December 31, 2014
by Rod Smith
The Mercury – January 1, 2015
Ways to think about the New Year that will lead you into new dimensions of living that you design for yourself:
All behavior has meaning. Assess your behavior – your responses, your attitudes.
Try to see the behavior of others (good or bad) as none of your business.
Draw. Using stick figures of various shapes and sizes, draw your family according to the influence you perceive them to have.
Think about your patterns. Diagram your relationship traps and triangles.
Chart your position: how it’s changed over the years and how you’d like to see it modified in the future.
Use colors.
Give the colors meaning. Track the information-flow.
Until you become your own Chief Executive Officer and Human Resource representative in your own family you will not see the changes you’d prefer. While you are not in charge of you, someone else will be.
Keep your drawing private. You are looking for change, not an argument.
Everyone sees his or her family differently because we all live in different families – EVEN if we are siblings.
Allow yourself, and everyone else, the kind of grace you’d like shoveled your way. This is partly what it means to accommodate homeostasis (yesterday’s column). Allow for some degree of regression and failure on all of your parts.
Posted in Anxiety, Boundaries, Communication, Differentiation, Difficult Relationships |
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December 22, 2014
by Rod Smith
Perhaps I was not like other children and the differences I experienced were as profound as they felt.
Perhaps not.
Perhaps all that separated me from what I perceived was the experience of other children was amplified in my young heart.
You know, you know how children are said to amplify things.
Who can tell these many years later?
But the things I wanted for Christmas when I was very young, and I mean as young as 7 and 8 and up until I was 10 and 11, required no batteries or remote devices or charging.
I wanted safe adults. I wanted adults whom I could trust. I wanted them sober. I wanted them sober all the time, not just in the mornings.
I wanted my dad to be as sober as my mother always was.
I wanted a peaceful home.
I wanted to live in a house where people didn’t live on the edge of financial ruin and where the anxiety over lack of resources was not repeatedly temporarily eased by very excessive drinking.
You can think I am exaggerating if you want. I’m not.
I did get it – I got all I wanted for Christmas when I was 12.
Dad stopped drinking.
Forever.
Posted in Adolescence, Boundaries, Children, Communication, Education, Faith, Family, Grace |
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December 21, 2014
by Rod Smith
“There’s a young woman cutting herself outside my flat. What can I tell her?”
(Text received from South Africa)
Assess the level of urgency.
Does she need an ambulance or your presence?
If it’s the latter, your presence is more important than your words.
Be very respectful.
Be calm.
Be gentle.
Ask if she wants you to say anything at all.
If she tells you to be quiet, be quiet. Tell her you will sit with her in silence.
Allow the quietness between you to settle in, and this could take a long while, then tell her gently that you are willing to listen to her for as long as she wants to speak, and that you will not say a word while she talks or try to rearrange her thoughts or mess with her feelings.
If she tells you that you may talk, tell her very gently, after much silence, that there is help available to people who think that hurting themselves is helpful; that while her strong feelings that result in her inflicting pain upon herself may offer her a tangible outlet for her strong feelings, there are steps available toward more permanent relief from whatever she is facing.
Posted in Addictions, Anxiety, Boundaries, Children, Difficult Relationships |
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October 8, 2013
by Rod Smith
“With regards to your article of 10/7/2013: Times are tough right now globally. We here in Durban have not been spared. Allowing someone into your home for a month is well within the spirit of Ubuntu.”
Allowing an adult woman and her mother into ones home for a month would indeed express the spirit of hospitality, generosity, and openness typically associated with the spirit of Ubuntu – if both the decision makers in the home were comfortable in seeking to offer such hospitality.
The husband’s spirit of Ubuntu surely loses its power and meaning, and is perhaps therefore not an expression of Ubuntu at all, when it is expressed at the cost of his wife’s well being.
Hospitality, like generosity, and charity, begins at home.
Posted in Boundaries, Communication, Education, Faith, Family, Marriage |
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October 6, 2013
by Rod Smith
“What’s your opinion on this quotation by TV relationship expert: ‘If your wife has a problem with your mother, it is your job to intervene and try to fix it.'”
A husband could intervene and try to “fix” a problem between the two important women in his life but the results will be temporary and playing superman will get old. Intervening in others’ conflicts is the springboard to burnout.
And, he’ll be signing up to intervene in many more conflicts, which, except for the conflicts they mutually enjoy, will have nothing to do with him.
If a wife can’t negotiate with her mother-in-law she’s likely to fight with many.
Besides, trying to fix a relationship from the outside, encourages participants to think the issues stem from the outside.
Here’s an axiom: problems between two people are seldom about the “other” person. I’d suggest each woman deeply consider what it is about herself that conflict seems to be a worthwhile pursuit.
