Someone recently was joking about making money and ways to do it. She hit upon a way to do it and we had a few good laughs.
She notes that most women say they want cuddling and they complain that the man in their life is not a cuddler. She joked that whomever rented themselves out as a "cuddler" would make quite a bit of money. People love to be touched, well, many people do. People love to sit on the couch and cuddle and there are tons who have no one for cuddling. No sexual intent, no romance, just simple touch/cuddling.
Hmmm
More ideas from the juncture of love and spirituality. Let me know what you think:
Love and patience are connected. When I develop patience, I am more loving.
What are your obstacles to loving others? If you can list them, name them, then you can work to remove them.
Pay attention to that which matters. What matters, or is important? Not much. We take ourselves a bit too seriously at times.
What arises in your mind is reflected in the world. We do not see things as they are. We see things from our perspective, always seeming to reinforce our preconceived notions- proving ourselves right. If you do not like what you see in the world, consider what you are seeing is an illusion. It appears real, seems real, but is not totally real.
Face your fears about love and trust. You will find that you love more openly and deeply and that trust is an inside job.
We create our own reality. What reality are you creating?
I just got back from a wonderful retreat to remove obstacles to compassion. I thought I was fairly compassionate and found multiple ways I can be more compassionate than I even realized.
For example:
Imagine seeing your spouse through God's eyes.
Imagine seeing yourself through God's eyes.
This one continues to challenge me and it is the cornerstone of counseling-Your mind is a mirror and reflects whatever you have in your mind. If you are angry at someone, consider that your anger is an internal mindset. You wrote the computer code in your brain, so that anger is yours. You can change the code, just don't blame someone else for making you angry. You are responsible for your feelings and your reactions. There is no “other”. When you are mad, you are mad at yourself. Once you are perfect, you can focus on fixing your partner.
Your feelings are impermanent. They change, like everything else. When you base a big decision solely on feelings, know that at some point soon your feelings will change and you will regret your decision.
Open your heart to people rather than defend yourself. When you defend your heart against getting hurt, you also block the other feelings from reaching you. You numb yourself.
More to come.
What sort of questions do people bring to counseling? Here is a composite of several couples throughout the years.
Dear Couples Counselor
My wife says she is not controlling. She tells me how to do things step by step by step. I am perfectly capable of doing many of these things myself, as evidenced by living on my own before we met. She has a preference that I do it her way. I do not do anything the way she does things and she does not do anything the way I do. We are very different.
I ask to do some things together so that we have a sense of partnership. She gets upset and tells me to do the whole thing. I don’t get it. I want to know how we do the bills. Do I have the right to ask how we do the bills or to see how much money we have coming in and going out? Am I wrong for wanting to be a partner in that process? I would not know because she refuses to do it with me. We might be quite compatible doing it, but I may never know.
She wants me to do more around the house, as long as I do it the way she wants it done. I think she needs to let go of the controls a bit if she wants some help. If she does not give up the reins, then she loses the right to complain or take on the victim role in my book.
We’ve talked about it and she either wants to be done with it entirely and give me the chore or have me do it exactly the way she wants it. I think there are more options that could be considered.
When I bring something like that to her attention, she gets really defensive and offended that I could possibly ask it. It is as if the question itself is offensive. It feels like she is backing me off. I have to apologize at some really weird points, I feel. It just does not seem right that she is over-reacting, in my opinion, and I am wrong about that as well.
My response to this couple would depend on the context of the counseling at this point in the relationship. There are obviously many things happening at once and prioritizing which battles to fight is hard. They all need to be addressed and addressing one might sidetrack us from another one.
What are your thoughts for this couple?
4 Marriage Secrets
Here are some idea
1. Those who need the least are the richest.
2. Happiness is a by product of serving others, of bringing happiness to others, of doing virtuous things, of having compassion.
3. You alone cause your feelings.
4. The desire for things to be different than what they are is the biggest cause of suffering. Let go completely and, by definition, your struggle ends.
