quick-plug

I know everything in the media seems to be revolving around the economy: the market, home loans, business concerns, and credit crunches. I think that that stress may be also trickling into some unforeseen places, like your marriage or relationship.

Sex and money are two common sources of stress, and both are highly underemphasized in most relationships. It’s not comfortable talking about these things, so what do we do? Sweep it under the rug, and go on using money with the negative, dysfunctional messages that have always characterized our relationship with money. 

Maybe one of you spends to alleviate stress, or the other has a habit of overspending to compensate for guilt or shame in your relationship. Maybe you both live in separate fantasies about how money works in your life - and those fantasies don’t match the other one. The current economic realities have started to slap you in the face, and now you’re wondering why you needed that last minute trip to the Bahamas.

Money, and our relationship with it, is a very powerful agent (and container) for our dysfunctional messages and neurotic compulsions. Mix in our issues with our relationships, and we’re looking at a perfect storm of problems. 

So, what helps this mess out? Stopping the hiding from your spouse about those gambling weekends you and your buddies had last month? All these are good starts, but there is more.

I think that understanding how to minimize conflict is another key. conflict will come from not being on the same page together if there are money issues. Honesty is essential. I think that money brings a lot of discomfort and fear, especially of the other spouse getting mad, and rejecting their mate or their spending habits. Spending habits are directly linked to one’s personal psychology, and rejecting the spending habits may risk rejecting the spouse, especially if their is excessive spending or addictive behaviors going on. Then, more intervention may be needed.

The economy has its ups and downs, just like a relationship. Taking preventative measures, and knowing how you will navigate (both in your finances and in your relationship) will calm the waters quite a bit. Knowing how to work with your spouse as a team, and not malign, blame, criticize or anything else to make the situation worse will help. Seeking professional help, such as with a good financial coach and a relationship counselor, will help minimize these issues.

- Jason

(This is an MSN article from “The Nest” That I found online. I don’t post too many articles on these types of things, but what chaps my hide is that these articles continue to push stereotypes about men and how we supposedly all live, in this case like slobs. What do you think? Do you see where I am getting at? Comments??)

My husband drives me crazy. He’s a complete slob; I’m a neat freak. I’ve brought my issue up to a few different people — my mom, my sister, and my frenemy — in a desperate search for sage advice or some masterful man-ipulation. Each of my mentors employs a different tactic, but who knows best? My mom always preaches, “Oh, just let it go.” My sister (who’s a women’s mag junkie) says to trick him into doing his fair share. And my frenemy swears by the sex strike. Frustrated and hopeless, I set out to put each theory to the test.

Tactic 1: Suck It Up
Expert 1: Mom — happily married for more than 40 years
The Plan: After 40 years, my mom must know how to make a relationship work. When I complain to her about my SH (sloppy husband), she says that if something really bothers me I should just take care of it myself. And, with a slap in the face to women’s lib, she always adds, “You know how men are.” Yeah, I do: sloppy.

This do-it-myself tactic seemed too ’50s for my taste, but I gave it a shot. Is the answer simply doing stuff that I don’t mind? Or do I need more than that from my husband? For three days, I spent every moment taking out trash, Windexing the coffee table, hanging up his suits…you get the point. Did I mention that I also have a full-time job?

“Is the answer simply doing stuff that I don’t mind? Or do I need more than that from my husband?”

The results: The house was spotless, but I felt glum. I’m his wife, not his slave. It occurred to me that what works for my mom isn’t going to work for me. Times have changed. She got married in the ’60s and has never worked. My marriage is more modern with the two of us trying to be equal partners. I move to plan B immediately.

Tactic 2: Trick Him
Expert 2: My sister — happily married for seven years
The Plan: My sister boasts about her ability to make a marriage work. I took her advice and decided to cease cleaning up. Note to self: Don’t tell my guinea pig/husband what I’m up to.

For an entire weekend I just let the mess happen. It was surprisingly easier than I thought it would be. The key was resetting my expectations for how neat or sloppy our home should be. The lazy thing was going so well, I let it spill into Monday and even invited a friend over. I didn’t worry about the mess (especially because my buddy was in on the plan). When my husband got home from work, my friend was on her way out. The door was barely shut when he screamed, “I can’t believe you’d have someone over when the apartment looks like this!” I shrugged my shoulders and responded, “It looks fine to me.” And he frantically began putting away all his junk and asking me which cleanser works best on the coffee table. “Windex,” I replied with a sly smile.

The results: Victory was mine, but it was bittersweet. Sad but true, being passive aggressive in a marriage works. But despite having a fantastic flat, I felt pretty lousy. I’m not so sure I want to be the kind of woman who manipulates her husband.

