The Valentine Post

Petula Clark sang a song in 1965, she called it My Love.
The lyrics of the most memorable stanza:

My love is warmer than the warmest sunshine
Softer than a sigh.
My love is deeper than the deepest ocean
Wider than the sky.
My love is brighter than the brightest star that shines every night above
And there is nothing in this world
That can ever change my love

Now that's a valentine.

 This is Cupid, the original matchmaker.

In my community, matchmakers look differently. They all wear clothes, for one thing.

But that is another story for another day. The current jury-of-what-works-in-relationships would not approve of matchmaking.

The story:

A journalist from the LA Times/Chicago Tribune, called me about week ago for an interview on Valentines Day. Why me?  Hearing about this, people in my personal sphere of influence joked about my deep, profound, enduring, long-lasting relationship with pagan holidays. 

The joke is that it isn't true. Like most observant Jews, I don't celebrate Valentine's Day or even Halloween. No Trick or Treat, no cheering, Happy Valentine's Day! Sounds horrible, but nary a dime spent to say, I love you.

Which isn't so bad.

Many years ago Valentine's Day was associated with the expression of love, not the flattening of the wallet.  I learned this because a little rusty on the history of the holiday, I did what anyone would do to prepare for an interview. I Googled it. Apparently Pope Gelasius I, clearly a visionary, razed the pagan rite, Christianized the day in 496 A.D.

The holiday rewrite looks a little like this:

Claudius II, an ambitious second century A.D. Roman emperor, sends every able-bodied man off to war. His soldiers, forlorn and lovesick, suffer terribly, destined never to return home again. 

In his quest for dominion and land, Claudius thinks it prudent to ban new marriages, put an end to that threat to the empire.

The stroke of a pen in those days.

You may recall the PBS series, I, Claudius with Derek Jacobi.
In the dramatization, Claudius himself engages in all kinds of liaisons and conflictual loving relationships. But apparently he bans them for the common folk. So off to war we go.

The abolition of marriage doesn't sit well with the people, and a rebellious priest defies the emperor, marries off young couples at a brisk pace.  (I picture these ceremonies happening in the woods). Unfortunately, blessing unions lands Father Valentine in jail.  There, behind bars, he falls in love with the jailer's daughter, and before his execution on February 14, sends her the first Valentine.  It is a letter.  A note.  Signed:

 From your Valentine. 

Knowing this history freed me to spout off eloquently to the Tribune reporter, Kelsey Collister, who proceeded to write a cute piece, Have a Stress Free Valentine's Day. Kelsey whittled down our 45 minute interview to a few sentences, still got most of it right.

She asked me the reason this day seems to be so stressful, and I said that people are afraid to fail at Valentine's Day. And basically,

Life gets in the way.

Who has time for another holiday, seriously?  Did you get that Bar Mitzvah gift for your nephew?  Why not? And we're all way behind on birthdays.

Another reason for the angst is that we have lost the skill of love, expressing love, even feeling love.  We're great at sex (at least people seem to say they are) but love is a lost art. Love is sexualized, I think is what I said. Only one of the five intimacies, and yet, you would think, that's all there is.

Relationship therapists recommend saying I love you, and saying it often, but this is far from easy. We're all children really, locked into our fears of rejection, our fears of intimacy.  What happens if our words are not reciprocated?  Not good.

So we play it safe, keep it intellectual, funny, or sexual.  Don't give over that part that is most vulnerable, the part that craves attachment. Be cool.  It's not about love.

But it is, and couples know this, at least the ones I see. Love is everything, and the test of a relationship is the work, building on that attachment, adding to whatever it is you have, bonding over problem solving, working together, sharing, negotiating the in-laws, work. Children. Love is a verb that builds, takes two partners, makes them into one.

This did not come across in the interview. 

What you get instead is me saying that if your partner shovels snow, massage the sore muscles. Not very deep, that advice.

But touch does matter.  We don't just massage anyone's sore muscles. Humans are sensuous, and the other way to loving, the one that isn't work, is to feed the five senses-- touch, smell, sight, sound, and taste. Good relationship therapy works toward enhancing life in this way, together, pushing away from the ordinary, the ho hum. Maybe even leaning towards chocolate. Smelling flowers.

