I was recently asked by someone not currently in a relationship, “What can I do to prepare for being in a major relationship?” The answer? Have hard conversations. Life is full of opportunities for hard conversations–with colleagues, parents, neighbors, even the guy at the dry … [Read more...]
Attuned= Mind reading + speaking
Are we supposed to know intuitively what our partner is feeling, wanting, thinking? Or are we supposed to tell each other explicitly? Yes, and yes. I’ve recently had interesting conversations with couples about the value of explicit communication versus “tuning in” to each … [Read more...]
Connect to feel better
In the early days of this crisis a friend found this Mark Twain quote chalked on the sidewalk. In these days of heavy burdens, we need to know the secret of lightening our own load by lightening another’s. In stressful situations, the stress we feel is lessened when we … [Read more...]
Different Coping Styles
I was a newly minted psychiatrist in 1989, when the largest earthquake since 1906 struck the Bay Area. The couples I was seeing were having trouble staying connected, and helping each other through the crisis. As I listened it seemed that some of their difficulty had to do with … [Read more...]
Emotional Contagion
Emotions are contagious. And the closer we are to others, the more time we spend with them, the more likely it is that we feel their emotions and are affected by them, sometimes “catching” them. On the one hand, this ability to sense our partner’s emotions forms the basis for … [Read more...]