Love

It seems that events sometimes occur in my life that cause me to reflect on existential concepts of my life.  One concept that appears to be recurring in my psyche recently has been the the multifaceted aspect of love.  I considered how in the world to briefly write about such a profound subject, a subject that each reader will view through their own life's lens, and as such will likely be their interpretation of what I am writing and not necessarily what I want to portray.  I still don't know how.  So all I can do is to write about what has been happening and what I am introspectively thinking and how I am feeling, and hope that whatever comes out will be meaningful for me and for you. the reader.  It's the only way I know of at this point.

Some of these disparate recent events include some challenging psychotherapy sessions, particularly with certain couples, landmark events in the lives of my children, being asked to speak at Church on Easter Sunday, reflections on songs that the SCMC and I sang on Easter Sunday, discussions with my wife, a renewed connection to nature, viewing a new Christian movie just out called Heaven Is For Real.  The latter is based on a book written by the father of a young boy who nearly dies and reports to the father that he went to heaven.  Attending funerals in recent months has increased my love for my life and for each day that I continue on this planet. And celebrating my 36th wedding anniversary was very emotional as well.

I am becoming aware that the reason that I enjoy doing psychotherapy and life coaching work, is to a great degree because I see these people as sons and daughters of God, and as such see them as my equals.  I believe that because I love myself, and am loved by God, that they are worthy of my love and care.  When I see these, my fellow travelers, struggling with themselves or significant others, I want to help them.  I attempt to help them to love themselves, not necessarily by anything that I might say, but rather, to facilitate their journey of introspection.  

I find that I struggle inwardly when I see clients, children and relatives, or anybody, for that matter, struggle with their life and their circumstances.  As I get to know them, I instinctively find myself wanting to help them.  It is very difficult for me to see criticism, defensiveness, contempt, and stonewallling with some clients.  They seem unable or unwilling to look inward at their own issues, and choose to focus on their partner's issues.  All that I can do is to point out the problem with their outward focus, teach correct principles concerning looking at themselves, and then hope that they "get it."

I desire that they learn from my knowledge, and occasionally, from my similar life experiences--because, I believe, I care what happens to them.  My challenge as a therapist is to share appropriately--to know and feel when they ready to hear what I know and what I have experienced.  Often, they are clueless as to what they are doing and as to their own motivations.  But that's fine; I have been clueless in the past as well and was ready to learn when life experiences brought me to that teachable moment. By giving myself grace, I try to extend grace to them. I earnestly attempt to not judge them.

Which brings up an aspect of love that is counter-intuitive.  Sometimes, in the right circumstances, the loving thing to do is to judge someone.  I am compelled at times in my therapy sessions to judge someone by telling them their thinking is flawed or even irrational, and to not tell them for fear of a negative reaction, is not showing love.  By not saying something, it becomes about me.  

Over four years ago, when my wife and I asked our son to leave the house for violating a house rule of not using drugs or drinking alcohol in our home, it took every bit of willpower to enforce it.  I had to judge him at that point, and while it broke my heart to send him away knowing that he would likely become homeless, I had to do the loving thing: what was best for him as opposed to what would make me feel better.  And what was best for him was to experience the consequences of his behavior, which I had not been allowing him to experience.  By not doing the loving thing at that time, I would remove an opportunity for growth and for eventually becoming. 

Such judgments can be a slippery slope, however, and one must have great integrity as to one's motivations.  I am learning that lesson as I watch my children sometimes make decisions that I would not make, and challenge my motivation for my judgments.  Are these judgments about me?

I have attempted to access this integrity as I have analyzed my feelings about same-gender attraction or so-called same sex marriage.  I struggled for a time with what I had believed and what practice my Church had inculcated and was judgmental of them, but when taking time to learn about, to appreciate, and ultimately to do what I feel is the loving thing, I became an LGBT Ally.  It is best for them if I care about and love them and not judge them, regardless of what doctrinally may be swirling around.  This has been a big transition for me.

Wanting to keep this blog somewhat secular, I will just say that I felt God's love deeply during my worship during the recent Easter season.  I have posted the entire talk I gave on another blog of mine: redashisdisciple.blogspot.com.  My feelings about deity are very much a significant part of who I am, and those feelings seem to be intensifying as I age.