To paraphrase a Buddhist teaching -When I seek my own happiness, I am almost guaranteed to be miserable.
The way to happiness is most commonly found when we treat others really well, love them, cherish them and serve them. If you want to be happy, try doing that. That in itself would transform marriage, if both partners would accept that challenge. We are happy when we do for others and when we seek our own pleasure or happiness, we tend to make ourselves miserable.
Every major religion has stories to teach that concept.
When people used to initiate their young men, one of the first lessons was, “Your life is not about you.”
If they did not get that lesson at that point, they sure did once children came along!
Look at the current problems you have in your life, work or relationship.
Are those problems due to you wanting to be happy and someone thwarting your will?
Are they due to others not behaving in the way you think they should behave?
I challenge you to serve them better, listen better and put your needs aside and observe what happens next. This is a challenge for most of us.
_Here is another common complaint- we parent differently, we have different values and we do not support one another well. What would you reply to the writer of this
Dear Couples Counselor:
I asked my kids to do chores and they balked at it. I expected my wife to back me up like I back her up. She ignored it. I wonder if they do chores when I am not home. I wonder if she would really do all the work to avoid asking them to do it. I value chores. I value having them contribute and get a good work ethic and pull their own weight. I would have them do a ton more around the house. When I suggest it, though, it is not met with any enthusiasm.
She tells me she wants me to lead, then does not have my back or sabotages it. I wonder if she simply does not want to be the bad guy. I think to myself if you want me to lead, you need to follow or go along with it or talk about what you want.
So today, she is with the boys while I am at work. She asks my son to do a chore 10 minutes before I leave. She had just asked me, “What area of the house do you want them to do?” I answered and she either did not hear me or did not agree, so she told them to do dusting.
First, why are you asking me what I want them to do? I jump to the negative conclusion that she does not want to tell them what to do, she’d rather I be the heavy. I don’t own the process if I am not giving the chore or am not handed the baton. You and I have not discussed the process and it is not clear what we want him to do.
They have never done dusting. As I was preparing to go to work, he asked me a question about dusting- where to dust. I told him around the baseboards, which he proceeded to do with huffing and puffing. He was not dusting in a way that would contain the dust, which bothered me. Since he has similar allergies to me, I thought dusting was not a good chore and he began having a stuffy nose. As I was leaving, I suggested she help him figure out how to do it. She became angry with me and said, “I thought you were helping him with it!”
I was asked what chore and she overrode it. She gave him a chore to do and did not prepare him for it, then thinks I was somehow in charge? I don’t get that! Again, She assigned her choice of chore and walked away from it and now I am at fault for not showing him how to do it?
_ Do you see yourself in this at all? What would you do?
Oddly enough, you can inoculate yourselves by looking at situations ahead of time so that when they happen, you are less likely to have an over-reaction. This is a composite of several couples.
Dear Couples Counselor:
My wife said she was beginning dinner at 5:45 in order to eat by 6:30 pm. 6 pm rolls around and I start looking in the fridge. My wife thinks that I am starting dinner and goes outside and starts talking to the neighbor. I was not starting dinner, but I now have to because, if we want to eat by 6:30, we have to start. She comes in at 6:15 asking if she can help.
I was livid with her. I do not trust her words. I do not trust that she will do what she has said she will do. I am angry that I believed her again. How could I be that dumb?
I looked out the front window to see her chatting with the neighbor, left again to pick up the slack. I clean up after her and feel like she is another of my children.
She does not pick up after herself on a regular basis and just assumes I will. When I refuse to pick up, she does not even notice and she does not clean it up until it is disgustingly dirty. Then she gets angry at me for cleaning and doing “her job.”
She won’t let me schedule chores for her and the boys (and me, of course) because that is not “spontaneous.” She wants to just let it flow. I take that as code that she does not want to be accountable.
