I heard this great line at a workshop with American grief expert and psychologist, Dr Robert Neimeyer yesterday (more on this in another post). Men, listen up! This is something we are often rubbish at. (Although more and more these days in some relationships it’s the career woman!) Too often us blokes step in to try and fix what others (partners, children, parents, workmates) are telling us about, instead of just ‘being’ with the person as they tell us their story.

We often grossly under-value the power of just being present and bearing witness to people as they tell their story. Even as a trained psychotherapist, where this is drummed into you, it took me many years to fully appreciate how powerful it often is just to listen actively to people. Usually, if there is a simple solution, the other person would have thought of it. Your quick solutions can leave them feeling unempathised with at best, or, at worst, that you just want to get them off the subject because you don’t like the discomfort of it.

If we ‘do something’ what should it look like?

Even if you can see a way forward for your partner, child or whoever, it is much more powerful to ask them questions that help them come to this realisation. We don’t look as clever, but then who do we most want to help? The person we care about, or our flagging ego …

I was fascinated to read about research* showing that people diagnosed with heart failure did better, up to four years later, the better their marriage was. How much love was in their hearts correlated with how well they did as much as did their hard medical risk factors! Yet another study correlating psychological well-being with physical health. Another reason why we should work on having more loving relationships. As always, start by thinking about what more you can do to make your partner feel loved.

*Coyne JC et al  Prognostic importance of marital quality for survival of congestive heart failure. Am J Cardiology 2001; 88:526–529.

At a recent workshop I was talking about ‘other-sabotage’. This is when a partner does things like starting to buy chocolates and taking their ‘loved one’ out to their favourite restaurant as their weight starts to fall. This lead me to talk about my working definition of love. As a relationship therapist one needs a clear way of understanding love, or else relationships (and life) get very confusing. When people finish a sentence about an abusive parent or partner with ‘… but I know he/she loved me in their own way’ they end up very confused as they hang onto a dream that maybe one day…   True love is not hard to recognise when you apply this definition that I modified from Scott Peck:

True love is a commitment to nurturing personal growth – in both you and the other.

Love is not a feeling – it is a commitment. When we are putting our irritable (and irritating) tired, grumpy child to bed without responding to their annoying behaviour, the dominant feeling is not a loving feeling – but the action is loving. If we see love as a feeling, all long-term relationships must become loveless eventually, for longer periods, as the ‘novelty’ wears off – but not so when you see it as a commitment to nurturing personal growth.  And then, to nurture another’s personal growth requires deep empathy for where they are at and what they need at that point in their life to grow into better people.

If  you only nuture the growth of others and not your own, you clearly don’t love yourself. This will limit how much you can love others by limiting how much they can love you. You will sabotage the relationship once someone loves you more than you do. Equally, our children need to see us take time to meet our own needs, otherwise they will grow up thinking they are only ‘good’ if they are looking after others.

If someone is sabotaging your weight loss, or stopping you from educating yourself, or getting therapy, or maintaining your friendships – it’s not love you’re looking at, it’s the opposite …

This 30 second speech by Bryan Dyson (CEO of Coca Cola) is worth repeating.

“Imagine life as a game in which you are juggling five balls in the air – work, family, health, friends and spirit. You’re trying to keep them all in the air.

You will soon understand that work is a rubber ball. If you drop it, it will bounce back.

But the other four balls – family, health, friends and spirit – are made of glass. If you drop one of these, they will be irrevocably scuffed, marked, nicked, damaged or even shattered. They will never be the same.”

The attached pdf is not really going to make much sense alone. I post this for people to use as an aid de memoir after we have worked through this at some length in therapy. In essence, it outlines the two paths that couples can go down.  The top row (The Conflict) is inevitable for all couples and results in some degree of separation and, thereby, safety – which is why some people will actually pick a fight with their partner – and results in the relationship taking steps backwards. The second row (The Management) is what many people avoid, but is necessary to growing a relationship and increasing intimacy as couples slowly work through what causes their conflict – this is how conflict becomes the pathway to greater intimacy: Here it is: Conflict Management Handout.

At my last workshop I promised to post details of the living psychiatrist (going strong at 79) that has inspired me more than any other. He is an authority on both Group Therapy and Existential Psychotherapy – the importance of finding meaning in one’s life. What makes him so unique for me, is that while his textbooks are highly respected in these respective fields, he has written best selling novels that spoke to my heart. I enjoyed reading these three books as much as I have enjoyed reading anything (and I read a lot). Few psychiatrists are prepared to talk about their failures and personal feelings as publicly and as openly as Yalom does (read The Fat Lady from Love’s Executioner). He lives his mantra that ‘it is the relationship that heals’ (not clever advice). In making himself vulnerable to the world he allows us all to be perfectly flawed humans. And then he writes like an angel. My three favourite books are:

• Love’s Executioner and Other Tales of Psychotherapy
• When Nietzsche Wept
• Lying on the Couch

His two textbooks that are must reads for students of these fields are:

• Existential Psychotherapy
• The Theory and Practice of Group Psychotherapy

To read more about him, here is the Wiki on this great psychiatrist: Irvin D Yalom

To go to Amazon, here’s the link: Yalom’s Books on Amazon

(While I have read all of his books the only one I’m not so enamoured with was The Schopenhauer Cure – it was a little too spiritually bereft for me.)

