I’m sure you’ve heard the phrase “God gave us two ears and one mouth, so listen before you speak!” When we are communicating with our spouse it is most likely that your default position is to express yourself or your point of view. It is less likely that your default position is to listen to the expressions and point(s) of view from the other person. 

Listening is mandatory for a compelling relationship. It’s a skill that can be mastered if you practice. It’s not something that is an innate trait in people. Listening is hard, and it’s fundamentally an act of love. 

As a therapist my primary posture is to be a listener. I am primarily listening for three things: What is being said; How it is being said; and finally, what is not being said. It’s been my experience that when couples are able to practice hearing these three things, their connection and communication soars.  

Outside of my office about 30 yards away are two sets of train tracks. About a half mile away to the south there is a railroad crossing, and the same distance North there is a massive concrete bridge that trains pass beneath. In the Spring and Fall I love to open the windows in my office. The birds and wind provide a soothing backdrop to the sometimes painful and heartbreaking stories being told in my office. But when the train comes by, it can be so loud that I almost can’t hear myself if I begin to speak. 

I’ve been in this particular office suite for almost 10 years. I’ve become so familiar with the space that I know most of the sounds. With the train, I know when it is coming well before my clients know. The conductor blows it’s horn hundreds of yards before the crossing to the South. It’s a faint sound. Much like a Childs play horn being blown under 100 blankets in the next room. To the North the trains rumble under the bridge causing my office building to creak in certain places that only a train disrupts. These noises are not there unless you know they are there. 

There are many times that I will stand up to close the windows, and 5-10 seconds later the train passes by. Sometimes my clients will say, “Oh, that’s why you closed the window!” Or, “How did you know the train was coming? Is it on a schedule or something?” 

I love this question becomes a place for my client(s) and I to pause and talk about the concept and practice of listening. Because I have been in this office for over 11,000 hours of counseling with clients, I have learned to listen for what the client can’t hear or what they don’t know to listen for. 

There are several application points here. First, what the client can’t hear. The client cannot hear the train because they are, rightfully, caught up in their own story and life. The drama of their own lives is louder than the drama of the world around them. If I were to not close the window, the train would only be recognized by my clients when the noise became too obvious to ignore. And some wouldn’t even hear it at all! While there may be nothing wrong with this, it just goes to show me/you/us that sometimes we are so caught up in our own world that we scarcely recognize the world around us. 

I had gone through a painful business divorce with my two business partners in the Summer of 2019 that included veiled threats, relationship sabotage, Google reviews impersonating me, and an eviction notice from my partners. We’d worked hard over the previous 4 years building a counseling center together, and despite a myriad of challenges, we were finally getting serious traction on our vision. And then, poof. It was all gone. In it’s place were feelings of loss and betrayal. What was once a partnership of friends was now adversarial. 

Perhaps the entire time, but certainly over the previous 18 months, my bride Stephanie, had been warning me about things she was seeing that did not appear to be well at work. I ignored these concerns from her. I defended my partnership with these guys. I rebuffed her feedback. I couldn’t, ahem, wouldn’t, listen to her because it was going to be too costly for what I was hoping to build at work. I did not welcome her feedback, instead dismissed it thinking that she really didn’t understand my partners and what we were doing. I even managed to ignore that me getting shingles in 2018 was a direct result of the toxic stress in my business partnership. 

Only after I packed up my office at the center just 3 days after receiving the eviction notice did I realize she was right and on my side the whole time. I was deaf and blind to her counsel.

Fast forward three years and it’s the summer of 2022. Having left my I’d rebuilt my counseling practice from ground zero, made it through covid, suffered through two horrific knee injuries to our two oldest boys, and graduated our oldest into college. I was exhausted. It was written all over my face, and body. 

Sitting on our screen porch one afternoon, Stephanie looked at me and asked, “are you ok?” I don’t remember what I said, or what she said after that, but I knew the answer was a resounding “No, I am not ok.” 

