Tag: communication

My Last Newspaper Column

I found out just as you did: I saw the headline that our paper was folding. No warnings, no large appeals for renewals, no publisher writing with their regrets. After 27 years of writing essays meant to inspire critical thought on issues of faith and life, I found out with all of you that I’m done. And so are those professionals who worked for our papers, had dedicated their education and livelihoods to the study and practice of journalism, some of whom had just begun working for the paper last month.

You wonder if you’ll miss the small weekly? We’ll no longer have a single place for obituaries, celebrating our youth events, or the opening of new businesses. And no independent reporter will be sitting at our town council meetings where zoning, taxes, roads, and development projects are controlled. No reporter seeking public records and discovering corruption, no journalist sitting through the first part of the school board agenda to report on staffing concerns, campus security, curriculum changes, or book bans. And no place where we can easily read interviews of those running for the elected offices of school board, town committees, or sheriff.

Can the StarTribune expand its coverage? Can the New Prague Times step in? Will our seasoned local journalists rally to create an online newspaper like Eden Prairie? We live in an area with deep financial resources; is there not anyone resident who is willing to organize and fund such a project? Here’s a serious plea: If you know of any journalistic entrepreneurs with a knack for raising up investors, please tell them of the opportunity in Savage and Prior Lake. We need the next version of local journalism to rise up!

As for the rest of us, the serious spiritual work of healthy community remains. The changes that technology has brought, which include losing our small-town newspapers, has let many more of us slowly slide into resignation and suspicion. Sitting on our phones and seeing hours of algorithmic-generated content every day has just increased our current social and political divisions. If we want to stop the erosion of community, we need to encourage one another to embody the core values of respect, collaboration, and support that neighborhoods thrive on. You know that has never exactly been easy; nothing worth doing ever is.

Reflecting on my years in print, I think there are twin threads that run through all my essays. The first is my effort to speak about the Christian faith as the lens through which I have come to experience God, a God of mercy, forgiveness, peace, and creativity. A God who joins us in this human life, coming close to us in loving relationship, and not as some remote, rigid divinity pulling our strings. The second is my deep conviction that we participate with God’s version of power, God’s “kingdom” or “reign,” when love for the neighbor is our ethical cornerstone: when we feed the hungry, heal the broken, and work for justice. God’s kingdom is present when we use power well and resist the pull of human evil, when we uphold human dignity, and protect the weak and vulnerable. Jesus lived his brief life devoted to God’s kingdom power. He invites us to follow and find abundant life.

Thank you for sharing these Spiritual Reflections with me. Occasionally I would receive an email or personal comment about my columns, and those connections cheered me on. (Once or twice, they even spurred an angry letter to the editor!) May we continue to do the work that God gives us to do in the world, each of us a unique expression of that creative and generative God we seek to know and love. Let’s keep striving for a more just, compassionate, and loving world. I’m cheering us on.

Written for last edition of the Savage Pacer 4/27/24

Sometimes it IS About You

As a family therapist and systems thinker, I view the conflicts and discussions in my therapy office as shared events and problems. We are all connected; what I do effects my spouse, my children and other close relationships, just as what they do effects me.

But there are times when one person’s habits, behaviors, attitudes, or choices are the source of a system’s pain. A problem frequently has a source. And it just might be you.

One of the most pained expressions I hear after couples therapy is the complaint that “therapy is always about me” and never focused on their partner. I hear it most frequently from my male clients. This reflects, I believe, the fact that men don’t often start conflict conversations in their relationships, leaving their women partners to do all that heavy emotional lifting. If their troubled patterns have been going on long enough, and the woman, despite how often she requests help or change, is always doing the complaining, the man is inevitably backed into his corner. Of course he feels that therapy is always about him. Because he has to travel so many emotional miles to catch up to where his partner has been.

In other situations, it may be that addiction is stealing away all the relationship and family stability. Or infidelity and secrets have damaged the sense of safety and closeness. Or one partner’s failure to care for their health, or work life, or family of origin problems weighs the entire family down. While all of these issues have system impacts, it just might be true that therapy, at least as we begin to unwind the issues, may truly feel like it’s All About You.

Core Long-Term Marriage Skills

One of my couple clients asked me to create a summary of our work together. I know these skills apply to nearly every long-term marriage, so I share them here.

1. Assume positive intent from your spouse. Trust him/her. Build positive interactions. Look for the good. Notice it, appreciate it. Stop trying to control the outcome of every interaction so that you feel less vulnerable. Protect yourself less, be open to one another more.

