The Couples Tool Kit
Working together as a team of three — by Jill Edelman, M.S.W., L.C.S.W., Specialist in Couples TherapyArchive for Conflict
“Money Matters” in The Coupledom: Budget 2012
Money Is Big: As the New Year confronts us, money matters can loom large in the line-up of Coupledom challenges: What are the expenditure priorities this year? Who manages the finances? Who pays the monthly bills, or not? Who brings home the dough? Who decides on how it is spent? Who knows where the money is invested? Who does the investing? Who decides on what the kids get? Which in-law deserves a loan, which doesn’t? Shall I go on? I think we all get it. Money is big. Money is massive in all our lives, by its presence and absence. As an observer of money conversations between spouses or co-habitating partners I notice some mighty common themes running through them.
Pitfalls Of Only One Pair of Eyes: Trust is a basis for successful communication and its opposite, distrust, its nemesis. From my observation what creates or sustains a trustful financial component of The Coupledom is transparency, the ability of each partner to know as much as their spouse regarding how money is earned and how money is spent. This transparency becomes especially significant when other obstacles confront the family nest, such as economic downturns, requests for monetary help from relatives or friends, time spent apart when one travels with an expense account and the other is in charge of paying bills, deciding outlays of funds for household maintenance, or children’s activities. Often, when a couple’s relationship hits the skids, accusations around money flare up because someone has access at their fingertips of the financial fountain and someone else is clueless. Not good.
The Subjectivity of Money Meaning: Money has meaning, but not always the same meaning to everyone. For one member of The Coupledom, money is broken down into how many literal pennies are in the bank; to the other, it is simply a state, we have it or we don’t; for a third, no amount of money spells security. For someone else money is scary, and ignorance about its details is preferred. There are folks who only feel in control when they are at the financial helm and cannot trust another to handle the checkbook, online or otherwise. For others, money is gender related: men earn it and control it, women receive their portion of it and spend it. Thematically, in western culture, money means power. Divorcing women whose homes ran along traditional western style money habits bemoan their ignorant years of marriage where hubby alone knew where the money went. Regretful that they didn’t demand “transparency,” the ladies are left to feel ripped off and robbed, though the evidence of that is often ambiguous. Why the assumption? Only one pair of eyes was focused on the statements, the investments, the W2’s, the yearly tax statements sent to the IRS. Not good! As prevention is a key focus of these posts, my aim here is to suggest that couples revisit how they run their finances and consider some modifications.
Accept Difference: A commonplace financial battle is around perception. One member of the couple sees expenditures as in line with income. Another disagrees, feeling much can be cut, much is extravagant. House cleaning is one of those areas where, for women, getting extra help to manage the chaos left by young children, laundry and dust is a means to the end of creating a greater sense of order and relief once every couple of weeks. For their husband, it means money that is needlessly spent when a good strong woman, their wife, is quite adequate to complete the task. Who is right? Who is wrong? No one. What money may offer one partner as relief, may do nothing for the other. A round of golf costs a penny but provides therapy for the body and mind. Just like housecleaning. Yet, rather than allow for difference and with two pairs of eyes look at the budget and decide the breakdown with both needs equalized, couples fight, accuse and blame. Again, not good.
No Deciders Here: College tuition is another grand slam big bang of a fight. One believes in state schools, the other wants their child to go wherever he or she wishes, private or not. Two pairs of eyes need to know the budgetary facts, what can be relinquished to afford the other, when values are at odds. Is the parent who wants the option of sending their child to a private college willing to yield up some of their personal perks or return to work part-time? No one person should be the “decider” in family finances. “And that is final” are words not worthy of expression in our times; rather, they hearken back to the age of rigid roles based on gender implied by “father knows best,” or “father is an idiot and mom knows best.” Now the mantra needs to be, “We together can figure out what will fly.” Not best, not worst, but negotiable and with two pairs of informed eyes, looking at a budget on a screen, with bank accounts and investment accounts side by side to provide a “shared reality.” All veils lifted.
