Build A Stronger You!SM Dr. Laurel A. Sills, Psychologist & Life Coach

Who’s Wedding Is This Anyway?

by

Laurel A. Sills, Psy.D.

(February 14, 2010)

 Your wedding is your dream-come-true.  It represents your decision to devote your love and merge your life with another.  It’s your time to shine as Princess for the day!  This ceremony paves the road to your future.  That’s why it’s vital to infuse it with special meaning and maintain your integrity.

While most people make smart choices about walking down the aisle, some get wrapped up with excitement and lose focus.   With so many fairy tales ending with, “They get married and live happily ever after,” who wouldn’t dream to get married?  Being a gorgeous bride in a wedding fantasized for a lifetime is compelling. It’s easy to get caught in the Princess Phenomenon and lose sight of whom and why you are marrying.  Be sure you don’t fall victim to this trap. 

Too many women say, “I knew I shouldn’t have married him.”  “I walked down the aisle knowing I was making a mistake.” If you have any doubts about your motives, love, honesty or his, don’t let your plans dictate your life.  It gets increasingly harder to exit as more non-refundable money is spent, invitations are sent, gifts are received, and your wedding day approaches.  We’ve all heard of “runaway” brides or grooms leaving their mate at the altar.  Tragic as it seems, this is far less hurtful than to marry and divorce.   While aborting a wedding is very painful and scary, it is far less costly and destructive in the long run.  It takes courage and integrity to exit when it’s not right.

It’s best to examine your motives long before your wedding day.  Know yourself well.  Some women use marriage as their “ticket out” of a painful situation.  Some are so hungry for love that they say yes to the first person who loves them.  Some are afraid to be alone.  Be sure you love and respect yourself and your mate.  Exploring your feelings with both your spiritual leader and a mental health professional is smart.  They can illuminate blind spots and help protect you from making unwise choices.  If you are sure of your mate, focus on making your wedding day special.

 Don’t let the planning become a “runaway train” such that it becomes bigger than what it represents or a big source of conflict for you.   Be sure to include your mate and decide what you both want.    Parents who pay for your wedding may feel it is their right to make your wedding how they want.  Don’t be afraid to discuss your own needs and wishes. It is possible to appreciate and respect those who pay for your wedding and assert boundaries that protect your wedding dreams.  Beware of those who create their own agendas which interfere with your plans.  Trying to please everyone is overwhelming, not to mention impossible!  Seek support to set limits, minimize conflict, learn proper etiquette and tactfully prevent wedding messes. 

This is your ceremony.  It represents your commitment to each other and should be filled with special meaning for each of you.  Enjoy your day.  Celebrate your love. Best wishes for a long, joyous life together!

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This article is written by Dr. Laurel Sills, Licensed Psychologist in West Bloomfield, MI.  You can reach her at (248) 788-4230 and learn more about her at her web site: www.BuildAStrongerYou.com.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Parenting Our Parents

By

Dr. Laurel A. Sills –What’s on Your Mind?

 Increasingly sophisticated medical technology has led people to live much longer lives.

As aging people live longer, there are also more problems to cope with and families often need to be relied upon more for support.

 As many of us reach our 40’s through 60’s, we face a painful process of recognizing the mortality and limitations of our selves and our parents.  The emotional hurdles we jump include accepting our own aging and loss of carefree activity; facing our life and accepting responsibility for our choices; letting go of our own children as they grow independent; and learning to parent our parents.  None of these are not easy tasks.  The most sobering and difficult of them tends to be having to parent our parents.

 As children, our parents are everything.  They are god-like creatures that seem omnipotent and omniscient.  We look to them for security, acceptance, validation, advice and support.  When we disagree with them, we know they will still love us.  When we rebel against them, we still know where they stand.  They are the anchors.  No matter what they say, there is some sense of stability in knowing their position, even if we disagree with or ignore them. Knowing their stand helps us identify ourselves more.  As our parents begin to have medical problems that affect their bodies and minds, we cannot rely upon them for validation, support, advice or protection because they may not be able to give us these things due to their own deficits. Despite our being independent for a long time, it still  hits hard that we are truly alone to rely upon ourselves.

