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| Who Are You? |
| Hundreds of people responded to our reader survey. |
| Adventures of a Middle-Aged Editor |
| GH Editor Michael Egan gets to the bottom of things in Waikiki. |
| Valentines for All |
| If you could send Dick Cheney, Hillary Clinton and your favorite cat lover a Valentine, what would you say? |
| Chocolate Isn’t Good for You |
| They’ve been lying to us all these years. How sad! |
| Leslie Wilcox |
| Leslie Wilcox is interviewed by Michael Egan in this month’s cover story. |
| Live in Sin or Do it Agin? |
| Is love really better the second time around? How about the third? |
| Off the Beaten Path |
| Learn about Oahu’s secret beaches and hidden hikes. |
| Heart Check |
| The American Heart Association offers women good advice...and a great new service. |
DEPARTMENT:
by Tom Merrill, Ph.D. and Bobbie Sandoz-Merrill, MSW
It’s Valentine’s Day!
Dear Tom & Bobbie
We have just finished one season of celebration and are heading into another one that I am supposed to be excited about... and I am not! We have been married for 15 years but have been together for 20 after each having first marriages that dried up and blew away. We felt so much in love when we first connected and committed and celebrated our being together at every opportunity...Christmas, New Years, Valentine’s Day, Ground Hog Day...you name it. Now we exchange presents and cards but the feeling is quite different. His cards to me will call me his “sweetheart” but I neither feel like it nor do I believe he really feels this way. These calendar celebrations have now turned into a time to walk on eggshells and avoid how I really feel. I could give you a long list of things that he has done that make me feel this way, but have not always been and angel either. So when I try to talk about it we end up in horrible fights, blaming each other, feeling more hopeless than before we talked. So why bother? I don’t want to end the relationship but can’t stand where it is and do not know how to fix it. Can you help?
Tom says:
Walking on egg shells is becoming an epidemic and reflects a culture of relationships that feel it is better, safer, more comfortable, etc., to avoid rather than deal with issues...big and small...that ultimately dissolve the glue holding them together. Given our skills at problem resolution, for most this may be a good call in the short run...if the goal is to simply stay together.
However, if the goal is to stay together over the long haul in a relationship that is meeting both your needs, then this strategy will fail; you will either split or remain forever in the relationship you describe. If you look around you will see this is true.
Whether it is significant-other relationships, or those of communities, states or countries, we are not in good shape. So, do not feel as if this is your problem alone. It is not. But the solution is yours and yours alone. And there is a solution.
I have really begun to wonder why it is we only celebrate our relationships
annually. Why isn’t every day Valentine’s Day? The reason
is that most of us are either so unhappy that we don’t feel
like it or have simply slipped away from that initial excitement,
that chemical rush we called love, and don’t think about it
until we are reminded by Hallmark to make the annual pilgrimage to
Longs for our cards and candy. Your relationship seems to be camped
out behind door number one and while you say you don’t want
to split neither do you want to remain in your current state of relationship
angst.
If this is truly where you are, then stop doing what you are doing.
This means start talking with your partner. You first need to find
out if the relationship is something he wants to continue. If he says
yes, then turn your behavior on a dime. Stop all the behaviors that
you refer to as non-angelic. Stop them. Now! No matter what your partner
does.
Despite what the culture may tell you, this does not require years of psycho-analysis. You may find however that you need some professional help moving through this and if so, then do not hesitate to get it (how and whom to pick is critical and we will cover this in an upcoming column). For most, changing our destructive behaviors is a matter of choice. If you choose to respond to nastiness in kind then you can count on the outcome. If you choose to be the person you want to be, then the ball is in his court.
One of two things will happen. Either he will continue to be relationship-stupid.
If so, this is feedback for you and after
enough time you can ask yourself the question, ‘Is this really
the person I want to be in a relationship with? Is he able to be the
person I want to give my life to?’
The second possibility is that your new behavior will have the effect that we have seen in so many of the relationships we have worked with. If so, you will be on the road to celebrating your re-found partnership an additional 364 days a year. Good luck!
Bobbie says:
A special childhood memory includes the wonderful scent of doughnuts wafting through the air as we drove past Bob’s Bakery on our way home from the beach following a day filled with surfing, volleyball, a greasy grilled lunch, and laughter with friends in the warmth of the Hawaiian sun.
Now, as an adult, whenever I smell the scent of doughnuts cooking, the associated hologram of those happy days fills me with pleasure.
It is this same mechanism at work to create the Post Traumatic Stress that men and women home from war experience. For them, any time a combat hologram is triggered in them by a loud sound or some other ‘scent’ of war, they are catapulted back into their traumatic war experiences.
And, the same is true for each of us on Valentine’s Day. Because this day is meant to honor the romance in our lives, it will either trigger the holograms we have connected to the love we are enjoying—or, as in your case, it will set off a cluster of memories and feelings showing us how the love we once enjoyed got whittled away to the point it no longer feels worthy of true celebration.
So, rather than zombie your way through it, wake up, as Tommy suggests, and pay attention to the memories and feelings that make up your romantic holograms. The first ones you will notice are the ones where you feel your partner is at fault. These are the ones you have no doubt been arguing about. Yet the only holograms that will allow you to fix your relationship are the ones he will experience and has been arguing with you about.
So ask yourself what these are, and rather than bat them back any longer, face what has been hurting him and stop inflicting that pain. For, in truth most Valentine holograms are filled with the pain we have inflicted on our partners in those multiple moments when we have been harsh, discounting, unfair and less than kind. Sadly, few of us understand the true impact of these moments or how they permanently change our partner’s view of us…unless we have succeeded in erasing them with a genuine apology. For each of those painful incidents that stand unexcused go into our romantic hologram basket and once there, infect the scent of our relationship.
The good news is that you can use Valentine’s Month as a time to make all needed apologies to your partner for past hurts; allow your partner to do the same…voluntarily, if desired; and then commit—really commit—to making all of your remaining days together ones filled only with the ‘scent’ of caring kindness that will result in the highly positive, settle-for-more holograms we all dream to experience.