Information is Power: And money information is particularly empowering. Today our financial life and worth is online. Need I bother to list for folks that everything from credit card expenses to cell phone and mortgage accounts to broker trades, iTunes costs, savings and business accounts, is up for grabs with just the input of an arrangement of 8-16 letters and a couple of numbers or punctuation, for all to see. Empowered folks are those who know the contents of the family vault, literally and figuratively. Don’t kid yourselves, no matter how great a guy or gal your spouse may be, they are not perfect, may need another brain to figure out how to run the family finances and decide priorities for all rather than base it on the mindset of one. And a heads up here: the need of one partner to control the monies is not the best sign in a Coupledom either. If you have a partner who feels burdened by bill paying and account balancing yet refuses to share the password or allow you to take over some of the payments, have a serious conversation. What’s up with that? Trust, fear, secrets, issues of personal identity, esteem or fears of being viewed as incompetent or an inadequate breadwinner? Listening skills required here, as well as heavy draughts of empathy and curiosity with a sensitive eye toward tweaking what isn’t working without condemnation or judgment.
Money Is Very Personal: And so is the shared life. To make a success of one, you need to have a transparency of the other. Good luck, see an expert if your Coupledom hits a wall here. And welcome to Coupledom Finances 2012.
©Jill Edelman, M.S.W., L.C.S.W. 2012
The Affair: A Symptom of Marriage Rot or A Rotten Spouse?
Affairs Come In Colors: Not all infidelities look alike. The red-hot mega-media adulteries are not the prototype for most unfaithful Coupledoms. The shades of color for the common household variety of betrayal are in grays, not black, white or red-hot. Yet folks on either side of the betrayal highway feel more comfortable thinking in black, white and red: black is the one who does the deed; white is the one who doesn’t; and red is the flame that fires everyone up. All fired up but perhaps still “clueless.”
Rot or Rotten? Decades ago, a couple whom I knew socially asked to meet with me privately. The woman had discovered that her husband was having a romantic and sexual relationship with another woman. This was not one of those nebulous discoveries, where terms such as “friendship” or “emotional affair” are batted about to obfuscate and distract from the “betrayal” facts of the action. No, this was infidelity, clear as day. That information put me in a tough spot, not permitted to do treatment as these were friends, yet wanting at least to send them away with something until they entered treatment with a couples therapist (and knowing that there were children waiting at home). So I asked the wife, “Do you think that your husband is basically a decent guy?” Now some would say that is an oxymoron: an adulterer who is a decent guy. But I didn’t think so. What was rotten here? Was it something rotting in the marriage or was this a rotten spouse? Big difference.
Time To Out The Marital Secrets: Many couples who end up in divorce court — because one member hooked up and got caught — shouldn’t be there. Not if the marital rot had been outed early enough to prevent someone from crossing over that deepest of all betrayal lines: a sexual relationship with someone other than their spouse. The essential question to be raised, once that line has been crossed: is there any other recourse but divorce? Yes, if the couple, despite the damage, can begin to view the affair as a symptom of marriage rot. We all have heard of this and many a betrayed spouse is accused of a pivotal role in their partner’s alliance with another. And many a betrayed spouse has a hell of a time owning that piece in a useful fashion, so distracted by the broken trust and narcissistic injury to their self-esteem, self-image and self-worth that real digging and reflection is constantly waylaid by rage, fear and sense of failure.
The Critical Piece: Now we come to the fork in the road. If the spouse who had the affair really doesn’t want to leave, perhaps for multiple reasons that are normal and of value — “We are a family”, “I still love you”, “I am sorry” — then it is up to the betrayed spouse to figure out if this person is rotten or if it were the relationship that was rotting. History can help here. What do you know about your partner? Over the years, have their actions, up to this point, matched the general expectations of moral conscience and honesty in their transactions in your life together? A deep exploration into the spouse’s qualities and history of their behaviors, the important ones with you, your children, the extended family, should tell you something really crucial: who they are as human beings, so that one is not surrendering solely to the most primitive gut reaction of “Cut, Run And Blame.” There are other options here. Remember, when you throw away the riches of a shared life, you never get them back…and though they may be beaten up right now, if you give them up, they are not just bruised but gone, without benefit of a healing restoration.
Narcissistic Injury and Broken Trust: Two of the deepest gashes to our psychological safety are those that slice at our self-regard/self-image and basic trust. Healthy narcissism (healthy self-regard, not inflated or exploitative) can be tested mightily when a betrayal, i.e. rejected for another, occurs. The wound is deep. For someone already scarred early in life by such injuries, a partner’s affair can present an almost insurmountable hurdle but one that can be challenged if the spouse is willing to look at their past to conquer its potentially crippling influence on their future. Trust, if broken earlier in life, when hit again, can present an image of human relations as intolerably painful and best avoided or manipulated. Here again, what may seem insurmountable can be opportunity knocking for tremendous psychological growth for the betrayed party. But this undertaking requires an ample supply of courage and willingness to take an emotional risk, because what may be saved still has value, and perhaps even promise.