 We face the scary reality that our parents are fragile and cannot be here for us forever. We must take care of the needs of ourselves, our children, and be there for our parents, too, as they become increasingly more dependent upon our physical, emotional, mental and possible financial support. 

 Psychologically, we have to stop expecting them to meet our needs. Whatever our parents were not able to give us by now, they likely never will. We have to accept this reality, grieve the losses and be thankful for whatever strengths and resources our connection to them has brought to us. This will make taking care of their needs much easier for us.

 Watching our parents grow older, suffer aches and pains and lose their abilities to function fully is very difficult.  Not only are we feeling out of control and helpless over what happens to them, we also begin to view our own future as “elderly people.”  We watch them struggle with their own sense of worth, dignity and identity as they are aware of their limitations and difficulties accepting the losses in their own lives.  When parents are stricken with strokes or Alzheimer’s Disease or some other type of disease process which makes their intellectual functioning decline, we lose our “real parents” and are left only with hints of their personalities now and then as their cognitive capacity waxes and wanes.  This is incredibly difficult because many of us are reluctant to grieve and mourn someone who is alive.  Yet, in these circumstances, the true personality and person is often gone.  We need to grieve and talk about the loss of our parents even when their bodies may remain relatively intact.  We miss their soul; their wisdom, their personality and their mind.  It is okay to mourn the loss of each part of them.

 It is typical to grieve losses in stages.  Kubler-Ross, a Psychiatrist, long ago identified five stages of grief: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance (Not necessarily in that order).  We may go through these stages many times with each change in our parent’s health or when anticipating the loss of them.  While these stages are truly difficult, we can gain strength in ourselves, learn to be more loving and caring people, and give back to our parents.

 Life’s lessons are difficult.  There is no doubt about it.  One process that will make this whole phase of life easier, however, is called Internalization.  As infants, we begin the process of internalizing our parents and caregivers.  We learn that we are loved even if our parents are not in our presence.  We learn lessons, values, love and self-worth from them and we keep these within us from that point on.  As we lose our parents, we will always hold onto them…for they will be with us always deep inside our heart and soul.  Thank you parents for all that you have given, sacrificed and taught us and for all the love that you have shown us.

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This article is written by Dr. Laurel A. Sills, a Licensed Psychologist and Life Coach who works primarily with adults and couples.  She is interested to hear, “What’s On Your Mind?”  Your questions, comments and ideas for this and other articles are always welcome. You can reach Dr. Sills by phone during normal business hours at (248) 788-4230 and visit her web site at:  www.DrLSills.com.

After the Affair

By Dr. Laurel A. Sills, Licensed Clinical Psychologist

 

One of the most devastating times in a marriage is when one partner learns that the other partner has had or is having an affair.  Affairs drive people to enter psychotherapy, to get a divorce, to become aggressive and vindictive, to become depressed or suicidal, or to go into emotional and/or physical crises.

 

Whether you believe it or not, most affairs are not the result of one “bad” partner acting out to “have their cake and eat it, too.”  Typically, there are marital problems of communication and intimacy that are present long before the affair takes place.  The exception is someone with a history of acting out and not being committed to an intimate relationship even before one gets married.  (People do not change behaviors just because they get a marriage license.)  Drifting emotional and sexual intimacy typically occur before one partner goes out of the marriage to find these missing ingredients.  This is not to suggest that the partner who keeps fidelity is at fault.

 

 Both partners tend to ignore signs of problems for a while before the affair happens. Often, one partner deals with stress by minimizing, avoiding and denying.  If there are changes in a relationship where the other partner is noticeably distant, lacking interest in sex, not wanting to talk about feelings and problems, going to bed early, changing work hours and staying away longer, there is often a problem.  Neither partner talks about these changes. Both make excuses for them rather than face them. Both partners typically overtly or covertly allow the demise of their own healthy communication.  They stop sharing feelings and fears and don’t problem-solve in a complimentary way.  All people involved in the affair contribute to a degree.  Simply blaming the person acting out is not a very mature or realistic way to look at a marital affair.