As witnessed by my recent posting about my senses, and in particular, about hearing and seeing, I love being able to observe and listen to the world around me.  I try to not to take these abilities for granted.  And as stated above, I don't take my safety or my living yet another day for granted either, and express love and appreciation to God each day for His kindness and love.  

I am discovering again that as I give love through service to my clients, my family, and in particular, my wife, my ability to love increases.  It felt really good to make arrangements and to pay for a nice anniversary dinner at a nice restaurant.  It felt good to have a nice, beautiful bouquet of flowers waiting on our table as we sat down.  It felt good to arrive home and to show her the video presentation that I had worked on and helped produce celebrating the day.  I felt great love for her as I carried out these celebratory services.

To love and to be loved.  What great gifts!


    



  

 

 

Checking In

I seem to be somewhat inconsistent in writing in this blog.  I apologize to those who check in periodically for new postings only to find the same old entries.  It’s been awhile since my last one so I am taking a few minutes to catch up.

On April 22^nd my wife and I celebrated our 35^th wedding anniversary.  I enjoyed our celebrations, one of which was white water rafting on the Kings River in Central California.  We had done that before a few years ago and it was just as enjoyable.   That is a long time to be married, although my brother and sister have been married to their wonderful spouses for 57 and 53 years respectively.  In comparison to them, I’m a greenhorn!

I attended many of the BYU Men’s Volleyball games held in Southern California and cheered them to victory a number of times.  They won their league and made it to the Championship Game of the Final Four.  Sadly, their play was far too predictable against a Cal State Irvine team that they had beaten twice in the season and who obviously knew how BYU plays, and were beaten in a three-game sweep.  I really thought that they were going to win it all.  Oh well, there is always next year.

My daughter and her family need to move out of their rented home in New Jersey by June 30 so the owner can move in.  This sudden turn of events has placed Adam and Emily in crisis mode attempting to find a home that they could purchase that would not significantly add to Adam’s commute into the City, and would not cost significantly more per month than what they’re paying for their current rental home.  This is an optimal time to purchase a home with interest rates and prices being what they are.  It’s just not very convenient or optimal to have to make  decisions so quickly.  My thoughts and prayers are with them.

My brother Tom celebrated his 76^th birthday on May 6^th.  He is in reasonable good health and is mentally fit, working at his employment every weekday, unless he is coming to LA for the Rose Parade or going to Gilbert, Arizona to see his oldest daughter, Caren, and her family.  Again, at 58, I’m just a whippersnapper!  My desire is that he lives as long as he wants to, which by all indications is a long time.  He has been a constant in my life, as I have written in this blog, and I love him and his lovely wife, Janeen, of whom I have written in this blog as well.

I have finally finished my 3000 hours of therapy and must now fill out a form and send it to Sacramento to enable the regulating agency to schedule the test I need to take to become licensed.  That testing should occur before the end of this year and with heavenly help, I should be able to pass it and “hang the shingle.”  I have learned so much and continue to learn as I do this important and challenging work.  I am grateful to those peers who have helped me along the way and to the many folks who have sat across from me or surrounded me as I have led groups.

The earth wobbled a little bit recently when I decided to join the social media world and have a presence on Facebook.  Although many of the 190+ people who have “friended” me are young folks in their 20s or 30s from my time as a YSA bishop in the LDS Church, there are some connections with people that I haven’t had any communication with for years.  I have to say that one can get “sucked in” to the social media phenomena rather easily, and I am controlling how much time that I allot to it.  One of my motivations for having a Facebook presence was to let folks know there about my blog and about new postings such as this one.

I do have a challenge with both Facebook and this blog and my profession as a psychotherapist.   Obviously, whoever I deal with and whatever occurs in my sessions must be kept confidential.  Most therapists do not do Facebook and most do not blog, although I have seen exceptions to both.  I guess that it is a matter of what you want to reveal about yourself and what you choose to write about.  I need to be very careful.

So my life is full, I am quite contented (for better or worse), and I am very blessed.  I appreciate having this outlet to my feelings and thoughts, and having the few of you that do read this blog.    

STAYING WITHIN EMOTIONAL REACH

I'm the apple of her eye!