“Sad but true, being passive aggressive in a marriage works.”

Tactic 3: Sex Strike 
Expert 3: My frenemy — who gets everything she wants
The Plan: I set off to deny my husband of sex, which quite frankly wasn’t too difficult considering that I’ve been so mad at him for being a pig. I knew if I taunted him by being sexy and then said no, he’d want it even more.

I just couldn’t do this — it’s too dishonest. My frenemy can use sex to get her way, but I decided to try something radical but all too obvious. I opted to talk to my SH. I told him I don’t want to nag but I feel like he isn’t doing his share of the housework (or respecting my neat-freak tendencies), and that I feel underappreciated. “I get it,” he said, “but I feel like you don’t realize the things I do for you.” And when he reminded me of the fact that he buys me stamps, fixes every single electronic around the house, and always replenishes the toiletries — even the girly ones — the lightbulb went off. A slob will never be neat, but that doesn’t mean a messy man isn’t trying. Oh, and as it turns out, Mom does know best. One day last week she said to me casually over coffee, “If you want your husband to do something, make sure to tell him early on because it’s much harder to get him to change later.”

So, is it true? Is your self-critic running your life? 

I’ve found that one of the biggest problems that smart, successful men deal with is their own self-critic. Guys with loud self critics never feel satisfied, need to feel in control most of the time, and in their hearts, don’t feel good enough or like they measure up to others’ standards. Even though they have accomplished a lot in their lives and in their professions, they still somehow feel like they fall short.

The self-critic is critical of self and others, always strives for perfection and unreasonable accomplishment, and is never at ease and satisfied with itself. It needs to keep pushing, and getting to “more.”

Consequently, it can be the source of a lot of stress, anger and insecurity, which will inevitably create problems on the job, in relationships, and in our own skin. It is the epicenter of a lot of the problems that you may be experiencing.

So, how can I help you to quiet this overly aggressive self-critic? Together, we’ll:

• Learn about your unique self-critic, and see how it works and runs parts of your life
• Figure out how to stop feeling less successful than other people
• Learn how to still accomplish and get stuff done, without the loud self-critic making it worse
• Understand the role of anger in your self-critic, and use it to better transform your critic
• Feel more in control, and stop feeling out of control
• Get less feedback from your woman about being controlling of her and the things that she does
• Create easier and deeper relationships for yourself

I invite you to make an appointment with me to work on your self-critic. Call me now at 602.309.0568.

- Jason

The importance of a father’s impact on his son cannot be underestimated. The father-son relationship is as important as it is underestimated in the successful development of a man, who becomes a partner, husband and parent himself. 

For a lot of men in our culture, men are either physically absent, or emotionally absent. The problem is that a lot of men don’t have a clue about how to be emotional, or to use the tools that they don’t have to solve relationship or communication problems. With that inability to use the necessary tools to create and navigate successful relationships, men get into trouble, and then unconsciously pass down to their sons the things that creates problems for themselves.

One example of what I mean is the ability for men to connect to their anger. Men traditionally either explode in rage and anger to get what they want, or will internalize their anger, and let it turn into anxiety, depression and a host of other secondary problems. Depression and anxiety have other roots and causes, but interpersonally, anger is created a lot of times and then suppressed when our needs for love, affection, importance, to be seen, etc. are not met.

Men pass these things down to their sons, who then get modeled these ineffective and destructive ways of being in relationships. They learn to not meet their needs, quiet their voice, and generally suppress their various needs within a relationship and in their lives. To the extent that women are emotional beings, men could learn a thing or two about how to connect to and speak from their emotional pain.

Men can be good at doing the things that they do well: teach a kid how to fish, shoot hoops or change a tire. Men can be supportive of their sons, and provide a model in a lot of ways. Men can model being good fathers, but unfortunately, men don’t know how to model being a well-rounded man. A lot of our culture says that to be emotional is not ‘manly’, and is responsible for this, I believe. This is a problem, and a myth. 

Until we accept that connecting to our emotional selves is not a bad thing, and is not “unmanly,” I believe we are only operating with half of our full selves. I think that it’s time to break the generational cycle that fails to hand down all the tools needed for personal and relationship success for men.

If you think you struggle with not having the right tools that you need for your relationship (for example, you don’t know how to communicate with your wife or girlfriend, or you avoid conflict at all costs), I ask that you contact me for an appointment at 602.309.0568.

- Jason

(This article I wrote also appears in the Jewish News of Greater Phoenix, October 10th edition)

Every good general has a battle plan, and, if you’re like my former self, you’ve spent enough time alone waiting for the right date to come around. My friend Jay used to call me the hardest-working dater he knew. (Now I have bestowed that title on him.)

