A Deepening Family

We all have basic needs to survive and thrive. I love to think about our needs and how they apply to our lives and specific circumstances. It is always a small list that is so general that we can pinpoint our needs in each challenge. What’s even more cool is that even though they are so general, it is still a super effective way to think about problems and figure out how to solve them. For a while I have been living with the list that we need to survive, love and be loved, feel valued, and have variety. I love thinking about my life within these categories, but more recently I have learned a new list that I have loved to explore. In this list of needs we need contact and feelings of belonging, power, protection, the ability to withdraw, and challenges. These needs have less to do with physical survival like with food, water, shelter, and clothing and they have more to do with the mental/emotional aspects of our lives. There are bound to be some overlaps from the first list to the sec...

So I thought of something very interesting this week. Self-reliance and union are on two opposite ends of a spectrum. Self-reliance is the idea of not needing anyone else to provide for you and union is the idea of different parties coming together to act as one. Neither is what humans can actually do to its fullest extent because we were made to balance the two. We need to be able to stand on our own enough to help balance out those you are connected to and we need to be connected with others enough so that we can be balanced out in our marriages, relationships within our families, and friendships.  When I think about being self-reliant, I think of not needing anyone and not needing anything other than myself. When I started to dissect the term, I thought of being financially independent and able to keep my emotional stability without a therapist. But the more I thought about it, the more I thought about the weaknesses of human beings and how much we rely on things. As a speci...

In a relationship it is super important to track progress, expectations, and work to progress in general and through problems. The whole communication thing has been a difficult journey for me. It always seems that no matter how much I try to communicate my feelings and circumstances, I always leave something out that would have been beneficial to talk about in a relationship. I do know that a relationship is a journey two people take together and it isn’t perfect, but I learned recently some really cool steps to communicating.  Empathy is a tool that wasn’t always given to me in the way that I recognized or wanted. It made my childhood difficult when I would express myself in a way that others didn’t understand and it led to the rejection of what I said the problem was and how I wanted it fixed. Even though I recognize that the way I communicated was confusing and juvenile, I also want to recognize that I was six. I really think that my parents could have tried a little harder to ...

The way we deal with stress in our lives is how we cope. Whatever it is that we do to help us through those situations whether it is doing something crazy, clinically suggested, or totally ignoring the problem and doing nothing. These are all types of coping. What I have found recently is that my coping strategies have been changing a lot recently and I have started to let go of reality. It sounds absolutely crazy to say, and rightfully so. I am losing touch with reality. I have had to swallow some pretty hard pills recently. I have had to come to terms with the fact that I am really messed up in the head, and if I were left to myself to make decisions I would end up super depressed and hurt. I have also had to come to terms with the idea that I am just clueless when it comes to how to act around people. I have tried both these things and it has led to lots of correcting and pain. Now I am learning so many different things because I have swallowed those pills and have been making those...

For a long time I thought that it was totally fine if my wife had friends who were guys and I had friends who were girls separate from each other. I now think that that shouldn't be the case. I couldn’t figure out why, but it felt off to think it was all good and fine but now I think I understand why. I think it is because the idea of spending time alone with another woman friend other than my wife without her there feels distancing. The feelings that I would be attaching to that other woman subconsciously, and not even necessarily with intent to be unfaithful to my spouse, would make bounds with that woman friend that can’t be shared between a sexually intimate marriage and a theoretically platonic relationship. I refer to the relationship with the other woman as a theoretically platonic relationship because I don’t know that we can help feeling sexually attracted within a friendship if the two are spending time together apart from others. I believe that it doesn’t take long to lo...

  Pulling it Together It makes me feel funny to think that two people that can care for each other so much can have their relationship fall apart so fast and destructively. I have learned recently that feelings are strong but it takes a lot of work and preparation in order to keep that foundation of love strong and steady.  When people form relationships, it is so hard to set expectations. Well, it isn’t actually hard to set expectations but it is difficult to allow yourself to be honest enough with yourself and with your potential partner to where the two of you can sit down together and discuss certain topics openly and honestly knowing that it is okay to have different opinions and that it is okay to be hurt and have sad feelings about disagreements. It blew my mind when I realized this, but it plays a large role in how I see relationships now. I am not saying that we should want or try to hurt others, only that we should recognize that feeling emotional pain is a part ...