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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It’s common for people to say they’re going to therapy to “get an objective perspective,” or “have someone objective look at this and tell us what we should do.” So I suppose it’s unfortunate that therapists—all 100% of them, including me—are human beings. Human beings can’t be objective.

They can’t be objective because, well, they’re subjects, not objects.

Imagine the most objective-appearing human you know of, or have heard of…someone like a scientific researcher, or an accountant wearing a green-shade hat. I spoke to an accountant just this past week who joked, “In my line of work, creativity is discouraged!” You may think that these sensible folks are objective. But they’re not.

They all have distinct temperaments, inclinations, preferences, points of view, and social locations (‘social location’ includes things like sex, cultural background, ethnic background, personal experiences, the generation in which one was born, sexual orientation, birth order, and so on). An accountant is not supposed to be creative, and yet isn’t she creative, in lots of ways? She develops relationships of trust with her clients, runs a complicated business, searches for (hopefully legal) ways to help her clients save on taxes… She is not an android.

And therapists? Well we’re even more subjective than that. We can’t decide if our field is a science or an art (and I personally wonder if science vs. art is even a valid dichotomy), and as much as we might want to give you an “objective” perspective, we can’t just turn off our cultural background, ethnic background, and all the rest. We are not objective. So…what good are we? Great question.

As a subjective therapist with my own biases, preferences, experiences, and social location, I can offer you this:

1. I continually work to be conscious of my subjective perspective. If I react to your story in a certain way because (just to take one example) I grew up in the Midwest, I’ve been trained to notice that reaction, to be conscious of it, and to work with it. Maybe my reaction is benign, maybe not. Maybe it helps me understand you—maybe you’re from the Midwest too!—or maybe it doesn’t. My consciousness about my subjectivity allows me to work with it, to play with it, and even to change it.

2. Because I have my own social location, I am better able to respect and honor yours. I’m not “Commander Data,” so I can deeply respect your own biases, preferences, etc. You’re human; I’m human. If you say something that is radically different than something I would say, I don’t have to be reactive or resistant to it. And if you’re a couple, I can respect all three subjective realities that exist in the room—mine, and the two of yours.

3. My subjective perspective is subjective, but it is also potentially more useful to you than the subjective perspectives of your friends, colleagues, partner, family members, and acquaintances. I’m not an objective robot, but my subjective reality has been shaped by 13 years of work as a therapist, my own work as a therapy client, and years of training and education. So…I’m biased, but in a way that can potentially help you.

4. I try to cultivate humility about all of these things. Because I know I’m not objective, I tread carefully when I sense that my way of seeing things is fundamentally different than another person’s. Or if I don’t tread carefully—if I screw up and get reactive and unconscious—I am able to challenge myself and remember that I am just one human among many. I know how to get over myself.

I encourage you to hire a therapist to get…well, to get a subjective perspective!

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(I can’t get Frank Sinatra’s “New York, New York” out of my head.) What good news! New York became the sixth state to legalize marriage for all persons, no matter their sex. Like California, New York is a major state, a center of USA culture, a very visible place. I expect now that I may live to see marriage rights be given to everyone in all but a very few states.

I can find no better take on this than the reflections of Andrew Sullivan, one of the earliest (if not the earliest) advocates for marriage rights. This is, as he says, a “BFD.” States granting full marriage equality are simply getting out of the way and allowing any two people to choose their relationship, to choose their kin. It is a triumph of freedom. The legislators who voted for it are patriots.

But my main reaction is more personal. I am married—at least in the eyes of God and our families and friends. We were “married” (damn those quotation marks!) in 2003. We became “registered domestic partners” (really, can’t we just say spouses?) in 2007. If Washington becomes the next state to get out of the way of its free citizens, will my partner and I get married? I don’t know. I’ll have to discuss it with him. But my first answer—just speaking for myself—is no, with an asterisk. No, we won’t be getting married, because we’re already married. We had a delightful liturgy of blessing followed by a splendid bash at Salty’s overlooking the skyline as it dazzled in the evening sun. Why would we do that again?