2. Self-focus: always pay more attention to how you are managing your own emotions/behaviors/words/tones than you are to your partner’s. Think: what can I do to improve our relationship? Journaling, prayer, ritual, reading about emotions/relationships/family of origin patterns.

3. Make every effort to improve your conflict conversations.
Don’t ignore important pain. If you find you are doing a lot of internalizing, mind reading, and stuffing emotions, it’s time to talk.  Bring up pain as complaints (about the issue – “I feel”) not criticism (about the other person – “You are”).

Start a conversation gently, “low and slow.”

Expect your partner to initially defend. Wait until that strong reaction passes before you respond. Ask your partner to lower their defense so they can listen, if necessary.

Listen for one another’s point of view. Appreciate whatever truth you can in your partner’s POV. Repeat it to them so they know they have been heard. Share your POV. Check to see if your partner gets what you are trying to say.

If conflict begins to hurt, STOP. Don’t escalate. Take some time out to calm down and return again to the conversation.

4. Cultivate your marital friendship. Remember, however well you think you know your partner, don’t assume you can no longer be surprised. Make asking questions of your partner’s day, experiences, dreams, hopes, memories, plans and pains a regular habit. Do some new things together. Allow one another the emotional room to do things independently. Too much intensity can be just as hard on a marriage as too much distance.

5. Flexible people are more satisfied in their marriages. Recognize and reflect on the fact that the that details of our lives we take for granted as we become adults – our bodies, minds, work, relationships with children, hobbies, friendships, emotions, goals – are changing all the time. Especially make peace with the ongoing aging of your body.

6. Keep emotion primary in your experience of life and one another since emotion is the way our bodies and minds give us moment by moment information. Continue to grow in your ability to notice, name, manage and understand your emotional life. Remember that your spouse is doing the very same thing. Think emotion before you attempt to use logic in hard conversations.

7. Know that the past never leaves us, but we can find creative ways to manage how it informs our present. Holding resentments or secrets is poison to healthy long-term relationships. When someone injures another, the healthiest couples use their spiritual resources of remorse, repentance, renewal and forgiveness to experience the hurt, commit to the healing of the injury and press on.

8. Build a positive appreciation for touch, smiles, eye contact, and physical proximity as expressions of affection and sexuality. Use your creativity to express sexual energy and desire in ways that work for both of you. Be sure to talk to one another during sexual activity so that you are clearer about what works and what doesn’t. If there is a difference in levels of drive and desire, work to blend masturbation and some kind of mutual sexual activity.

9. Share the leadership of your family/couple. Appreciate one another’s unique skills and allow for growth and change. Make decisions together, and think of your marriage as a team, a unit, even as you are always individuals.

10. Remember that life is short, and grows even shorter as we age. Set a daily intention to do the best you can as a person and a partner. Cultivate your spirituality and your sense of humor. Stop threatening divorce; take the word out of your imagination and vocabulary. Re-commit to your shared future; appreciate and marvel at all that you have already endured and experienced together.

Have some advice you’d like to share with long-married couples? Comment below!

Direct vs. Indirect Communication

Nearly every time I meet with a new couple, one or both of the partners will tell me they think that their main problem is “communication.” When I ask them to tell me more about what they mean, they will often talk about repeated and escalating conflicts, days of avoiding contact, in-house separation, lack of eye contact and physical touch, and constant critical vocal tones. And more. What I hear in that sad list of problems is a relationship that has suffered for awhile from emotional hurt and mental frustration, with communication being just the most obvious, surface-level issue they face.

As we begin to work on the multiple layers of pain they present, I often find that both have developed the mental habit of communicating very indirectly, all the time. Instead of asking their partner for what they need, or answering a question specifically, or commenting on something that is happening in the moment, they weave and dodge with their words. Now, we all know that to get along with other human beings, whether a friend, boss, neighbor or parent, we often side-step direct speech in favor of a softer, side-ways answer meant to smooth the emotional waters. “So, do you like this new (hideous) carpet we just laid down all throughout our house (for thousands of dollars…),” asks your mother-in-law? Oh, it’s terrific, we may say, simply to go along with the obvious drift of the conversation. What do we care if our spouse’s parents have new lime green shag carpeting under their feet? It’s not an important opinion, and we go along to get along.

While an important adult social skill, in the context of marriage, it can be applied too often. If we always avoid conflict, skirt an important issue, never give our critique or opinion, our partner never really knows what we think, and we are left alone with our hidden thoughts. Do this repeatedly, and with both partners, each will inevitably feel chronically misunderstood, unappreciated, hurt and angry. What’s left? Each partner secretly expects the partner to read their (true) mind, figure it out from their vocal tone, body language, hand gesture or facial expression what the truth is. And around and around we go, with no one feeling free or safe to say what they mean, express a real need or ask for help. No wonder the marriage feels lost and hopeless. I ask if it feels like the opposite of the early days of the relationship when partners were just getting to know one another, and their talk was free and personal and detailed. Invariably, both partners say Yes.