I heard her concern, and acted on it. I made arrangements with my practice, clients, and schedule to take an emergency extended leave from work. Over the next 5 weeks I spent time in the hay fields of our families farm in South Arkansas, in the mountains of Montana, and at home with my kids who I had been neglecting in the name of work and provision. I met with a Spiritual Director, disconnected from social media, email, text messages, and consumeristic endeavors. I fell in love with riding bikes again. I hiked, sweated, cried, and journaled. It was a soul cleansing time that I will forever be grateful for. 

And it was all because of someone, not me, who was listening to my life. Stephanie listened to what I was talking about, how I was talking about it, and what I was not talking about. She stood in the gap for me because I wasn’t listening to the exhaustion of my life. 

Without someone else pointing these blind (or deaf) spots out in us, we will continue to live as though we know best. We all live our lives in varying degrees of echo chambers. Our internal relationship with ourself is the primary example of this. It is easy to get stuck with a familiar thought, behavior, and belief pattern that left unnamed will only continue to reinforce itself. We can sometimes be our own worst enemy, and I believe it starts with our inability and/or refusal to listen. 

There are two glorious questions I have for you about this story. Who is giving you the gift of listening to your life? And Who is it that you are giving the gift of listening to their life? 

I can think of no better picture of marriage than a husband and wife who are giving each other the gift of listening. 

The post Listen Twice, Speak Once appeared first on Five Minute Sherpa.

This question might also sounds like: 

• Will you leave me? What are the limits of your acceptance of me? When will you see enough of me and turn your back. How much can I trust you to stay? What are the limits of my acceptance of your love, care, attention, inattention, and commitment to me. Ok, I belong to you, but for how long? 

Do I belong is more of a question for ourselves to answer than it is for others. It’s a problem when we only ask this of others. If I ask my wife “do I belong” and her answer determines my mood for the day, I’ve given her too much power. Perhaps I’ve caught her on a bad day, or on a day that I’m in the dog house because of something I’ve done or left undone. So to give her the sole power to answer this question wholly is unfair to her, and to me. I need to be able to accept my own belonging to humanity, this planet, the community I live in, the places I go, my workplace, profession, and so forth and so on. If my posture towards these aspects of belonging is “I’m not sure that I belong, will you tell me if I belong or not?” It gives the other too much authority to tell me if I fit into their wish for me, and let’s face it, don’t we all of wishes for other people? Sometimes these wishes are for the good of the other, sometimes for ill. So why would we subject ourselves to the possible wish for ill from another person? The answer to this question has to do with your story. What we know about human development is that the mother, often the primary nurturer, reflects back to the baby their identity. Babies are bon without self-identity. They are a blank slate. Now sure, they have genetic dispositions, personality traits that have yet to be developed, but fundamentally the infant is unknown as a unique individual. The infant develops their sense of self and the world around them through their mothers face. When mom is upset and frowns at the infant, the infant is distressed. She believes herself to be the cause of the frown. She does not know mom just got a difficult phone call. She only knows the feeling of stress as a feeling that showed up when mom looked at her. Conversely, when mom smiles at her, she believes that there must be something good about herself. This feels good to infants, and lets be honest, to all humans. So back to the question about subjecting ourselves to the ill wishes of another. Sometimes in our story there exists an experience where mother took out her own feelings of ill wishes on the infant. Perhaps this occurred during breastfeeding. The infant, unable to control their own bodily impulses, bites mother while being fed. The natural instinct of mom is to wince in pain and withdraw so as to protect herself, and her body. Two things happen here. One, mom winces and withdraws. Baby sees this take place and internalizes the experience that she must have done something bad. Secondly, mom now has a choice. She either reengages with baby to forgive, or she will punish the baby for the bite. This story now begins to create a “sliding door” type moment for the baby (if you haven’t seen the movie “Sliding Doors”, check it out. Through the concept of a “parallel universe”, the movie explores how vastly different life can be if we did or did not experience a significant event). If the mother reengages with the baby, forgives the bite, the baby is soothed and can now learn that biting is painful, but not so painful to break the relationship. If the mother doesn’t forgive, and withdraws, perhaps even scolding the baby for biting, the baby internalizes the feeling that her bite, uncontrollable by her, is bad and it severs relationship with mom. The baby cannot understand why mom withdraws except that it must be because she herself is unworthy of love. She only belongs to mom when she behaves properly. Her acceptance is conditional. Now fast forward 30 years and the baby is a single woman looking for a partner. Without any healing of her identity wounds, how likely will this woman be able to manage rejection, being ignored, or the blank stare of a man who doesn’t know what to say? Not very likely. Though no fault of hers, she now believes her belonging to the world is conditional. Love is not to be trusted because “bites” happen, sometimes still uncontrollably by her. On the flip side, if mom forgives the bite and reengages with the baby, now there is a feeling of acceptance despite painful accidents. She belongs even when she does something that isn’t right. Even when she makes a mistake. Fast forward 30 years and the baby is a single woman looking for a partner. She’s capable of handling difficulties in intimate relationships because repair was a building block her mother taught her. This question of “do I belong” began at birth. It continues into adulthood, and it informs all of the relationships that we engage in. When there is doubt about belonging, we will struggle to be present in our relationships. Especially intimate ones. We will have difficulty trusting others. We will have difficulty trusting ourselves. And we will struggle to maintain stability in intimate relationships. As you and your spouse interact, you are both asking each other this question of belonging. It is vitally important that you answer this question over and over and over again. Tell her you chose her. Tell him that you would choose him again. Give to the other what you most want to hear. Drown each other in gratitude for belonging to each other. Leave no doubt at the end of the day that you belong together. One of the greatest tragedies of our Western culture is that we too readily believe that salvation is found in our individualism. In our autonomy from the world. Let your marriage be a protest agains this. Resist temptations to serve yourself alone. 

