A couple I am working with gave me permission to share their brilliant invention of referring to past relationships as "workshops"! This prevents hurt feelings and conveys the reality that is at the heart of every relationship.

Just saw “Carnage”. A great demonstration on how couples can fight in order to destroy each other. Spoiler alert: here are just some of the rules, according to the movie:

1. Treat the other with contempt and sarcasm; bully them overtly or covertly
2. Engage in character assassination
3. Expose and pick on your partner’s areas of self-hate
4. Tease your partner about their values or aspects of themselves that matter to them
5. Change the focus to unrelated, but awful, issues, making them seem as if they are part of the conversation, thus throwing your partner off balance
6. Throw up on something that was valuable to the other person
7. Keep your phone on and pick up all calls, or text throughout
8. Belittle or dismiss the other
9. Start drinking heavily in the middle of the fight

10. Call your partner names or insult them: “You’re DISGUSTING!” “That’s the most idiotic thing you’ve every said!”

11. Distort the meaning of what they are trying to express into something hateful

12. Do this in front of other people

13. Do something to deliberately provoke the other like handing out cigars to your guest when it’s always been a house rule not to smoke in the house

14. Say nasty things about your partner to the other people, like, “She’s always hysterical like this”

15. Throw a punch at your mate
.

I was kind of chuckling today to see Newt Gingrich, annoyed with Mitt Romney's negative campaign against him, call him a liar, and say, "“If he would be willing to just be man enough to say, ‘You know, this is my negative campaign and I admit it,’ I’d be a lot happier.” This  blog is not going to be a political statement. It just struck me, as a couples therapist, how much he sounded like one of the people in a couple who are not getting along. The tendency is to project blame, especially when we feel hurt. At those moments it's so much easier to focus on the other, try to get them to change, and so hard in the heat of the moment, to stay focused on oneself. His complaint sounded very familiar. So, if they were a couple--now that's a real stretch!!--the work would be to understand the source of the hurt and get that expressed, which would most likely have the effect of softening the other partner's reaction and eliciting in them more compassion. But of course politicians are in competition with each other, and they're supposed to be, a very different situation from coupledom, in which cooperation is the goal.

Your Financial Honeymoon Will Eventually End

By CARL RICHARDS: Carl Richards is a certified financial planner in Park City, Utah.

I’m not a marriage counselor, but sometimes I feel like one.

In my role as a financial planner I’ve heard countless discussions between couples about money. Even after 16 years of marriage myself, I’m still learning when it comes to money and marriage.

With that in mind, I thought it might be helpful to review a few things about money and its impact on relationships.

1. It’s almost impossible to overestimate money’s role.Arguments about money, whatever they may be, often lead to divorce. There’s no question that a relationship is better when the financial side of life is stable, both people know what’s going on and work together to make decisions. So we shouldn’t ignore money in our relationship discussions.

2. We all come with baggage. One big challenge is that each spouse brings a set of deeply ingrained beliefs, habits and feelings about money. Most of us were raised in families where money (and religion and politics) were subjects not to be discussed in polite company. As a result, we have very little training on how to talk about and deal with the emotional issues that are inherent to our financial lives.

The challenge here is that money is not simply a means of exchange; it represents our goals, dreams and fears. In fact, money has (unfortunately) almost become the air we breathe. For most of us this represents a challenge, because we have to figure out someone else’s (sometimes unspoken) views to build and maintain a successful relationship.

3. Money seems to be the last thing we talk about (at least at first).
During a courtship or engagement, money is often not a topic of conversation. There’s this sense that if you need to talk about money in your relationship, you may not be in love. Prenuptial agreements are passé, and no one wants to be accused of marrying just for the money.

But no matter how much we avoid this discussion before marriage, the time will obviously come when reality will hit, and we will have to deal with the role that money plays in our lives and our relationships.

Not every couple has a problem talking about money. But it is clear based on the conversations I’ve heard, and even within my own marriage, that we need to do a better job of it. And it seems like a good idea to start those conversations before anyone says “I do.” Learning to have meaningful and honest conversations about money is something that should be part of every relationship both new and old.

From the sketch above, you might think that I believe there’s some specific point when money becomes a problem. Not quite. I could have written, “One Month,” “10 Years,” even “20 Years.”

But financial honeymoons always end, so there is no time like right now to do the hard work of having honest and meaningful conversations about money.

