The season is in full swing and apparently y’all are getting chatty out there! This week I’ll answer a couple of interesting questions from faithful readers:
Christa writes, “My husband and I have been together for ten years. We enjoy socializing with our coupled friends, but we find that we often like one member of the pair more than the other. To make it worse, we sometimes disagree about which of the partners we like better. Is there some formula we can follow to get this right?
Dear Christa, the magic formula is this: You’re expecting too much. Many couples come together because opposites attract. Nontechnical people are often drawn to technically competent ones. Empaths are drawn to thinkers. Outgoing people are attracted to wallflowers, etc. In other words, you enjoy certain qualities in your partner that you might not possess yourself.
So here it comes (fasten your seatbelt): Your time is precious. Life should be fun. You or your spouse are not obligated to waste precious moments with people you don’t enjoy. Of course, you can’t be entirely rigid about this, but if there are opportunities to do one thing with one member of the couple, then you might consider doing that. “Oh, you like macramé? I like it too, but Joe can’t stand it. Let’s whip up a hammock sometime while the others go shopping.” Of course you have to be careful not to deliberately exclude people or hurt their feelings, but Joe will probably be more than happy to go shopping after he hears about that hammock.
You don’t have to do everything as a couple. If you and your partner love your time together, then fine. But don’t box yourself in.
Jerry from Ocean City writes, “My girlfriend and I are pretty happy, but I often feel anxious and conflicted about everyday things. She has suggested that I consider psychotherapy, but I’m not sure what it can do for me. What should I expect if I decide to give it a try?”
Thank you, Jerry for giving me a chance to promote my books! In the most recent one, “Bad Therapy, Good Therapy (And How to Tell the Difference)”, I state candidly that you pay a psychotherapist “not to care.” At first that may sound harsh, but if you think about it, it’s really true: If you want advice from someone in your personal life, you can get it for free. In fact, you can get uninvited advice from just about anyone who’s bossy or who needs to feel superior. It’s important to consider the source and what the advice-giver might get out of it.
A therapist — a good one at least — will not try to run your life. He or she will offer an objective assessment of what you’re saying. “It sounds like you really want to change jobs. But you seem conflicted because you don’t want to live with less income. You need to think about your priorities.” This sort of feedback helps you, the client, think more clearly without being told what to do. By “not caring” about all the personal things that tend to upset mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, partners and spouses (i.e., those who love you), good therapists are in a unique position to be truly objective. You’re free to remove a therapist from your life at any time, so there’s no negative consequence from how you handle the feedback.
Therapy is not a medical procedure. A psychotherapist holds either a Master’s degree or a Ph.D. A psychiatrist, on the other hand, is an M.D. and can prescribe medication. In a medical situation, you go to a doctor to treat symptoms with pills or maybe surgery. Therapists don’t fix you with surgery. They help you fix yourself by guiding and coaching you over a period of time.
It might take a few tries to find the right match. Therapists are people too, and, as I state in my book, some might not have an approach that can help you. Pills may have their place, but five minutes with a doctor and a prescription pad will never be the same as quality time spent talking with a skilled psychotherapist.
By the way, my books are available exclusively here at www.DrHurd.com.