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Think of trust like the gas you put into your vehicle … you’re not getting very far if you don’t have it. Here are a few thoughts on how to build trust in your relationships at work, home, and with your self (if you don’t trust yourself to do the right thing, likely no one else will either).

1. Follow through.
   Let your yes be yes, and your no, no. If/when you’re unable to follow through, proactively own it and explain why if asked.
2. Delay gratification.
   Learn to wait and be patient. Just because you can get something doesn’t mean that it’s best to do so right away. Having the ability to wait will be a great attribute when the time comes when you have to wait.
3. Tell the truth.
   Don’t run a PR campaign with those you care about. Don’t lie. Don’t shade/justify the truth. Speak the truth for the sake of growth, yours and theirs.
4. Own your mistakes.
   When you mess up, own it. Don’t explain it. Don’t piggy back on why your mistake was a result of their mistake. Your intentions don’t matter unless the other person cares or asks about why you did what you did.
5. Make amends.
   Become proficient at apologizing. Correct the mistakes you can, and accepting your limitations when you can’t. True amends are life changing interactions, for everyone involved.
6. Use your powers for good.
   Your words have the power to build and to destroy. Your choices can bless and they can curse. Your unique abilities can be a gift and they can be a burden. Offer to help the other person grow, don’t demand or require them to grow.

The post Building Trust appeared first on Five Minute Sherpa.

I’ve long thought about writing a follow up post to men, and doing so as a way to open up conversations not to shame and beat them up. Men need to know what their porn use is about, because it’s rarely about what they think it is, and that there is help.

1. It is not about your wife.

No one enters into marriage sexually pure. Everyone has a story of sexual brokenness or harm. Said another way, we all have sexual baggage, and porn is a certain kind of sexual baggage.

There have been very few instances when I have heard a man speak about developing a porn habit or addiction after getting married. The overwhelming majority of men bring a history of porn into the marriage. Now it’s possible that the porn usage increases after marriage because of a husband’s inability to handle a variety of factors: Disappointment in sex, performance issues, or frequency of sex. While it would be nice and clean to put the blame on the wife, that’s not really what’s happening. She’s not the problem.

Porn use happens because it’s easy. Because you win. Every single time, you win. You win because there’s no risk of rejection. When you pursue your wife sexually, there’s a good chance it won’t go the way you hope/want/need. The viewer of porn never experiences this pain of failure.

