May 9, 2011
by Rod Smith
“My husband routinely ignores Mothers Day. I make a big deal out of Fathers Day and you’d think he would reciprocate. He does not. This has been going on for 21 years and my sons are following in his footsteps. I am tempted to ignore Fathers Day this year just to see if he notices.”
Show up, stand up, speak up....
and playing hide and seek is for children – it is not for adults.
If you want attention shown to you at Mothers Day let your husband and your sons know.
Tell them ahead of time so that you are not left waiting to see what he or your sons will do for you.
If you have let this go on for 21 years I have to wonder what else you have left up to chance.
If you want your relationships to grow then lose the temptation to stand back and watch how others respond to you.
Show up. Stand up. Speak up. Leave as little to guesswork as possible. This done, at least you will have made your expectations clear and others can choose to deliver on your wishes or not.
Posted in Boundaries, Communication, Differentiation, Difficult Relationships, Family Systems Theory, Friendship, Grace, High maintenance relationships |
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May 8, 2011
by Rod Smith
“I’m in love with a man out of my caste. If my family finds out I will be disowned. He loves me and I do the same. His family doesn’t want him to be with me either. He’s going through a separation with his wife. They have twin girls who are 2 and boy who is 8. His wife still loves him tremendously but he has no love for her and has clearly told her. I feel so guilty that I’m the cause of everything but he won’t let me go. He says I’m the reason for his living and that his marriage was long over before I came into the picture. We are planning on marriage. I have a 5 year-old son who will have to leave along with my entire family. My fear is if I’m making a right future path for my self and my boyfriend. I desperately need advice.”
This is a disaster waiting to happen
A man who can abandon a wife and three children will do the same, and worse, to you and your son. This “relationship” could only work if you immediately sever all ties while he gets divorced, pays child support, and is a cordial ex-husband for 5 years at least – before he BEGINS a caring, mutual relationship with you.
Posted in Affairs, Betrayal, Blended families, Boundaries, Children, Difficult Relationships, Divorce, High maintenance relationships, Trust, Victims, Voice, Womanhood |
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May 3, 2011
by Rod Smith
“I am happily married. My husband is an amazing man. We are Indian with both Western and Indian beliefs and tradition. Our problems stem from his family. His mother hates me. She constantly gossips about me and tells people I am a terrible person. She knows how much her son loves me. I think this upsets her. I cannot understand how a mother can be unhappy if her child is happy. Although I have accomplished a lot I feel inadequate. I need help to keep my sanity and feel loved and appreciated by my husband’s family. My parents have been married for many years and love their children equally. My mother is one of the most humble people I know – which makes it even more difficult to understand my mother in law.” (Edited)
Get your focus off her
Gossips attempt to fill up empty lives by trying to destroy others. Try not to feed her toxicity by allowing it to do its ugly work.
While it may be counter-cultural for you, I’d suggest you and your husband (together) lovingly confront her with your unwillingness to accommodate and ignore her damaging ways.
Confrontation is a powerful expression of love. This accomplished, get your focus off her, whether she continues or not.
Posted in Blended families, Boundaries, Communication, Differentiation, Difficult Relationships, High maintenance relationships, In-laws, Victims, Voice, Womanhood |
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April 23, 2011
by Rod Smith
“I have been an unfaithful wife and my husband is tired of it. He has given me a fresh start on three or four occasions but this time he refuses. He says his trust well is empty and that he has to move on with his life. How do I convince him that one more chance is all I need? Please help.”
Take responsibility for your actions
to be taking an option necessary for his well being. I’d suggest you move full force into recovery from serial infidelity.
Unfaithfulness can hardly leave you with good feelings about yourself and I’d suggest you get professional help to delve into its origins in your life.
While his actions are painful for you, I’d suggest he has not had a painless journey.
If your husband were consulting me I’d attempt to solicit from him the level of his desire to remain married. Given any suggestion that he’d prefer to stay married, I’d encourage him to embark on an extended separation to allow you to get your troubled house in order.