But here’s the asterisk: again, speaking only for myself, I would find it odd not to get a marriage license if it were available. And that’s a cause for celebration, no question. But the whole thing would have to be done with the clear acknowledgement that we are celebrating Washington state’s transformation, not our own. We’d be raising our glasses to a guest who arrived quite late to the party, offering them a warm welcome and discreetly not mentioning their rudeness.

So yes, New York has a lot to be proud of today. Most of its citizens have been ready for this for quite a long time now, and it’s great that their state caught up with them. So hand the state of New York a glass of champagne, suppress the desire to say “Took you long enough!” and propose a toast to the Empire State.

As Frank’s song goes, If marriage equality can make it here, it can make it anywhere!

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In the summer of 1998, with some trepidation—but probably not enough, given the challenges that lay ahead!—I saw my first client as a therapist. I was working in the behavioral health division of Good Samaritan in Puyallup. As you can see below, I looked somewhat younger.

In the early days, I did lots of child and family therapy. I worked with kids diagnosed with ADHD, did home visits for kids with serious behavioral problems, and for many years had a caseload of folks on Medicaid in agency settings where I did school-based therapy. Then I moved to Group Health in 2004 to work mostly with adult individuals on depression, anxiety, and other issues. I still saw several kids and families during my time there. But I couldn’t shake the itch I felt to try my own hand as a small-business owner. I wanted to run the whole operation, and design a way of being a psychotherapist that better expressed who I am and what I want to do. And I wanted to shift my emphasis to relationships—working with both individuals and couples on how their relationships are shaping who they are, how they can change, and what might be getting in their way.

So in the fall of 2007 I took the plunge and opened this practice. That same month, after I had left Group Health, invested an unsettling amount of money in my new business, and moved into my new office, I came down with appendicitis and was grounded for a month! I remember going to my therapist (I believe I’m better at what I do when I regularly sit in the client’s chair myself) and she laughed and laughed (in a really good way). “Appendicitis!” she said. “The universe wants to know if you’re really serious about this, if you really want this!”

Well, I did, and I do. I’m closing in on four years now as a private practitioner, and it’s been going well. I’ve got plans for some updates and changes to how I do things, so stay tuned for some new items on my website and more convenient ways to schedule and keep your appointments. But the ship is sailing along!

Thanks to all of my clients who have entrusted me to join them in some of the hardest work of their lives. You teach me a lot, and I hope I am returning the favor!

Finally, a snapshot of my ID badge from Good Sam (click photo to enlarge). Now be nice!

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As I mentioned in the previous post, I spent three days this past week attending a human-interaction-skills lab, a training program that offers participants the opportunity to experiment with new behaviors in a group setting, and get feedback about the impact of those behaviors. The goals are to increase your awareness of the way you behave with others, improve your relationship skills, and, in general, stretch and grow in the area of human interaction.

And this was my goal: to 1) not use charm to get what I want; and 2) tell the truth. It sounds immodest, but I can be very charming! I have a natural friendliness, and a desire to be liked by others. I’m an extravert, and I enjoy the company of other people. If you’re my friend, or my client, or my sibling, I will rely on my natural humor and smiles and generally buoyant personality to connect with you. It’s not fake. I truly am a nice, sweet guy! But there are times when that sweetness can get in the way of my personal growth. Specifically, there are times when I might use a joke to diffuse healthy tension, or rely on my own personal warmth to avoid an important confrontation that I need to have with someone who is important to me.

So…for this training, I followed a few basic rules. If I didn’t think a joke was funny, I wouldn’t laugh at it. Even if I thought it was funny, but also thought that all the laughter was getting in the way of the intensity I needed to learn something new, I would not only resist laughing, but I wouldn’t even smile. I did nothing untruthful: I was not negative or hostile in a fake or artificial way. I just peeled back the warmer side of my personality so that I could be more direct—and more intense!—with my group members.

Well. This certainly got a reaction. The content of our group process is confidential, but I think it’s okay to say that I was not a very popular participant in the group. It was interesting to see how my usual good humor and sweet personality really softens the experience I have with people, and how, when I strip that away, I put myself in hot water. This was difficult, but I really, really wanted to learn from this! A growing edge for me is ‘speaking truth to power,’ to borrow a common phrase. It can be hard to confront both myself and others with the painful truth of my honest reaction, my challenging opinion, my hard-to-hear concern.

