Even with the best of intentions, when you parent in reaction to your own parents, you often go too far to the opposite extreme.
People with negligent parents often want to make sure their children know they love them or try to become close friends with them, and as a result they may become overly-indulgent. People with smothering parents want to give their children space, but in doing so, may become too laissez-faire and disconnected. People with strict parents often want to allow their children the freedom they never had, and as a result, may become overly-permissive. People who grew up in chaos may want to provide their children structure and boundaries for their protection, protection they never had, but sometimes go overboard in enforcing too many rules.
When you’re trying to make up for what you didn’t receive as a child, you often unknowingly go too far in the other direction, with some unexpected results. The most painful consequence is that the children don’t appreciate the very thing you’re trying so hard to offer them—that which you did not receive.
Extreme styles of parenting generally work only for the short-term and have unintended consequences.
Children with highly authoritarian parents will be obedient. Yet, they tend to develop a strong inner critic and hide things from their parents.
Children with indulgent parents will be pleased to get whatever they want. However, they may not develop much self-discipline or the ability to delay gratification, which can lead to a lack of motivation.
Children with emotionally-distant parents often become independent, but at the cost of having difficulty sharing what’s in their heart and developing close, interpersonal relationships.
Children with controlling or smothering parents often become rebellious or resentful, hiding their real feelings and thoughts.
It’s best to aim for balance and moderation. Strict parenting in moderation provides secure structure. Indulgence in moderation teaches compassion. Control in moderation offers necessary guidance. Negligence in appropriate moderation allows a child to develop independence and learn from experience.
If you look back how your own parents brought you up, it’s likely that they were either emulating their parents or reacting to their parents. It’s easy to adapt an extreme position—letting your children do whatever they want to, or telling them, “Do it because I said so!” A more difficult but satisfying way to parent is to make small meaningful changes from your parents and to seek a wholesome balance.
Sexual attraction is one of the key reasons people start dating. As individuals get to know each other, character flaws or incompatibility may start to get in the way of a harmonious relationship. Such conflict often carries itself into the bedroom, but it usually doesn’t start there.
The loss of sexual attraction may be one of the ultimate reasons for breakups. But most of the time both breakups and the the loss of sexual attraction result from underlying relationship dynamics, which have caused a sense of distance, monotony, or contempt in the relationship.
1. Distance: When couples walk on eggshells, spend no time with each other, or stop taking care of themselves either physically or emotionally, intimacy vanishes.
2. Monotony: When partners stop treating each other as attractive and special they often end up feeling like brother and sister—without desire for one another. When a couple stops making the effort to create a romantic atmosphere, the relationship becomes pedestrian.
3. Contempt: When partners criticize each other or one acts superior, the toxicity of contempt destroys love and passion. How can you feel open and confident with someone who treats you with contempt? Sex as a window into the relationship
A couple’s sexual relationship is a window into their general relationship. Generally, one partner’s sexual disinterest or dysfunction is a symptom of the entire relationship not just the individual. Note that even in a marriage where sex has stopped, the way in which celibacy develops reveals the emotional dynamics occurring within the relationship. For example, one partner may be needy emotionally, while the other has become sexually distant, or one has become so critical or irritable that the other withdraws physically.
How does a couple rekindle desire and passion in a marriage that has grown cold?
Igniting passion is the inverse of extinguishing it. Couples need to
1. Spend some enjoyable time with each other, which means they must take care of themselves to enhance the vitality they bring to the relationship,
2. Treat each other as desirable and special, and
3. Be accepting of one another, avoiding criticism and contempt without having to hide their true thoughts and feelings.
Differentiation
“Differentiation” enables a person to break the negative patterns, which destroy passion and intimacy over the long-term. The more differentiated partners are, the more potential they have for sustaining long-term passion and intimacy.
Differentiation means having the ability to calmly withstand the tension of anxiety—anxiety caused by disagreement, vulnerability, or embarrassment. Handling anxiety without being reactive—withdrawing suddenly, lashing out angrily, or falling apart—is crucial in developing and sustaining emotional and sexual intimacy.
