Scary When Scared: How Fear Turns Into Threat in Relationships
There’s a painful moment that happens in close relationships—romantic, familial, even professional—when you realize something confusing: You weren’t trying to be threatening. You were trying to protect yourself. But the other person experienced you as scary.
Relationships Operate on a Tape Delay
Relationships don’t always keep pace with life’s changes. When something big happens — a wedding, the birth of a child, a move to a new city, or even launching a child into college — each person in the relationship goes through their own process of adjustment. Emotions shift, roles evolve, and priorities get rearranged. But the relationship itself often takes longer to catch up.
Soothing, Caring, and Sharing: The Recipe for Secure Attachment
Healthy, lasting intimacy begins with the relationship we have with ourselves. So often, we long for closeness and connection, yet struggle when it comes to sustaining it. The truth is, in order to share ourselves fully with another person, we first need to learn how to soothe ourselves, care for ourselves, and truly have ourselves.
When Grief Masquerades as Guilt
So often, when people talk about grief, they picture sadness. Tears. That hollow ache in the chest. But grief has many disguises, and one of the most common — and most confusing — is guilt.
Secrets In Relationships Are Like Black Mold
On the surface, black mold can be hard to spot. It might hide in the corners of a damp basement or under a layer of fresh paint. But given time, it spreads quietly, breaking down the structure beneath and releasing toxins into the air. Secrets in a relationship work the same way.
Parenthood and Sexuality
As we approach Valentine’s Day, instead of a stereotypical idealistic and ultra-romantic post, I’m going to get realistic and address those of us who are parenting in whatever shape or form. Arguably, parenting is one of the least romantic life experiences. It’s messy, it’s hard, it’s tedious, it’s scary, it’s vulnerable.
Solitude and Female Sexuality
It’s the holiday season. I find myself copying a crossstitch meme about replacing my “regular, everyday anxiety” with my “fancy holiday anxiety” and sending it to my sister and my mom friends, who I know will get it. Then I send it to my husband, just to be sure he gets it too.
Talking With Young People About Sexuality
“I got the best question today!” I tell my husband excitedly about how earlier that day my 9-year-old asked me “What is puberty?”
Admittedly, a part of me was like “Dude, we’ve covered this multiple times and you took a whole class about it last year” but most of me was thrilled to jump in the pool of The Sex Ed Conversations again.
Both / And
Human feelings are complex and interwoven, and often even in conflict with each other. My favorite therapeutic concept that deals with these common emotional paradoxes is “both/and.” In the last few years, both/and has especially resonated with me: the COVID-19 pandemic shut down was both isolating and simplifying.
The Myth of Spontaneity
A common lament among the couples I see is, “I wish sex would just happen naturally!” Often they add, “like it did when we first met.” These couples, now struggling with desire discrepancies, elusive orgasms, or unreliable erections, are looking back on a time early in their relationship when desire and sexual response seemed to crank up instantly, with all cylinders firing.