For example, when I felt the group was getting off track, I would say something like, “I feel frustrated, because right now my experience of the group is that we are avoiding our task and just taking care of each other. I wish we could get back to the real reason why we’re here.” That was hard for me to say! I felt a ton of social pressure to just go along, be sweet, suppress my frustration.

Why did I do this? Well, one good reason is that I expect that my clients will tolerate pain for growth, so I can’t dodge that same pain myself. I need to practice what I preach. And, as odd as it sounds, I felt true pleasure in stretching like this. On the final day, after our group processes were finished, I relaxed and let my fellow participants see my full personality. I joked and smiled again, and thanked them for working with me on my goals. But I felt a lovely feeling of satisfaction that I had really taken this training seriously, and pushed myself to make the most of this laboratory learning.

Now that it’s over, I’m glad it’s over! But I move forward with more insight about how I can continue to stretch myself, to challenge myself, in my truthful interactions with others.

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I’m taking a three-day course as part of my continuing education, and this time the topic is human interactions and interpersonal awareness/skills training. In English, it’s a course on raising your consciousness about how others perceive you, and experimenting with new behaviors (such as being more assertive) in the relatively safe context of a training “lab.” It’s great if you want to be a better participant in staff meetings, a more effective work colleague, or generally more functional and self-aware in all the relationships of your life.

But it’s not therapy. The leader took great pains to point that out to us. For one thing, in the group work we’re doing, we avoid “why” questions: “Why do you think you fidget when someone is frowning and looking away from you?” is an example of a “why” question. In this lab, you notice your fidgeting and experiment with some new behavior, such as confronting yourself and the other person with your discomfort, or your irritation, or your anxiety about the fact that they frowned and looked away from you. “I feel anxious,” you say, “because I saw you frown and look away, and I thought it meant you were angry.” This is new behavior: rather than fidgeting, you’re being in the room in a more active way.

But wait. Why isn’t that therapy? Well, the trainers tell us, it’s more ‘here-and-now’ than therapy. It’s not an exploration of your past, or a search for deep insight. It’s a raw, immediate, high-intensity way to learn and grow in a here-and-now situation that forces you to look at your right-this-second feelings and behaviors, and do something different with them.

But wait. Why isn’t that therapy? As I drove home last evening, I thought that it actually sounds a lot like therapy to me. There are many parallels. Nobody in the room is my therapist, and even though I am a therapist myself, nobody in the room is my client. But there we were, doing many of the things I invite clients to do. We were noticing our current, in-the-room-right-now “stuff,” and with that consciousness taking steps to change and grow in our interpersonal awareness and skills.

My clients do that all the time in therapy sessions!

I think one of the fears participants have is that they’re going to be analyzed by a beard-scratching Viennese biologist, the typical Freudian therapist stereotype, and maybe their training colleagues are going to find out something embarrassing about them. And maybe one of the fears of the trainers is that they will be seen as leading a “touchy-feely” or “caring-and-sharing” event rather than a robust laboratory for human awareness and development. So when everyone says, “This is not therapy,” maybe—just maybe, and I haven’t asked them—they’re saying, “This is not [insert negative belief about therapy here].”

Well, it’s not therapy. But it can be therapeutic, and therapy can look a lot like a human-interaction lab. And in my book, that’s not a bad thing. In the end, we’re all working on our own development, our own self-improvement, our own next step as human beings.

So I hope, today, we can relax a little more. Sigmund is not in the corner, scratching his beard. (But if he were, he might have something interesting to say!)

UPDATE: I should also say that the trainers are absolutely right to say it’s not therapy, because they need to remind participants that they are not engaging in a therapeutic contract and should not expect a certain therapeutic outcome. It is a training, not a group-therapy format, and participants need to understand that fully, right from the start. It’s just that in our effort to tell ourselves how different this is from therapy, I started noticing all the similarities!

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Okay. First just let me say, *sigh.*

One more. *sigh*

Okay, just one more. *SIGH*

Now can I try to put a positive spin on this?

It’s been a really rough winter in Seattle. And I know that sounds whiny, particularly if you’re one of my relatives from Minnesota. Seattle Whiner: “It barely made it above 40 for like, what, six months in a row?!” Minnesota Whiner: “Ha! 40 what? Degrees? You actually had degrees above zero??!”