If a wife really wants to fix her relationship with her mother-in-law a good place to begin is with her own mother – go authentically deeper with mom, and she’d be amazed at how much else will begin to fall into place.
So, I think “TV relationship expert” is incorrect.
Posted in Boundaries, Children, Differentiation, Difficult Relationships, Education, Faith |
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July 14, 2012
by Rod Smith
1. You experience greater OBJECTIVITY and can “see” your most important relationships as if looking at them through someone else’s eyes.
2. Despite any pain, any trauma, any uncertainty, you can see some HUMOUR in what you are experiencing even if it is short lived.
3. You are progressively gathering a small community of friends who know everything (or almost everything) about you and their SUPPORT is becoming easier to trust.
4. You are seeing with greater and greater CLARITY what are and what are not your responsibilities within your most important relationships.
5.”No” comes easier and it is not accompanied by guilt. “Yes” is your response when you really want what you agree to. You begin to BELIEVE the words you say. Your words reflect you, your desires, and are not said from guilt or the impulse to keep the peace or make others happy.
Posted in Anxiety, Boundaries, Communication, Differentiation, Difficult Relationships, Education, Faith, Family, Family Systems Theory, Grace, High maintenance relationships, Leadership, Listening, Love, Marriage, Past relationships, Re-marriage, Responsive people, Schnarch, Sexual compatibility, Therapeutic Process, Triangles, Trust, Victims, Violence, Voice, Womanhood |
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July 13, 2012
by Rod Smith
Love and control cannot co-exist in the same relationship anymore than light and dark can exist together in the same space at the same time.
Posted in Affairs, Anger, Anxiety, Attraction, Betrayal, Boundaries, Communication, Differentiation, Difficult Relationships, Domination, Family Systems Theory, Grace, High maintenance relationships, Long distance relationships, Love, Manipulation, Past relationships, Pornography, Responsive people, Sexual abuse, Sexual compatibility, Therapeutic Process, Triangles, Triggers, Victims, Violence, Voice, Womanhood |
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July 12, 2012
by Rod Smith
There is no good reason ever why any person ought tolerate poor treatment from another.
You teach people how to treat you.
I know you may feel trapped and without an escape route or a friend in the world, but you must get help if this post is reaching deeply into you.
Posted in Affairs, Betrayal, Boundaries, Differentiation, Difficult Relationships, Divorce, Domination, Grace, High maintenance relationships, Love, Manipulation, Re-marriage, Reactivity, Recovery, Sex education, Sexual abuse, Spousal abuse, Triangles, Triggers, Victims, Violence, Voice |
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June 6, 2012
by Rod Smith
“My husband left me for my best friend. This not only devastated me but caused my children (and her husband and children) a lot of confusion. I don’t want things back how they were but I do want some peace of mind. Her husband has gone off the rails with anger and I have bordered on depression. How am I supposed to forgive two people who have been so close to me and who have done this bitter thing to people, including children, whom they profess to love?”
My response will focus on you and the double blow you have received.
You have lost two best friends and you have lost them to each other. They have together all of what you once enjoyed and you have none of it.
I do not write this to rub salt into the wound or to tell you what you do not already know – I write it so you may see that your loss is real and at least partially understood.
Your anger and depression is justified. Grieve, wail. Express it in any helpful way over the coming years.
At the same time (in sane, healthy moments) begin to rebuild your life.
It is possible to do both: grieve, build, grieve, and build – just not at the same moments.
Posted in Affairs, Anger, Attraction, Betrayal, Blended families, Boundaries, Children, Communication, Differentiation, Difficult Relationships, Divorce, Domination |
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July 6, 2011
by Rod Smith
“My husband and I were happy until the birth of our son when our relationship changed. After our son was born he started cheating, lying, and drinking everyday. We spent less time together than we used to. I thought we were friends, but now it feels like we are distant cousins. Our sex life is boring.”
Your future must seem painfully endless!
While I am sad that you are victim to your husband’s cruel behavior, I am also sad for your child who is witnessing a marriage he could hardly want to emulate.
Please read David Schnarch’s book entitled Passionate Marriage. I will warn you that it is the very best book on sex and relationships I have ever read.
While the book is very explicit, it is never pornographic.
It is to be read as a whole, cover to cover, before judgments are issued on its worthiness.
The book outlines the journey of couples who have lives as miserable as you describe yours to be, and offers valuable keys for all marriages and all relationships.
I have gotten into hot water for recommending this book to couples.
Not only does it promote strong, healthy sex lives, it challenges people to live full, complete, and adventurous lives.
Posted in Attraction, Boundaries, Communication, Differentiation, Difficult Relationships, Schnarch |
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