Lots of times clients sound a little bit like, well, me. They say things like, “I just need to get my life back into balance.” Or, “I’ve never been in balance. I’d like to balance all the different things in my life.” And I say—both to them and internally to myself—

Nah. Don’t bother.

Here’s why: life is not about balance. Don’t believe any counselor who tells you otherwise. You think you’re focusing “too much” on career and not enough on your relationships? Says who? Maybe your career is your lovely baby, the beautiful thing you’re giving birth to in the the world. Your clients or customers or care recipients don’t think your career-focused life is out of balance. And that’s probably not only because they know your so-called “workaholicism” brings benefits to them. It’s also because they know that what you do is valuable. It’s a force for good in the world. Does that make you a bad girlfriend? Maybe. But maybe that’s okay. (And yeah, maybe you should be honest with your partner about that.)

Or maybe you’re going through a time in your life when you’re doing, well, everything. Kids, jobs, grad school, pets, family visits, volunteer work, friends…everything except rest and relaxation. This is unhealthy? Says who? Maybe this is a time of immense growth and development and change in your life. Maybe you’re young enough and energetic enough to do all of these things, and do all of them rightthissecondnow. Sounds good to me. You’ll have time for yoga and meditative silence in a year or two.

Having said all that, you may decide that your life is out of balance, but in a way you don’t want it to be. You want it to be out of balance in another way. That’s fine. But it can be very freeing to let go of the idea of “perfect” balance. And I’ll close with a little nugget on the word “perfect.” A friend of mine who studied Latin told me that the English “perfect” comes from the Latin per fecare, which does not mean to “do something flawlessly.” It means to do something thoroughly.

In your out-of-balance, crazytown life, are you doing what you love, and doing it thoroughly? If so, good on ya.

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I’ve found myself saying something again and again to clients, particularly couples, when they are upset about something their partner said or did. Most times, when you’re mad at your partner, you have good reason to be. People misbehave, and your partner is no exception. You feel exasperated because s/he said the wrong thing, did the wrong thing, was absent when s/he should have been present, was in your face when s/he should have backed off… there are a thousand ways your partner can drive you crazy!

So the first step I take is to understand that, and let you know that I truly understand it. You have a legitimate case against your partner.

But often enough, that’s not the whole story. For example, my partner has a preference for introversion, in contrast to me (I have a preference for extraversion). That means I’m much more outgoing, talkative, even (to use an old-fashioned word) gregarious. And yeah, there are times when I feel frustrated because my partner (like a lot of my friends, colleagues, and acquaintances) isn’t a perfect match for my special blend of extraverted personality. And it’s all too easy to pathologize that. You don’t like to talk as much as me? Well then, something must be wrong with you. You don’t want to stay up late talking about our relationship dynamics and making meaning of the nuances of our union? Well, why not?! It must be your fault.

And that’s where I—or, I should say, my own therapist—gets to say this: “It’s not your partner’s fault that you chose to be with him.” This means that I chose to hook up with an introvert, to cultivate a relationship with him, to open my heart to him. (And I don’t regret it one bit.) But that also means that when I feel frustrated about our differences, or wish my partner would be more like me, I have to remember that he wasn’t put on this earth to please me, or be like me, or make my own life easy. It was me who chose to be with him. Not him. So it’s not okay to expect him to be the person I want him to be.

I can invite my partner to be more like me. I can let my partner know that there is a lot to recommend the lifestyle I prefer. But if my partner insists on being himself, that is not his fault. And it’s not bad or wrong in any way. In short, it’s not his fault that I chose to be with him.

Once I realize that, and let it sink in, I then feel motivated to draw closer to this person who is so different from me, so wonderfully and beautifully different.

And who knows? We may rub off on each other. He may be more open and (shocking!) extraverted. And I may cultivate a richer inner life. I hope so. But for that to happen, we both have to get past the idea that the other person is “supposed to” be the person we want them to be.

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I am now a certified practitioner of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, which is a well-researched and versatile tool that helps you understand your innate preferences, and how you use those preferences (or not) in your daily life and work.