Sex with oneself is infinitely easier than with another person, but it’s also infinitely more empty. Sex in real life is rarely easy. It’s very vulnerable, and the possibility of rejection or failure is ever present. But it is this vulnerability and risk that make sex in a marriage a unifying, healing, and connecting experience.

2. Porn use happens because of your shame.

Shame is the feeling that there is something wrong with me. That I am bad. I keep doing things that are painful to myself and/or others, and only bad people do those kinds of things again and again. Because of this, I feel the toxic shame of being bad.

Porn is a readily accessible way to forget about the deep disappointment in yourself. That is, until the porn binge/use is over. Then you are on their own forced to face the mess, emotionally and physically. This is when the tidal waves of guilt and shame come with great intensity. A great reprieve from the toxic shame is to soothe oneself, and what better way to do that with someone on the screen that will always say “yes” to whatever is asked of them.

Shame keeps us from connecting with other people. And this isn’t just about porn. Anyone who deals with shame has trouble being in caring, intimate (not just sexual intimacy), vulnerable relationships. We were created for relationships, and if one is too shameful to have real relationships, porn is a momentary outlet for this longing and need, but it is a fractured and broken way of feeling connection.

3. Porn use is cheating.

One of the most problematic justifications I often hear about porn is that it is better than having an affair. Most people don’t outright say this, but if you believe that it isn’t cheating you are saying that it’s better than going out and having an affair.

Porn use is cheating because it involves getting your sexual and relational needs met in a relationship outside the marriage. It is a sex outside the marriage. Yes, to some it might not feel as devastating as an affair, but it’s incredibly problematic for a couple to deal with the effects of porn.

Studies show three significant issues that come from porn usage. First, the more men use porn, the less successful they are in their intimate relationships. Secondly, they tend to have (and need) more sexual partners in life. Lastly, they confuse sex with something that is relationally experienced with something that is watched. Sex becomes about orgasm, not about connection. This habit of watching sex transforms subjects into objects, and connections into transactions. Men and women become nothing more than genitalia.

4. Healing is a community experience.

The previous words might have been difficult to read, but take heart. There is hope. We all desire to live a truthful life. Because of the shame, we often attempt to fix our lives on our own, especially with porn. But that rarely, if ever, truly works. Recovery happens in relationships, not in isolation.

The men, women, and couples who attempt to recover from their sexual brokenness on their own face an impossibly difficult uphill ascent without any safety gear to keep them from falling. The impact of porn is such a personal and shameful experience (for both husband and wife), the last action most want to take is to invite others into that process. But that is the only way that I know of how healing and forgiveness take place.

Don’t try to do it alone. Join or start a recovery group. Seek professional counseling. Get help! Talk with a friend, invite them into a healing process with you. You’re not alone: Barna research group found that 73% of men ages 18-49 viewed porn once a month. Others are waiting to be invited into the light of day, just like you are.

What action steps do you need to take?

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The post 4 Things Men Need to Know About Their Porn Use appeared first on Five Minute Sherpa.

1. It’s not about you.

Porn is almost always something that is brought into marriage. I can only think of a few instances over the past 15 years of working with couples when porn use first started after marriage. This is not about the wife “being good enough” and more about the man’s inability to have an intimate and close relationships with a women (or it’s an outright addiction). Porn is easy because it requires nothing from a man beyond what his body is naturally designed to do. 

It is difficult for a man to develop a healthy view of women that is apart from the notion that women are sex objects. Over and over again the modern culture tells us that women are sex objects. It’s why so many men are unable to have close relationships with their daughters as they go through puberty — it’s difficult to see a woman as anything other than an object. They don’t want to view their daughters sexually, so they distance themselves emotionally. Porn perverts and distorts the reality of a woman’s value and thus he cannot have a true understanding of your value either. Perhaps his distance from you emotionally or sexually is actually a good thing so that you too do not become just an object in his life.