But it has been rough. It’s been cold, and cloudy, and rainy. We have sun breaks (like today!), but they are short-lived. It’s May 11, and the rhododendrons are barely budding. I’m not an expert, but I think they’d be almost over—or at least in full flower—by now. (Minnesotans are once again snorting and rolling their eyes…) I can now say it’s been the hardest winter, weather-wise, since I moved here in 1997.

And then there’s today. To illustrate what happened to me today, I give you my Facebook post from this morning’s coffee time (click on the image if it appears too small):

But I want to do more on sunny mornings like this than just sing a great song and appreciate the break. (Though that’s a good thing to do. I recommend it.) I want to figure out what all this weather has done to me, or with me, over the past few months. I want to do some meaning-making, people!

And here’s what I’ve come up with: Seattle’s crappy weather has gotten me in touch with the restlessness and uncertainty I’m feeling in several areas of my life. It’s gotten me thinking about, oh, everything: what I’m eating, how (and whether) I’m exercising, what’s going on with my money, how my marriage is going, how my practice is doing, what my friendships and other relationships are bringing up for me, what I envision for 2012 and beyond…and so on. (Maybe it sounds a little self-focused, but did I mention the weather’s been cruddy in Seattle?!)

In short, the weather has made it almost impossible for me to be complacent. In a typical year, the sun pops out plenty of times, especially after the grueling month of February. And so I sing a bar of “Sesame Street” and go about my day. But this year, when I’m not joining my fellow Seattleites in sun dances, I’m forced to confront the fact that life isn’t always a song about muppets. Sometimes you have to take stock, look at things critically, ask the crucial “wonderment” questions of your life. Questions like… I wonder what kind of retirement funds I want tucked away by 2015. I wonder whether my daily work is really lighting my fire, and if so, whether I’m celebrating that enough…and if not, why that might be. I wonder…

But for now, I’m taking in the blue sky, so these questions can wait for the next gray and gloomy weather front.

It should be along in a few minutes.

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This weekend I’m working as a trainer for not-for-profit leaders studying organization development, and yesterday we studied the Myers-Briggs Typology Indicator. As part of our work on the topic, we all took the assessment ourselves. It measures four things: how we energize (or, how we recharge), how we receive and work with information, how we make decisions, and how we live.

If you’re not familiar with the MBTI, you’ll probably recognize pieces of it, such as the introvert/extravert dichotomy. If not, you should know it’s a soundly researched, effective tool that helps you understand yourself and your personality preferences, and apply that understanding in many practical ways. And it can even be a lot of fun!

But I struggled yesterday. The assessment came back and said (based on my own answers) that I am an ENTJ—extravert (yep) intuitive (oh yeah) thinking (WTF?!) judging (check). That means I recharge my batteries—I energize—by putting energy outward, by extraverting it; I receive information as an intuitive, which means I search for meaning, play with metaphors, and love to dream up creative solutions; I make decisions as a thinking type, relying more on logic and high principles to reach conclusions about things (as opposed to feelings and value systems); and finally, I live as a judging type, not a perceiving type, which means not that I’m judgmental, but rather that I prefer closure, being organized, following clear checklists, etc.

But wait! I really think I’m an F! That is, I have a lot of tension and uncertainty on that third measurement—thinking vs. feeling. I often make decisions based on my feelings, and my values. I’m often concerned about how everyone else in the room is doing, whether they’re being affirmed and supported. I connect with clients on a feeling level when we’re deciding where we’re going to go, whether it’s a choice about what to do with our session or where they’re headed in their work around a major decision in their life. But…I am also a thinking type. I frame things in a very T way: I’m an organized, logical writer, even when I’m writing creatively, and I come across to some of my colleagues as a T. (While the other half of my colleagues just stand there and say, dude, you’re totally an F. Come on!)

And this is where the MBTI instrument can help. When you find yourself in the middle on one of the measurements, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re in happy balance. It could easily mean that you’re conflicted, or that you still have a lot of development work to do around that dimension of your personality preference. When I read the ENFJ descriptions, I recognize myself…a lot. And that includes the part that describes how an ENFJ might behave if his feeling function hasn’t been fully nurtured or cultivated.