So sure, you can give a gift or three on this holiday.

But I like Father Valentine's way so much more, and think it is what we need in our technologically glutted, electronic world. Not the generic grocery store greeting card, but a homemade valentine.  Historically these are works of art, beautiful, sensuous, cut by hand. Let's rejuvenate this art form, and better even, take the religion out of it. Any day, any time, create something for someone.

Should that be a valentine, however, consider buying the following: rice paper, watercolor,  lace. Try to make something pop out of the card, like they do in the childrens books. Write a poem, Nancy Rosin,  president of the National Valentine Collector's Assocation, has close to 10,000 of these, including the first mail-posted Valentine on record.  Her collection is a social history of love and it is more than beautiful.  Each one, homemade.

Making your own works because like a good chocolate chip cookie, it is original, has no added preservatives, feels fresh and personal, smells good.  And better than a cookie, there are the words, the sentiments.

No time to shop, get out the markers, the paper, the magazines. Collage is fairly simple process, Google that, and add old pictures, make it personal. Go to your mother's sewing box and find some pretty material, cut and paste it to your card.  Make it beautiful. Try.

And if that seems impossible, then write the right things on a plain piece of paper. Celebrate your appreciation, your need.

Maybe a limerick.

When I met you, the world turned colors
My thoughts, my dreams, no trace of others,
The future bright, warmth and treasure
For you I gambled, without measure.

There. That took all of 76 seconds. Feel free to steal it, don't even worry about giving me credit. Or just use the Petula Clark song. My love is warmer than the warmest sunshine. . .softer than a sigh.

therapydoc

Being Right Part Two

I thought there might be a Part Two when I posted Part One of Being Right. Sometimes there has to be a Part Two.

In Part One we find me hopeful about people changing. It takes time, but even people who have to be right all of the time can change, can yield the point with or without therapy, if you play them right. A family systems approach works better than CBT, a cognitive behavioral therapy that falls with defensiveness on deaf ears, as in, What do you know?

Part Two, I'm sorry, is more depressing. I find that I can't change some people, not without medication to chill them down. They'll never yield the point, never be wrong. They're simply too afraid. And they have a disorder, probably.

If it's Schizophrenia, Paranoid Type, an Axis I disorder, you can't blame a person for being quite sure that there are enemies out there, that people are persecuting him. He's right about this, absolutely sure; they're listening through the telephone, the computer. Voices and imagined events are real, no convincing otherwise.

These are delusions. Even with help, without medication delusions can be hard to dislodge. Try and convince people who suffer from them that they're wrong. Good luck.

Being right is also a feature of Paranoid Personality Disorder (PPD), an Axis II, and we can't blame people for personality, either.

Nowhere does the word "delusion" appear among the diagnostic indicators of PPD (listed below) but the features imply that sufferers are delusional by virtue of their unfounded distrust. Because they hear no voices they're not technically delusional. It is their faulty construction of reality that makes them suspicious of others, not voices in their heads.

You can have both, an Axis I disorder like depression, addiction, or anxiety, and an Axis II, a dysfunctional personality. The latter can cause the former. People can get depressed because others don't like them; they can't look in the mirror to see how difficult they are to love. Hospitalized for the whole gestalt, even CEO's billionaires, people ostensibly doing just fine, functioning at the top of their game, get mentally sick.

Personality develops in childhood as our genetic predispositions are slapped with reality, the world out there. Some traits lie dormant until challenged by the hand we get, our families, friends, teachers, our luck. Yes, you actually can blame the family, and you can blame others (try that boarding school, orphanage, the Nazis, or a father who liked your little brother better) for bringing out the worst in you.

The problem is there's no pointing any one finger at any one person. Everyone's a product of someone else's stress in transgenerational theory, people who victimize have probably been victims themselves. If you go genetic, you have to start with Adam and Eve and all those other mamas and papas.

Surely some features of personality, especially the cute ones, the positive ones, aren't snuffed out with negativity, and they're genetic, for sure, our cadence, how we talk, joke around. We see our mannerisms in our children and grandchildren, we know they haven't copied us intentionally. There's wiring in there. Yet we all talk like Seinfeld. Would I lie?

The environment gives the nod, the go-ahead to both the good and the bad.