2. Porn use is about shame.

The bottom line is this: Shame is at the core of porn use. Shame says “I’m not enough” which can easily be felt sexually and non-sexually alike. Porn use causes shame, but the real challenge is that it promises an escape from shame. Men can use porn and fantasy as a way to “be enough” for the fantasy on the screen. The porn stars never reject the men. They always tell the viewer, “yes, yes, yes, whatever you want.” The cycle starts over when a man needs to be enough, and can’t get that in the real world, so he resorts back to the fantasy world. Porn can become the only place where he feels potent, and in that there is tremendous shame because he probably feels so impotent in the real world. 

Shame doesn’t last very long in an environment with grace and empathy. But here’s the problem: Wives often can’t give the gift of grace and empathy to their husbands because of their own stories. These young women have been sexually abused (to varying degrees) and they have their own wounded sexuality. Without doing her own work of recovery and healing, she will not be able to offer empathy and acceptance because the husbands use of porn will always make him like “all the others who have harmed me.” This is why it is so important for the wife to tend to her own work so that she can know how to be in relationship with her husband without enabling or shaming him. 

3. Having more sex can cause more harm.

This is a delicate topic as withholding sex can be harmful just as the use of porn is. Some errant advice given to wives of porn addicts is that they need to make themselves more available sexually and this will keep the husband from acting-out. This is awful advice because it invites the fantasy life of porn into the marriage bed, and says that the wife’s lack of sexual availability is reason for the man’s acting out with porn. If someone gives you this advice, run away.

Women do not need to be more sexual for their husband to keep him from fulfilling his needs elsewhere. This is enabling behavior. Most would not want an affair partner in their marriage bed with them, but this is exactly what the advice to “become more sexual for him” is doing. It’s bringing a fractured sense of intimacy into a sacred space meant to be shared only between husband and wife.

There needs to be hard work and conversations about the harm that porn has caused in a relationship before sex can be trusted as an expression of love and commitment. This does not mean that couples need to stop having sex altogether if porn is present, rather that the purposes of sex be talked about, perhaps with professional help, to establish healthy boundaries. Do not limit sex as a form of punishment or control, and do not give in to having more sex just to make things better. 

4. Porn use is cheating.

Though men are resistant in accepting this, porn use is an affair. It is taking the most trusted and vulnerable act that a couple can share together, and giving it away to someone else. Yes, it’s kind of a “one-way” relationship as the images provide no relational feedback, but it is still taking the sexual embrace outside of the marriage bed.

All affairs are a result of a breakdown of trust and intimacy. All affairs are a passive “screw you” stance towards the spouse that says “you won’t give me what I want, so I am going to go get that from somewhere else.” Instead of working out the issues of the relationship in the context of the relationship, fulfillment of sexual needs are being done outside the marriage. That is the very definition of cheating.

Don’t go at this alone. Get help even if your husband won’t. It’s not an easy topic to address, but it’s not impossible to heal from. Be patient, take your time, and work hard to find a path forward towards wholeness, forgiveness, and reconciliation.

(For some sobering statistics about porn, check out http://www.covenanteyes.com/pornstats/)

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When you don’t jump through these hoops (perhaps causing some kind of ego hurt to the other), you’ll likely be shamed, sometimes with some spiritual/emotional abuse thrown in there such as “A follower of Jesus would be moved to apologize…”

Don’t make the mistake of automatically believing that the other person wants what’s best for you, or actually knows you enough to understand why you’re acting or reacting the way you are.

If you cause damage to their ego, other shaming statements might be made about you to try and get you to fall back into line and into submission. A statement like: “Any decent human being would have an empathic response to the feelings that someone was hurt.”

What this statement does is that it causes confusion and self-doubt, because there is truth in it! A decent human should have empathy to someone being hurt … unless that hurt is being weaponized. Then it is wise to hold empathy at bay so as to not be in danger of the attack.

Above all, the one with an insecure and fragile ego is going to attach themself to someone willing to give themselves away to those in need. In our youth, this is beautiful and redemptive and is a great picture of filling in each others gaps. But if the gaps in the relationship are only filled because you’re jumping through hoops … then perhaps it’s not a relationship worth all that much.

