Ask Dan and Jennifer » Cycles of the Heart

Why There’s Still Hope for Marriage

Dan and Jennifer — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 16:30:43 +0000

Why do we cry at weddings?

I think its because we are all hopeless romantics. We all want the dream of a lasting connection that keeps us engaged and invested. We want to feel hot about our lover 30 years into the marriage and we want that for others. We cry because we want it for ourselves and because we don’t really know if it’s possible.

My daughter cried at my wedding. She was, afraid, perhaps. Afraid that while it seemed so good at the point of the wedding that it might not end up the fairy tale. I’ve been married three times now and she knew how it could turn out. She has seen my two previous marriages fail and got a really clear picture of how bad a bad marriage can be. But even at that third attempt, she cried. She wanted, at 16 to have a father who cared about her, and a husband for her lonely mom. Her hopes brought tears.

As she walked down the isle herself, a couple of weeks ago, I cried. My husband asked me what I was feeling and I told him, “Sad, glad, wonderful.”

What was amazing me was that in spite of seeing me go through two disastrous marriages, she still had hope. She believes in her ability to love, and she believes in her husband.

When I hear the debate about whether you should stay together for the kids or show them that it’s okay to find happiness, I am amused. Ideally, we should all be able to make it work out. But watching miserable parents suffer for their sake does not make for well-adjusted children.

What I like to think my daughter saw, which gave her continued hope, is that when you are determined enough, anything is possible.

Ending two marriages in divorce was not what I wanted for my kids, or in the least, myself. I was ill equipped to manage a lasting connection. My mother also went through two divorces, one when I was a toddler, and another long after I was grown. So I saw both divorce, and “staying together for the kids”. Neither provided me a model for intimacy.

But I was determined to have what my mother did not, a lasting, intimate connection with my husband. What I did, and what my daughter witnessed, is to find out what it took to have what I dreamed of having.

I hoped therapy would help me find it. And undoubtedly, the work I did and the things I learned did pave the way. But it wasn’t until I discovered the Cycles of the Heart model that I fully understood why it is so horribly difficult for most of us to have that romantic dream. And it wasn’t until I understood the way out that I was able to do it differently.

Discovering that the way our minds are wired and…

Who Are You And What Have You Done With My Partner?

Melody Brooke — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 17:10:34 +0000

When I got married I was such a happy person. My husband was gentle, kind, giving, and such a great dad. It came as a complete shock to me the first time he got angry with me.

You see, I am an anger phobic from way back. I will never forget cringing as my grandmother screamed at my mentally retarded uncle. She would go on tirades that filled the house with angry blasts of her voice (this was no small task as the house was a 3 story boarding house). I was never comfortable with anger (especially not my own!) and I would do just about anything to avoid it. Additionally, when anyone was angry I had huge judgments regarding them. Anger, in my opinion meant ugliness, abusiveness and there just wasn’t any excuse for it.

So marrying someone human enough to get angry startled me. I didn’t understand where my loving, gentle husband had disappeared to and who was this person in my bedroom anyway? After all, I didn’t see that I could possible have done anything to have brought on his wrath. I never did anything to deliberately hurt anyone, especially him, my most beloved. The anger that I felt as a response separated us. I felt totally disconnected from him. I couldn’t understand where he got off being so angry with me for nothing I could comprehend. Who was this angry monster and why did he seem to hate me?

That’s how it felt to me. If someone was that angry with you they had to hate you, right? Consciously I knew that was wrong, but it definitely felt that way. The little kid inside cringed at every angry word he spoke.

I was fearful of his getting angry so I started editing what I told him. In other words, controlling him by not giving him all the information. That always backfired of course, because eventually he would discover what I had not told him and it would make him even angrier.

I don’t recall how long it took for me to realize that underneath the raging exterior of my formerly loving partner was a lot of fear and hurt. What’s more, what he was angry about was never really about what I thought it was about, it wasn’t really about what I had said or done, it was about something far bigger, and older.