In Part One we discussed how when childhood stress is bad, as it is under the roof of abuse and neglect, unconscious decisions to cope with it aren't always good. Without parental coaching, how's a kid supposed to know what to do? So children make decisions, as in, T

Trust no one.
Don't tell me, I'm wrong. You're clearly wrong, and you're scary, and
You're not the boss of me now.

We call attributing, or casting unwarranted negative aspersions to people paranoia, and we're not talking the pot smoking kind. You can change that by getting straight, you know.

When paranoia rules in an otherwise normal personality, as in Paranoid Personality Disorder, there's no yielding the point, no being wrong about people and their intentions. The person suffering from paranoia is sure, 100% sure that. . .

He stole that money!

She cheated me out of the property!

She has my ring and won't give it back.

He thinks I'm stupid. I'll show him!

Very difficult to convince people like this that they are wrong about this, no matter how much cajoling, flattering, affirming, validating, you do.

Okay. Maybe with a lot of sex. But even with physical affection, I don't know, the odds are that the paranoia will come back again under stressful conditions.

This is why, by the way, medications are helpful, they help people buffer stress. It is also why some people don't want to take them. They don't want to be left vulnerable to exploitation and harm, psychologically "buffered" from the pain.

Here are the features of this intractable disorder.

301.0 Paranoid Personality Disorder:

A. A pervasive distrust and suspicion of others such that their motives are interpreted as malevolent, beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts, as indicated by 4 or more of the following:

(1) suspects, without sufficient basis, that others are exploiting, harming, or deceiving him or her

(2) is preoccupied with unjustified doubts about the loyalty or trust-worthiness of friends or associates

(3) is reluctant to confide in others because of unwarranted fear that the information will be used maliciously against him or her

(4) reads hidden demeaning or threatening meanins into benign remarks or events

(5) persistently bears grudges, is unforgiving of insults, injuries, or slights

(6) perceives attacks on his or her character or reputation that are not apparent to others and is quick to react angrily or to counterattack

(7) has recurrent suspicions, without justification, regarding fidelity of spouse or sexual partner.

B. Does not occur exclusively during the course of Schizophrenia, a Mood Disorder With Psychotic Features, or another Psychotic Disorder and is not due to the direct physiological effects of a general medical condition.

No fun. Partners, spouses and children are often accused of cheating, lying, having affairs, manipulation. Friends and children of friends, housekeepers, baby sitters, business associates, deliberately plotting behind their backs. People look at them the wrong way, people wrong them, think they're oblivious, stupid.

These are angry people. Suspicious. Not obviously, sometimes, they won't always tell you their suspicious, but surely. Telling you might give you an edge.

There is a strong association with child abuse, and you can see why. If you can't trust your own parents to take care of you and protect you, to show you that they love you, that they believe in you, who can you trust? Or if you lived in a concentration camp, and every authority was a killing authority, every uniform or bunk mate a possible snitch, you learn to read aggression in people, even when there isn't any. You misinterpret facial signals, body language, tone of voice.

You learn to trust only yourself. You become impenetrable, are perceived by others as tough. Deep down you want others to adore you, to tell you that you're wonderful, and you may behave as if you believe you really are, but you're really not sure. This thread of insecurity runs through most personality disorders, you know.

People who suffer from Paranoid Personality Disorder are often afraid to put themselves in situations that are intimate, it makes them feel vulnerable, weak. They won't initiate an intimate conversation, and have buried their issues deeply, don't participate, necessarily, or appear disconnected, laugh when they shouldn't. Makes sense, right? How can you let a potential enemy get close? That's just plain dumb.

You don't make yourself vulnerable, tell people your true feelings, your fears, your sadness, if there's a chance of being punished.

That's another reason you have to be right, too. So you don't get punished.

therapydoc

Complaining

The Jewish word for complaining, you might know, happens to be kvetch-ing.* But you don't have to be Jewish, obviously, to kvetch.

There's therapeutic value in it, and paid listeners spend the good part of their day in pursuit of the productive kvetch.
Meaning, if a patient can complain to a professional and get results, either feel better or resolve a problem, then it's probably good for that person to kvetch, and a therapist is doing a real service, just listening. It's what we do, among other things.

