Ask Dan and Jennifer » Melody Brooke

Satisfaction or Frustration – How Would You Describe Your Sex Life?

Melody Brooke — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 17:09:26 +0000

A while back I sat with a beautiful older woman who had been struggling with depression for most of her life. She and her husband have been married close to 40 years, and their relationship has become distant, though they still report to love each other.

I was shocked to learn that in 40 years she had never experienced a climax with her husband. She didn’t even know what it was until her body did it spontaneously during a dream.

My grandmother was 65 before she had ever experienced one either. She had been married to my grandfather for 50 years. After he died a man she had known in high school contacted her and eventually they married. Only then, at 65 did she discover what sex was all about. That was 20 years ago.

I foolishly have thought that women today are not in that same boat; that with all the sexual education there is out there today, women couldn’t possibly not know about climaxing. Obviously, I was wrong. As I sat looking at my client who had opened up about this for the first time in her life I realized that there must be other women out there like her. I am sure she is not the only one.

It would be easy to blame the husbands for not being sensitive to their wives needs, but that would be wrong. The reality is that these men know as little about sex as their wives. I cannot imagine that men who love their wives would knowingly not want their wives to enjoy their sexual relationship. But they are obviously unaware of what is happening with their wives and have never really enjoyed true physical intimacy with their partner. How terribly sad this is for both partners.

Society teaches men that they are supposed to somehow innately know how to please their wives, and that if they don’t, they are not real men. How many men out there don’t even know that they don’t know? Men, believing that they should know, are forced to act as if they know. Women without any awareness of sexuality or their own bodies don’t know what or how to tell their man any different.

Talking about sex, whether you are a man or a woman is touchy. How do you tell your husband, “Honey I love you but the sex is terrible.”

How do you tell your wife, “I don’t know if I am pleasing you.”

Both situations leave us feeling inadequate and fearful. But if we don’t find a way to breach the subject we run the risk of living 40 or 50 years without the joy of true sexual intimacy.

If you are a husband and haven’t talked with your wife about her sexual satisfaction, you are…

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…

Weathering the Storm – How to Survive Stressful Times Together

Melody Brooke — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 17:24:01 +0000

Life doesn’t always go smoothly, have you noticed that?

It’s easy to feel in love and happy with your partner during times of success and relative calm. But times like that don’t come along all that often.

My husband and I figure we have had one year that was relatively free of stress. Fortunately it was the second year of our marriage. We had weathered the normal “sturm and drang” of the first year and had established a warm, trusting connection between us. We had one year to enjoy that state of marital bliss before life came along to stir things up.

Change is Inevitable

The old saying goes there are two things certain in life, “taxes and death”. I would go on to add a third, change. Change happens continually and most of the time unpredictably. Humans don’t really like change, for the most part. We would prefer to have our routines and daily lives remain stable and secure so that we can know what to expect. Unfortunately, this is not true to life. Life has a way of shaking things up, sometimes at the worst possible times.

Marriages, if they are to last, have to change as well. They have to adapt to the flow of change in life and become more than they originally were, if they are to succeed. Most of us don’t handle it that well and the result is the amazingly high rate of divorce. The popular belief is that we are “serial monogamists” and that it’s normal to be divorced in the 22nd Century. But if you are like me and ever experienced a divorce, you know there is nothing “normal” about it and it causes damage to anyone touched by it, whether you have kids or not.

So how are we to surf successfully through the storms of life and remain connected as a couple?

I am sure there are books on that particular topic, though I have to admit to never having read one. There are lots of books on communication and deepening intimacy, but I don’t think I’ve seen any that directly address the topic of managing stressful times together as a couple. It’s easy to feel connected to another person when things are going well, its something else altogether to stay connected when things are not going well.

Human Nature is to Find Someone to Blame for Our Unhappiness

This is because knowing who is to blame helps us solve the problem. If we know where the problem is we can do whatever it needs to be done to fix it. But, in the case of marriage, that often looks like divorce. We figure, we are unhappy, so it must because of my partner. “Just look at (him/her) (he/she) is so (fat, addicted, mean, selfish, whatever) and obviously doesn’t care about (him/her) self or me. How can I be happy with a partner like that?”