Unfaithfulness is an individual pursuit. There’s nothing anyone can do to make you unfaithful. It’s not your spouse or any of your multiple cohorts. It is you who needs the help – get it. Allow him, in the mean time, to do whatever it is he needs to do.
Posted in Affairs, Anger, Attraction, Betrayal, Boundaries, Difficult Relationships, Forgiveness, High maintenance relationships, Manipulation, Marriage, Past relationships, Reactivity, Recovery, Sex matters, Space, Spousal abuse, Trust, Victims, Violence, Voice |
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April 19, 2011
by Rod Smith
Reach for your inner strength
You are probably
stronger and more
resilient than you feel and think you are. I am often amazed at the latent power I have seen come to the salvation of men and women who are under great stress or experiencing great pain.
You are probably more creative, tenacious, and determined, than you have conditioned yourself to believing you are. It’s been a joy to watch men and women dig themselves out of a tight spot once they’ve allowed themselves to escape the prisons of their own thinking.
You are probably better able to negotiate tough situations and speak up for yourself than you consider yourself to be. I’ve seen clients transformed from the proverbial wallflower to a force to be reckoned with, simply because they’d had enough of some people regarding them with less than absolute respect.
You are probably wiser than you give yourself credit. When push comes to shove it’s amazing what wisdom will emerge.
You are probably funnier than you think you are. When the chips are down, it’s refreshing to see how funny people can be. To cap it all, the humor of the wise, the humor of the resilient, requires no victims.
Posted in Boundaries, Communication, Differentiation, Family, Family Systems Theory, Friendship, Grace, High maintenance relationships, Leadership |
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April 16, 2011
by Rod Smith
“I’m a single mother of a one month beautiful boy. His father loved me before I was pregnant. He wanted a baby with so much and I did not. I was busy trying to build a life. I fell pregnant and I love my son. His father was unavailable through out the pregnancy. He wanted to give our son his last name but my family refused because we are not married. I want him back. He says begging him is unattractive and that he will come back when he wants to. It’s hard because my son hasn’t had a chance to have a family. He’s walked into an emotionally broken mother.” (Edited)
Chasing is a waste of energy
The energy required to woo the father back into your life, even if you are successful, will be insignificant next to the energy it will take to keep him.
Your son may well have “walked into an emotionally broken mother” but it doesn’t have to stay that way. Resume your pre-pregnancy quest to build your life.
Living a full, satisfying life yourself will be the greatest act of mothering you will ever offer your son – go for it. Live the kind of life you hope he will live one day and he will have something to emulate.
Posted in Betrayal, Boundaries, Children, Differentiation, Family Systems Theory, High maintenance relationships, Triangles, Trust, Victims, Violence, Voice, Womanhood |
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April 8, 2011
by Rod Smith
Family meetings!
The following are pointers (two are enough) to suggest you could use therapeutic help with your family, relationships, and your faith:
1. Being part of your family feels mechanical, rigid. You feel locked in – you are an actor in someone’s play and you don’t particularly like your assigned role.
2. No matter how hard you try, things (tensions, roles, anxieties, problems) stay the same. Faces and circumstances modify over the years but the stresses and the issues remain constant.
3. At family holidays (Christmas and Thanksgiving most intensely) you feel pressure about where to be. You are the rope in a tug-of-war.
4. You feel intimidated when speaking with your parents about anything meaningful even though you are an adult. You knees get weak at the thought of engaging your parents about substantial matters.
5. Old arguments often resurface; minor disagreements seem monumental – there’s little sense of proportion and little things are blown up into huge issues.
6. You find it easy to talk about your parents but find it difficult to talk to them. You’re loaded with material about them but feel silenced when it comes to taking with them.
7. Feelings of loyalty and disloyalty can rage within and you feel pressure to compromise your integrity with your family of origin (parents, siblings, grandparents).
8. Your career and family life interfere with each other. It seems as if you can’t have both with any degree of success.
9. New relationships get intense very quickly (becoming sexual, manipulative, or controlling) despite genuine attempts to make things different “this time.”
10. You enthrone (make saints) and dethrone (make sinners) people rather rapidly. Your heroes quickly prove fallible and you are disappointed once again.
