|
|
|
100 Ways to Connect With Your Teen
100 Ways to Connect with your Teens 1.View adolescence as an adventure. 2.Respect their privacy. 3.Create family times around activities they enjoy. 4.Keep the delicate balance between holding on and letting go. 5.Understand the nature of the...
Business Partners and Marital Partners, Will the Marriage Survive? (Part II)
In the last article, we concluded by saying that keeping your business and personal relationships separate is very important to the survival of both your business and your marriage. In this article we will talk about how to achieve this...
How To Choose The Right Marriage Counselor
You have made the decision to contact a marriage counselor. The next question is “How to choose the right marriage counselor?” The success of your counseling experience will relate directly to your compatibility with your counselor.
Before you...
Marking Togetherness: Beyond the Unity Candle
By now, surely everyone's familiar with the unity candle, but did you know there are other unification ceremonies to choose from when planning your wedding? Although the unity candle seems to have been with us forever, in reality it's only about...
"Reasons For Divorce; What Constitutes Viable Reasons For Thinking About Or Wanting A Divorce?"
According to the Center for Disease Control's National Vital Statistics Report of 2002, 50% of first marriages ended in divorce and 60% of remarriages end in divorce. But, the Center for Disease Control also found that 96% of Americans express a...
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
The New Marriage - Part Three Of Four
Harry Stack Sullivan, in The Interpersonal Theory of Psychiatry, argues that human beings have a biological drive to develop and establish interpersonal relationships. In Biological Basis for Human Social Behavior, R.A. Hind suggests that a person’s “attachment style”—the way in which they relate to other human beings and form relationships with them—is developed mostly during childhood. The attachment style tends to persist into adulthood but is not fixed and can be modified either positively or negatively as the result of further interactions.
I have had the joy of seeing countless adult clients consciously change their attachment style. This is a practice that takes time and is not easy to do. However, I have seen many people move from a victim stance to living more fully by changing their attachment style.
Helen was a lovely, dark-haired young woman, the adult child of an alcoholic. Her attachment style led her to be attracted to what she called “bad boys.” Helen told me she “had radar for the bad boys in the room,” those who would treat her with indifference and ultimately disappoint her. She had been married for five years to Paul, who was extremely critical of her, had multiple affairs, and was also an alcoholic.
We worked hard on her attachment style. Like many clients, she could not trust her unconscious processes to choose an appropriate partner. I had her make a list of the characteristics that she was looking for in a partner and had her carry it around with her in her wallet. One bright November morning she came in to tell me of her triumph with another bad boy situation.
“I was consciously able to make a choice to not follow my attraction,” Helen explained. “I was at a party and was approached by a very attractive and charming man. My radar went up immediately, because I felt a strong attraction to his good looks and charm. However, I also started looking for indications that he was the type of man that I had been attracted to in the past. I did not have to consider this for very long because I realized that he had a date who was over getting something for both of them to drink. I decided on the spot that I did not want to go out with him when he asked me out on a date, when he already had a date.” So began a real change in Helen’s attachment style. She has since married a conscientious, devoted husband.
An attachment style is not simply made up of behavior we have learned at our
parents’ knees. An attachment style is a way of thinking and feeling as well, and shapes not just what we do, but the meaning we give to the things that happen between our partner and ourselves. The way we think as children can persist into our adult lives.
Despite the learning we do later that develops rational thinking and professional skills, there is a tendency to hold onto child-like ways of thinking in our long-term and intimate relationships. Our professional skills are things we learn as adults, but as H. Stadtman Main points out, love and attachment we learn as children.
We think of the period when the child is learning about love as the individual’s beginning of the journey that will lead him or her to the heights of rapturous love and then, all too frequently, into the valley of faultfinding and blame-gaming. One’s attachment style lays the groundwork. Foster parents frequently report the lengths to which an abused or neglected child will go to protect and defend their birth parents, frequently blaming themselves rather than the abusive parent. Also well documented is the “cycle of abuse,” whereby abused children become abusive parents. Such behavior patterns are difficult to break, no matter that after each episode the abuser is remorseful and promises never to do it again.
The work of Harry Stack Sullivan and others has many implications for couples. While it identifies the existence of pre-formed attachment styles as a possible cause of interpersonal difficulties, it also contends that problematic attachment styles can be addressed and changed.