Ah, we have solved the problem!

Now we know what to do, …

How Therapy Can Actually Destroy Your Marriage

Melody Brooke — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 19:14:49 +0000

Generally speaking we choose to go into therapy when we can’t figure out how to make our lives work by ourselves. Maybe we’ve been aware of underlying sadness that doesn’t seem to go away no matter what we do. Or perhaps we have started having panic attacks for no noticeable reason that we cannot contain on our own. We could be tearful much of the time and don’t understand what is causing it.

On the other hand, we could enter therapy because we are unhappy with our marriage and we can’t get ourselves to leave or figure out how to change it.

When we go into therapy for any reason, and we are married, the odds of ending up divorced actually increase. I suspect this is because when we enter therapy we are looking at things solely from our own perspective. We go into therapy hoping to get a different perspective, but often what happens is that we get support in our perspective. Most therapists are kind, care giving types of people who have gone into the profession in hopes of helping people. So when you enter their office they give you support and encouragement, they help you feel better about yourself and your position. If you have a partner and you are unhappy with them, the therapist encourages you to stand up for yourself and assert your needs.

The downside of their doing this is that while it may make you feel better in the short run, it runs the risk of destroying your marriage in the long run. This is because what has happened is that you have gotten help in making you stronger, at the cost of the connection between you and your partner.

In supervision early in my career I remember my supervisor saying that once a person brings their spouse into therapy you become the marriage’s counselor and not the individual’s counselor. This made sense to me at the time.

Since then I have come to realize that when someone comes to me their relationships are as much a part of the therapy as they. This means that I do not take positions against the other parties. I support the person in discovering more about themselves and exploring how their current relationships are impacted by their past experiences. I do not make judgments about my client needing to end their relationships just because my client is unhappy in the situation.

One of my past supervisors habitually demanded that her clients cut off connections with their families. Now, at the time this made sense to me since some of those family connections were with parents that continued to be abusive. And, sometimes, this it can be important to take time-outs in these situations until the clients are strong enough to protect themselves. But most of the time what my clients need is to be able to develop a different kind of relationship with these important people in their lives by developing compassion for both themselves, and for their parents.

To do this the therapist has to themselves be…

Are YOU Dating a Narcissist? Find Out Here…

Melody Brooke — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 13:15:37 +0000

"I’m In Love – With Myself!"

This past month one of my dearest friends fell into a familiar trap. She found herself head over heels in love with someone who was even more in love with himself. It took several weeks of bending her mind around the idea that what he loved was not her, but his version of her.

Actually, most of us do this to one degree or another. We find someone we think is “perfect” for us because of certain things that we think we see in them. This is not generally a bad thing. The problem is that sometimes our image of what we want is very far from the truth of the person we are projecting all this on. Most of us can sort that out as we go along and begin to see who the person really is and not just our projections. Narcissists can’t do that. They only see what fulfills their own wish of what the person they are with is like.

My friend’s guy was a very attractive, intelligent and savvy 40 something man whom had never been married, he said, because he kept meeting women who were “not available”. When he met my friend, he was very excited because she was very available, and quite lovely. My friend is open, intelligent, and sensitive, and quite sensual. He was easily able to draw her into his illusion of himself, because he seemed to be what she wanted. He had many years of practicing the illusion that he himself had fallen prey to believing. By profession he was a women’s “Coach” and offered workshops on achieving goals to women of the community. He talked the talk of being someone emotionally aware, and spiritually attuned.

Here was my friends’ biggest mistake; she opened her heart before she had enough information. She committed her love to him before she had spent enough time with him to gather the information as to whether he was really a good potential partner. But, in her defense, she was taken in by a master at the craft of seducing women. He knew that he needed her to commit her heart quickly in order for him to be free to behave in accordance with his true nature.

You see, once she had committed to him he knew it would be difficult for her to back out. Human beings have a hard time changing our idea of what we think of someone once we have committed publicly to our view. To have to say we were wrong about someone means admitting that we used poor judgment. None of us wants to admit to that!