His anger was what I call a “Self-Protective” stance that he took to manage his hurt and fear. Often when someone is hurt they will become larger than life. They will raise their voice, puff up their physical self to maximum capacity and try to look as threatening as possible in an effort to appear more powerful than they feel (Imagine a puffer fish here). They appear large and loud and scary so that you will be intimidated into stopping whatever it is you are doing that is hurting or scaring them. Underneath there is a kind of desperation and terror. But that is not what they show; they show an overpowering, larger than life toughness to attempt to force change.

The person that had been so frightening to me was in fact scared and hurt. Now, for some of you that might not be new information, but for me it was a huge newsflash. Knowing this changed everything. It empowered me to respond differently than I ever had to an angry person.

Instead of responding as a helpless victim…

Arguments and Fights: Why Won’t You Listen to Me?

Melody Brooke — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 14:08:29 +0000

How many times have you been in a situation with someone you know pretty well, maybe your spouse or your best friend, when you just couldn’t get through to them? For some reason beyond your understanding they just refuse to listen to what you are saying. They argue, they say irrational things, they confound you with statements unrelated to what you are trying to say, they just don’t seem to hear what it is you are trying to get across.

Why is that?

Okay, we have all heard of the “Fight or Flight Syndrome”. That’s’ when your brain takes over and you feel you have to either fight or run away from the situation. But what does this mean to us on a personal level? What it means is our brains are engaged in a battle for our survival and it is sending us messages intent on helping us survive whatever the threat appears to be. That threat could be as simple as avoiding embarrassment, it could be defending against something that you said that the other person perceived as an attack. Whatever the threat, the other person is reacting to you as though you are a threat. They see you as “the bad guy” and themselves as “the victim”.

Now, if you asked them, they would deny this. They are not lying to you, they are not aware that “the bad guy” and “the victim” roles are unconsciously engrained into their way of perceiving the world. Actually, it’s a part of all of our unconscious minds. We can’t help it it’s automatic.

Picture this: A husband, let’s call him Jim, is trying to help his wife who is swamped with Christmas preparations. She told him that she has to set up the tables for their holiday dinner and gave him a vague notion of how she wanted it done. Without asking for more details, Jim thinks he can help his wife; lets call her Susan, by setting up the tables for her. He hurries around hastily setting up the tables before she comes back from Christmas shopping, hoping to surprise her. Well, boy, was she surprised. Susan says, “What is this?”

Jim proudly says, “I set the tables up for you.” Suddenly, without warning, Susan explodes on him, telling him this is not at all what she wanted, and why did he think this is how she wanted it? And why didn’t he let her do it? Jim was dumbfounded. He starts yelling back at her how he was just trying to help, and didn’t she want his help? Susan is aghast that he can’t see this is not what she wanted. She starts telling him he was just trying to horn in on her show, that this holiday dinner is important to her because her new son-in-law’s family is going to be there and she had it all planned out. Jim insists that he was trying to help her and she is just being petty.

The discussion erodes from there into an all out fight.

What happened here? Both people were trying to accomplish the same goal, but they got seriously derailed. Why? It’s because their brains kicked into survival mode. The whole argument escalated because neither of them realized how suddenly they had become each other’s enemy. Each saw the other as “the bad guy” and themselves as “the victim”. Whatever understanding they may have had of each other’s stress was out the window and they were each solely focused on surviving the current threat.

So what is the alternative? The alternative is…

Talk is Cheap – What Does it Really Mean to Tell Someone “I Love You”?

Melody Brooke — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 03:36:27 +0000

What does it mean to tell someone "I love you"?

How many times have people said that to you in your lifetime?

The words are great to hear. They make us feel all warm and mushy inside. Of course, there are different kinds of love. Our minister may say "I love you" but it means something different than when our child says, "I love you". And of course it means something entirely different when our lover says, "I love you."