You can take the MBTI assessment online by yourself and come in for a 1.5-hour session with me to interpret it, or you could come in as a couple for a 2-hour session. (For couples, both of you would take the online assessment separately.) I’m also available to work with larger groups such as your work team. The online assessment will generate a detailed report personalized for you, based on your answers to 144 short questions about your personality preferences.

MBTI focuses on two basic human activities: the way we take in information (and the kind of information we tend to trust), and the way we make decisions. The first activity—taking in information—is about whether 1) you prefer to pay attention to the many here-and-now details and facts that you get from your five senses, or 2) whether you like to see broad patterns and tend to trust your ideas and hunches.

The second activity—the way we make decisions—is about whether 1) you prefer to make decisions using logic and a critical, principled method; or 2) you prefer to make decisions by listening to your values and your concerns about the impact of the decision on the people involved.

MBTI also helps you decide whether you put most of your energy out into the external world (extraversion) or whether you prefer to direct most of your energy inward, cultivating a rich inner life (introversion). Finally, MBTI helps you decide whether your attitude toward the external world is marked by a desire to be organized with lots of closure and certainty or a desire to be open-ended with lots of room for discussion and uncertainty.

All of this is intended to be useful in practical ways. You can use MBTI to understand how you behave in conflict, how you communicate with others, how you manage change, how your preferences affect your marriage/partnership, and more.

Again, you can take the assessment by yourself and come in for a 1.5-hour session with me to interpret it, or you could come in as a couple for a 2-hour session. I’m also available to work with larger groups such as your work team. Think about it, and stay tuned for more information about this useful tool.

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(Warning: what follows is a somewhat wonky discussion of MBTI. For more on the MBTI, click here.)

I’m doing some light blogging during a week of training for certification as a MBTI practitioner, and I’ll have a lot more to say (and do) when this is over and I can actually use the instrument with clients. But for those who are interested in personality type and how it operates in their lives and relationships, I’ll share a few of the things I’m learning along the way.

Have you ever heard someone say, “Oh, he’s a P off the scale, so no wonder he’s so disorganized!” or “Yeah, well she’s a huge J, so of course she has to control everything!” Comments like that are problematic for two reasons.

I knew the first reason before I took this training: one’s preference for a certain attitude (perceiving vs. judging, or extraversion vs. introversion) or function (sensing vs. intuition, or thinking vs. feeling) does not explain why someone might be disorganized or controlling. There are lots of organized P’s and flexible J’s walking around in the world!

But there’s another problem with using type in this way: according to type theory, if you prefer J, you prefer J. You can’t have an “off-the-scale” J preference. If you take the instrument (and note that it’s an instrument, not a test!) and it reveals a “slight” preference for “J”, that only means that the consistency of your “J” responses on the instrument was in the “slight” range. You have just as much of a preference for “J” as someone whose responses were fully consistent with a preference for “J,” which is the “very clear” range. In fact, if your reported type indicated a “slight” preference for “J,” you’re more like a “very clear” “J” than a “slight” “P”! It’s not about the amount or level of “J” you “have” in your personality. It’s about the clarity of your preference in the reported type, that is, the type that was reported back to you after you took the instrument.

Having said all that, you may get your instrument back and think, no, I really don’t think I prefer “J.” I think I am a perceiving type, and the instrument was not accurate. That’s just fine! You get to decide what your preferences are and verify your “best-fit” type. But if you conclude that you have a preference for one opposite over another—as in the above example, “J” over “P,” then it doesn’t matter how clear your preference appeared on the instrument: you are, through and through, someone who prefers a “judging” attitude.

More soon, for those who are still reading this!

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It was four Labor Days ago, in early September 2007, when I opened this counseling practice and began seeing clients as a private practitioner. Each year has been both challenging and rewarding…and more successful, in various ways. I have truly enjoyed specializing in relationship counseling, both for individuals and couples.

For the nine years I worked as a therapist before opening my own business, I worked with hundreds of clients on a host of different issues, and since then it’s been great to focus my work on the relationships in people’s lives—not just their romantic/spouse/partner relationships, but their friendships, family relationships, and even co-worker relationships—and how we all can learn so much about ourselves when we take a close look at the many ways (for good and ill) that we relate to others.