 

Many couples fear rocking the boat by confronting problems.  This lack of talking about what is bothering either partner only increases the chances of one partner taking the problems to an outside party.  All affairs could be avoided if even the most painful topics are talked about for the love of the relationship.  Love may still be there, but not a desire for physical or emotional intimacy.  Ironically, one person  fears hurting the other by saying what is causing distance, but they are  willing to risk  hurting  their partner far worse by having an affair. The cost of this affair is guilt, hurt to one’s partner, children, extended family and friends, and potential dissolution of the marriage.

 

Affairs feel exciting.  They are new.  They provide a high.  They are an escape.  They give one person what is missing from their marriage.  But, the affair is a false picture of reality.  Most often, the affair relationship is on borrowed time. It is not a day to day intimate relationship that includes problem-solving and commitment.  It is a pseudo-safe place for pseudo-intimacy. It temporarily provides the needed attention, excitement and changes to a partner who is bored, afraid, hurt, lonely and afraid to deal with the reality in his or her primary relationship. When caught, the marriage will go into major crisis.  It either will begin to repair itself (typically with professional help), or it will die.

As with any major crisis, there is the potential for great opportunity.  The Chinese Yin and Yang is the symbol for crisis and opportunity.  It may not be readily apparent, but there is a chance to grow both personally and as a couple as a result of the affair.  Affairs force denial to end.  They force the couple to look at the source of the problems that led to the affair.

 

If a couple can talk openly about what led the person to act out, they can begin to heal.  This must be done without blame.  Certainly, the person acting out had a chance to say what he or she was unhappy about in the relationship before acting out.  If this did not occur, there was no way for the other partner to work on making changes in the relationship.

 

Oftentimes, those couples who still love one another and want to stay married, can overcome the pain of the affair and regain trust.  This process is very painful and difficult, but can be done.  Honestly appraising how each partner contributed to the emotional distance in the relationship is the first step in getting closer.  Looking at family of origin issues as they affect each partner’s ability to communicate intimately is another step.  Being totally honest and expressing feelings in a respectful way is vital in the rebuilding and repairing process.  Both partners must listen to the pain and the hurt that the other partner feels and felt in the past.  This process takes a long time and may feel like a roller coaster of emotions at first.

 

 The affair must end for any potential marital repair..  No marriage has a chance if one person continues to siphon energy from the marital relationship to an outside party.  This will not be easy for the one involved to let go of the outside party.  It involves grieving the loss of the friend, lover and emotional connection.  This is a choice that must be made if one wants their marriage to work.  The marital couple learns to be friends.  They learn to hear each other’s pain, hurts, needs, struggles and dreams.  They learn that the affair is not necessarily an indication of one person’s inadequacies.  They learn to be strong as individuals, not just as a partner in a relationship. 

 

Take your marriage to therapy before you act out.  This is much easier than repairing broken trust after an affair.  If it is too late, tell the truth and get help with the fallout.  It could be the beginning of a better relationship for both of you together.  I have seen many couples work through an affair successfully.  It is possible to  learn more about yourselves as people and grow closer as a couple as a result of understanding what happened and why.  Be honest.  Be courageous.  Know that the consequence of your  affair may risk the loss of your marriage whether you tell your spouse or someone else does. You need not lose all your integrity just because you had an affair.

 

This article was written by Dr. Laurel A. Sills, a Fully Licensed Clinical Psychologist and Life Coach who sees individuals and couples in West Bloomfield, Michigan.  Dr. Sills can be reached during normal business hours at (248) 788-4230.  See her website at:  www.DrLSills.com for more information about her practice.  We want to know, “What’s on Your Mind?”