Call me / Skype me (RodESmithMSMFT) / Email me – I can probably help you or steer you to someone who can.
Posted in Betrayal, Blended families, Boundaries, Children, Communication, Differentiation, Difficult Relationships, High maintenance relationships, Leadership, Listening, Triangles, Triggers, Trust, Victims, Violence, Voice |
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March 31, 2011
by Rod Smith
Edwin Friedman – a pioneer in family therapy, writer, teacher, and rabbi and who was trained by Murray Bowen who is considered the “father” of family therapy and “Bowen Theory” – wrote about helping couples to separate, establish space, maintain individuality and secure room to breathe and room to move in order to help the couple avoid radical separation (divorce) in their future. Friedman suggested sometimes couples were “too close” meaning that everything done one or both persons seemed to unsettle or rock the world of the other or both.
Identifying couples who are “fused” or who are too close:
1. Every thought, move, glance, blink of the eye, every gesture is interpreted to mean something by the other person and the meaning is usually negative.
2. Mind reading is at its most intense. What is damaging is that what is “read” or interpreted is believed as fact. “I know exactly what you are thinking when you look at me like that.”
3. There’s no room for change or growth because there’s no emotional “wiggle room.” If one person is convinced that he or she knows exactly what the other person will do and will think there is no room for anything new to occur.
I have named these writers to facilitate reading beyond this column.
Posted in Affairs, Anxiety, Attraction, Blended families, Boundaries, Communication, Differentiation, Difficult Relationships, Education, Family, Family Systems Theory, Grace, High maintenance relationships, Leadership, Listening, Love, Marriage, Schnarch, Space, Therapeutic Process, Triangles, Victims, Voice |
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March 22, 2011
by Rod Smith
“My sister and her husband constantly belittle our lives. We, my husband and I, are not as wealthy, we are not as successful in our careers, but at least we are 100% honest. While they are not blatantly dishonest they do make their living in questionable ways that and it pays them very well. The point is that my husband is now disinclined to spend time with my extended family. Do I speak up or just suffer in silence? Do I insist my husband joins me at family events or do I go alone and make an excuse for him?”
Suffer in silence? Never. Speak up? Of course you speak up. I’d suggest you gently tell both your sister and her husband (together) your truth. Tell them whether they are able to hear you or not. Since their “questionable” pursuits are none of your business, I’d suggest they are not worth mentioning.
Attend any family event you want whether your husband wants to go or not. Don’t push him. Don’t determine his level of involvement with your family or allow him to determine yours. If anyone wants to know where he is or why he is not with you suggest that person ask your husband his or her questions directly.
Posted in Boundaries, Communication, Differentiation, Difficult Relationships, Family, Family Systems Theory, High maintenance relationships, In-laws, Triangles, Voice, Womanhood |
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January 17, 2011
by Rod Smith
80,000 online views
Of course you are going to fall apart, and mourn the loss of the future you thought you’d have.
You will feel like death itself and even welcome your own.
Then, when your mind somewhat clears, you’ll wonder what really occurred. You will question what you might have done to cause the marriage breakdown and wonder what you might have done to save it.
Then you will bargain with God, your husband, even your children, or with anyone who will listen as you urgently try to get things back to normal, and get yourself back into his heart, head, and bed.
And, when things somewhat settle, and you’ve gotten some rest, and you emerge from the initial impact of what has occurred, you will see that this is not about you, or what you did or did not do. You will see there that there is no real power in bargaining with him, or real value in your becoming whatever you think he’d prefer you to be.
You will see that, quite apart from whatever he decides to do, there is great power and value in picking up your life, one emotion at a time, and doing what is best for yourself and your children.
(November 2006)
Tell me your story. I am listening:
Posted in Affairs, Anger, Attraction, Betrayal, Boundaries, Differentiation, Difficult Relationships, Divorce, Domination, Forgiveness, Grace, Grief, High maintenance relationships, Listening, Love, Manipulation, Marriage, Past relationships, Re-marriage, Reactivity, Recovery, Schnarch, Sex matters, Single parenting, Triggers, Trust, Victims, Voice, Womanhood |
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