So, even though my friend pretty quickly got a lot of information about him that indicated he was a poor partner choice, she could not easily say so without losing face.

Fortunately for my friend, she had good advisors close at hand who could see through what was happening and help her regain her boundaries long enough to tell him she was through with him. This wasn’t easy, because people who are in love with themselves have a hard time admitting defeat. His response was to insist that he would not give up on her and begged her to marry him. Fortunately my friend had become strong enough at that point to resist his overt efforts at getting her to conform to his wishes; never mind what hers were.

How do you know if you’re dating a narcissist?

…

Want More Sex? Here’s how…

Melody Brooke — Wed, 15 Aug 2007 20:23:58 +0000

Regardless of what you may think. Sex happens in the brain. Our ability to feel desire, the things that turn us on, the things that make us reach climax all happen in the brain. So, if you want more sex, it’s reasonable to assume you should know more about the brain. I’ll give you the primer version.

Our brains are hard wired to respond to perceived threat in ways that will preserve our ability to survive. These automatic reactions are called “Survival mechanisms”. Our brain fires off chemicals that provoke us into feelings of fear for our survival. Then we have biologically programmed ways to react to fear that aid us in surviving whatever it is that is threatening our survival. You don’t really have a choice about what you are feeling when you perceive yourself to be in a threatening situation. Your brain takes over. Our brains are very powerful in affecting how we feel and how we respond.

You see our brains have been programmed through biology and culture to respond in ways that will insure our survival in primitive situations. Your brain doesn’t really get it that if you perceive your job is being threatened you will not die. It really feels like you will. Your brain doesn’t know that if your husband/wife/partner is angry with you and you think they might leave you that you won’t die. Your brain doesn’t know that when a friend calls your character into question, that you won’t die. Your brain doesn’t discriminate between actual threat for your survival and emotional threat.

Our brains are divided into sections. As we evolved as a species we went from depending on simple functions to the very complex brain that we now have as human beings. Our reptilian ancestors brains comprised of three cleanly defined sections: the front part allows for smell, the middle for vision, and the rear allows us balance and coordination. And those basic survival instincts were cordoned off in a space between the smell and vision sections, a kind of command post with the scientific name of “diencephalon”. This part of the brain holds our drives for food, our "fight-or-flight" aggression reactions, and of course, sex.

Our brains further evolved into what is known as the “mammalian” brain when our left and right cerebral hemispheres developed. More and more circuits had to be added to process the more complex functions of the life and culture of our mammalian ancestors and our brains grew in size. But we still rely on that command post to assist us in our primary need: survival. This relic of the past fights our evolved brains more flexible reactions and tends to take over when we perceive that we need them.

This very powerful tiny walnut sized part of our brain, set inside our brain stem, is called our “hypothalamus”. It injects our system with electrical stimulus evoking anger, anxiety and acute fear. Most of the time, we are able to maintain mastery over this part of our brain. But now and again our animal senses tell us that our survival or our well-being is being challenged and that package of survival programs, called “emotions” erupt.

It’s like you have two brains in one body. Your emotional states that evolved to help you survive; and the other which is ruled by reason. The old brain; and the new brain in one package: your skull.

Okay, now, back to sex…

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…

The Battle of the Sexes

Melody Brooke — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 14:43:20 +0000

Growing up in the 60’s with a liberal mother I was all over the women’s movement. We marched for Choice, we burned our bra’s, we shouted out “Equal Rights for Equal Pay!” And, we did a lot of good.

Things have changed.

They are not yet as equal as they should be and the Roe vs. Wade keeps being modified and brought into question, but women have made a lot of headway in our culture. We “have come a long way, baby”. And perhaps as a rallying point for women the National Organization for Women is needed to get people to push for women’s freedoms. Maybe we wouldn’t address them without this, what I call, “Self Protective” stance. But it’s a shame.

