“I can’t love you unless you love yourself”
In the whole history of bullshit, few notions reek of bullshit more than the notion that you have to love yourself before anyone else can love you. It is worse than false; it is nonsense. And it is...
View ArticleWhy you’re wonderful
…and why you need to realize you’re wonderful Let me tell you about a woman who started working with me recently. When I first saw her I thought she was very nice looking and as I got to know...
View ArticleWhen a husband cheats, the wife is often the one in the spotlight
It’s bad enough when your spouse cheats on you. At a very minimum you know you have years of hard work ahead of you. At worst your life as you knew it is destroyed. So it just makes things a lot...
View ArticleWhat is cheating? What isn’t?
Here I am, home from the store with a bottle of milk I’ve bought for my family. Cow’s milk. And I expect and trust that it really is cow’s milk. 100% cow’s milk. No other water in it than what came...
View ArticleMen and women, texting and dating
Hey, looks like we have another entry in our occasional “I told you so” series. I-told-you-so’s are obnoxious indeed, but also delicious, and this one is particularly sweet. For years we’ve talked...
View ArticleAre humans made for monogamy?
Every once in a while someone uncorks the argument the monogamy isn’t natural. He’ll point to the way our ape cousins the chimps and bonobos are quite uninterested in fidelity—to say the least!—and...
View ArticleSusan Sontag, sex therapist
The great challenge, when it comes to writing about sex, is to find something to say that’s interesting, new, and helpful. It’s hard to get any one of these—particular hard to find something new or...
View ArticleMORE on emotional energy
Here we go again, ripped from the headlines. This time the interview is from a major European magazine. Q: I read in another interview you gave that research shows that only 30% of energy is...
View ArticleLove and kindness
Only the most naïve rooky therapist would think of telling a couple in a troubled relationship that things would be fine if they just were kind to each other. It’s not that simple! Of course some...
View ArticleLove and kindness, cont.
Well, that was stupid: setting up a question for myself in the previous blog that was so hard it’s almost impossible to answer. Kindness is good, and more kindness is better, but since just telling...
View ArticleLove and kindness, part 3
Well, it turns out we are finding ourselves going deeper into this business of being kind. Last time we’d left off with the question, “So now what do we need to be kind to each other in our...
View ArticleLove and kindness, part 4
When we left off last time we had finished talking about how if you want to be kind, you have to understand the other person (particularly their vulnerabilities), have some emotional energy, AND be...
View ArticleThe ultimate, best ever, top 10 do’s and don’ts for having a long, satisfying...
I keep getting requests for this, so… If you want a long, happy marriage, all you need is a bathroom mirror. Then write down these 10 do’s and don’ts, tape them to the side of your bathroom mirror...
View ArticleEmotional affairs revisited
Here we are with another in our ripped-from-the-headlines series. This time it’s an interview by a major newspaper about emotional affairs: what they are, what they mean, and what to do about them....
View ArticleAre men more likely to cheat?
Are men more likely to cheat? Uh, no, actually. So…glad that’s done. Talk to you next time. OK, maybe we’re not done yet. I can hear you asking why I’m saying that, and how I know it’s true. Fair...
View ArticlePsychotherapy vs. pill therapy: the debate is over
The world of treatment for mental illness is reeling. We are in the process of rethinking everything—well, almost everything—that has to do with the diagnosis and treatment of mental illness. For...
View ArticleNo more fights with your partner
Hey, how’d you like to lower your risk of getting into a fight with your partner? Seriously lower, like by about 80%? If you’re in one of those states where you’re almost certain that once you start...
View ArticleDivorced for now, a family forever
Someone starting the always-stressful process of getting divorced asked me about what would happen to her family now that it was breaking up. I surprised myself with the passion with which I said:...
View ArticleHow to keep the sex sexy
Maggie had a very disturbing conversation about sex with her grandmother. No, it wasn’t simply because she was talking about sex with her grandmother. That might be a scary idea for some people, but...
View Article“Can our marriage be saved?”
I saw a new couple last night. Nothing out of the ordinary–I see new patients all the time. But this couple had had a tough journey to finding their way to each other. A painfully failed former...
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