How do we know what those words mean and are the words enough?

Here’s another great article by featured author Melody Brooke. I know on some level we can all relate to what she’s saying…

Love in Action

What does it mean to tell someone "I love you"?

How many times have people said that to you in your lifetime?

How do we know what those words mean and are the words enough? I know women like to hear the words, too many years of living with the silent types who can’t say the words can grate on a person after a while. But its possible to hear the words over and over from people who don’t show it, and the words become meaningless.

A child who is regularly beaten by his parents hears the words "I love you" and begins to think that love means being hit. A child whose parents left her at her grandparents for weeks on end hear the words "I love you" and learns that the words mean abandonment. The words are only meaningful through the action that accompanies them.

Love then is an action. The actions teach us what the words mean.

I was married to a man who was wonderful on Valentine’s day, on Mother’s Day, on Christmas, and sometimes on my birthday, but the rest of the year failed to take the actions to show me that I was loved. Do I believe he loved me? Yes, I think he did to the extent that he was capable. But I needed him to show me.

Small things help us know that our partner is thinking of us, sometimes they are microscopic…

Seven Easy Ways to Ignite the Spark in Your Relationship!

Dan and Jennifer — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 16:55:55 +0000

Here’s a great article from one of our featured authors, Melody Brooke. Melody is a Professional, Marriage and Family Counselor and InterPlay leader. Her approach uses body, mind, and spirit to help her clients heal themselves with her gentle and compassionate guidance.

"Seven Keys to a Lasting Connection" provides practical steps to ignite, or keep that spark, in your relationship. This is a must read article that is guaranteed to improve your relationship (assuming you are willing to take action ).

Seven Keys to Lasting Connection

It doesn’t matter how excited you are about your partner if you can’t stay on the same wavelength and keep a connection over time. Finding the right person is really less than half of what it takes to stay connected with someone. In working with couples and families over the past 18 years it has become clear to me that being in love, or even just loving someone, isn’t enough to keep the relationship going.

To maintain that magical feeling of love and special-ness in a relationship we have to be willing to take 150% ownership of the quality of the connection in our relationships. There are certain things we have to be willing to do and to continue doing if it is our intention to stay in love and in connection with our chosen partner.

The exciting thing is that it doesn’t matter if your relationship is only 6 months old or if its 20 years old, these things will work to deepen your connection. And, you don’t have to wait for the other person to do them, it’s not about what the other person does or doesn’t do. It’s about you deciding that you want to maintain that connection, and being willing to take that 150% ownership.

So here we go:

1) Love is an action: Show your partner how you feel about them every day, at least once a day. Do this even if you are in different states or countries. Show your care don’t just speak it. Saying “I love you” doesn’t deepen a connection unless it’s accompanied by actions. Leave love notes under your partner’s pillow when you are going to be out of town. Make sure the tires in his car have enough air in them before he leaves town. Hug her every time she walks in the door. Think to get her favorite flower once in a while, for no reason. Fix the leak in the bathroom he’s been complaining about. Wipe up the counter and pick up after yourself like she has been asking.

2) We are all kids at heart: Recognize that no matter how grown up your partner seems, they are really a little kid inside. (Oh yes, and so are you) We are all really just kids that have bodies that have aged. Inside all of us are the unmet needs of our childhood as well as the playful spontaneous joyful child that we once were. Throughout the time you spend with your partner, see if you can notice the kid inside them. Respond to that kid just as you would to a kid who has not yet grown older.

3) Bedtime sharing: If you live together, go to bed at the same time, together, every night. This is huge. That means turning off the TV, the night-light and the phone. This is your time together. Cuddle and talk, make love if the urge strikes but that is not the point. The point is to talk about your day, your worries, and your hopes. Discover that in spite of all the time you have spent together, you still don’t know each other. If you don’t live together, or are not together for whatever reason, talk on the phone after you climb into bed…