In the past few years men have begun to organize themselves in a similar fashion. There is a National Men’s Equality Congress this year, there are men’s rights books and magazines, men’s rights online digests and men’s activism agencies. They have brought light to the issue of parental alienation and father’s rights. And for better or worse, Alec Baldwin has suddenly become their spokesman. They have done some great things to help father’s regain position in the courts as important in the emotional lives of children. But again, they have thrust themselves into an extremely “Self Protective” stance. Again, it’s a shame.

As human animals we find ourselves in this “Self Protective” position when we perceive ourselves to be under attack. There is no doubt that women have perceived themselves as under attack from the pedagogical structure of our society from it’s outset. Women have fought for the right to vote, to go to work, to own property, to raise our children on our own and to choose when to continue to carry a child. Women have even had to fight for the right to not be beaten by their husbands.

In our culture, and most others, men have more income and therefore more access to financial power. Money buys a lot of power. It’s easy for those without power to assume that those in power have all the rights they want and that they are persecutory. Women have experienced themselves as the “Victims” of this perceived persecutory power that men have held for generations. There is no doubt that women have suffered.

When we perceive ourselves to be “Victims” we have three choices. We can remain in the “Victim” position and let ourselves slowly deteriorate because this position is one of hopelessness and powerlessness; there is no way out. Or, we can learn to placate our persecutor and please and cater to them while controlling them through our pandering to them, this is called being a “Rescuer. It is a position that women have often, throughout history used to give them as sense of power (think of the characterization of a “Jewish Mother” or a “Southern Belle”). Finally, we can chose to become a “Self Protector” and fight for our rights against our persecutor whom we perceive to be “wrong”, “bad”, and needing punishment (a classic example is of the caricature of a “bra-burning femi-Nazi dyke” from which most men recoil in fear).

The problem with choosing to perceive ourselves as a “Victim” and taking any of these positions is that we cannot escape the battle. Conflict and pain is unavoidable when we are in this egocentric position of perceiving ourselves as the “Victim” of some persecutor that has no soul and no sense of empathy for our plight. We are then stuck in a position of having to fight for our survival against a perceived enemy. We become staunchly adversarial with our foe. We fight until we prevail and our enemy “loses”.

Of course, when someone loses a battle…

Intimacy – I Give Up!

Melody Brooke — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 15:12:22 +0000

At 40 when I was divorced and dating I met guys who had given up intimacy. These guys had decided that since they are “no good” at intimacy, they might as well just have a good time and focus only on finding women willing to be sex partners with no entanglements. They didn’t care if the woman was married or not, just that she was ready to hop into bed without any “strings”. Lately I have been meeting women who have also given up, but because they don’t want promiscuous sex, they resign themselves to a life without men.

It seems that when we reach a certain age and we have not been able establish a long-term intimate connection we tend to give up. Now, obviously this is not true for everyone as some people divorce and remarry many times trying to make it work. But many people do give up. I think its sad. Some of the men and women I have met are marvelous people, intelligent, creative, hard working and attractive. They are lonely, though often they try to convince themselves that single life is fine and they are happy. Maybe some of them are, certainly many of them have full, meaningful lives. But usually when I hear them talk about relationships it’s with a sad, wistful look on their faces.

So what are they to do? One woman I spoke with said about her ex-husband, “You know, he was a really great guy, but when we were together it brought out the crazy in both of us.” Without knowing what it is that makes us “crazy” when we are together we are left in a hopeless tangle of feelings and confusion.

Going to therapy is one obvious choice, but what if you have gone to therapy already, but you still don’t understand what when wrong? I went to therapy and learned the reasons for some of my bad choices and some really important things about myself (even becoming a counselor myself). I learned to be more assertive with my friends. I learned to feel better about myself as a person. I processed through a lot of old pain from my childhood. And yes, it did help me make a better choice in partners, but it didn’t fix the problems I had relating. Only after discovering what I now call “The Cycles of the Heart” did I begin to understand what was making me… and my partner, “Crazy”.

You see, something we humans don’t like to admit about ourselves is that we are animals. We have animal instincts. We have hard-wired brain reactivity that forces us to react in certain ways under certain circumstances. The emotions that drive the behaviors that result are compelling and overwhelming. We think that we have to do the things that our brain is telling us is required of us.