Growing Up Is Hard To Do: Really, which is easier, growing up or breaking up? Take your pick. And get help to do the former before you hire someone to do the latter.
©Jill Edelman, M.S.W. L.C.S.W. 2011
Oldies but Goodies: The Passive-Aggressive Punch: The Silent Code of Anger In The Coupledom
Happy Labor Day Weekend! Jill is taking a break from the blog this weekend to rest and relax post Hurricane Irene. Here is one of her most popular posts from the past year or so.
Excerpt:
Withholding: A common form of passive-aggressive behavior is withholding: sex, affection, information, conversation. Someone in the Coupledom stops chatting, sharing details of family life; someone refrains from conveying essential data such as appointments, social events, school open houses, soccer games; someone “forgets” to share news about changes at work, relative illnesses……
You can read the full post here:
The Passive-Aggressive Punch: The Silent Code of Anger In The Coupledom
© Jill Edelman, M.S.W., L.C.S.W. 2011
Maria And Arnold: A Rorschach Test
Separation Tremors: The announcement that Arnold Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver are separating after 25 years married and four children may be sending out tremors beyond the confines of the couples’ California home. What can have gone awry? Mid-life crisis; infidelity; anorexia; male or female menopause; the end of a political marriage matching the termination of a gubernatorial career?
But what is certain is that many couples may be projecting some of their concerns, fantasies and worries onto the Shriver Schwarzenegger Coupledom. Could this happen to us?
Projection! That is the process in which we impose our own thematic notions and concerns onto someone else or something else. As in a Rorschach test, used in psychological testing, where ink blots splattered on a page are interpreted by individuals in ways that reflect the workings of their psyches, how an individual interprets events in the world around them, mirrors what is of significant concern in his or her personal world.
Opportunity Knocks: A married man in his forties interprets the Shriver Schwarzenegger separation from Maria’s perspective: she is done with him; his flirtations; his groping; his ego. A woman who has been happily married for 25 years with the same man, but was raised in a world of infidelity and misogyny, has a different focus; she thinks Arnold is dumping his wife for a younger woman; an older woman ponders the possibility that the loss of Shriver’s parents in recent years liberates her to leave a self-centered and selfish man so that she can affirm her right to happiness.
Famous Break Ups and What They Can Do For Your Coupledom: Whether it is Tiger or Sandra, Tipper and Al, Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins, famous breakups cause speculation and fear in the hearts of many. For the self-reflective pair, questioning what when wrong in the relationship of a well-known couple can reveal concerns in their own partnership. Sharing with your partner some of these “projections” openly and inquiring into his or her notions, could lead to a more in depth conversation about what is good, what is feared and what could be worked on. Family of origin issues influence what expectations and projections may be at work in the hearts and minds of members of a Coupledom. If one of the partnership comes from a family of adultery, then how does that history operate in their Coupledom? If one interpreted their parent’s marriage as “staying together for the children’s sake”, then the fear that they may find themselves doing the same, is worthy of airing and sharing.
Risk and Loss in Love: We know that partnering is risky business. Someone we love can leave us, humiliate us, or become boring to us. With separations and divorces all around us, and the fact that no one really knows all the variables at work in another couples’ break-up, observing one’s “projections” or notions of what brought down another’s coupledom can reflect the fears of what could bring down our own coupledom. These same fears or fantasies provide a rich opportunity to increase self-awareness and share concerns with our partners: a serviceable form of prevention.
Leave No Stone Unturned: Mine the misery of others to avoid your own. Why not? Projections provide a canvas of concern worthy of our attention. Use it!
©Jill Edelman, M.S.W., L.C.S.W. 2011
Stereotyping The Coupledom
Stereotyping Your Partner: One marvels at the power of gender stereotyping in The Coupledom, that domicile in which the relationship resides. Years, even decades into a marriage, partners interpret behaviors in the language of expected gender norms. Often these interpretations are inaccurate and create emotional distance rather than facilitate connectedness.
