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 21, 2011
by Rod Smith
“My husband says I am obsessed with our children. He says they take up all my time and leave little for him. I tell him that is what it means to be a good mother. We discuss this a lot. Please comment.” (Synthesized from a very long letter)
Mutuality is a challenge
signs: your husband is speaking his mind; you are listening enough to write for my opinion; you are able to have some reasonable dialogue on the topic without either of you closing down to the other.
I am in no position to comment on your particular relationship but I have seen women hide from their husbands in the name of being a good mother. I have seen women bury themselves in the children in order to escape the call of mutual, respectful, and equal relationships with other adults. Likewise, of course, men can also “hide” from wives – they can hide behind children, careers, and sports.
While a woman is enmeshed with her children she will rob herself, her husband, and her children of the beauty and freedom that comes with respecting the space and the distance everyone needs in order to grow.
Even trees cannot reach full height if they are planted too close to each other. Give your children some space and face whatever it is that makes them a useful shield. It will do you all a service.
Posted in Anxiety, Blended families, Boundaries, Children, Differentiation, Difficult Relationships, Education, Faith, Family, Family Systems Theory, Friendship, Grace, Listening, Love, Manipulation, Marriage, Responsive people, Sexual compatibility, Space, Therapeutic Process, Triangles, Trust, Victims, Violence, Voice, Womanhood |
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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 12, 2011
by Rod Smith
If you are a leader of anything – Pre-school to Presidency….
Leadership is often lonely
1. The
process, understanding and identifying the underlying pressures within your organization, trumps the content, detail, and the day-to-day minutia. You can have all the details in place and be sabotaged because you failed to see, or you ignore, the hidden tensions that exist in every organization.
2. The people and an appreciation of the inestimable value of others, trumps programs, or the implementation of plans and procedures. You can have perfect plans and procedures to implement your perfect programs, only to fail because you failed to appreciate the people around you.
3. Relationships, knowing the people with whom you share life, trumps hierarchy of who is more important than whom. The “lower” down the hierarchy a leader forms authentic relationships – the more credible will be his or her leadership.
4. Openness and transparency, allowing oneself to be known and allowing oneself to get to know others, trumps covert or undisclosed agendas inhabiting all complex organizations. What’s hidden will bring greater damage to your leadership than what is revealed.
5. Negotiation and dialogue, the willingness to enter into discussion and engage in debate, trumps a dictatorial, top-down style of leadership. Top-down styles bring some heartless, temporary obedience – authentic dialogue fosters creative, long-term, relationships.
Posted in Anxiety, Boundaries, Communication, Differentiation, Difficult Relationships, Education, Family Systems Theory, Leadership, Listening, Therapeutic Process, Triangles, Voice |
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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 29, 2011
by Rod Smith
“I struggle with what I told the little one’s in my family of the death of their young and vibrant ‘Aunt L.’ She had been really sick and took her own life in the end. I just could not tell these little one’s that she committed suicide – how would they understand, ranging in age from 9 to 2 years old. I just told them she got sick and she died – her body and her spirit were tired. I am so afraid of them finding out the truth one day. We all have continued to grieve our loss. All of the children attended the funeral and memorial services and we all take an active role in remembering her life. But how do you explain suicide of a very close loved one to a child?”
Your chidren will understand
Of course what you faced was difficult and, once the children are old enough to know the truth, I believe they will understand the reasons you have said what you have said. Suicide is perhaps the strongest and most powerful form of prayer I have ever encountered – giving ultimate relief in dying, what seemed impossible while living. “Aunt L”, I believe, has found in death what she could not find in life.
Posted in Adolescence, Anxiety, Betrayal, Boundaries, Children, Differentiation, Difficult Relationships, Education, Faith, Family, Family Systems Theory, Forgiveness, Grace, Grief, Meditation, Parenting/Children, Reactivity, Recovery, Responsive people, Space, Therapeutic Process, Triangles, Trust, Victims, Violence, Voice |
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March 23, 2011
by Rod Smith
1. Enriched is the woman who does not lose herself to her marriage or motherhood. She has a strong spirit of independence while being a loving wife and mother.
2. Enriched is the woman who does not accommodate poor manners (being taken for granted or being victimized) from anyone (not husband, children, in-laws, siblings, or her parents).
3. Enriched is the woman who lives above manipulation, domination, and intimidation. Her relationships are pure and open; her boundaries are defined, secure, and strong.
4. Enriched is the woman who does not participate in unwanted sexual activity. She honors her body as her private temple and shares it, even in marriage, only by her own deliberate choice.
5. Enriched is the woman who has developed a strong, clear, identity. She regularly articulates who she is, what she wants, and what she will and will not do. She is unafraid of defining herself.
6. Enriched is the woman who knows that pursuing her dreams to be educated, to work, to accomplish much, to expect much from her life, are profound acts of partnership in marriage and profound acts of mothering. She knows that the woman who “takes up her life” does more for herself, her husband, and her children than the one who surrenders it.
Posted in Adolescence, Anxiety, Boundaries, Children, Differentiation, Difficult Relationships, Education, Faith, Family, Family Systems Theory, Leadership, Listening, Living together, Love, Parenting/Children, Re-marriage, Responsive people, Sex matters, Sexual compatibility, Single parenting, Therapeutic Process, Victims, Violence, Voice, Womanhood |
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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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February 28, 2011
by Rod Smith
It's not about words, it's about creating a anxiety- free environment
Five, no six, things to remember when you have an important message to deliver
Your anxiety will speak louder than your words (written or spoken) – so do whatever it takes to reduce your anxiety. The message of your perfect speech or letter will be drowned by your anxious emotional presence. Anxiety is contagious – your audience will catch it from you. If your audience is already anxious, it is your task to be a “step-down” transformer and assist your audience to relax, to manage their anxiety, so that you may effectively deliver your message.
If an audience (of 1 or a million) is already closed down to you, your words (written or spoken) will only serve to push your audience further away from you – keep in mind that he or she who is doing the most work (over-functioning) is placing the “other” (of 1 or a million) in a position of power.
What you are heard to say (written or spoken) is much more important than what you intend to say or do say – when the stakes are high, people hear what they want to hear and anxiety makes people selectively deaf, blind, and mute. Filters, on both sides (speaker and the hearer) become erratic when there is much to gain or lose.
Resist saying to many people (the whole congregation, company, hospital staff, faculty) what you really want to say to one specific person.
Others (1 or a million) will resist listening to you if you are condescending, patronizing, or uninterested in their day-to-day lives and concerns. No matter who you are or how powerful is your platform or position, you cannot fake authenticity.
Who and what you are will be communicated to your audience whether you like it or not, if your message is well prepared or not, if your sentences are perfectly rehearsed or not. Your PRESENCE will be ultimately be the real content of your message.
Posted in Anxiety, Boundaries, Communication, Differentiation, Difficult Relationships, Education, Faith, Family Systems Theory, Grace, Leadership, Listening, Schnarch, Therapeutic Process, Voice |
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