In the coming year, I am planning a few changes to develop my practice and expand its scope. I’m working this month toward certification as a Myers-Briggs Typology Indicator practitioner, which means I’ll be working with individuals, couples, and groups on their personality types, using the MBTI as a lens that reveals where we focus our energy, how we perceive information about the world, how we make decisions, and how we relate to the outer world. I’m very excited about this. Exploring my own type has been a great way to learn how I function, and also how I run into conflicts with others…and it’s also helped me understand how others are different, and how those differences are gifts and strengths that other people bring to the world, and to my own life.

I’ll also be setting up new ways to schedule appointments, plan your course of treatment, and reflect on how our time together was helpful for you. And I expect that after another four years, I may be in a new location! (But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.)

Happy Labor Day, and may this day be an opportunity for you to celebrate the contributions we make to the world through our labor, and to hold in our consciousness those who are unemployed and underemployed during these difficult times.

See you soon!

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Lots of people go to couples counseling (or seek counseling as individuals) because they want to decide if they should break up with their partner. “Should I stay or should I go?” goes the song. And lots of people sing that song.

Often enough, I counsel people to break up … in small ways. If you’re not ready to end the relationship, then it’s possible there’s still something worth saving in the relationship. It’s possible. But it may take a while for you to discern whether that’s true. In the meantime, why not ‘break up’ with portions of your relationship—the smaller pieces of your relationship that you don’t like, that aren’t consistent with your values, that just aren’t you?

Here are some examples.

If you’re not ready to break up in a complete way, try ‘breaking up’ with these things—

—’Break up’ with behaviors of yours that undermine your happiness in the relationship. For example, when your partner says something provocative, something that seems to be an invitation for another unproductive fight, ‘break up’ with your instinct to go on the defensive, and choose instead to say, “I don’t want to fight like this anymore.”

—’Break up’ with shyness—with your tendency to sweep things under the rug, or silently tolerate things that truly bother you. Choose instead to tell your partner, “I’m sorry, but I can’t put up with this anymore. I need the two of us to change how we handle this…”

—’Break up’ with patience—with your (understandable!) habit of putting up with interaction patterns and relationship dynamics that get you down. “I know you’re going through a hard time,” you might say, “but I need to insist that we talk about some of our problems…”

Breaking up is hard to do. (Yeah, that’s another pop song.) And sometimes it’s not what you want to do. There might be many things worth saving in your relationship. But to do so—to save what’s working—you might need to ‘break up’ with a few of the things that are broken.

What are some pieces of your relationship that you want to break up with?

UPDATE: A reader writes, “Your examples sound a lot alike. Are they really different?” Good question. Answer: yes and no. Some people have trouble in their relationships because they behave automatically, unthinkingly, when they’re upset (the first example). Others have trouble because they’re being what I called “shy” above, but could also be called basic fear or anxiety (#2). Still others are impatient and their issue is more in the area of anger than anxiety (#3). In all cases, people can find themselves in the same general place: unhappy with their relationship, and wondering if it’s worth it. And in all cases, there’s likely at least one part of their relationship that they can “break up with” rather than ending the whole thing.

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John Gottman, the UW researcher who is (deservedly) famous for his decades of research on what makes a happy couple, well, happy, likes to say that happy couples tend to have high standards. They have high expectations for their level of satisfaction, and high expectations of one another.

But often people assume that it’s a bad thing to expect “too much” from your partner. But the research (and Gottman is a thorough, painstaking researcher!) disagrees. “I don’t know,” you might be thinking. “I’m probably too impatient, to idealistic. I should just be more accepting.” That sounds…kind, I suppose. You’re lowering your expectations because you don’t want to be “high maintenance,” or intolerant of another person’s flaws. To a certain extent, that kind of humility can serve you well. There’s certainly a place in any happy relationship for tolerance, discretion, and patience!

