December 6, 2007
by Rod Smith
You advise women to stand up to their jealous or controlling husbands. Don’t you know the Bible says wives must submit to husbands?
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I do. Paul says, “wives submit to your husbands,” and one can safely assume Paul is addressing all of his writings to both men and women. A husband who loves according to Paul’s descriptions of love is both safe and worthy of submission! Such a man will indeed not be going out of his way to secure the obedience of others.
Beware of any man whose knowledge of Scripture begins, and ends, with “wives submit to your husbands.” Loving men (leaders, bosses, teachers) have no desire (or craving) for the submission (obedience) of others. “Love seeks no power, and therefore has it,” says Alan Paton.
Submitting (“giving in”) to jealousy or controlling or abusive behavior is certainly not very helpful to the marriage, the husband or wife.
The Bible doesn’t require anyone to submit (accept, obey) anyone’s pathological behavior, whether it is from a spouse, pastor, or any leader. To resist (stand up to) pathological behavior, however (wherever, whenever) it rears its ugly head, is to do the perpetrator (spouse, pastor, leader) a loving service.
Submitting to damaging behavior can hardly result in helpful long-term outcomes.
Sadly, I have seen many a woman hang onto the hope that the husband will eventually change (stop drinking, beating, swearing, and go to church!) if she could just learn to really “submit.” I know women who believe their husband’s abuse is deserved – a “reward” for the failure to really submit. If abusive men (yes jealousy and control are forms of abuse) were as interested in Paul’s injunction to men: “love your wife as Christ loved the Church,” we’d be pleasantly engaged in a completely different discussion.
No. The monster (jealousy) will not go away if continually fed. It only gets more controlling, more demanding, and more viscous when it is not appeased.
Posted in Anger, Attraction, Love, Manipulation, Marriage, Trust, Victims, Violence, Voice |
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December 2, 2007
by Rod Smith
“My husband got caught up in an affair with a woman at work. Distance made it was difficult for them to see each other but it lasted 18 months. I found out. We moved country. Changed company. All forgiven. Our stable, happy marriage of 33 years suffered but was reestablished. Now 8 months ago, he has been assigned to the same province where she lives although 400 km apart. I suspect that they might be in contact either by phone or email and I suspect that she knows he is in this area and might try to see him. She was really determined to keep the affair going. I would like to know if I will jeopardize our relationship if I ask my husband if they are in contact or if he has heard from her. We have not spoken about her for 4 years nor about the affair. We chose to put it behind us.” (Minimally edited for space only)
Of course this must be talked about. Putting something behind you doesn’t mean never talking about it again — it means stopping the behavior, finding reconciliation, and discussing it whenever one of you needs to. Ask. Talk. Debate. What you avoid talking about will have more power than what you do talk about.
Posted in Affairs, Anger, Attraction, Betrayal, Victims, Violence, Voice, Womanhood |
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December 1, 2007
by Rod Smith
Christians ought to be the most free, most fun loving, joyful people of all, and, when married, ought to be having the very best “wall-socket” (a David Schnarch term) sex on the planet.
Surely, knowing a creative God, being engaged in a dynamic relationship with the very Giver of life, the very source of joy – ought to translate every Christian marriage into a powerhouse of sexual joy and fulfillment?
It seems to me that “sexless” and “Christian marriage” – apart from very unusual circumstances, ought to be next to impossible to find – and an oxymoron if there was ever one. While, as a therapist I know this is not the case (for sexuality has become so very soiled for so very many people) it is not unreasonable to expect that people who claim to know and serve the Living God ought to enjoy and know the best sex and most powerful relationships God and life can offer.
Since equal, mutual, and respectful sex between a husband and wife is one physical representation of the love of God, sex between married Christians is in itself one of many acts of worship – at least with as much importance as reading the Bible or attending church, feeding the poor, or having a “Quiet Time.” Good, mutual, and respectful sex is one way to get closer to God and improve the spiritual dynamic of everyday living.
Posted in Attraction, Faith, Family, Friendship, Sex education, Sex matters, Voice |
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November 29, 2007
by Rod Smith
It is in us to love. It’s human. We have the capacity for it. Even hurt and rejected people can love. Once a person accepts that love has more than romantic connotations, as powerful and valid as these of course are, he or she will be able to see its broader power.
Love is unleashed through simple, but not easy, human acts of seeking the highest good both for oneself and for others. Acts of offering unearned forgiveness, of reaching out to the estranged, of welcoming a stranger, of letting go of all prejudice, of rejecting dishonesty – all begin within the individual human heart.