What triggers our brain into these survival mechanisms is a sense of threat. For animals, that sense of threat comes in pretty simplistic forms. They observe signals of a physical nature coming from another animal that compels them to react defensively. A growl, a stare, ruffled fur, bared teeth, stiffening of a spine all trigger a defensive reaction in animals. But human beings are a bit more complicated. Our brains store more data than most animals and it gets us confused about what is an actual threat and what just feels like a threat. It doesn’t matter to our brains whether the threat is real; it only knows to respond.

Our partners are important to us so we are really sensitive to threat from them. This is why we may have no problems getting along with our friends but a terrible time making a partnership work. What happens then is that our partners unwittingly say or do something that creates a sense of threat in us, we get frightened in some primitive way, and react defensively. Then, or defensiveness triggers a defensive response in our partner and the cycle begins; never to end.

We both end up acting like crazy people because we are reacting to something that feels way bigger than the situation, that the other person doesn’t understand, and neither of us knows how to end.

Does any of this sound familiar?…

Relationship Problem – Fighting Like Wild Animals?

Melody Brooke — Wed, 23 May 2007 16:16:48 +0000

Standing in Quick Sand

How many times have you found yourself in a discussion with your partner that suddenly turned sour and you don’t really know how you got there? You’ve said or done something that set them off and you are not sure how it happened, it’s just that suddenly you are standing in quick sand and sinking deeper by the second. Now, of course, you want to dig yourself out, but everything you try just pulls you in deeper. At this point your heart is racing, you are sweating and unsure of what to say or do. Your partner is behaving like a wounded animal and you don’t have a clue how to fix it. Sound familiar?

Well, it should sound familiar because we all do it. We all have times when our communications do go as we intend and we find ourselves battling a battle that we don’t understand. We don’t know what started it and we sure as heck don’t know how to stop it. Sometimes divorces result from just such interactions!

All of us have our moments. All of us have certain things that set us into a survival mode that leaves us feeling isolated, terrified, angry, hurt, or just plain depressed. This survival mode feels personal, as if our partners deliberately intend to wound us in our most sensitive places. Momentarily our partners may lose sight of who we are and, yes, say or do something to deliberately hurt us, but unless our partner is a psychopath, they don’t go into the conversation with the intention of hurting us. So why is it we so often find ourselves in the quick sand?

Human beings are animals. We have an old part of our brain (old in the evolutionary sense) that reacts in a primitive manner to any hint of perceived threat. We can’t really help it; our reactions are part of our brain function. The more insecure we feel in a relationship, and the more important that relationship is to us, the more likely we are to be triggered into this primitive reactivity. The set of behaviors triggered by our brain chemistry are pre-programmed into us from our ancestry to increase our chances of survival in the wild.

Lauren and Stan had been married for over 20 years, yet they had never established trust. Their “old brain” was still behaving as if their partner were a threat to them. Lauren’s mother was depressed and her father was an angry, frustrated man who raged at and physically abused his children. As a result, any time Stan expressed his frustration with anything that Lauren did, she accused him of being abusive. She shamed him and withheld sex from him. She believed herself to be protecting her children. Her old brain kicked in and she went into what I now call “Self-Protector” mode. Her attacks threw Stan into his own “Self-Protector” mode. She would snap at him…

Touch – It’s More Than Sex

Melody Brooke — Fri, 11 May 2007 16:45:59 +0000

Every wonder why a man gets instantly excited by the slightest little touch?

The reasons behind his reaction may not be as simple as assuming that he’s just over-sexed. It may go much, much deeper…

We all associate different emotions (good and bad) with different types of touching such as holding hands, hugging, getting a massage, and kissing. Some of these emotions can be very powerful and have a significant impact on how we relate to others.

Read this great article from featured author Melody Brooke to find out why the way we touch one another is extremely important to a happy and secure relationship.

