I love the following piece by author and clinical psychologist Harriet Lerner — so simple and so wise. It is an excerpt from her latest, easy-to-read and very worthwhile book, Marriage Rules: A Manual for the Married and Coupled Up. This specific piece (from a chapter on the challenges that parenting presents to couple-hood) offers ten tips for survival.
100-Year-Old Marriage Advice (R.M. Rilke)
In 1902, the famous Bohemian-Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke began a letter correspondence with a 19-year-old aspiring poet and military cadet named Franz Kappus who was trying to decide between a literary and a military career. In his letters, Rilke offers advice on how a poet should feel, love, and seek truth in trying to understand and experience life and art. In 1929, three years after Rilke’s death, the ten letters were published as Briefe an einen jungen Dichter (Letters to a Young Poet).
The Three Love Systems (H. Fisher)
Helen E. Fisher (b. 1947) is an American anthropologist (Rutgers University) and human behavior researcher of the biology of love and attraction. She was hired as the chief scientific advisor to the Internet dating site, Chemistry.com, a division of Match.com. Fisher has conducted extensive research and written five books on the evolution and future of human sexuality, monogamy, adultery and divorce, gender differences in the brain, and the chemistry of romantic love.
The Art of Healthy Reactivity (B. Atkinson)
Dr. Brent Atkinson is author of Emotional Intelligence in Couples Therapy and co-founder of the Couples Clinic in Geneva, Illinois. The Clinic is home to an innovative team of therapist/educators who have pioneered methods for improving relationships that are used widely by marriage counselors and educators across the United States.
15 Simple Steps for Sustaining Love (H. Lerner)
A renowned scholar on the psychology of women and family relationships, Harriet Lerner is the author of numerous articles and eleven books on relationships and connection, among them New York Times bestseller The Dance of Anger, Women in Therapy, and The Mother Dance.
Being Present in the Face of Grief (D. Brooks)
New York Times Op-Ed columnist David Brooks writes this week of one family’s trauma, following the death of their 27-year-old daughter and the severe injury of their second daughter, Catherine, a few years later at the age of 26. He shares lessons drawn by the Woodiwisses, which at least apply to their own experience, about how those of us outside the zone of trauma might better communicate with those inside the zone.
Love and Power – Part 2 (Estroff Marano)
Part 2: What an “equal” relationship, one in which power is shared, looks like:
Hara Estroff Marano’s Psychology Today article on love and power explores how equally shared power in long-term relationships creates happy individuals and satisfying, intimate connections. A sidebar in the article lists the relational elements generally present in relationships where power is shared.
Love and Power – Part 1 (Estroff Marano)
Part 1: Shared power is the only power
In a recent article entitled “Love and Power” in Psychology Today, Hara Estroff Marano interviews marital therapists and psychologists from across the nation, and shares their conclusion that only equally shared power creates happy individuals and satisfying marriages. Increasingly, shared power is the passport to intimacy.