Dismissive or Disengaged? At the top of the list for many a female partner is the seeming lack of interest demonstrated by their husband around the day-to-day life of wife and children. Whether they travel or are local for work, many men are viewed as less than present, often dismissive of the minutia and emotion that goes into mundane life.
Disappointed and Critical: Adjectives ascribed by males to their wives behaviors seem to rest on a notion that “wives are hard to please”, and often disappointed with their spouses. Many a male has looked at me with despair after once again, his wife has described him as deficient in some area.
Peeling Away The Layers of Stereotyping and Projecting: There is an art to going beneath the surface to find the layers of meaning in behavior. In couples’ work, this art involves giving each partner the time and patience to self-explore and explain the inner workings of their mind, to their partner. Why is this so necessary? Because of the inclination to stereotype and project. We tend to read each other more like a paperback novel than a multifaceted human being who can harbor more than one emotion, motivation or opinion at the same time. We tend to ignore the possibility that what we view as causal is just one possible explanation of our partner’s behavior, and not the only one. We tend to “close the book” on additional interpretations. And we tend to be incurious! Worst of all.
Disclaimer: Forgive me for much of what I am about to write may seem like the pot calling the kettle black. I will be “generalizing” and “stereotyping” from clinical experience. Whatever doesn’t fit, throw out. Take away what is useful and leave the rest.
Male Avoidance: A husband decides it is best to say as little as possible whenever he thinks that his wife will get upset. Consequently he has spent decades concealing his reactions to family life. His wife, unable to read his mind, sees this behavior as disinterest and uncaring. Hurt and bewildered by this disconnect, she withdraws as well. Both describe years of walking on eggshells. Deeper exploration uncovers a strongly held belief system left over from his childhood: “You are a bad person if you make someone you love unhappy.” Therefore, choosing compliance over anticipated “conflict” becomes a way of life. Information is withheld that could trigger a less than happy response (often a projection), and outsiders become confidants instead of his spouse. When he can no longer keep the emotional exchange at bay, he cuts it off. Why? He is overwhelmed with feeling like a bad person, guilt ridden and secondarily angry that “his wife” has made him feel this way. What had appeared as rejection and disinterest is in fact a fearful relic of a young boy’s world, desperately needing airing and updating to the world of the grown man he is today who can disagree, even with someone he loves, and not be bad for doing so.
Critical Wives: A husband is baffled by his wife’s constant attacks on him. She strikes out at him frequently with harsh words that make no sense to him, blaming him for financial hardship and failures as a wage earner, though they both are hard workers in a recession. He sees her as impossible to please, irrational and even cruel. No matter what he does, she is never happy with him. Another female impossible to please, and emotionally overwrought. In the therapy, the layers are peeled away to reveal many frightening moments in her childhood, where she was unprotected and at the mercy of a helpless mother and raging father. Money, earning it and having it, became a surrogate shield for true parental protection and comfort. In the session, that little girl made an appearance, which allowed her husband, perhaps for the first time, to see how frightened she was and why dry reasoning never touched the place that needed the comforting touch. In turn, she had glimpsed at how her childhood trauma colored her perceptions and treatment of her husband today.
Gender Predisposition? Biology and our culture demand it: men are cowboys and soldiers; women are mothers and movie stars. Men lean towards the coolness of fact; women bend towards the warmth of feeling. But each woman, each man, and each feeling is unique. Each disconnect has its multifaceted roots. There are more reasons than one; more emotions than you are with me or against me.
Simplistic Conclusions Are The Devil’s Work: The Coupledom, that domicile that holds the us of us, can be a challenge to make safe and solid. A black and white palate has no place here. We decorate in multiple shades, tones and textures, lots of layers of the you and of the me. Knee jerk assumptions of the other’s motives, feelings and beliefs are dangerous. Better to take the time to go under the surface of typical notions and become true intimates, heart and soul.
©Jill Edelman, M.S.W., L.C.S.W. 2011
Stereotyping The Coupledom
Stereotyping Your Partner: One marvels at the power of gender stereotyping in The Coupledom, that domicile in which the relationship resides. Years, even decades into a marriage, partners interpret behaviors in the language of expected gender norms. Often these interpretations are inaccurate and create emotional distance rather than facilitate connectedness.
Dismissive or Disengaged? At the top of the list for many a female partner is the seeming lack of interest demonstrated by their husband around the day-to-day life of wife and children. Whether they travel or are local for work, many men are viewed as less than present, often dismissive of the minutia and emotion that goes into mundane life.