Touch – It’s More Than Sex

by Melody Brooke, MA, LPC, LMFT

For many men, the opportunity to be touched, even casually by a woman is arousing. And, no, it’s not because men are different than women innately. This is because boys are often raised with little physical nurturance. Some men are so touch deprived that they shut off the awareness of the need for it entirely. As a result they appear cold, distant and emotionally unavailable. They have little understanding of why a woman wants to be touched or cuddled. It completely baffles them.

Many cultures within the larger American culture work to toughen up boys and assume that cuddling, hugging and kissing boys makes “Mama’s boys” or “Sissies” out of them. This creates an environment in which our male children are raised without physical touch. Yet we know, from years of research that touch is a basic need. Babies deprived of touch do not survive; they will quit eating and die. While men, even 5 or 6 year old boys are not infants, they, like all of us have a basic need to be held, to be touched, and otherwise physically nurtured. This need for touch can be hidden away for years, until perhaps in their early teens, a girl steals a kiss or holds his hands. Suddenly he finds himself aroused and from that moment on, associates touch with sex.

Then these poor guys get accused of being hyper sexual because the need for touch, which has been repressed for years, suddenly emerges as sexual desire. The hormone oxytocin carries messages of bonding, safety, overall well being and of love to our brains and to our bodies. It also increases sexual arousal. This hormone is released when there is any type of skin-to-skin contact. This generally happens at the same time as the developmental hormonal changes of adolescence, further complicating matters. From the male perspective then, touch=sex.

Every touch experienced carries a different electrochemical message to the brain. Even small, very light touches can create tremendous brain activity. When you expanded to hugging, the response is magnified many times because it brings with it memories of previous experiences (or lack thereof) and the attached emotional meaning. (Welch, 1988) When a person is upset or stressed, taking their hand usually produces a soothing effect, reducing anxiety, and generating a feeling of greater security as the oxytocin is released.

Couples observed touching affectionately test as being more securely attached and having a more satisfying sex life. If you are unhappy with the amount of sexual activity with your partner, notice what happens when you become more affectionate in general with each other. Increasing overall affectionate behaviors can have a positive effect on each of you individually, as well as increasing the amount of sexual activity between you…

But Seriously, Play with Me!

Melody Brooke — Mon, 07 May 2007 18:32:52 +0000

Here’s another great article from Melody Brooke. She’ been a featured author on our blog for several weeks now and we feel really fortunate to be able to share her thoughts and insights with you.

Today’s article however, had a tremendous impact on me personally – probably because it hit a little too close to home… We all get so busy doing the things that we think we ‘have’ to do that we forget to take the time to do the things that we ‘want’ to do and those things that brings us joy.

Not taking the time to have fun together can really cause a strain on your relationship.

Read this article to learn some really great ways to connect or re-connect with your partner.

But Seriously, Play with Me!

by Melody Brooke, MA, LPC, LMFT

When we date someone we are intent on finding time to enjoy being together. Discovering similar interests means doing things together that you both enjoy. The result is that we end up doing a lot of fun, playful things together when we are dating. Bonding during play is an important aspect of building intimacy with someone. We open our hearts up to those we feel safe with, and we play with those we feel safe with, too. When you think about the time you spent together when you were dating, weren’t you constantly on the look out for playful things to do together?

It’s funny but we will even do things that are outside of our own comfort zone when we are dating. We will attempt things we have never tried before and we will do things that we don’t even particularly like, simply because the other person finds it fun.

Before we were married my husband invited me on a ski trip. I was 43 and had never skied before. I hate the cold, my Reynauds caused my hands to go numb in the cold, but of course I went. He taught me to ski (turns out I have a knack for it) and I now love to ski. But I might not have ever tried it if it weren’t for wanting to spend time playing with my prospective partner.

Yet once we settle into our daily lives with our partner, we tend to forget or even avoid doing those fun things together. Why is that? I think there are many reasons for it, but the top reason is that we start taking life too seriously. We have kids to care for, bills to pay, pools to care for, lawns to feed, work to do… all of which fill up our time and our thoughts, requiring all of our energy and resources. Taking time to play with our partner becomes a chore on our to-do list.