When a person intentionally facilitates others toward finding and enjoying and exercising the full range of their humanity, he or she will know and see and experience the powerhouse love is.
Even people with reason to reject others, having themselves been rejected or treated inhumanely, have it in them to love, if they dare to muster the courage for it. It comes quite naturally to the courageous person, and when it is unleashed, the purposes and the meaning of life surge into the heart of all who have the courage to hear and respond to its powerful call.
If you want a bound edition of all 400+ columns GO TO: www.ToughPlace.Blogspot.com and follow the directions on the right of the page…….
Posted in Anger, Anxiety, Attraction, Betrayal, Boundaries, Children, Communication, Differentiation, Difficult Relationships, Faith, Family, Grace, High maintenance relationships, Listening, Long distance relationships, Love, Marriage, Meditation, Past relationships, Re-marriage, Recovery, Sexual abuse, Sexual compatibility, Therapeutic Process, Triggers, Trust, Victims, Voice, Womanhood, Young Love |
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November 28, 2007
by Rod Smith
Jealousy serves no useful purpose. Jealous men (It’s men in my experience) try and tell me it comes with love. Nonsense.
Ugliness is never a symptom of love.
Placated? Appeased? Entertained? Jealousy won’t dissipate. It will grow. And grow. Become increasingly demanding.
The sympathetic, those allowing jealousy to do its ugly work, will discover the virus to be insatiable. It will only becomes more restrictive and ridiculous.
“I stopped talking to men at work, I stopped dressing in pink, I stopped calling my sister, I stopped smiling – these behaviors of mine made him jealous,” she says, “now he doesn’t want me talking anyone, or wearing clothes he didn’t pick out for me, or talking to anyone in my entire family!”
Rings of pure love, doesn’t it?
It is common for a woman to believe she causes a man’s jealousy.
“I make him jealous,” she says.
“No you do not. You are not that powerful,” I say, “his jealousy predates you, and now you are the unlucky victim of the virus.”
Don’t mess (negotiate) with it. Stand up to it. Or it will get you every time. It will contaminate your every move, your every thought. (This is the nature of a virus.)
Address him with: “This is your issue, not mine. I love my life too much to allow your jealousy to manipulate or dominate me. If you want me, you have to accept that I will not allow your issues to have any power over me. It’s sad enough that your issues control you, I am certainly not going to let them control me. I’m interested to see what YOU will decide to do with YOUR problem.”
Posted in Affairs, Anger, Attraction, Boundaries, Differentiation, Difficult Relationships, Voice |
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November 25, 2007
by Rod Smith
A few readers have asked what letters look like BEFORE I publish them. Here is a FULL and UNEDITED letter. My response is in BOLD. (Since newspapers limit columns to 220 words, this will not run in any paper “as is”…..
“I have recently started going out with a man (5 months ago). He has a female friend (K) who also happens to be a recent ex of his. They dated for approximately ten years with a break in between of about 3 years where he was with another woman (L). After breaking up with L he then returned to a sexual relationship with this ‘friend’ (K).
[Clearly this is a very deep connection between the man and K. Ten years, you will probably agree, is a long time to be together.]
“He had not been seeing K sexually for over a year when I started going out with him, but had continued to see her very regularly (3-4 times a week) on a friendship basis. This has continued even after I have started seeing him.
[So you knew this going into the relationship and this was something about him no one was hiding from you. Yet three of four times a week is a lot of time with a friend, even a “best” friend. Most people would suggest this is more than a friendship even if it is not a sexual connection. Be sure, if there was anyone in my life I was spending this amount of time with other than my immediate family others would expect it to have more meaning than simply a good friend.]
“Once I started going out with him I requested to meet K.
[This is a healthy and legitimate request and I commend you on making it.]
“She said that she did not see the need.
[She did not make the request. You saw the need and you made the request. You did not ask her because of what you thought she needed but based on what you need.]
“She says that as the ex she does not want to meet the present girlfriend.
[Correct. She is the ex and she doesn’t want to meet you, BUT you want to meet her and she is important to HIM and therefore meeting her is important to you. A good friend to HIM will also want to be a good friend to YOU if she knows YOU are important to HIM.]
“By chance we met her twice at two different restaurants but the meeting was very strained and uncomfortable.
[Of course it was. I trust you were friendly and gracious since they are only friends. If you see where the discomfort was coming from you will know where the issue is.]