Disappointed and Critical: Adjectives ascribed by males to their wives behaviors seem to rest on a notion that “wives are hard to please”, and often disappointed with their spouses. Many a male has looked at me with despair after once again, his wife has described him as deficient in some area.
Peeling Away The Layers of Stereotyping and Projecting: There is an art to going beneath the surface to find the layers of meaning in behavior. In couples’ work, this art involves giving each partner the time and patience to self-explore and explain the inner workings of their mind, to their partner. Why is this so necessary? Because of the inclination to stereotype and project. We tend to read each other more like a paperback novel than a multifaceted human being who can harbor more than one emotion, motivation or opinion at the same time. We tend to ignore the possibility that what we view as causal is just one possible explanation of our partner’s behavior, and not the only one. We tend to “close the book” on additional interpretations. And we tend to be incurious! Worst of all.
Disclaimer: Forgive me for much of what I am about to write may seem like the pot calling the kettle black. I will be “generalizing” and “stereotyping” from clinical experience. Whatever doesn’t fit, throw out. Take away what is useful and leave the rest.
Male Avoidance: A husband decides it is best to say as little as possible whenever he thinks that his wife will get upset. Consequently he has spent decades concealing his reactions to family life. His wife, unable to read his mind, sees this behavior as disinterest and uncaring. Hurt and bewildered by this disconnect, she withdraws as well. Both describe years of walking on eggshells. Deeper exploration uncovers a strongly held belief system left over from his childhood: “You are a bad person if you make someone you love unhappy.” Therefore, choosing compliance over anticipated “conflict” becomes a way of life. Information is withheld that could trigger a less than happy response (often a projection), and outsiders become confidants instead of his spouse. When he can no longer keep the emotional exchange at bay, he cuts it off. Why? He is overwhelmed with feeling like a bad person, guilt ridden and secondarily angry that “his wife” has made him feel this way. What had appeared as rejection and disinterest is in fact a fearful relic of a young boy’s world, desperately needing airing and updating to the world of the grown man he is today who can disagree, even with someone he loves, and not be bad for doing so.
Critical Wives: A husband is baffled by his wife’s constant attacks on him. She strikes out at him frequently with harsh words that make no sense to him, blaming him for financial hardship and failures as a wage earner, though they both are hard workers in a recession. He sees her as impossible to please, irrational and even cruel. No matter what he does, she is never happy with him. Another female impossible to please, and emotionally overwrought. In the therapy, the layers are peeled away to reveal many frightening moments in her childhood, where she was unprotected and at the mercy of a helpless mother and raging father. Money, earning it and having it, became a surrogate shield for true parental protection and comfort. In the session, that little girl made an appearance, which allowed her husband, perhaps for the first time, to see how frightened she was and why dry reasoning never touched the place that needed the comforting touch. In turn, she had glimpsed at how her childhood trauma colored her perceptions and treatment of her husband today.
Gender Predisposition? Biology and our culture demand it: men are cowboys and soldiers; women are mothers and movie stars. Men lean towards the coolness of fact; women bend towards the warmth of feeling. But each woman, each man, and each feeling is unique. Each disconnect has its multifaceted roots. There are more reasons than one; more emotions than you are with me or against me.
Simplistic Conclusions Are The Devil’s Work: The Coupledom, that domicile that holds the us of us, can be a challenge to make safe and solid. A black and white palate has no place here. We decorate in multiple shades, tones and textures, lots of layers of the you and of the me. Knee jerk assumptions of the other’s motives, feelings and beliefs are dangerous. Better to take the time to go under the surface of typical notions and become true intimates, heart and soul.
©Jill Edelman, M.S.W., L.C.S.W. 2011
Charlie Sheened? When Your Spouse Is Unraveling, What To Do?
The Foundation is Cracking: An earthquake, a tsunami or the breakdown of a family member? Viewing Charlie Sheen on the T.V. screen, gaunt and pulsating with the energy of an avalanche, full of spit and spin, dark circles rimming incendiary eyes, evokes a sadness and melancholy in me for both him and his family. Though he will be making mega millions from his solo tour, soon to appear at Madison Square Garden, and CBS is showing a renewed interest in bringing Charlie back, “Winning”….what comes to my mind is the family that is collapsing under the weight of mental illness and/or substance abuse. And this is not Charlie’s first family to undergo the ordeal of familial desecration. In fact, it is his third family.