But… don’t take that too far. Don’t sell yourself short. And here’s a metaphor I came up with to explain what I mean. Whenever I go to San Francisco I try to make it to the Top of the Mark on Nob Hill for a cocktail. It’s the swanky bar on the top of the Mark Hopkins Hotel. (Usually I can afford only one cocktail!) The views are breathtaking, the room is light and elegant—it’s a fun San Francisco experience. And it’s my metaphor. Here’s my question: in your relationship, are you at the Top of the Mark? Or are you settling for the sleepy little bar on the main floor with no views?*

A ‘Top of the Mark’ relationship looks something like this (for me, I should say—your own definition might be different!): in my vision of a ‘Top of the Mark’ relationship, you’re with someone who builds trust with you over time, and you’re doing the same thing. You’re with someone who cares about your dreams. You’re with someone who delights you, attracts you, even ravishes you. You’re with someone who sometimes inspires ecstatic love that feels almost dizzying. You’re also with someone who’s a great friend, an ordinary partner, a comfortable old shoe. You can be ‘family’ with this person. The two of you are cultivating something beautiful, and something serene. You laugh a lot. You laugh at yourselves a lot.

And here’s the snag, the thing you and I could work on in counseling: to have a ‘Top of the Mark’ relationship, you have to be okay with your right to want one. You have to be okay with the idea that it is not unreasonable to expect this. And to do that, you have to see yourself as ‘Top of the Mark’ material. This can be hard because you may not have thought of yourself in such a healthy way, or you may have learned that when you have high standards, the number of people interested in dating you dramatically drops. And you may have failed to see that the biggest reason for that drop was probably that non-Top people sensed you were too good for them and pulled out of the race! But if you’re ‘Top of the Mark’ material, then being on your own is preferable to being with someone who doesn’t meet you at the highest level.

So… do you want to go to the Top? If you do, there are no guarantees that you’ll find a lot of people up there. Lots of people are settling for less, both in their relationships and in what they expect from themselves. And having high standards can be scary: it forces your partner to step up (or step out), and it requires you yourself to be a high-quality partner!

But it is one hell of a view.

—–
To be honest I don’t know if there’s actually a little bar on the main floor of the Mark Hopkins. I’m just taking a little metaphorical license here…

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Happy August 17, which is (of course) Robert DeNiro’s birthday! (And … mine.) It’s my 41st this year, and I feel … fine. I’m doing all the usual “you’re-as-young-as-you-feel” stuff, and dinner out this evening will be fun. But I’m also reflecting on my work, my relationships, my future… and the Work I’m doing (capital W) right now.

Not long ago, as a client got up to leave at the end of the session, I said, “You know, this is the work of your life.” I’ve actually said this to several clients. People often go to counseling because they have a specific problem—their relationship is in trouble; they feel depressed; they have problems with anxiety; they don’t know what to do about their parents, or their kids. But I say that the deeper reason they come to counseling is to do the work of their lives.

Your relationship is in trouble? It’s a good bet that one reason for that is a missing piece in your own development: you’re still having trouble telling the truth when the truth hurts; or you’re still afraid to ask for what you really want because you think the other person will reject you; or you’re replicating patterns of interaction you learned from your first family, patterns that can sometimes be useful but often enough get you into trouble. For example, maybe you deal with conflict or stress by “shutting down,” and when you do that, your partner gets upset and pulls you into a fight. This is the work of your life. It’s something that, if you worked on it, could be a major step forward for you, something you remember at the end of your life as something new and significant and courageous that you finally learned how to do. “I learned how to stand up for myself,” you might say later on. That’s the work of your life.

So when you think about coming to counseling, by all means think about the immediate problem that’s upsetting you. We need to attend to that. But allow yourself to reflect a little more deeply. What is the Work of your life?

It’s an excellent birthday question!

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This is a simple concept I learned from a therapist long ago – twenty years ago, actually. Like lots of simple concepts, it’s something that makes a lot of sense, something we all know, and…something we easily forget.

It goes like this: let your friend be your friend. Let your spouse be your spouse. Let your mother be your mother.

And here’s what it means: we often get into trouble when our expectations of another person don’t line up with their role in our lives. It’s not wrong to have high expectations–in fact, John Gottman says that couples are happier when they have high standards for their relationship and for one another. This isn’t about high vs. low expectations. It’s about lining up expectations with the people in your life.

For example, you may have a friend who, like any good friend, has been there during your rough times. That’s what friends are for, as the pop song says. But are you expecting more from your friend than she can reasonably offer in her role? Are you expecting her to be your therapist, or your parent, or your rescuer? It’s one thing for you to expect her to be supportive, and quite another for you to expect her to be your savior.

