The following is a collection of couples enrichment exercises taken from the “Brief Couples Therapy Homework Planner” by Gary Schultheis, Bill O’Hanlon and Steffanie O’Hanlon (John Wiley and Sons). Try these exercises out as a way of enriching and deepening the intimacy between you: Find five things you would do if you were really in […]
Communicating When You Are Hurt, Angry, or Upset
Dear Neil: Would you clarify where the appropriate place is for anger? My husband thinks my anger is inappropriate when he has periodic communication with a woman whom he has been having an “emotional affair” with for the past two and a half years. Unfortunately, the only way I’ve actually succeeded in stopping their communication, […]
Solving Seemingly Unsolvable Conflicts
Does this problem sound familiar? She wants him to take a larger role in housekeeping, domestic chores and keeping the place picked up. He wants her to get off his back. Don’t relate to that issue? How about this one? She wants to socialize with and meet new people at parties and other social events, […]
Self-Love Requires Being On Your Side
Note: This is the second of a two-part series. Click here for part one When you love and value yourself, you start taking care of your health; your body; your psyche; your relationships with others; and your sense of vitality, optimism, and overall well-being. Here are some of the things you can do to better love, respect […]
How Do I Become Self-Loving?
Note: This is the first of a two-part series. Click here for part two Dear Neil: I’m 54, and have had to face aloneness, fear and memories of childhood rape and emotional abuse. How do I become self-loving? Trying to Heal in Wellington, New Zealand Dear Trying: You don’t have control over how you grew up, […]
Love Requires Heart and Vulnerability
Dear Neil: I’m wondering why I cannot trust my heart. Ever since marrying my husband four years ago, I have known something was wrong. After a year of searching, I have finally figured out that I married him based on “cognitive” things that I thought would make a good marriage. The problem is that I’ve […]
Personal Power Doesn’t Require Anger
Dear Neil: Thanks for your recent column on anger. What’s been fascinating for me is to realize how ill-equipped I am to having any reaction other than anger or feeling like a doormat. Learning to rein in anger is freeing, but if people who have relied on anger for power don’t have any other readily […]
When You’re Smitten
When was the last time you felt smitten? People who are smitten live in a different world than everyone else. The normal world includes highs and lows, work, fun, joy, chores, bills, worries—in fact, all the pleasures, pains and responsibilities of real life. Not so when you’re smitten. These words come to mind in describing […]
Wooing
Ah, springtime. The time when nature wakes up again. Birds migrate back to the north. Plants burst out of the ground with a profusion of green everywhere. Flowers bloom. Fish spawn. Animals breed. All of nature comes alive. Including us. And the way many of us express that aliveness, stimulated by springtime, is through urges […]
Expressing Love and Appreciation to Your Valentine
When was the last time you told your Valentine how valued s/he was? How special? What you appreciate and how much you appreciate him or her? In honor of Valentine’s Day, here is an exercise if you’d like to correct that oversight—and infuse your relationship with renewed appreciation and gratitude. Select from the following list […]