Taking Down a Family: When a partner is unraveling, whether it is slowly over time, or overnight, the entire family is brought to its knees. Mental illness and the devastation of substance abuse can seep into the foundation of a family system not unlike a mold or the seemingly innocent creeping of an evening’s fog settling over country roads. Soon no one can see where they are going.
Reality and Support: Recognizing that someone whom you thought you knew so well, is changing, has changed, is the first step towards dealing with a crisis. With many forms of mental illness, particularly mania found in bi polar disorder, and substance abuse, for the afflicted, “denial” is the frontline of defense. Confronting or attempting to reason with the individual in the throes of mental illness or substance abuse, is futile, as their illness or addiction is dependent on a skewed and distorted grandiosity or paranoia. Powerless to exert any influence on the marginalized and accusatory partner, spouses, children, and best friends are left desperate, frightened for themselves, their family and their beleaguered loved one.
Step One: Go Outside The Coupledom For Your Reality: A typical strategy of these illnesses, visible in Charlie’s rants, is to characterize others as misguided or mal intended if they don’t drink the same Kool-Aid. “Help” is seen as “Harm” or delegitimized due to “ignorance” or lack of understanding (remember the grandiosity/superiority theme of the afflicted) or the equally powerful “Don’t you believe in me, trust me?”, hurt and injured twist. Remember, the illness is not only manipulating the afflicted, it is attempting to manipulate you! Therefore you have to go outside the inner circle, separate from your dependence on and trust in your partner, and share with strangers, or acquaintances, what feels like a shameful secret, “I think my wife/husband/mom/dad/sister/brother, is “crazy”!
Step Two: Support Groups: Feedback is Critical. The reality testing needed to confirm that something is very wrong here is often most reliably located in a self help/support organization. Since family members and friends have the slanted view that proximity, familiarity and emotion often color our objectivity, organizations who are strangers to your loved one but no strangers to the illness and addiction can offer the necessary feedback to confirm that something is wrong, and begin the educational and supportive journey needed to deal with and survive this ordeal.
NAMI and AL-ANON: Nami, an acronym for the National Alliance for Mental Illness and the more familiar AL-ANON AND AL-ATEEN, in my opinion, offer tremendous support and education to family members at no cost and are easily accessed in most communities and online. The medical community can diagnosis and treat these illnesses in the suffering individual but for the families to first identity the “illness” and locate a knowledgeable guide to help them make decisions, cope with the pain and fear, and sustain the journey, support groups, often with the addition of an individual psychotherapist, are the best resource.
Courage is Needed For Step 2: Going outside The Coupledom or the family, may seem like a betrayal to your partner or the privacy teachings of our culture. However, as it takes a village to raise a child, it takes several villages to deal with mental illness and addiction. Gather up the necessary courage to contact these organizations, go to the first meeting and DO NOT USE RATIONALIZATIONS AND DENIAL TO JUSTIFY NOT RETURNING!!! “I JUST DON’T IDENTIFY WITH THOSE PEOPLE. THEIR SITUATION IS SO MUCH WORSE THAN MINE.”
I have heard these disclaimers for decades. This is tough stuff! So faced with the personal agony and rawness of an ill partner, in a weakened state from fear and suffering, and inclined to be “private” and invulnerable, exposing one’s self to strangers with your guts hanging out, is the last thing on one’s list of desired activities. Shields of self defense go up, and none are more common than rationalizing, diminishing, refusing, and distancing, aka emphasizing “differences”. Don’t Be Fooled By Your Psychological Defenses….they are not always in your best interests.
Step 3: The New Reality Takes Time: Life changes in a nanosecond! And when it is your life that has changed, because the life of your loved one has entered a very dark tunnel, time is required to adjust to this new reality. Time coupled with learning, support and an unwanted but necessary addition to one’s identity : “I am the wife, mother, sister or brother of a ………………”. Fill in the blanks. You have joined a new club. Not a desirable club, but one that has many other members. Seek them out. Let them help you. To integrate this new world requires a blend of education, courage, and new shoulders on which to lean. For now, you can’t rely on your partner to validate your reality. Nope! But you can rely on others.
©Jill Edelman, M.S.W., L.C.S.W. 2011
