You might have to invite a friend, on occasion, to step out of his or her stem. But be careful, stem-bound men and women are humorless! And, they bite.
If you want to punch someone who disagrees with you, or run away from all “stupid” people – you are probably stem-bound. You’ve allowed your stem (your Reacting) to dominate. I’d suggest you shift gears (shift boxes) before hurt someone or lose your job. When you find you are overly reactive you have to tell your stem “to get back in your box! Do your job. Stop trying to think.”
Box 2 is the Limbic Box and it is much larger than the stem and feels it is much more important. It is not. It is different. This is the “feelings” or “emotion center.” Give yourself enough time in this box and you will hear country music blaring from all sides and you’ll see “Chicken Soup for the Soul” books everywhere.
Linger in the limbic and you will feel overwhelmed. It is an essential place to visit but you don’t want to live here. This is a place reserved for mammals and humans. No matter how much you love your pet alligator, it simply doesn’t have fun. It doesn’t have the brains for fun. Your dog does. That is why fun with your dog is really a mutual (but not equal) experience. Throwing a ball in the yard might be fun for you but it is the pinnacle of joy – every time – for your dog.
Ever felt really sorry for yourself? Like absolutely no one cares, especially after ALL you’ve done? Do you find yourself singing “I’m-so-lonesome” songs and “I-feel-so left out” songs? You have been spending far too much time in your feeling or I-Need-Empathy Box. This is a warm and welcoming place but it is not built for thinking. Move on to the Think Tank (Box 3) where you can get some useful work done.
Box 3 is your Neo-Cortex and it is larger than the stem and the limbic. This is the creative, distinctly human dimension of your brain. It governs (or tries to govern) the stem and the limbic. It is your “Think Tank.” It’s the Art Studio, the Creative Center. Here you’ll find Einstein posters, wild lists, cartoons, and drawings reminding you of all the possibilities you have seen for your life plastering the walls. It is from here you engage in creative discussions (“I think therefore I am”) about marvelous possibilities.
This is communication central, the clearinghouse of ideas large and small, this is the funny farm, the place you get your funniest thoughts and ideas. This is where humor, spirituality, appreciation of the finer things in life, and prayer, begin and thrive.
No matter how much you love your pet mammal he just cannot share your spiritual space with you. He doesn’t have the brains for it. The developed neo-cortex is reserved for humans only. Visit this, your “seize the day” room as much as possible and try to have all your “thoughts” about your reactions, feelings, and actions walk around this room for examination before you make a move.
Time spent in Box 3 is (usually) good for you. It’s your humor center, your envisioning center – it’s a platform of endless possibilities and the place from which you greatness will really emerge.
All three “brain boxes” can be “visited” in an instant: I enter a shop and search for an item. I cannot find what I need or anyone to help me and I am in a hurry. My Stem (the fuse box) wants me “blow a fuse” and walk out never to return! Limbic, which feels abandoned, kicks in. I tell myself, “After all my loyalty. After shopping here for 20 years, you’d think someone would recognize me, and care.” Then Cortex pipes up and says: “Ah! You are bright, resourceful and every one is busy. You can find anything you need on your own. Seize this great opportunity!”
Rod E. Smith
(317) 694 8669
http://www.DifficultRelationships.com
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It is not only some exotic insects and creatures that eat their young. I’ve seen parents do it quite regularly. It happened to my friend when we were boys. His mother ate him. She tried to eat me too but I got away. I ran as fast as I could and after I did that once she left me alone. After I ran away that first time I could visit without her making a meal out of me. She knew I knew what she was up to and furthermore, I knew she knew I knew. Before all this “knewing” gets ridiculous I know that because of what we both knew I knew, she didn’t like me much which was okay with me. If you don’t like someone very much you are unlikely to eat him. Knowing made me safe – which I think it usually does.
Mrs. RunAwayBunny (I call her that just for fun) didn’t eat her son all in one bite, it was just slow, steady mouthfuls. Every time he expressed a view that wasn’t also her view, he got tongue lashed. She chewed him out when he showed any desire for independence or if he laughed at anything she didn’t find funny. Then one day it finally happened, she swallowed him altogether. His pinkie toe of his left foot was my very last glimpse of the real him. All this adoration and love wasn’t very pretty.
Of course she “loved him to death” and because he was “so adorable” she could just “eat him up.” So she did. She did spit him out after a few days much like I imagined the whale regurgitated Jonah. Unlike Jonah, my friend stopped thinking, seeing, feeling, and speaking for himself. Something happened when he got swallowed up, I guessed it was getting so near to the womb he’d already left, that stopped him up or it was something to do with getting too much mother juice. She loved him into what she wanted, into seeing things through her eyes, and when he did, she thought these triumphs were remarkable signs of just how much he loved her. She measured his love by how much of him she could occupy even though it was “Mrs. RunAwayBunny” (I’m liking her name more and more and you’ll know why if you’ve read the story) who wanted to occupy him. If this confuses you now you must know how much it confused me then.
We still rode our bikes together and we sometimes still walked through the forest at the bottom of the yard but after she ate him and coughed him up like a cat and a hairball it was like riding my bike with her and walking through the forest with someone who was always careful and afraid. After she loved him to death he wouldn’t cross Blackburn Road when there was no traffic without being terrified.
Yes. One day, as I told you, and because she loved him so completely and she was always willing to sacrifice her needs for him, she ate the boy out of him altogether. I know. I was there. I watched it happen.
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While there are more than TEN REASONS this advice column is different from Ann Landers, Dear Abby (and therefore a good juxtaposition to those very well-loved columns) I have listed the 10 that come immediately to mind:
1. Short. Takes 50 seconds to read and offers sound, to the point suggestions and advice.
2. Questions are not presented in full.
3. It is anonymous. Questions go to Rod@DifficultRelationships.com
4. Submitted to newspapers in two-week packs by email or download before deadline (over 1000 segments are already available).
5. Segments sometimes follow a theme. One reader said it was “better than a soap opera.”
6. Sometimes the writer expresses a personal note about general relationship issues.
7. Allows immediate access to readers on the Internet.
8. Advice is focused on strength, sometimes funny, believes in the resilience of people and covers a very wide spectrum of issues.
9. Writer is a family therapist who teaches family therapy in several countries each year.
10.Style allows for brevity, anonymity and cutting to the chase.
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