Wish You Had More Intimacy in Your Marriage? Part I
September 18, 2011
“I just wish we could talk more; talk about our feelings more, I mean,” Connie said longingly. “I wish he was more affectionate.” As Connie spoke, James, her husband, sat still, not saying a word. When I turned my gaze to him, he offered , “Nothing I do is ever enough.”
“I come home from work and I want to share my day with her. She doesn’t seem interested. She’s preoccupied with the kids or she’s preparing dinner. It seems like she gets annoyed with me when I start to talk to her,” Tom’s voice was sad and frustrated. In her defense Sharon offered, “I’ve been with the kids all day and I just don’t feel like talking anymore.”
These comments are expressed fairly frequently in my office by spouses looking for help with their marriage. Sometimes, like Connie, it’s the woman who wants more from her husband. Occasionally, like Tom and Sharon, the shoe is on the other foot and the husband feels ignored.
The Root of The Problem
How we express love and how we accept, or avoid, others’ bids for love are, in large part, related to the quality of love that was shown to us when we were very young. Were our attachment figures, usually our mother and father, attentive, caring and affectionate? Did we experience them as understanding when we expressed feelings like sadness, fear, or a need for affection? Or did they tend to hold back, interacting with us only when we needed to accomplish something such as homework, chores, or dinner or hardly ever? Perhaps they were overbearing so that we felt we hardly had room to breathe.
As much as we might not want to believe it, our early parental relationships, and I mean in the first few years of life, strongly affect the quality of our relationships in adulthood.
Attachment Styles and Marriage
Understanding your attachment style as well as your spouse’s can help you to have empathy for yourself and your spouse. You will have more acceptance for your spouse because you’ll realize that there is not one right way to express marital love. Neither you or your spouse is right or wrong, good or bad.
Try the following exercise.
1. Think about one of the earliest memories you have of a time with you and one of your parents. What was the quality of each of this relationship? Write down 5 words to describe the relationship between the two of you; not words that describe your parent, but the quality of the relationship between the two of you.
2. Next, think about your relationship with your spouse. Do any of those words describe the quality of your relationship with your spouse? Most of the time there is a positive correlation between the two. So what does this mean?
3. We often act toward our spouse as if they are that person in that early relationship treating us the way that person treated us. So, just consider for a moment that this might be true. Now consider the possibility that your spouse is communicating love to you, only differently than it was by your early attachment figures. As you consider this possibility, write down five ways your spouse communicates their love for you. It might be preparing your favorite meal, spending time with you but not talking, mowing the lawn, suggesting that you watch a movie together, giving you a kiss or making eye contact when you return from work.
4. Over the next week, try to add to your list. By the end of the week, try to have at least 15 ways your spouse shows their love to you.
5. The last part of this exercise is to allow yourself to appreciate being loved by your spouse the way they show it.
Watch for my next article when I will explain the different attachment styles and how your understanding of each other’s styles can improve the quality of intimacy and communication in your marriage.
©Patti M. Zordich, Ph.D. Triangle Psychological Services 919.380.1000
Spiritual Fatherhood
September 5, 2011
John Paul II wrote about spiritual motherhood which means nurturing others’ spiritual, emotional , moral, and cultural life. As a psychologist specializing in attachment, I see spiritual motherhood as the essence of healthy attachment caregiving.
I was reading about spiritual motherhood about the same time gangs of teenagers were terrorizing many areas throughout London. I thought about so many young men and women whose lives are filled with violence, selfishness, and anger. As a therapist, I am aware that selfishness and anger are often covers for self-hatred and fear and even sadness and grief. These covers are effective for an individual because they feel strong and safe, rather than the vulnerability and fear that lies just beneath the surface.
It is not uncommon that these vulnerable youth are raised solely by their mothers and grandmothers; that their fathers are missing in action. No doubt their fathers are grown up versions of themselves. These mothers and grandmothers, trying to raise their children by themselves, feed their children, protect their children are worn out because they too were raised by their mothers with checked out fathers. Often they put themselves last in order to serve their children.
In order to provide healthy attachment experiences, or spiritual motherhood, one must have received it from their parent or by another attachment figure along the way.
What I thought about as these two realities mingled in my mind, spiritual motherhood and the lost rioting teens, was spiritual fatherhood. All children need their fathers. They need the strength, courage, guidance and singlemindedness that is often seen in men who provide healthy attachment experiences to their children and loved ones.
Just as with spiritual motherhood, a man does not need to be a biological father to provide spiritual fathering to others. Yes, what these rioting teens need, among other things, are strong fathers, spiritual fathers, who support their child to rise up and use the gifts with which they were created. Spiritual fatherhood provides healthy attachment experiences that can lead others to their ultimate spiritual father, God. Without spiritual fatherhood the soul flounders and becomes lost.
It is time for men to acknowledge their spiritual fatherhood and consider how to support, encourage, and guide lost fathers, lost boys, and lost girls. John Paul II described mothers as “everyday heroes.” Let all men discover their spiritual fatherhood and become “everyday heroes.”
Patti M. Zordich, Ph.D., Triangle Psychological Services, Raleigh, NC, office@trypsych.com, 919.380.1000
An Adopted Child’s View of a Typical Homecoming
September 4, 2011
In my new book, Gotcha! Welcoming Your Adopted Child Home, I describe the needs the needs of a newly adopted child
following his Gotcha! Day. I share recommendations for the newly adopted child’s homecoming as well as the days and months that follow.
In this article, you will watch a video of a homecoming similar to those many newly adoptive parents arrange for the day they bring their child home. Their Gotcha Day. I have heard such memories recounted in my therapy office many times. Adoptive families believe this will bring happiness to their newly adopted child. They so want their new adopted child to feel loved.
Sometimes what we think is best for our child, isn’t really, Especially when our child has Early Relational Trauma from living in an orphanage or in foster care. We need to take into account the child’s previous experiences. We need to be sensitive to the child’s unmet early developmental needs of nurturing. And, we need to be responsive to the needs that are being expressed. How do we do this? Read the full article here at newadoptionresources.com.
Enjoy!