Not so long ago I shared a podium with the legendary AFL player, captain and coach Leigh Matthews. He told the amusing story of how they had a sports psychologist profile each of his team’s players into categories like ‘Thinker’, ‘Feeler’ (I wouldn’t have thought there would be much room for these guys on a football field!), ‘Enforcer’ (sounds more like it) and ‘Mozzie’ (these guys buzz around with their ADHD, bothering the hell out of the other team).

The psychologist was explaining to Leigh how, for example, you give the Thinkers the game plan the night before to ponder it, whereas the Mozzies you don’t tell until just before they go on because they have the memory span of a … well, you get the idea. Then Leigh, getting a bit irritable with all the psychobabble, asks the psychologist, ‘Just tell me which types respond best to me criticising and yelling at them?!’

The psychologist was a little tentative in front of the great man. ‘Aah … sorry sir. No personality type responds well to being criticised or yelled at. In fact, to bring the best out in people they need to feel good about themselves. Yelling at someone never achieves that.’

Leigh was more than a little disappointed. But, he went on to say that it has become clear to him that it is a total myth that people stay on their toes if you are critical, if you don’t reassure them, don’t let them know when they do something well. Specific recognition (rather than general positive comments) improves performance and brings out the best in people.

Partners, who would never consider yelling at a work colleague, somehow think it’s ok to yell at each other. Then they complain about their relationship/partner not meeting their needs. People who don’t like their overweight body often spend a lot of time putting themselves down, yelling at themselves in their mind, hating their body. We all need to remember to focus on parts of partners (and parts of our bodies) that we can appreciate – from this place real change for the better can occur.

Gary Chapman in his wonderful book The Five Love Languages: How to Express Heartfelt Commitment to Your Mate was a breakthrough for those of us who work in relationship therapy. Why? He highlighted how each of us has a preferred love language (or two). More importantly, he pointed out that couples repeatedly got into trouble because they would automatically give love to their partner in their own love language not the love language that their partner responds to. Given that we are attracted to partners whose personality either is the opposite to, or compliments, our own, you can appreciate the problem – our partner’s love languages are usually not the same as ours. I don’t know how often I have seen partners try to love their partner, but it all being wasted, because they give love in their own language, not their partners. The five languages are:

1) Words of Affirmation – saying words of love or appreciation.

2) Quality Time – spending time doing what the other wants and giving it your full attention, often this involves just being and talking about your life with them.

3) Receiving Gifts – and little thoughtful trinkets.

4) Acts of Service – having things done for you from breakfast in bed to fixing that leaking tap.

5) Physical Touch – from touching and hugs to sex (for women it’s often touching specifically without sex and the opposite for men).

As you can see the five are very different. We need to realise that we often waste our energy giving love in the language that is ours and not our partners. It is such a tragedy to see a couple slowly withdrawing from each other out of disappointment and frustation at their partner not appreciating ‘all the effort’ they put into being loving.

You should work out your top two languages and then let your partner know with words like: ‘If you feel like showing me that you care, if you could [be very specific e.g. give me a hug without any expectation of sex] that would be wonderful.’

Here is a wonderful two part talk on this issue by Professor Wally Goddard a gifted speaker and a lovely human being who has kindly allowed me to give away this recording – do yourself a favour and have a listen:

Prof Goddard Part 1; Prof Goddard Part 2.

Here you can post any questions, comments or requests you have on the site.

(click on the ‘Comments’ link, or ‘Leave a Reply’ under this post)

There are two types of Giving. There is the giving that expects a return (even if it is later down the track). Then there is the Giving where the reward is simply that which comes from the experience of being part of what is the oldest, purest loving act. If you feel in any way depleted by your act of giving then you are giving with a little ‘g’. Big ‘G’ Giving is done without the Ego getting in the way. This allows us to Give more powerfully, with the recipient getting the full potential of the act of Giving.

In relationship therapy, I often see couples with problems giving with a little ‘g’ – or ‘tit-for-tat’ giving – i.e. I’ll do this for you on the basis you do this for me – often unspoken – it’s not worth much. It does not capture the fullness of the key strategy of  ‘working to be the best partner you can be’ irrespective of how your partner responds (whether they develop this skill for your current partner or your next one).

And then, few things shift a negative mood state more effectively than big ‘G’ giving.