Although I really wasn’t sure how to feel about that honor, I did learn volumes about the dating process, and about myself, in the experiences that I had before I found success. Although there are forces that are sometimes beyond our control (the mysterious and cosmic powers of chemistry, for example), there are things that you can do in preparation for getting a date to improve your chances of finding the partner that you want.

What is essential to consider is this: Do you know exactly who you are looking for? Could you write a fictional profile of the woman that you are looking for, down to the name of her dog and her favorite flavor of ice cream? This may seem extreme, but until you have honed and refined your ideal mate, you widen the gap and allow for a lot of ambiguity and indecision to flow in. What you’re doing is creating the idea of your mate in your mind. Take some time to consider this invitation to create a profile of the woman you want. Identify her personality traits, values, physical features, professional aspirations and hobbies or interests - everything that you can think of. I’ll bet that when you put your ideas on paper, you’ll find out much more than you thought you would, and the results may surprise you.

Second, how is your networking “presence”? Do you set yourself up to meet as many ideal women as you can? The Internet - whether that’s JDate, Match.com or any other Web site - can be a great tool, but if that’s the only place you’re looking, you’re limiting yourself. Once you have done the first step of writing your profile, you’ll familiarize yourself with the places and settings where your ideal date will be, whether that’s at a film club, at Papago Park doing some hiking or at a yoga class. (Hint: Guys, go do yoga right now - if you’re not already. You’ll get a great workout, find tranquillity and meet women all at once).

Third, and this is important because it’s the hardest, how will you convey interest in her when you meet her socially? Will you walk the plank and take the risk of approaching her when you find her?

I will share with you my philosophy about kamikaze dating: Act fearless and summon the strength to go over to her even though your fear tells you not to (the girls without the wedding bands, of course). Your kamikaze mantra will become this: “There is nothing that I can say or do now that will kill me,” to borrow from Friedrich Nietzsche.

Unless you are a total bumbling idiot and drool or speak incoherently, she will appreciate your summoning the strength to go over to her, even if she doesn’t show interest back. Let me ask you this way: Do you want to live with the regret of not approaching her and the fantasy of “what if it did happen?” What could you be missing out on because you colluded with the fear inside of yourself instead of taking the risk?

For those less brazen souls, be everywhere you can where there is the possibility of meeting someone special. Don’t be shy if you really want it, and if you want it, you need to place yourself where you have better odds. Being at home obviously lowers the odds quite a bit more than being out where your date will be.

Next article, we’ll talk about how to create success while on “The Date” itself, and how to get her interested in you and on your side in no time. Stay tuned.

I wanted to post about a topic that I hold pretty dear, which is the relationship between your mental functioning and your mood - two things that are probably affecting your well-being, and possibly your relationship.

How you eat and take care of yourself is a reflection of the way that you respect yourself (or not), and take interest in the quality of you life. Failing to eat the right foods and not exercise will lead to obesity, other cardiovascular problems, and depression, anxiety and more stress.

(more…)

For the guys, I want to help communicate for you those things that are creating fighting and problems in your relationship. For the girls, I want to help you understand your guy, and what he is needing, as to give you an insider’s edge. Here goes.

1. Wants to be loved: You’re not too different from her, I know. This idea doesn’t run rampant in our culture, which says that we need sex, beer and football, which is crazy. I know that you need to know that you are loved, special and important to her, and that she communicates this to you.

2. To be admired: I know you want her to think highly of you. Remember why you tried out for your high school baseball team in the first place? Yes, it was to impress the girls. As adults, we still have that same need to impress our women. We want to know that she is admiring and swooning at us and our achievements and accomplishments, whether that’s being a good dad, employee or husband. So important.

3. Sex with you: Ladies, yes, he does want to have sex with you, and why should this even be on the list. A no-brainer. But, he also needs intimacy and affection from you, in the same way that you do, too. Guys are emotional beings, and don’t let any article form MSN or the like tell you that that is not the case.

4. Validation: A little different from admiration, validation is needed by guys to know that they are doing right by you. That’s it. I think that guys fear angering their partners, so a little verbal validation will help keep your relationship on track and show him when he’s doing a good job. Plus, it’s a great behavioral modification tool, so he’ll know when he does good and when he doesn’t do so good.

So, these are some things that guys do want, whether or not they are said. We’re not just limited to strictly what the media has to say about us. Believe it or not, we’re quite dynamic and emotional beings. And, no, this conversation doesn’t go past this blog post. I promise.

Check out this related post on why men cheat:

http://phoenixmenscounseling.com/blog/2008/09/30/why-men-cheat/

Jason