Good Clean Reads

By Tammy Nelson, PhD Mirroring, validating, and empathizing are part of the imago dialogue developed by Harville Hendrix, the author of Getting the Love You Want, a book about couple's therapy. The imago technique is a structured method that you can use to talk to each other, enhancing communication. This imago therapy dialogue has worked for thousands of couples around the world. It is a way that may help you to talk about conflict and frustration in your relationship.

by Anastasia Strgar

My mother always told me that what people give to a relationship is never even. It is all in direct proportion to what each partner puts in their own box and that it never looks exactly as it should or comes exactly at the same time. Relationships are all about compromising and about breaking down expectations based on pre-conditioned responses.

Recently, my boyfriend and I...

The first time I learned of the idea of self soothing, I was reading a parenting book and trying to let my first child settle herself to sleep. I was more upset than she was that evening, gripping the door knob, willing myself to not open it and go in to soothe her. Awash in my own inability to self soothe, I cried as she whimpered herself to sleep. That night provided only a glimmer of the power...

“Sometimes the questions are complicated and the answers are simple.” – Dr Seuss

 

Sexual desire issues are an integral part of long-term relationships. In the twenty-six years of my own marriage I have visited all sides of the desire fence .Whether it was wanting intimacy more than my partner and not feeling wanted by my partner or not wanting my partner or intimacy at all, each machination was...

By Teagan Shepard

Do you find that, even though you spend a good bit of time with your partner, you just don’t feel that connected anymore? It’s highly likely that quantity doesn’t equal quality for you.

Every so often, and I recommend once a week, do something that both of you enjoy and can connect with. Not sure what to do anymore? Here are a few tips.

Take a hike. Seriously, get out of the...

by Jennie Gill Rosier

Over the last few weeks, all but one of our four cars have stopped being able to get us from point A to point B for one reason or another. (Which, by the way, doesn’t include the Hus’ [aka- my husband’s] dream car that’s on jack stands in the garage. So technically, all but one of our five cars don’t work. Why do we have five cars? That’s another story for another time. I...

“For having lived long, I have experiences many instances of being obliged, by better information or fuller consideration, to change opinions, even on important subjects, which I once thought right but found to be otherwise.”  -Benjamin Franklin

One lesson that I didn’t expect to learn from focusing on receiving is how little opinions actually matter. This is surprising, as I have long relied on...

by Anastasia Strgar

About a month ago, when I was going through my own mini internal crisis, my mom showed me an article  from which Katie Couric posted some of her favorite advice. It was all really good advice, but the one that got me thinking the most was a comment made by Anna Quindlen:

“Remember Pinocchio? There is a Jiminy Cricket on your shoulder, giving the very best advice. It is you,...

“For anything worth having one must pay the price; and the price is always work, patience, love, self-sacrifice – no paper currency, no promises to pay, but the gold of real service.”  ~John Burroughs

It is perhaps the deepest aspect of our human nature to seek security and assurance. This innate need is the foundation of our survival mechanism and fuels the multibillion dollar insurance...