I think this is why the book, “The Giving Tree”, is so profound. It can be read two ways: Either an amazing picture of sacrificial love; or a picture of codependency and taking advantage of someone.

Or maybe it’s both. 

At the end of the day, don’t give your self to people who won’t care unless you do everything their way (hoops). Learn to say no and learn how to suffer the awkward social (or family) gatherings that happen afterwards. It will get easier with time.

The post The Demands of Others appeared first on Five Minute Sherpa.

Evil is not self-sustaining. It must be in constant movement and perpetual action. It has to constantly keep recruiting new participants, hosts to inhabit. It does not rest. It cannot rest, because if it did, it would collapse and would cease to exist.

Rest (sleep, sabbath, vacation, breaks, pauses, etc) restores the good and pushes against the evil that is always lurking. When we refuse to rest, we unwittingly begin colluding with evil. Perhaps this collusion begins with the contempt and hatred of self, giving oneself over to shame. 

Where good happens you can bet that evil will be at work to slow it down. Innocence will be stolen, hopes will be poisoned, and order will become chaos. All because to exist without is far too painful and problematic, even for evil. This is hell, to exist in the absence of good. 

Evil will stop at nothing to get those who fight for good to give up their arms. Seems to me the two most common options to begin participating and conspiring with evil is through vengeance or apathy. 

Vengeance (revenge) assumes that one can defeat evil. You cannot defeat the absence of something. The only possible feeling of not being able to win is to be defeated, and give up. Apathy. One who is apathetic stops fighting for good, thus the cycle continues. 

While we will might never be able to prevent another school shooting, we can take a step towards the light and goodness in our homes, at work, and in our community by not giving up to revenge or apathy. Overwhelmed with all the evil in the world? Try this.

Do not lie. Evil thrives on lies. It is itself a lie. When we cannot distinguish the difference between truth and fiction, we become puppets. The little white-lies we tell ourselves, and other’s, are the most dangerous because they eventually become fertile ground to grow to bigger and bigger lies.

Grieve what has been lost, do not let grief become self pity (cheap grief) or apathy. True grief is a kind of rest. Grief is an act of pushing back against the evil that was done to us or to someone we love. Grief allows love to be center stage.

Look at people in the eyes. Compliment them. Tell people what you enjoy about them. Be curious about the battle they are facing. Offer gratitude to them. Say thank you every chance you get. Let your breathing be an offer of thanksgiving. Tell the workers who make your life better thank you. Look at them in the eyes when you do so. When we look at people in the eyes with goodness, we offer a dignity that evil has no answer for. Evil cannot stay in the light, it will flee.

I wonder who in your life needs your eye contact, and your delight? I wonder what kind of delight you might need. Do you know? Do you have someone to ask or talk to about that?

The post Some Thoughts on Evil appeared first on Five Minute Sherpa.

Philip and Tracey walked into my office, sat down, and immediately launched into the fight they had on their way in for marriage therapy. She wanted to arrive 5 minutes early, he was ok arriving on the hour. What followed was a pretty normal fight for a lot of couples: She mad at him for being “late,” he mad at her for being “uptight.”  

After some back and forth dialogue between them (not very productive), I stop them. 

“What’s happening here?”

This is a question I often ask couples. It’s a question to take a step back and look at their fight with curiosity and some objectivity. 

“She’s mad at me for being inconsiderate to her need to be early, but I still can’t figure out why she always gets her feathers ruffled when we’re just a mere 30 seconds late,” Philip responds with the main dish of defensiveness with a side of passive aggressiveness. 

On the heels of his words, she quips, “it’s because I’m responsible and value other people’s time enough to arrive early and not offend people.” 

“Ohh, I’m irresponsible huh? What about those checks you bounced last week, or locking your keys in the car yesterday,” he responds. 

I stop them again. They’ve taken the first step towards the indelible spiral downward into the game of cops and robbers — who’s the good one, and who’s the bad one. It’s a never ending game because it’s asking people who are emotionally triggered to stop themselves and objectively look at their own stuff. Stopping this spiral doesn’t happen naturally, it takes work. You can’t heal a wound that continues to get injured over and over and over again (intentionally or not).