Anyway, if I say that it is 5:45 and dinner has not started, I feel like I am being a jerk. If I go out and interrupt her with the neighbor, that is worse. If I do not start dinner, that is being passive aggressive. I cannot do the right thing in this situation because there is no right thing. I prepare dinner, resentful as all get out.
She then gets mad at ME when I bring it up to her. I am very gentle, slow start up in bringing this to her attention and she gets mad at ME. So, I am not allowed to be angry or resentful. I get blamed for being rigid with dinner times and she takes the focus off herself, or so she thinks.
What is worse is that I used to come home for dinner with the family, a big value growing up. I have stopped doing that because there were enough times that she was not home when I got home and forgot to tell me or didn’t have food ready. There were tons of times there was food, though.
Do I have the right to complain? It was inconsistent enough that I stopped coming home for dinner and made up some lame excuse.
Confronting her on it has not worked and I am not sure I am being reasonable. But I have changed my behavior yet again to accommodate her and I do not like it.
Help!
I was compiling information to do a question and answer. I found myself answering differently depending on which gender was writing the question. Please read the following and guess if it is the original gender or if I changed the gender. Then, what would you advise this person?
Disclaimer. To avoid breaking confidentiality, I am compiling complaints and questions. Therefore, these did not happen exactly as I portray them. I combine several complaints/issues into one letter.
Dear Couples Counselor:
Am I being a jerk?
My wife is never on time. Rarely, that is, let me be accurate. Last week, she said, I’ll be home by 3pm. 3:45 pm she pulls in the driveway. The kids asked, “When is mommy coming home.” I told them, “She told me she’d be home by 3pm.”
Mind you, we have had this conversation a bunch of times in the past. If you are going to be home at 3:45, tell me 3:45. If you don’t know, tell me you don’t know, be vague and tentative. I even coached her with, “tell me you don’t know. Tell me sometime before 5 pm. It is always better to be early than late in my book. I take you literally. If you tell me 3 pm, I expect you to keep that promise. Part of me knows you are not lying when you are not home when you say you will be home. However, I have come to not rely on you. I cannot take you at your word. Your word does not mean anything to me. I do not trust what you are saying.”
It would have been different, if she kept her word on other things or followed through. Now, when she makes a promise, I have trained myself not to believe her, not to take her literally. I have given up some things in order to accommodate this style of communication.
Dear reader- what would you advise this person if they were male and would it change if they were female?
_Another article I ran across shows how differently we respond. This stuff fascinates me:
When women are blue, sad or mad, they are more likely than men to think about their problems in a repetitive, unhelpful way. When men are down or depressed, they're more likely than women to hit the bottle. That's one of the findings of a University of Michigan (U-M) study of 1,300 adults age 25 to 75.
The combination of high job stress and large family responsibilities spells significant and persistent increases in blood pressure for white-collar women who hold a university degree, a new Canadian study shows. And unlike men, their elevated blood pressure persists at home after working hours.
In the Canadian study, it was only among white-collar women who have university degrees that a significant association was observed between blood pressure and stress on the job and at home. "The effect of this double exposure on the blood pressure of university women seems to be the sum of both effects, on the job and at home," says Chantal Brisson, PhD, who headed the team of scientists from several Québec City research institutes. "We found the increase was present through work, evening, and night, suggesting a persistent effect beyond the work setting."
In an experiment with 60 married couples, husbands displayed greater cardiovascular reaction when they thought their skills were being challenged, while the wives had greater reactions when they disagreed with their husbands. The study was conducted by Timothy Smith, PhD, of the University of Utah, Salt Lake City, and colleagues.
The investigators found that the husbands displayed greater cardiovascular reaction when they thought their verbal abilities were being judged, but not when they disagreed with their wives. The wives showed the opposite pattern: disagreement with their husbands produced greater cardiovascular reaction, but having the quality of their speech judged did not. "Wives were responsive to a potential threat to the quality of the interaction while husbands were responsive to a possible threat to competence or dominance," the researchers say.
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