“Please accept my resignation. I don’t want to belong to any club that will accept people like me as a member.” When comedian Groucho Marx wrote this, he was expressing a peculiar, yet very common, human trait. A lot of individuals reflexively distrust people that truly appreciate them. As a therapist, I see this a lot […]
Managing Family and Independence
Should you take your parents’ advice? That depends. Before you answer this question, ask yourself another: How well do you really know your parents? It’s perfectly natural and healthy to go through a phase of feeling like your father is Superman or your mother is Wonder Woman. You idealize your parents in childhood because you […]
Is Your Partner a Stupid Poopy Face?
by James Robbins, M.A., LPC For better or worse, your first model for Romantic Relationship comes from your parents or childhood caregivers. It’s not what they say about relationships that shapes you, but what they don’t say. Every family has unspoken rules. We don’t address conflict directly. Men sometimes yell and break things. Mothers worry […]
Does Having Children Increase Marital Satisfaction?
Not usually. The majority of studies indicate that marital satisfaction significantly declines for most couples after having children. This is truer for women than men. In Dr. John Gottman’s well-known research at the University of Washington, 67% of women reported declining satisfaction with their marriage after having children (Journal of Family Psychology, 14, 59-70). Although […]