Even better is to orchestrate it so that the patient complains to someone in the family, builds an alliance there.

But forget about the therapeutic setting. Anybody with a friend or partner can complain just because it feels good. I suppose in certain religious circles this is frowned upon if it presents as gossip or involves casting of negative aspersions.

But let's not get all spiritual here. I'm pretty sure there are ways to complain to friends and lovers that are less gossipy or damaging than others. Talk to your local clergy-person if you have any religious questions about the right way to complain. Generally, you're allowed to do it in therapy to solve a problem, serve peace in relationships.

This comes up because a blogger wrote me to complain that he had blogged and let it all out, told a story that clearly felt good to tell. He disguised the people he wrote about as best he could, but worried that he had embarrassed someone.

He asked me, "Well, isn't the therapeutic value of getting it out of my system worth the slim possibility that I might have embarrassed someone, who, by the way, really injured me?"

Uh, no.

It's not going to be therapeutic in the long run if you're already feeling guilty about it. Maybe pull the post.

That's how kvetch-ing comes up in the blogging world. (I can just feel collective guilt festering all over the blogging universe right now as you read this.)

In the therapeutic world and the world of friendship, marriage or partnership, one person's proclivity to stuff it, as opposed to complain to, communicate with another, can be a problem.** Some people really do need to work things out, perhaps talk out loud, feel heard to feel better. But they won't. Or can't. People don't all have the words, or the clarity, vision fogged over with fears of exposure or conflict.

For some of us, complaining as children just wasn't allowed. Only the parents had the right to complain. So we learned not to. For other people, complaining feels horrible, like being exposed, raw, so out there, so vulnerable to criticism, rejection, and abandonment.

And then there are those of us who don't see that it will make any difference, complaining, don't think it will help, who can see kvetch-ing doing more harm than good, risking intimacy that will ultimately be lost, potentially create conflict, hurt feelings.

The emphasis on this blog, regarding communication, has always been

(a) You don't take away an umbrella until it stops raining.

In other words, if that's a person's psychological defense, not talking, you don't take it away. You don't make someone talk, you can't make someone talk, until that person feels safe in the relationship. Then it will be a natural thing, talking. Maybe. With a little work here.

And

(b) You want it to stop raining because intimacy, not distance, is valued in a relationship.

To me, one of the advantages of a committed relationship is that it lends itself to intimacy. Same bag of bones every night. You know each other's stressors, you know each other's outlets. You know if it's icecream or beer, and encourage watermelon. You encourage one another to share, because at the end of the day, only the two of you are living under that same roof, only the two of you can solve your problems. And if you have children, it is the two of you who will be accountable for their upbringing.

And the sharing feels good when you aren't punished for what you have said, rather have been rewarded with understanding. That feels very good, especially if it is a safe bet.

So we can talk all we want to our friends, complain all we want on the Internet, but if we have a significant other, the real juice is the emotional intimacy of complaining to him, to her. It's painful to listen to it, that's for sure, so often. We're tempted to feel we have to fix it, and sometimes we can, sometimes we can't. Problem solving, in relationships, is a different type of intimacy, requires different skills.

But listening is really the first order of business, the first course of intimacy, served up exclusively with a helping of words from someone else, words that fall, until further notice, on silence.

You notice, you really do, if someone isn't sharing with you, if a person is holding back, has things to say and isn't saying them. If you're sensitive, you can tell you're the only one who has been talking lately.

And for people like me, who don't like to let it all out, who would much rather read newspaper headlines aloud to bide the time, or tell Jewish jokes, or ask what's new in the community, the treatment is really less complicated than it looks. You tell people like us,

Just give me a little. Throw me a crumb. I won't ask questions, and I won't try to fix it. Just a couple of words, will do. Let me in. What's going on in there?

If you're lucky, and if you really refrain from trying to fix it or asking questions, it's likely you'll get some results.

Then maybe, if you're lucky, you'll feel you know this person. You can stop complaining about the lack of emotional intimacy.

therapydoc

* A kvetch is someone who complains all the time, but we use it as a verb, as in, lemme kvetch.

**This is where some of us have what is called interface, and have to talk to our therapists or push our finger nails into our palms to keep ourselves from saying something egregiously idiotic like, "ME TOO! I CAN'T COMPLAIN, EITHER!"