To sustain passion, then, couples need to move from gridlock to compassionate dialogue when issues are worth discussing. They need to actively have the intention to see the best in the other person, and to bring the best of themselves forward, particularly when the going gets rough.
Differentiation permits people to maintain their own course when lovers, friends, and family pressure them to agree and conform. Well-differentiated people can agree without feeling like they’re “losing themselves,” and can disagree without feeling alienated and embittered.
When partners can develop differentiation, then sexuality holds the potential for expressing profound intimacy and love.
There is a delicate balance to be maintained between the need to process the trauma of divorce to recuperate, heal, and recover) and the need to maintain the interpersonal skills essential to dating and, later, to bonding and pair-formation (pairing). The main problem may be the temporary suspension of the ability to trust, to open up, to render oneself emotionally vulnerable, and to reciprocate. The pain of divorce is so enormous and so all-consuming that narcissistic defenses kick in and the new divorcee is often unable to empathize and selflessly interact with potential partners. My advice is: listen to your inner voice. You know best. Do not let yourself be coerced, cajoled, and pushed into dating prematurely. You will know when you are ready.
The only reason and justification to date online is if you have no access to venues where you can date “real” people face-to-face, instead of mere avatars. Online dating is a disaster waiting to happen. To start with, it is unsafe as it affords no way to establish the identity of your interlocutor or correspondent. It also denies you access to critical information, such as your potential partner’s body language; the pattern of his social interactions; his behavior in unexpected settings and circumstances; his non-scripted reactions; even his smell and how he truly looks, dresses, and conducts himself in public and in private. Frequently in online dating, the partners use each other as “blank screens” onto which they project dreams, wishes, and unfulfilled needs and yearnings. They are bound to be disappointed when online push comes to offline shove.
Divorced adults are surrounded with eligible partners: at work, on the street, in the elevator, the clinic, next to the traffic lights, buying a newspaper, pushing a shopping cart at the mall. The problem is that of mindset, not of opportunity. Divorcees are in such agony that many of them withdraw and “block out” new information, potentials, and possibilities. Additionally, their narcissistic defenses kick in and they feel entitled to “something or someone better”. They become overly selective, pose unrealistic demands, and subject people they have recently met to a battery of tests that all but guarantee failure. It’s like they are self-defeatingly punishing wannabe partners and would-be mates and spouses for the sins of, and abusive misbehavior and maltreatment meted out by their exes.
Some special topics:
Informing the Children
How should you inform your children that you are dating again?
It depends on:
1. Whether the divorce was consensual and amicable or ugly and rupturous 2. Who is perceived by the child to have been the “guilty” party 3. How old the kids are and 4. Whether one of the parents or both use the child to taunt, torment, and punish their counterparties.
The parent should explain to his children his or her emotional needs. The parent should not supplicate, ask for the child’s permission, or pose as the child’s equal or “partner”. He or she should simply share. The child should be kept fully informed at all times regarding developments that may affect it: a date that is turning into something more serious and may alter living or custody arrangements, for instance. The parent should make clear his or her priorities and, as much as possible, foster the child’s sense of safety, emotional stability, and certainty that he is loved. But, the child should not have a veto power over the parent’s predilections, choices, and, ultimately, decisions.
Dating in different age groups
The mechanics are the same, but the expectations are different. The divorced 20-odd years old is probably still looking for a partner to establish a family with, as her main priority. Her 50-something years old counterparts are more concerned with companionship, personal growth, and issues related to old age and security. Consequently, these two age groups are bound to home in on different profiles of potential mates.
Mr. or Mrs. Right
According to many studies, women look for these qualities in men:
Men seem to place a premium on these qualities in a woman:
1. Physical Attraction and Sexual Availability; 2. Good-naturedness; 3. Faithfulness; 4. Protective Affectionateness; 5. Dependability.