On Sunday, my wife Ann and I will celebrate 34 years of marriage.  In this day and age, that is an accomplishment I suppose.  But honestly, divorce while always an option never has seemed to be the way to ultimately deal with problems between us.

I can say that through the years, I have assimilated some of Ann’s personal and gender characteristics and she likewise has assimilated some of mine.  Perhaps more importantly from the standpoint of the couple’s therapy that I do routinely these days, she has been working on her own personal issues while at the same time I have been working on my own.  What that has served to accomplish is to keep us within emotional reach of one another.  What I mean by that is she has grown more secure in herself through the years while I have grown more secure in myself in those years, and that growth has been fairly equivalent.

Based upon my research and my clinical experience, when one partner in a relationship goes forward or backward in a significant way in their emotional life and their partner does not simultaneously respond in like manner, there are problems.  For example, if a partner gets caught up in an addiction, there is a regression in his or her emotional life, while at the same time, their partner usually has maintained and not regressed.  That’s a problem.  That presents a widening gap in their emotional reach of one another.  Another example might be a partner who has an exciting, fulfilling job while the other has a repetitive, non-stimulating life at home.  (Read my daughter’s example of my hypothesis in my recent blog entry of her blog post.)  That’s a problem.  That also likely causes a widening gap in their emotional reach.

As I state often in my clinical experience, when we go into a partner relationship, we enter at the level of our dysfunction.  In other words, we find and connect with someone who is as similarly “messed up” as we are (or aren’t).  We fall in love with someone who is within emotional reach of us.  Harville Hendrix, who has written extensively about finding our “Imago,” (Greek for our “image”— our likeness) is stating what I just wrote but in a different way.  We enter into relationships with similar “baggage” from our families of origin and our life experiences (nurture), and who we are (nature.)  If partners aren’t similarly “messed up,” the relationship will likely not last.

Icy surroundings, warm hearts

But then, unless a couple’s emotional lives remain somewhat close as the years pass, their relationship will likely be in peril and likely will not last.  Having read this hypothesis, I imagine my daughter might think that her relationship with my son-in-law might be doomed.  That is not necessarily so.  If both are really concerned about the other and each is willing to be humble and open to making changes in themselves, not expecting the other to change before they do, then they likely will stay within emotional reach of one another.  I pretty sure that will be the case with my daughter and her good husband who is a wonderful, humble man, and whom I am proud to have as a son-in-law. 

I know that Ann really cares for me on a deep level as I care deeply for her, but we both humbly realize that we each have issues and we try to work on them constantly.  In order for our marriage to flourish—that third entity in our partnership beyond her and me—, each entity has to “take care of their own side of the street.”  As we do so, the emotional distance between us is relatively small and we can deal with the resulting bumps in the road as they occur.

To be fully transparent, we have not always cleaned our own sides of the street.  In the past we looked outwardly to the other, to some degree, to meet our emotional needs.  And that occasionally surfaces even now, but when our partnership was wobbly in the past during challenges in child rearing, we got into therapy and we BOTH started working on our own “stuff,” and we continue to do so.  As a consequence, we have grown, and we have grown more or less at the same rate.  That small emotional distance between us has allowed us to grow together as a couple!

We sometimes "put on the dog"

Longevity in marriages does not necessarily mean that all is well and blissful.  For every one that is, there are as many or more that are not.  Couples can often merely tolerate one another because there is little emotional connection; they are not within emotional reach of one each other.  Those partners will often look to fulfill emotional needs outside of their relationship because there is so precious little within it.

So as I approach April 22, I have a huge smile on my face!  I have never been happier and more in love than I am right now at this time of my life.  My marriage just keeps getting better because there is emotional connection and passion.  My wife is my best friend, my confidant, my lover.  I cannot wait to be around her and love living life with her.  And what is most wondrous about this relationship is that the doctrine of my Church dictates it can last beyond death.  It can last forever; there is no “‘til death do you part.”  Why wouldn’t I want this blissful experience to go on indefinitely?

I am working hard on what I can control—myself, and on our marriage so that the transition from mortality to eternity will be natural.   HAPPY ANNIVERSARY TO ME!

"You are my lover, you're my best friend, you're in my soul"