“Are you mad at me?” The question is presented as an inquiry about the other person, but it isn’t really asking about that person. It’s more of a statement: “I now need another shot of reassurance, please” is the message. So it’s both a request, and a report about the speaker’s inner state of anxiety and affect-hunger. What it is not, is the very thing its literal meaning presents it to be: an expression of interest in how the other person is actually feeling. This mismatch between the question’s overt meaning and its real use can be annoying. Asked often enough, it can even make the hearer feel a little bit …mad.
The part of each of us that calculates rational cost-benefit analyses is a crucial voice in a larger inner chorus. But it should not always be the final authority deciding where we go forward and where we refrain. It is as if Life itself were a person, to whom we stand in a mysterious relationship, one that benefits from good faith more than from thoroughgoing prudence and obsessive efficiency. So let yourself go and do something creative or edifying, without insisting on the certainty that it must be the best choice possible. Make a mark, then another. It was wise advice they gave in kindergarten at fingerpainting time: Just get in there and smear…
A client came into session today looking mildly dejected. He wanted me to know it was nothing he couldn't handle. But something was bothering him, and he didn’t entirely approve of his own discomfort. He explained that his wife’s birthday was a few days ago, and they had experienced another go-round in a pattern they’ve played-out before on anniversaries, Valentine’s day, and Christmas. He puts in plenty of effort, but she’s usually disappointed in the results, and he blames himself.
If there is something you really want to do, but you’re not doing it, there is probably another part of you that’s resisting. So it’s a negotiation between two parties, except that they are both you. They’re different parts of self, with needs that don’t seem to fit together—or not at the very same instant. The part that wants instant gratification, now and forever, is probably a lot younger than the part that’s more interested in getting valuable things done (like pursuing justice, or doing the laundry,), even if that means having to wait awhile for some of the other kinds of value (like ice cream, or a movie).
It isn’t neurotic at all to be concerned about climate change, or the loss of the natural world, or the rapid erosion of public institutions that used to guarantee a basic standard of political stability. In fact, being concerned about these huge trends is an important part of living together in the real world, and a therapeutic culture of atomized individualism can prevent the public from getting together to improve things. Yet this, too, is a delicate balance to be struck and maintained, because we don’t pay our therapists to sway us into their favorite world-saving projects. Treatment should remain focused on the patient’s individual well-being, and include bigger public issues only insofar as the patient is already struggling with them.
If you’re married, or in a committed relationship, the way your partner responds to your physicality is probably part of how you feel about what you see in the mirror. Give each other the working materials to easily generate an erotic home-base that feels hot and sexy sometimes, warm and friendly most of the time, and coldly evaluative never. Judgements and measurements are for competition, and home is not a place to compete.
When a man relentlessly defends himself in an argument with a woman, he is usually doing it to protect the goodness of his character:I am a good person! Can’t you see that? When a woman exerts indignation in a relationship with a man, she is usually asserting her rights, her boundaries, her prerogatives:I matter! Can’t you see that? Until the man stops trying to prove to her, and to himself, that he is indeed “good” and not “bad,” he cannot go about the urgent business of showing the woman that she—her needs, her dignity, her work, her feelings—really does matter to him.
A habit merits the term “addiction” when it costs you more than it’s worth; when you try to stop it, but find you can only put it “on pause” for a short while; and when you find your thinking (especially your judgment) is distorted by the high priority you place on repeating the habit. Another criterion is perhaps less important because it’s outside you, but it can be very important indeed: when multiple neutral or friendly people tell you they think you have a problem—especially if they haven’t spoken to each other about it beforehand.
This post is addressed to people who (a) currently live in the world of sex-positive dating, which often includes kink and polyamory, and who (b) have begun to feel that all this sex and sociality is fun, but that Romantic Love is missing, and its absence matters more and more. Living a lifestyle of erotic adventurism and searching for a Primary Partner can be two very different things. And if you think you might want to attempt a permanent monogamous commitment with somebody awesome who feels uniquely suited to your nature, then they’re very different things.
Some feature of your audience, or of the situation, is familiar enough to trigger a specific piece of material that proved to be scintillating in the past. It might be just as charming or poignant now as it was back then. But think twice before you wheel it out and redeploy it. Why? Because the slightest congruity between past and present can be powerfully tempting: surely this is a chance to validate old good stuff, to prove to yourself the value of what you’ve accumulated, and to be good-with-people without having to make a renewed effort. This temptation can cause you to overlook the important new factors that distinguish this moment from its distant precursor…
People have an evolved need to be part of something – to belong to a family that belongs to a tribe. Anyone who doesn’t have that can become susceptible to whatever offers itself as a substitute, even if the eventual price of belonging is unclear at the outset, and turns out to be too high. We are a profoundly social species, and the more isolated somebody is, the greater their risk for getting absorbed into a company that has cult-like features—especially if these only become obvious after some time has passed, and ties have been formed.
Hoarding occurs on a spectrum of severity. It can be a light nuisance, a serious problem that impinges on one’s life-possibilities, or a severe mental affliction with potentially dire implications for physical health. It’s a distorted version of some natural and necessary mental functions. In the deeply ancient world, long before civilization, people generally kept only what they could carry. Evolutionary psychology of this sort can easily jump to mistaken conclusions, but it seems likely that somewhere along the line it became adaptive to try and hang onto stuff that might be useful later on. A temperament that disposed people to a more retentive attitude became partly heritable—despite the fact that it could also cause trouble...