Play, of course, can take many forms and is highly individual. That can make it complicated for couples. He likes to golf, she likes to garden. She likes to shop, he likes to tinker with his car. When the divergent ways we like to have fun keep us apart, intimacy can be interrupted. Play is an intimacy building activity. We play with those we are closest to, so if we stop playing with them we stop feeling close.

Play also builds creative connections and opens new pathways in our brains. Studies show that kids who don’t get enough play time…

How to Tell Your Partner Anything and Live to Tell About It

Melody Brooke — Sat, 21 Apr 2007 13:16:36 +0000

Do you have things that you don’t tell you partner because you’re afraid of how they’ll react? Is it easier to avoid the conversation than to deal with their response?

Do you know that your lack of communication is actually hurting your relationship rather than helping it?

Here’s great article from featured author, Melody Brooke that will help you better understand how to have even the most difficult conversation with your partner and how having these conversations can actually help your relationship grow even stronger.

Oh, No, I Could Never Tell Him That!

by Melody Brooke, MA, LPC, LMFT

It took me many years to figure out that my way of communicating was a disaster. I was so paranoid of telling my partner things that would upset him that I had very few things that I could actually say to him. Even when I got over the paranoia, I still found myself not always telling him things.

By choosing to limit what I was telling my partner, I was controlling him. I chose not to tell him certain things because I was afraid of his reaction. I didn’t want to displease him or anger him, so I just didn’t tell him things that I feared would cause those reactions.

For years I was convinced behavior I labeled as “controlling” was a “bad” thing. It would make upset me terribly to have someone tell me what to do or to command me to behave in a certain way. I would be triggered into feeling trapped, angry and resentful. Yet I never realized that my own lack of communication was really the same thing!

The decision making process is key to understanding why we communicate the way we do. If our decision-making is based on fear or control, we are in for trouble. The trick is; how do we recognize our motivations? To know what our motivations are, we have to be connected with our own feelings. We have to be able to name them, and we have to be able to recognize how they are affecting us, and our communications.

The funny thing is that many of us are keenly aware of what other people are feeling (or what we think they are feeling) and yet clueless about what we are feeling. What I have learned over the years is that the same thing motivates all of us: survival. On a brain level we are driven to do that which will help us survive in whatever circumstance we find ourselves.

Rarely in this day and age are those feelings based on actual physical survival, but rather they are based on the survival of our well being. When we feel our well being is threatened in any way, we will be thrown into a survival mode that is as old as life itself. We can’t help it, its automatic. It doesn’t matter how mature we are, if we are put in the right (or wrong) circumstance we will behave in ways we end up regretting and we may even be confused as to why we found ourselves reacting that way.

This brain response limits our choices. When we are in this kind of reactivity our bodies go into what is known as “fight or flight” response. Telling my partner something I feared would make him angry sent me into “flight”. For me, that meant shutting up, holding back, and not speaking my whole truth. As a result I often ended up lying to him through lies of omission. I didn’t think of it that way, in fact, I rarely thought about it because it was automatic.

Once I recognized that pattern I was able to start speaking my truth to him. Scary though it was, it dramatically improved the quality of our relationship…

Sex, What’s That? I’m Married!

Melody Brooke — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 23:43:28 +0000

Have you ever wondered why sex seems to disappear when you get married? Is it complacency? Is it laziness?

Sex, What’s That? I’m Married!

by Melody Brooke, MA, LPC, LMFT

It’s not a joke; most married men I know claim to have less sex than they did when they were single. This seems to be confirmed by the Durex Survey (2001), since couples living together claim to have sex 146 times per year, while married couples make love only 98 times per year. Yet going from roughly three times a week to two hardly seems to justify the statement. But why is it that simply being married reduces the number of times we choose to enjoy each other’s bodies?

After working with couples for over the past nearly 20 years, and going through my own set of divorces, I have come to the conclusion that marital dissatisfaction and a lack of sexual intimacy go hand in hand. Men feel it as a lack of sex; women feel it as a lack of emotional connectivity. But both feel it as something lacking in the relationship. Men tend to blame their wives for being disinterested or lacking in sexual drive, and women tend to blame their husbands for not having a good emotional I.Q. Yet both are unhappy. Hmm. The thing that seems to be consistent is that they each blame each other.