And roles shift over time. Your mother needs to have a different relationship with you once you’re an adult and she’s an older adult. “Let your mother be your mother” means something quite different now than it did when you were a kid. It’s no longer appropriate for you to expect her to be perfect (something that’s only natural for small children to want in their parents), or “there for you” in quite the same way. Your roles are shifting, and though it’s fine to expect your mother to be a helpful person in your life, your roles are actually trading places–which means her expectations of you to “be there” will eventually overtake your expectations of her.

Sometimes it helps to realize that the conflict we’re having with someone, or the heartbreak we may feel when someone doesn’t meet our expectations, is happening because we’re just not letting our friend be our friend, our sister be our sister, our co-worker be our co-worker…

Again, it’s a simple concept. But simple concepts often elude us!

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I don’t know if this is a good idea, but I’d like to wade into this discussion. It’s a short blog post by Dan Savage, with links to previous threads he’s having with The Dish, the Times‘s Ross Douthat, and others.

Here’s my take.

First, I mostly agree with Savage’s advice to this guy (“Do what you need to do to stay sane”) even though I would qualify that advice in a couple of ways. And I say this as someone who is in a long-term monogamous relationship and (as a couples counselor) appreciates the many benefits of sexual exclusivity between two people. I also work with non-monogamous and polyamorous clients, and can see the advantages to those arrangements too. But I admit that monogamy has always enjoyed a privileged place in my beliefs and assumptions.

Here’s what I would tell this guy. First, you are being harmed by this arrangement with your wife. Your needs are valid, and these many years of sexual dysfunction in your marriage have taken their toll on you. Let’s honor that, and honor it deeply. Second, your need—and your simple desire—for a healthy, fun, ecstatic sex life is also valid. It is a basic human need. It is not a sign that you’re shallow, and your vigilant adherence to the vow you took with your wife proves that you are not—you are not!—shallow. And finally, third, let’s talk about that vow. Did you really promise your wife that you would endure unending sexual unhappiness? If you’re like a lot of monogamous married couples, you promised something along the lines of “richer and poorer, sickness and health…” And the assumption everyone had on your wedding day was, well, that that’s that. But the bad news for your wife is that if “that’s that,” than that’s not healthy, it’s harming you, and you being harmed with no way out is unethical. Even immoral. So here’s what I think you should think about doing:

First, tell your wife that despite the frustrations and failures you’ve suffered in the past, you need to bring up the sex topic again. Tell her that you are not interested in simply complaining about your sex life, and that you are fully aware—and sympathetic—of her physical situation. But you also must express your legitimate needs and desires. You’re a man; you’re a sexual being. You love her—and you’re on record living that love for thousands of days despite all the troubles you two have had—and you have a legitimate need to talk about sex problems without being accused of not loving her. (Bringing this up is quite the opposite: it is another sign of your love for her!)

Second, tell your wife that you insist on doing this in a careful, planned way. If counseling has failed in the past, you may not want to try that again. (Or you could, but if so, tell the therapist that you failed in the past and are quite afraid you’ll once again be wasting your time and money.) Alternatively, John Gottman has well-researched ways for couples to talk about difficult problems like this. Order his “repair kit,” or better yet delve more deeply into his materials for couples. You’re not asking your wife to instantly transform herself into your ideal sexual partner. You’re not telling your wife that you don’t respect her dilemma. You are only saying that you also have a valid dilemma, and it needs to be addressed for the sake of both of you.

Finally, if you carefully go through this process and it leads to continued frustration (or worse, disaster), you can tell yourself that you did everything you could. You can then decide whether to end the marriage, or whether to “do whatever you need to do to stay sane.”

One last note: Dan Savage likes to say that monogamy is not natural. It’s a big theme of his. I both agree and disagree. I agree that monogamy is a social, cultural construct. It is not natural the way, say, a redwood tree is natural. It’s something humans created in their social, cultural contexts. But I do think that a desire to be with one person is, like all desires, natural. Not everyone feels that desire, and not everyone who feels it feels it strongly. But it is as natural as any other desire we have in our complicated, sentient lives.

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