The infatuation with Mr. Right or Ms. Right, common in the West, is very counterproductive and narcissistic. The romantic delusion that there exists, somewhere, a perfect match, a soulmate, a lost identical twin leads to paralysis, as we keep searching for the best rather than seize upon the good. It is the optimum that we should seek, not the illusory maximum. Dating and pairing is the art of compromise: of overlooking his shortcomings and deficiencies in order to benefit from your prospective partner’s good traits and qualities.
Having friends with benefits
There’s nothing wrong with short-term, interim, intermittent, and less committed liaisons that involve sexual gratification as well as companionship. It provides for an oasis of much-needed calm in between more demanding, serious, and sometimes onerous relationships. As long as this does not become a permanent and predominant pattern, it should be regarded as a welcome addition to the emotional and psychosexual arsenal of singles and the divorced.
From Bar-room to Bedroom
The sooner, the better. If he strikes you as a “candidate”, if she strikes you as a potential partner, it is time to hit the sack. Sexual incompatibility is the reason for a majority of breakups and divorces. Better to get this issue out of the way before things get more serious. If you find that he repels you sexually; if you find her unimaginative or frigid; if you find him clumsy and irritating; if you find her perfunctory or domineering – better put an end to it now, before you commit yourselves and get entangled emotionally.
Of course, all the precautions apply: gather information about your prospective partners from his/her friends, family, and colleagues; insist on protected, safe sex; make clear, in advance, what you are willing to do and where do you draw the line. But, otherwise, go for it now, before it is too late. Find out if you are a true couple in bed as well as away from the sheets.
“I’d like to help but I can’t do so if you swear at me or continue to raise your voice.”
In difficult situations staying calm will create an atmosphere that is least likely to escalate tempers. Issuing commands, yelling, or swearing back generally stokes the flames of anger and the argument will spiral out of control.
Yet, ignoring the swearing or yelling by continuing to help someone who is treating you inappropriately is not the answer. Never accept demeaning language or behavior as this will encourage more of it in the future.
If the other person grabs you by the arm, don’t lose your calm. Face him or her squarely and repeat your request, “Look, nothing is accomplished by shouting. Let’s sit down and discuss this in a civilized manner.”
If the angry person continues, you can repeat yourself one more time: “As I’ve said before, I do want to help, but I cannot do so if you raise your voice and swear at me. And if you continue, I will walk away.” Be prepared to do so.
A musical canon consists of “two or more parts that have the same melody but start at different points.” Like the variety we find in music, we also find great variety in types of relationships that work and don’t work. There are both healthy and unhealthy relationships among couples who argue and among couples who don’t.
No Fighting
Unhealthy: Some couples who never fight will simply hide their differing opinions and emotions, creating a situation that leads to distance and frosty disengagement. The partners, feeling alienated, sadly drift apart.
Healthy: Some couples who don’t typically fight have learned how to actively listen and to express their opinions and disagreements without expressing contempt for the other person. This seems ideal, but is difficult to live up to when emotions run high.
Fighting
Unhealthy: Some people who argue and fight do not listen to each other. They attack and defend. As a result, mutual negativity and contempt for each other grow until the relationship is nothing more than a bitter struggle.
Healthy: Some couples who have disagreements and lose their temper care deeply for each other and desire to put right any harm done.
Attempts to Repair
What’s more important than avoiding conflict is the earnest attempt to repair hurt feelings after a disagreement—and the sooner the better. Loving couples have empathy for each other, and will therefore, hasten to apologize for harsh words or losing their temper.
Having fights is not necessarily harmful to a relationship as long as there is not abuse or a pattern of criticism and contempt. Getting past the hurt feelings caused by arguments occurs best when each person’s overriding concern is for the well-being of the other and the relationship, which rests on the well-being of both partners.
More important than whether a couple fights is how often and quickly they try to repair their relationship after disagreements. Phyllis Diller might have been right when she said, “Never go to bed mad. Stay up and fight.” Some fighting, unless it’s constant or cruel, can be fine as long as couples strive to make peace soon afterwards.
Honest disagreement is often a good sign of progress.