Fear Intimacy? Then Conflict Could Work for You

I posted this in 2006. made a few revisions.

Sometimes I'll see a couple who communicate primarily by arguing. The gloves are on, the fight is waiting to happen. Their normal posture is to be either on the defense or offense. It's a competition and somebody has to be right.

Take a fictional couple, Jack and Jill. They're in marital therapy. They're very uncomfortable expressing affection to one another (although sex isn't a problem, this is a passionate couple). Both of them grew up in homes where parents used a time-honored right to break things (dishes, walls) to demonstrate feelings. J. & J. learned that when someone crosses you, you react, and react fast and aggressively to win. That way your feelings won't get hurt.

You don't, actually, need to grow up in a conflictual home to be a person who reacts rather than responds under stress, but it helps.

It’s been snowing in Chicago. Jack shoveled after last week's snowstorm until his back hurt and he had to stop. Jill managed to find the spot he missed. She fell on the ice and blamed him. But luckily, Jill falls well.

Jack (walks in the door at the end of his long, stressful day at work): Yo, darling.

Jill: You (expletive)!! I almost broke my neck out there on the ice. You didn’t shovel very well!

Jack: Why you ungrateful (blanking) (blank)! At least I tried. I did a lot. You did nothing!

Jill: A lot of good your effort was to me.

Jack: Well, (blank) you!

Jill: Back ach’a!

And they’re off.

What’s this? Is it merely that they’re uncomfortable with intimacy that they'll say anything to avoid it?

Yes, that's true. But they're still starved for it, they still want love and intimacy, like most conflictual couples. And they'll profess to do whatever it takes to develop an intimate relationship. That's why they're in marital therapy. That's why they do well in marital therapy . This is where individual therapy is called for, too.

These two let loose on one another out of fear, but also out of habit. Habits are hard to break.

They also lacked loving role models, corny as that sounds. Conflict was the rule in both families, not affection. Their parents demonstrated good behavior outside of the home, at work or with other couples, just like Jack and Jill are a model couple on the outside.

And they never learned how to be assertive, obviously. They'll err on the side of passivity (sometimes) with authority figures and friends, then take it out on the family or the family dog.

The Jacks and Jills feel their emotions bubbling over before the key hits the door. Having held their tongues all day long, when they're with the people they love, when they're comfortable, ironically, they let loose.

I've heard a million times, "Where else am I supposed to let off steam?"

What does Jill really want from Jack? Not his steam.

She wants him to show her that he cares about her.

What does he want from her? The same.

In this case, Jill wants Jack to say, "Ah, honey, are you okay? Let me take a good look at you. Let me ice your boo boo’s, kiss it where it hurts. I’m so sorry. I must have missed a spot. Are you okay?!?!”

She wants him to show concern. She needs that. But it comes out wrong. It comes out as a blame statement: YOU missed a spot!

And he doesn't patiently take the hit and say, "OMG."

Had their families modeled Affection Speak things might have been different. Affection Speak sounds something like this:

Try Jill greets Jack at the end of the day after they have both faced multiple stressors:

Jill (quick peck on the cheek): Jack! How ARE you? Come on in, give me your coat. I made us some dinner.

(Okay, it’s a little on the traditional side. If you want, switch genders, add genders, subtract genders, do what you want, I don’t care).

Jack: Ah, honey, that’s so sweet. I love ya’. I had a heck of a day.

Jill: Me, too. And guess what?

Jack: What?

Jill: I narrowly missed breaking my neck on the ice. This looks like it’s going to be a
terrible winter.

Jack (concerned): Where? What happened? Are you okay?

Jill: Right in front of our house! I fell, but I’m okay.

(notice, she doesn’t blame him)

Jack: Aw, man! I must have missed a spot. I feel terrible!

Jill: Oh, please, I could have thrown a little salt out there. I’m not a baby.

Jack (taking her chin in her hand, looking into her eyes): Are you okay?

Jill: As long as I’m with you, I’m fine.

Jack: You’re sure?

Jill: I’m sure.

Obviously that’s the way we’re supposed to talk to one another at the end of the day. Why else are we married if not to support, nurture, and engage each other in caring conversations? The job, ALWAYS, is to make the OTHER person feel good, not bad.