“I do not have a problem with him continuing a friendship with her but I do not wish this to be exclusive of myself.
[So you DO have a problem if it excludes you but you do not if it somewhat includes you – this is perfectly reasonable.]
“I trust that he is not engaged in more than a friendship at the moment with K but would still like to understand more about the dynamics between them and to feel more secure in my position in his life.
[Your security in HIS – life – whatever this means, has nothing to do with their relationship. I am more interested in your security within YOUR life.]
“I feel that at the moment she has the benefits of both the anonymity of an ex and that of a friend who can see him at any time. She refuses to come to any functions when groups of our friends are going to be there. Rather she chooses to see him with her own friends or on her own. I feel excluded from a part of his life and this is creating conflict between us. We rarely fight about much else.
[You are correct. She is getting what she wants but is not concerned with its impact on her friend or on you – she says she is a friend of his but is not behaving as one.]
“To be fair to him, he has requested that she meet me and has explained that it upsets me to be excluded from their friendship. However, as she has categorically stated that she does not wish to meet me and sees no need, he feels that one should not force her to do so.
[Bingo! She sees no need! It is not her needs you are talking about or trying to fulfill. It is your need to meet her and this is the issue. If she were just a friend to him she’d willingly comply. I go out of my way to meet people my friends really like. This is normal friendship! You are trying “to be fair” to him and he is trying to be fair to HER and it seems to be at the expense of being fair to YOU.]
“He feels that his friendship with her pre-dates me by a long way and that he does should not have to sacrifice this friendship for my benefit.
[Well that is something each of you gets to decide for yourselves. You get to decide if you can be with a man who hangs onto past relationships and can’t seem to move on or include past people in his new life. He gets to decide which relationship he really wants. You get to decide if you can share him in this way. If he wants a long-term relationship with you – like marriage – believe me he is going to have to give up a lot more than friendship with a former girlfriend. When you have children the children will demand he give up a whole lot he perhaps thinks he can hold onto. Here’s the essential truth: love means making choices that help each other live more fully and he is helping an ex at the expense of helping you. You get to decide if you can live with this or nor.]
“He often reads the Natal Mercury (Independent Newspapers) South Africa, and has often commented that he thinks your advice is very sound. I wonder whether you could provide us with some of this wisdom in how to proceed with our relationship from here.”
[I am delighted he reads The Mercury and I am very grateful for all the readers in that part of the world. I trust you will share my thoughts with him and with her. I do not seek to be RIGHT – just helpful and I trust this helps you. You get to decide how you will be treated and therefore you get to decide where this relationship goes from here. It is up to you. Not him. Not her. It is up to you.]
Have a great day,
Rod Smith, MSMFT
Posted in Attraction, Sexual compatibility, Space, Trust, Voice, Womanhood, Young Love |
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November 21, 2007
by Rod Smith
1. When being right (correct, moral, accurate) is so important, so insisted upon, that it is at the expense of being loving. A healthy person can sacrifice his or her need to be right in order to love.
2. When anxiety and love are confused. “I am anxious about you” is a far cry from “I love you” and are not the same thing. Anxious people often believe true love necessitates worry. “How will he know I love him if I don’t worry about him?” is the plea of the anxious partner or parent. A healthy person remains non-anxious.
3. When love and control are synonymous. “If you love me you will dress (speak, think, see, hear) according to my will,” says the controller, “or I will question your love for me.” Healthy love celebrates freedom.
4. When love means “melting” into each other, giving up individual identity in the name of love. “We’re so close we even think each other’s thoughts,” proclaims the unhealthy couple. Healthy love elevates separateness, space and individuality.
Posted in Trust, Victims, Voice, Womanhood |
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November 13, 2007
by Rod Smith
The power and sacredness of sex …
Morality, religious beliefs, and family values and expectations aside, which, by the way I believe is impossible to do, don’t have sex with a person whom you do not know, and are not committed to in every area of your life, for the long haul.
To say “it (sex) is just a physical thing” is naïve, shortsighted, and misguided.
Sexual behavior is powerfully connected to the essence of who and what each of us is, and to regard it lightly or with flippancy, dismisses the powerful, creative, and beautiful place sex occupies in the engine room of each our lives, whether married or single.
To regard sexual acts as purely (only) physical is absurd.
Sexuality, and its expression through physical acts, potentially combines your whole heart, mind, your spirit (or inner being) and your body – in a sacred act of shared love, resulting in mutual replenishment, mutual recharging, and the willing refocus, as a couple on all that is mutually and individually important.
