Good Advice

Put twenty minutes a day of uninterrupted communication with your spouse as a top priority on your list. To think that after five, ten. fifteen or more years of marriage you have absolutely nothing to say to your spouse for even twenty minutes is frightening. How could it be? When you first got married you were enthralled with each other. But over time, you invested yourselves in your job. your extended family, your children, your synagogue, your community, your spiritual enhancement and elevation, but you didn’t invest enough in each other. How sad.

Outwardly you might appear happy, professional, and successful. However, if you haven’t done something positive each day to strengthen your marriage, be it a telephone call just to ask “How are you?”  or a small, inexpensive gift, or a gesture of caring and affection, you’ve wasted that day. You’ve relinquished an opportunity to strengthen your most precious relationship, and in the end, you’ve lost.

Click to read more ...

Effective Keys to a Happier Marriage

Key One – Understanding Childhood Influences

Our childhoods are most important in marriage because at any given moment each marriage partner is still extremely influenced by that “child within.” These childhood feelings and attitudes influence and, to a great degree, determine the quality of our adult relationships. Every marriage, in fact, is comprised not of two individuals but of four: the girl she was and the woman she has become; the boy he was and the man he is now.

Click to read more ...

Couple Skills # 8 – Assessing and Changing Aversive Strategies

Aversive strategies often yield very good short-term results: a partner is hurt or intimidated into giving you what you want. But over time, aversive strategies cease to work. People become numb and unaffected, or rebellious, or deeply alienated. Intimacy and trust are replaced with anger, detachment, or resistance. It’s a high price. In this workshop you will learn to identify the eight aversive strategies most frequently used to control others in relationships.

Click to read more ...

Friends

What is a friend? How much should I reveal to a friend? Everything – even the negative stuff about me they don’t yet know? Or only the good stuff? Well – you may say, “If I reveal everything about me – even the awful stuff - I'm afraid they will reject me! Isn't it better to be cautious and not get hurt?

I think it's really sad when the only time someone will open up to talk about who they really are is when they have to pay for it, like when they go to their counselor. Of course I'm not against going to a counselor for help - after all I counsel people for a living – and it's important to go when you're in need. But you should at least have one friend that you can open up and tell everything to - your great points as well as your weaknesses.

Click to read more ...

Effective Communication

In the famous Biblical story of Joseph & his brothers, it says that when Judah approached Joseph he said, "If you please, my lord, may your servant speak a word in my lord's ears.” (Genesis, 44:18). Judah indicated that he wished to speak very softly, virtually whispering "a word in my Lord's ears."

What was the purpose of that? Furthermore, why does the Torah bother to tell something that does not appear significant?

Ah! Torah is always teaching us something.

There is great emphasis today on methods of communication. Difficulties in relationships are often attributed to problems in communicating.

It is related that a minister left his sermon on the lectern. An observer noted that he had made marginal notes on the method of delivery. One note said, "Go slowly and emphasize." Another said, "Gesture upwards." At one point the note read, "Argument very weak here. Yell loudly!"

Click to read more ...