NOTES on EMAIL and TEXTING POTENTIAL PROS AND CONS in THERAPY and EVERYDAY LIFE

It’s a new world! Technology gives us unparalleled abilities to learn and to connect. Then, too, people have reported dissolving an entire marriage through text and email. Is this a good thing or a bad thing? Or something else? Perhaps they could express things that needed to be said that could not safely be said in person because it would make them feel too vulnerable. Perhaps they could say provocative things to express rage without fear of immediate in-person reprisal. One thing is clear; you can say anything in writing and maintain absolute control of the timing of the response, and be spared the strong  feelings that are engendered by being in the same room together, possibly both talking at the same time with no one being heard. There is the fantasy that by writing in the absence of the other that they are “hearing” you, even though the possibilities for distortion on the other end are equally or more extreme than in person. Writing allows, for better or worse, any fantasy one wishes about how they are being heard.

Below is an incomplete list–I’m sure much could be added– of pros and cons of email and text for the purpose of communication.

PROS

1. enables people to share emotionally loaded material that might have otherwise initiated a fight, in a more objective way such that neither person needs to respond right away and can take time to consider
2. similarly, enables people to articulate what s/he wants to say without fear of interruption or instant retribution, and therefore conceptualize his/her thoughts more clearly
3. the process of writing itself helps conceptualize thoughts by externalizing them to the page so they can be seen and thought about in a leisurely, unpressured fashion
4. very, very convenient, efficient and time-saving
5. fun
6. can free people up to say things (constructive) they might not otherwise, because the absence of the other reduces fear of being judged/feeling self-conscious, just as the use of the couch can be in therapy
7. the process of writing itself accesses thoughts and feelings that may not have emerged in the talking process, just as journaling can be therapeutic
8. enables the individual to dispense with a lot of communication chores easily and quickly
9. likewise, enables us to connect about small details that can be useful to the relationship or to a project when before it might have felt like too much trouble; enables groups to get huge amounts of work done together efficiently and comprehensively
10. encourages connection to others who may be emotionally and/or geographically far away

11. connection, connection, connection!

CONS

1. feelings are distorted and misunderstood
2. feelings are missing
3. cannot embody nuance
4. have to shrink message into something convenient to write
5. miss out on progressive communication that occurs when two people talk and spark ideas in each other in the process—possibility of brainstorming
6. keeps sharing and ideas concrete
7. amplifies possibilities of recipient feeling dismissed/rejected, esp. when response is not quickly forthcoming
8. contributes to expectation reply should come quickly, which is limiting as people need time to think through decisions and what they want to communicate
9. fosters impulsive communication and replies which may be harmful
10. is not private among individuals (people spy on each other) and on the internet
11. contributes to false sense that one is actually communicating, when they aren’t, esp. about emotionally meaningful or leaded material
12. enables sender to avoid difficult feelings that would be useful to feel in relation to the other in order to further and deepen the relationship
13. is assaultive to the receiver when material is negative and receiver has no opportunity to respond in person and is left with feeling blindsided and temporarily powerless
14. as above, leaves receiver holding powerful feelings that could be better shared—and potentially worked through and/or alleviated–in a conversation
15. in therapy, even the seemingly mundane communication, like changing a session time, circumvents the therapist’s ability to pick up the associated feelings involved in the communication, which are the meat of therapy
16. similarly, the patient avoids communicating the feelings involved in a cancellation or request for change in time, or even leaving treatment, which would be useful for them to feel in the interests of the therapy
17. can result in receiver feeling treated impersonally, or like an object
18. can strain your tendons (overuse syndrome)
19. one can make a type by mistake or unconsciously not by mistake that changes the meaning of what s/he consciously intended
20. worse, one can send something by accident (or unconscious intention) that s/he sorely regrets
21. a terse response can be interpreted as criticism that was not meant
22. can become substitute for genuine connection
23. can become addictive

Based on my experience from my couple therapy practice, the crisis of pregnancy may trigger deep insecurities in the husband; he is afraid of losing his primary status with his wife to the new baby, he feels inadequate, and to bolster his self-esteem, may go outside the marriage, from explicit tweeting to having an actual affair. This can also occur soon after the birth of the child. The situation is exacerbated if there is a preexisting tendency to sexual compulsivity (a whole other set of problems).