Blame is an old survival mechanism left over from our years as cavemen. We needed to know who was to blame for things in order to survive our harsh environment. This is not something we need to hang on to in our modern society. The assignment of blame acts as a tool to focus our actions and provides us with clear understanding of what to do next. But it also distances us from those we love. Our old brain, our mammalian primitive brain stem tells us that the one we blame is threatening our survival. This does not make us want to make love to them. It makes us want to protect ourselves, in other words, distance ourselves from that person.

Blaming each other and feeling like a victim of the other’s behavior, in my experience tends to lead to divorce. Yet somehow, this is the behavior of choice. What might happen if both partners actually took ownership of the situation and decided that they are both responsible for the lack of sexual and emotional intimacy?

If we can understand that our old brain is in gear when we are in a blaming stance, then maybe we could make a different choice. When we can recognize that we are blaming our partner for something, be it lack of sex or lack of emotional connection, it would behoove us to take ownership of our own part in the problem. We may not be sure what it is; but rest assured you have as much a part in the problem as your mate.

The alternative is to begin to explore what is in the way of the thing that you want. Let your partner know that you want things to be different and that you recognize that you have not made it easy for the two of you to have what you want. Simply admitting that you recognize that you have a part in the problem will take your partner out of defensive mode and improve your communication.

This is hard for people who…

Help! My Partner is Driving Me Crazy!

Melody Brooke — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 12:52:01 +0000

Have you ever been in one of those relationship "discussions" – read: arguments – with your partner that for no reason seems to escalate out of control and when it’s all over, you’re sitting there in a daze wondering what happened?

Wouldn’t it be nice if you could identify these situations before they occur and stop arguments in their tracks?

Here’s great article from featured author, Melody Brooke on just how to prevent these "discussions" from spiraling out of control.

Help! My Partner is Driving Me Crazy!

When we are in a long-term relationship we sometimes find that we are caught in conflicts that make us feel crazy. We don’t understand what the other person is talking about and they don’t seem to understand what it is we are trying to tell them. Often this is about the time couples give up on their partnership and call it quits. Why does this happen? How can we stop it?

It happens because we are animals. Yes, essentially we are human animals driven by instincts that we don’t have conscious awareness of, but that are driving our behavior nonetheless. It’s not terribly complicated, though it’s not all that easy to change. Understanding what drives us and why we react the way we do, and why our spouses are reacting the way they are; helps us move through it to a (hopefully) happy resolution.

We can stop it, but it’s sometimes really hard. To begin with, recognize that whatever it seems like the conflict is about is not what it’s really about. I know it’s hard to accept but what you are really upset about it not that he didn’t call when he said he would or that she got upset with you for being late. That may be what triggered the discussion, but it is not the source of the upset. Let me explain.

When we feel we are being attacked or threatened in someway we feel that we are the Victim, and the offending person (our partner) is the Villain (perpetrator, bad guy, whatever) on an emotional level. Now, we may know intellectually that this person is our lover, our spouse, our intimate partner, etc., but we don’t feel that way when we are feeling attacked or threatened. On an emotional level, we are the Victim and they are the Villain. As long as we are emotionally in this place, our relationship is ultimately doomed.

Our instinct then, is to attack back in order to feel safe or that we are protecting ourselves. I call taking this position being in the “Self-Protector” position. Of course, if we are “Rescuers” we might instead, let our partner off the hook by saying, “Oh, it’s okay. I’m sorry, I am getting upset over nothing” thereby placating our partner and avoiding a fight. But the end result is the same, we haven’t stopped feeling like a Victim and they are still the Villain in our heart.

So if fighting back or placating are not the answer, what is? How do we stop the craziness?

The answer is simple, but not easy. We take ownership of our part in whatever upset our partner, or of what is upsetting us, and then provide empathy and respect for our partner. This is what it looks like…

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…