I look at Philip and Tracey, and made a suggestion. “Philip, when I asked you two to take a look at what’s happening in the relationship, you had a great insight. If I remember correctly you said that she was mad at your inconsideration to being early to your appointment. Is that right?” 

“Yes, but…” 

I interrupt him again. In a scenario with a couple like this, nothing helpful ever comes after the word ‘but.’ 

I continue, “what I am curious about is where you felt the need to shift the conversation from the issue of time to the issue of responsibility?” 

“She’s the one bringing that up. I’m just making sure both sides of the story are being told.”

Sensing that he’d unintentionally opened up a window into his emotions, I wondered aloud. “I understand what you’re saying, and I’m also wondering what you were feeling when she made the statement about her being the responsible one. Something must have happened for you to need to shift blame to her. Any ideas?” 

During every marriage counseling session there comes a moment of truth for one or both spouses. They are faced with revealing something about themselves that prior to the session they weren’t willing to share or perhaps they didn’t know about it. In this instance, Philip was just made aware that he was feeling attacked and labeled as “irresponsible” and out of an impaired emotional state, responded in like to his wife. He shifted the blame because he felt blamed. 

In Science, we learn about kinetic energy. The rule is that for every action, there is an equal or greater reaction. This not only happens in the physical world, but the emotional world as well. 

In the early days of relationships, emotions are flooded with infatuation and drunken love. It’s an intoxicating feeling that not only makes your stomach twirl, but has a way of numbing ourselves to negative interactions with our fellow twitterpated companion. Only after the infatuation stage do we begin to uncover and discover the reality that being this close to someone can hurt. 

After Philip pondered my question about what he might be feeling about being attacked by Tracey he said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I wasn’t feeling anything.” 

Feeling left out of the conversation, the more verbose and extrovert one of the two, Tracey looked at me and said, “See what I have to deal with? He refuses to talk, to open up, and communicate about what he’s feeling.” 
If her statement had happened at home, the two of them would have engaged the fight with guns-a-blazing. Fighting would have been a lost cause. Thankfully, they were in a safe environment and were able to process what was happening. 

I turned towards Tracey and asked her to consider rephrasing her statement about Philip’s difficulty to talk, explaining that he is unable to hear her needs when she’s highlighting his faults and failures. She told me she didn’t know what I was talking about  and that if he’d just talk more, she wouldn’t get upset. 
Stalemate. 

To help them see what I was asking from them, I grabbed a book from the shelf and set it on the table. 

“Let’s consider that this table is your relationship. Every day you both put things on the table, take them off, and replace them with different things. A lot of times each of you put something on the table that is disguised. Think of it like this book,” I continued. 

In the back of my mind, I realized something. In my own relationships, I often fail to understand the other person because what’s being said (placed on the table) is not forthcoming. Realizing that this is a natural fault of humans, I knew that this is what was happening with Philip and Tracey. 

I picked the book up and said, “When you offer something to the other person that is not true to the content inside, it’s impossible to know you.” 

“Tracey, it must be really difficult for you to so desire relationship with Philip that when he responds with ‘I don’t know’ it completely undoes you. Now, before you respond, I want you to consider this book. This book has a cover, and content. Can you share with Philip about the content as in what is happening inside of you when he says ‘I don’t know.’ Her response surprised me. 

“I guess it makes me afraid,” she said. 

“Afraid of what?” I asked. 

“Afraid that this is as good as it’s going to get. That this is the way our relationship is going to be, and that I’ll be alone in my needs.” She was barely able to speak the last part about being alone, as her tears began to flow. 
I gave her the book to hold.

“Tracey, what you’ve just spoken is truth about your experience in the relationship. Now, I want you to offer this as a gift to the relationship. This book represents your fears about being alone. Can you offer this gift to Philip?” 

Turning to Philip, I asked him to consider how he’d like to respond to Tracey’s gift. “Consider that this gift is not an attack towards you, that she’s illuminating something about her self and her story that in the past has been placed on the table but not opened. I suspect that in the past, you’ve been blamed for her fears and her loneliness which has created a equal reaction of emotions in you.”