It is impossible to get the best out of sex (or put your best into sex) with a stranger, or with someone you hardly know, and with whom you have no long-term shared responsibilities and commitments.
Posted in Affairs, Attraction, Betrayal, Boundaries, Communication, Difficult Relationships, Divorce, Domination, Forgiveness, Friendship, High maintenance relationships, Listening, Living together, Long distance relationships, Triggers, Trust, Victims, Violence, Voice |
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November 7, 2007
by Rod Smith
“I am in an extra-marital affair and want to end it. I never ceased to loving or being intimate with my husband although my relations with another man have shattered some parts of our marital intimacy at times. I told my husband I also love another man and am sexually attracted to the other man. My husband does not find it wrong.. I think I crossed the border because there appeared dark corners and secrets. Could you share your thoughts about ending the affair?” (Minimally edited the portion presented. But a small portion of a much longer letter.)
I am not going to pretend to know what you should do or suggest you cut all ties and go “cold turkey” from your affair. Men aside, you have to decide what you want. Some emotional space from both men (sexual space, too) might be necessary for you to clear the atmosphere and allow you to see (think, feel, assess, process, clarify) more clearly than you are able to do right now.
While I might be legitimately accused of going against my own advice offered in previous columns, your dilemma portrays the complexity and power of human sexuality.
Sexual behavior is ALWAYS complex and this (its complexities) ought never be downplayed.
Your husband, I’d suggest, finds this (your love and attraction and sexual activities for and with another man) not wrong for deeper reasons than meet the eye.
Face your own dark night of the soul. Decide what kind of woman you want to be. This is what is in the balance.
Posted in Affairs, Anger, Attraction, Betrayal, Boundaries, Triggers, Trust, Victims, Violence, Voice |
3 Comments »
November 3, 2007
by Rod Smith
I am listening....
1. Neither client nor therapist exaggerates therapist’s abilities or the client’s condition.
2. Therapist sees role as helping client steer toward a more productive, healthy future.
3. Client sees the “big picture” over the “long haul” rather than immediate relief in the “here and now.” (Patience, patience, patience).
4. Client and therapist maintain a sense of humor (a sure indication of health) while facing life’s inevitable challenges. Not everything can or will be better no matter how much therapy you throw at it!
5. Client and therapist call forth the client’s strengths and the innate human desire for adventure, rather than engage in the seemingly endless pursuit to understand a client’s pathological history, weaknesses, parents’ weaknesses, and debilitating reasonable, and unreasonable fears.
6. Therapist and client understand the limited benefits of empathy in exchange for the overwhelming benefits of challenge and adventure.
7. Client realizes that psychological insight without action (acting upon the insight) is a waste of money, time and useful therapeutic process. Sometimes a person has to actually DO something rather than be filled with insight about what needs to be done.
8. Client is willing to increase the ability to tolerate necessary pain (both within self and within others) and resist the understandable pressure to alleviate the very pain essential for growth to occur.
9. Therapist challenges the client repeatedly toward self-definition (to grow up!) in the face of life’s natural obstacles.
Conditions under which counseling or therapy will be of little or no value…
Time and again I hear “If I could just get him/her to see a counselor” as if a counselor can work magic to heal and solve all personal and relationship problems. Few trained counselors would see themselves as possessing such unrealistic powers. Here are some conditions (there are others) under which even counseling will be of little or no value:
1. When a person is forced, or cornered, or manipulated into seeing a counselor.
2. When a person has no motivation for change.
3. When a person agrees to see a counselor because he/she believes counseling will “fix” someone else in the family.
4. When the person’s mind is already made up over and issue (a pending divorce, continued involvement in an affair) and goes to counseling so he/she can say he/she tried it and it was no help.
5. When a person is resistant to getting help (doesn’t see the need for help) and offers counselors little or no respect in the first place.
6. When the person is combative from the outset and sees the therapeutic hour as time to show how clever (or funny, or morose, or argumentative, or stubborn, or intellectual) he/she can be.
7. When the person has already made up his/her mind that there’s no hope (”we’ve tried it all before”) or that counseling is a waste of time and money.
Posted in Anger, Attraction, Blended families, Boundaries, Differentiation, Difficult Relationships, Divorce, Domination, Education, Family, Forgiveness, Friendship, High maintenance relationships, Love, Manipulation, Marriage, Re-marriage, Recovery, Responsive people, Sexual compatibility, Step parenting, Teenagers, Therapeutic Process, Victims, Voice, Young Love |
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