Copyright 2005 Linda Miles Ph.D
About the Author: Author, Dr. Linda Miles, is deeply committed to helping individuals and couples achieve rewarding relationships. She is an expert with a doctorate in Counseling Psychology, and has worked in the mental health field for over thirty years. She has been interviewed extensively on radio, TV, and in newspapers and magazines. Find more relationship ideas and relaxation techniques on her web site and in the award-winning book she co-authored, The New Marriage: Transcending the Happily-Ever-After Myth, and Train Your Brain: For Successful Relationships, CD. http://www.drlindamiles.com
Source: www.isnare.com
|
|
|
|
|
| Marriage - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia |
| Marriages are generally publicly declared in the context of a wedding ceremony. ... The term wedlock is a synonym for marriage, and is mainly used in the ... |
| en.wikipedia.org |
|
| Marriage Builders ® - Successful Marriage Advice |
| Provides answers and insight to questions about infidelity, marriage counseling, and divorce. A free support forum is also available. |
| www.marriagebuilders.com |
|
| Christian Marriages - Families Christianity Free Newsletters Sex ... |
| A biweekly newsletter, published by Christianity Today, that provides information and articles of interest for couples. |
| www.christianitytoday.com |
|
| Marriage -- THE starting place for exploring marriage |
| Useful links, and weekly feature articles on making your marriage the best it can be. Chat room and bulletin board also onsite. From About.com. |
| marriage.about.com |
|
| Marriage - Wex |
| Today the underlying concept that marriage is a legal contract still remains ... Entering into a marriage changes the legal status of both parties and gives ... |
| www.law.cornell.edu |
|
| Smart Marriages |
| Clearinghouse: The latest EASY-TO-USE information to make your marriage or realtionship successful, sexy, and satisfying. |
| www.smartmarriages.com |
|
| University of the Family - Marriage Ministries International |
| Marriage is the foundation of the family. When the relationship is hurting, the family is hurting. Couples seek counseling and counseling and are often ... |
| www.marriage.org |
|
| USC-MSA Compendium of Muslim Texts |
| Marriage in Islam has aspects of both 'ibadah (worship) of Allah and mu'amalah ... The Prophet considered marriage for a Muslim as half of his religion ... |
| www.usc.edu |
|
| Marriage Records - First Comes Love - Portland, Oregon |
| Tonight (Wed Nov 29) Marriage’s own old intern Cole Miller and Glacier Park’s Jessie Slavich are playing at Valentine’s (232 SW Ankeny) downtown at 8pm. ... |
| www.marriagerecs.com |
|
| National Marriage Project Home Page |
| Research, education, training and advocacy to strengthen the institution of marriage. |
| marriage.rutgers.edu |
|
| UKBMD - Births, Marriages, Deaths Indexes & Census transcriptions ... |
| UK BMD Births, Marriages and Deaths Indexes Online. Baptims, Burials, Monumental Inscriptions, Cemetry, Cemetries, Civil Registration, GRO Indexes, BMD, ... |
| www.ukbmd.org.uk |
|
| Welcome to Worldwide Marriage Encounter Home Page |
| Marriage Encounter weekends give married couples the tools to make Good marriages GREAT marriages! Why settle for a ho-hum relationship when you can have a ... |
| www.wwme.org |
|
| Alternatives to Marriage Project |
| Provides support and information to people who choose not to marry, are unable to marry, or are making decisions about marriage. |
| www.unmarried.org |
|
| Marriage Equality USA (index.shtml) |
| Group solely committed to securing the right to civil marriage for same-sex couples. Related facts, membership information, and chapters. |
| www.marriageequality.org |
|
| President Calls for Constitutional Amendment Protecting Marriage |
| President Bush on Tuesday said, "The amendment should fully protect marriage, while leaving the state legislatures free to make their own choices in ... |
| www.whitehouse.gov |
|
| Marriage in Ancient Rome |
| Selected information plus a bibliography and internet links. |
| www.fortunecity.com |
|
| Instructions to Obtain a Marriage Certificate Copy |
| This page provides instructions for obtaining a certified or uncertified copy of a Wisconsin marriage certificate. |
| www.dhfs.state.wi.us |
|
| Judaism 101: Marriage |
| Learn about the Jewish concept of finding your soul mate, Jewish weddings, the process of acquiring a spouse, and the marital relationship. |
| www.jewfaq.org |
|
| the marriage toolbox |
| www.marriagetools.com/ - Similar pages |
|
|
| American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy |
| Professionally developed resources for practitioners and consumers of marriage and family therapy. Site also offers a search engine for finding a qualified ... |
| www.aamft.org |
|
|