Getting a marriage back to a safer emotional position, in which both partners feel more able to express themselves as they truly are, ask for what they need from their partner and stop constantly mind reading and avoiding is long-term work and takes both partners working at it at the same time. This is where good couples therapy comes in. If what I have written here reminds you too much about your daily experience in marriage, I encourage you to call and set up an appointment. Come and see how a skilled counselor can help you untangle the habits of mind that keep you stuck, and get you back to a more direct, collaborative and warmer emotional style of talking with your spouse.

 

Your Big F***ing Job Can Ruin Your Marriage

As our economy has crawled out of the recession, so many people have experienced the shrinking of the job force at their companies, and the subsequent increase in the demands of their job descriptions.

Many are doing the work that 2 (or even more) people have done in the past. More people are traveling more miles, more leaders are being pressured to increase production, or customers, or digital content, or whatever is on the front line of worry for stake or shareholders.

Add in the natural disaster that a very harsh 2014 Minnesota winter brought to several industries (transportation, energy, retail, just to name three), high level executives are using up all their available energy at work. They come home exhausted, worn out and without any emotional flexibility at all.

They don’t have the energy for the demands of parenting, or if they put in a bit of their work with the kids, they certainly have not one single thing left for their spouse. The Marriage Will Not Survive if this goes on for any length of time.

I tell my clients that if they are working like this, dedicating themselves to the salvation of their company, they must save at least 5% of themselves for their spouse. It isn’t much, but in the scheme of life, it can be enough to greet your partner, listen to them a bit about their day, share some of yours, and connect.

No one will care at the end of the job if you lost your marriage for it. But your spouse and children will.

Stop living for your work, and work for your family and life instead. And if you can’t seem to figure this out alone or together, please call me or a local family therapist for some coaching, understanding, and practical help.

What Every Husband Ought to Know about Marriage Conflict

Nobody likes to hear someone close to them be critical, blaming or shaming. It feels bad. And sometimes scary. It turns out that when women talk like that to their husbands, contrary to popular opinion, most men feel this intense criticism very strongly in their bodies. And because male bodies “rev up” faster than women’s in stress (heart rate, blood pressure, muscle tension, tunnel vision), in order to protect themselves and their relationships from too much emotion, men frequently, readily, as a default, go into Defense mode.

It’s vital for happy, flexible marriages to have partners who know how to manage difficult conversations. There will be many of them over the years.

As I said in my last post, women have to learn how to bring up their complaints softly, gently, and with a caring touch.

Men need to recognize their usual default of Defensiveness, and learn to lower their emotional walls quickly.  If men can do this, while at the same time women practice being more gentle, the best situation for a positive interaction around difficult topics happens.

The most successful couples work on this communication posture change together. Trusting that the other is doing their best to move out of their “automatic” thinking/behavior/posture and tone to a more couple-friendly communication strategy.

Because I talk about these automatic couple missteps every day in my therapy practice, I know this is one of the most common couple problems. No one part of the couple can fix the problem completely on their own : each person in the marriage has a piece of the solution!

What Every Wife Ought to Know about Marriage Conflict

If I had the opportunity to share one essential marital tool with every wife in America, I know exactly what I would say:

Learn to bring up difficult topics with your partner in a calm, quiet and focused voice.

Marital researcher Dr. John Gottman has studied tens of thousands of marital conversations over 30 + years. He has found that there are 4 distinct communication habits that are poison to happy relationships. He calls them the “Four Horsemen,” like the biblical horsemen that bring in the end of times in the book of Revelation.

He has learned that men have a faster body response of adrenaline (increased heart rate, blood flow to the extremities, tunnel focus of attention) than most women to partner conflict. That means that when many women are just getting into the meat of their problem, their partner has become ready to run, fight and defend. It makes it very hard for men to stay focused and listen calmly without enormous effort.

If every woman could develop the personal skill of bringing up difficult discussions with their partner in a calmer way, their male partner is less apt to “flood,” focus and defend. And the conversation is more likely to be productive and problem-solving.

It’s a skill we practice in therapy all the time. Are you able to bring difficult topics up to your partner in a calm, cooperative way? If not, you may want to start working on this skill.

What is it that I wish I could tell every husband in America? Well, that’s for next time.