“Can you turn towards Tracey, and tell her what’s happening with you?” 

At this point, Tracey has softened. Her shoulders are relaxed, her arms are not folded, and the sniffles and occasional tear drop suggest she’s present very differently than just 5 minutes prior. 

Philip takes a glance at Tracey, and says “I can’t.” 

“Is it that you cannot, or that you will not,” I asked. 

“I guess, I won’t.”

Knowing that his refusal to share would likely be heard by her as a normal and dooming response, I continued to press him towards getting to the root of why he refused to share with her. “Thanks for being honest. What’s happening with you that you don’t want to share with her?” 

His momentary silence suggests he’s really considering the question, he finally speaks up, “Okay, it’s like this. When I tell her how I’m feeling or what’s going on with me, she doesn’t listen.”  Putting my hand up to pause Tracey from responding, I asked Philip, “She doesn’t listen?”

“Well, I don’t think so. At least to me it doesn’t feel like she’s listening.” 

“And what would you want her to hear?” I asked. 

“That I very much want to support her and for her to not be alone, but I don’t know how to do it.” He pauses for a moment, and continues, “I feel like she thinks me not knowing is used as an excuse, but I really don’t know what I’m doing.” 

Knowing that our session is about to end because we’re out of time, I get another book off the shelf and hand it to Philip. “I want you both to consider these books as precious and valuable gifts. They are you. The words on the inside of these books are descriptors, adjectives, verbs, and nouns that all come together to form you. There are stories from childhood, high school, college, and early adulthood. There are even stories that happened before you were born. All of these stories are living and breathing with each step you take in life.” 

I continued on telling them that they bring these stories, just like you and I do, to the relationship table. When we put these stories on the table and package them as ammunition, walls or shields, or not even on the table at all, we are not offering gifts. The goal of a lasting relationship is to uncover, together, how our stories have impacted our lives. The great, and at the same time, miserable, thing about it all is our spouse triggers emotions from our story. 

It’s great if we know how to navigate those triggers, conversely it’s miserable if we don’t. These stories can be marvelous gifts to our marriage if we view them as gifts. Most often, the one preventing us from receiving a gift is not the giver, it’s the receiver. It is way easier to give a gift to someone in need than to be the one in need. Every marriage happens because two people have needs.

A relationship cannot exist without needs. These needs can be viewed as implications of your failures, or as invitations to grow. Which will you see them as? 

The post Invitations or Implications: A Peek Inside a Marriage Counseling Session appeared first on Five Minute Sherpa.

Always. 
I’m here. I’m not going anywhere. I promise. I pledge. For however long we are both here in time, the hope, plan, dream, and goal is with you, always. 

Be. 
I’m me. I’m not you. I’m not trying to get you to be me. I’m not trying to be someone else. You’re helping me to be me (in both what is good and what is flawed). I’m here with you to be, not to do (though “I do” out of who I am, my being).

Curious. 
Interest. Thoughts about what I don’t know. Mystery about myself, about you, about us. Thinking outside of myself. Committed to asking questions that are not disguised agendas. Listening to what’s possible. Talking with not at. Exploring different viewpoints, points of view.

Always be curious is the invitation to explore your lives together, not alone or apart or as though one of you has figured it out. 

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It was summer, But it was fall I wanted,
The colorful leaves, And the cool, dry air.

It was fall, But it was winter I wanted,
The beautiful snow, And the joy of the holiday season.

It was winter, But it was spring I wanted,
The warmth, And the blossoming of nature.

I was a child, But it was adulthood I wanted,
The freedom, And the respect.

I was 20, But it was 30 I wanted,
To be mature, And sophisticated.

I was middle-aged, But it was 20 I wanted,
The youth, And the free spirit.

I was retired, But it was middle age I wanted,
The presence of mind, Without limitations.

My life was over.

But I never got what I wanted.

~ Jason Lehman

(written in 1989 when Jason was 14 years old)

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