That's the basic point of marital therapy.

That means no blame. Even if you blame him/her in your head, you don’t say so. Did you notice how Jack owned the responsibility for not shoveling when he wasn't blamed? Had she said, “You idiot, it’s your fault that I fell because you did a slacker job!” he would have felt he had the right to say, “Ef you, you blank!”

Not very productive, not very loving. We feel their pain.

So you tell me. Why WOULDN’T a couple want to go with Affection Speak, given the chance, and there's always the chance!

Mainly because a couple like this is really afraid of intimacy (as their parents before them) in this case, probably reflecting a fear of rejection or abandonment, but it could be a fear of suffocation, engulfment, merger, all kinds of weird psychological stuff. Better to reject first than to be rejected, suffocated, engulfed, etc.

Yes, it's as you armchair psychologists out there suspected. Strike first.

If a couple like this starts good relationship therapy then we work on those intimacy fears. And we can work behaviorally to stop the conflict.

I start with the idea of responding versus reacting. Reacting is a knee jerk thing, a reflex, like when the doctor hits your knee with that rubber hammer to check your reflexes. It’s automatic, not thought out in the least. Reactions just happen.

Responding is thoughtful. A person THINKS before responding, strategizes, plans out what he/she thinks will be the best way to phrase something. I personally like to do it this way. I LABEL PROBLEMS. Of course, I went to school for this.

Me: FD? We have a problem here. Do you have a minute or should we talk later?

FD: Now’s fine. What’s up?

Me: I think we need to buy more or better salt. I’m afraid people might get hurt on our sidewalk. I almost fell today. Scared the living daylights out of me.

FD: You okay?

Me: Sure. You know I’m an excellent faller.

FD: Much experience.

Me: Yeah.

FD: I think we have some salt in the crawl space. Lemme check before either of us runs out to buy it.

Me: You’re my hero.

FD: I know.

I would call this Affection Speak. No assignations of blame. All we hear is (1) a statement of a problem, (2) a call to discussion, (3) brain storming for a solution. You work together, two heads are better than one. You come to a decent alternative. You can do that if it's not a competition or you simply can't bring yourself to sharing your head space (too intimate).

I could easily have greeted FD with anger. I could easily have yelled at him.

FD! What WERE you thinking! You shoveled but you didn’t salt and you missed some spots and I almost broke my freaking neck! And you KNOW our health insurance deductible is $10,000 dollars!

That would have been a reaction.

If you’re reading this, it’s likely that you are an adult. By now you want to be above reactivity. Reactive is what lions do. Reacting is what pit bulls do. They eat their prey. You want to RESPOND, talk awhile, think it out.

Responding means defining the problem and asking for help with the solution. You stand shoulder to shoulder. It's better than facing life on your own. Why else get married? Why commit? Why bother? What do singles miss, after all, if not support, caring, tenderness and warmth?

When marriages bite the dust, no one misses the conflict. Everyone misses the warm bod' in the winter.

People who grow up with conflict err on the side of familiarity, thinking the significant other will be okay with it. Why? I don't know. My guess is that since 99% of our behavior really is unconscious, we simply choose social defaults. Unlearning the defaults is the ticket.

Being verbally affectionate, careful, and caring. That's not as easy as it sounds. It's risky. If I say I love you, you may say, Well, I sure don't love you. That would be terrible. But that's what I mean when I'm talking about fear of intimacy and rejection. It's possible. It can happen.

So the job is to make the communication process conscious, to stop, think, strategize, and determine how to say what you want to say without blame. Define the problem in such a way that your partner will want to help you fix it. Engage with sincerity and confidence that if the two of you put your heads together, there’s nothing that is irreconcilable, not even loss-- over time, of course.

It's true that even if you personally learn to respond, that there's no guarantee that your partner will also. Even when you are patient, even when you do edit, things can go sour. But it's worth it to try to communicate clearly without blame. It's worth the risk. It's worth setting the example. Your partner, if tested, might just respond positively to your positive communication.

Somebody has to make the first move. If you can't make the first move, or if you know it's futile, there's still no excuse for putting your partner on the defense. No good can come of that.


Copyright 2006, TherapyDoc