So…it was up to me to make the call. And here it is: I’m an ENFJ, world. Deal with it! And I know just where I need to go next in my self-development.

Update: this is also a good example of how the MBTI tells us not who we are, but what we prefer. We can do all of the functions it measures. Instead of saying “I’m an F,” it’s more accurate to say, “I slightly prefer F.” So I won’t duck my responsibility to do things I don’t prefer by saying, “Well, I’m an ENFJ, so I don’t do that!” As an ENFJ, I may not prefer to do it, but I certainly can put energy into my inner life (introvert), focus on details (sensing), let go and be spontaneous (perceiving), and, as I discussed above, develop both my feeling and thinking functions as I move in the world.

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Anybody interested in some theory? (It’s okay to say no!) But if you’re in the mood, read on.

I think there’s one thing I can confidently say all of my clients are struggling with—because it’s something all humans struggle with: moving between the polarities of ‘individuation’ and ‘participation.’* That sounds dull, I suppose. But here’s what I mean:

Individuation is your natural instinct to be an individual, to have a unique self. It’s a normal and healthy dimension of your humanity. Even if you are happily married for decades, you want individuation! You want to be able to say no—or creatively say yes—and you want to be able to know that you would be okay if the other person fell apart, or left you, or died. You might care for them and worry about them, grieve their loss, or be angry with them, but you would be able to take care of yourself, both literally and psychologically. If you’re fighting with your partner, or having sex with your partner, or going on vacation with your partner—in short, if you’re doing anything in your relationship—your ability to individuate is essential.

Participation is your natural instinct to be a part of a group, to gain identity by participating in a social dynamic. I am me (individuation) but I am also us. It’s been said that if the planet were destroyed and only one human being survived, she would still be a member of the species homo sapiens, but she would no longer be a human being, because there would be no social referent that would tell her (and others) who she is. To be human is to be social, to be one of many. It is frightening, though, to participate with others in this way. The main fear is (naturally) the loss of self. If I marry you, will I remain individuated? Will I remain me? But to be in a happy partnership or relationship, I have to take that leap.

Ultimately, as the drawing says above, flexibility is the thing. If I get stuck in individuation mode, then I’m the stereotypical “commitment-phobe” you see in sitcoms. I’m Chandler Bing. If I get stuck in participation mode, I am emotionally fused with the other and I lose myself. Sound familiar? And if I’m stuck someplace in the middle—not moving toward either polarity, and more importantly, just not moving—then I’m at best confused and at worst pretty depressed. I can’t relate to others, and I can’t be in a healthy relationship with myself.

Our work together can help you be more flexible in these natural, human functions.

*It was Paul Tillich who called these polarities “individuation” and “participation.” They’ve been called other things, such as “individuality” vs. “emotional connection” (David Schnarch), but I prefer Tillich’s terms.

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Happy spring, everyone! And for those of you who are still well aware that it’s unseasonably cold in Seattle, and windy today, and look, the clouds are back after a sunny morning, so blurg… well, I have a suggestion: how about painting a bright accent wall in your favorite room?

I know, it’s silly. I’m a therapist, right? I’m supposed to help you gain insight about your late-winter blues and help you take concrete steps toward happiness. Okay…I’m happy to do that. But I also think that sometimes a small project like the one I did yesterday is just the kind of thing we need to see the world differently.

I had been looking at my office with a critical eye for several weeks, and I knew that rearranging the furniture was going to happen—I usually turn everything around every year or so, just to give myself a new physical perspective, a new way to occupy a room where I spend so much time. But this time, it just wasn’t enough. I realized that I had never done anything about the industrial white walls of my office, other than hang a few pretty pictures. I needed some paint therapy.

This was my first time, so it didn’t go entirely as planned, but it was less difficult than I had imagined. I polled a few clients as we were walking out of the office at the end of their sessions: so, take a quick look at that wall. What color should it be? The suggestions were all over the map: “dining-room red,” “gold/yellow/earthy,” “lush meadow green,” “sky blue.” Red seemed too dark and angry for a therapy office, and yellow seemed too, I don’t know, chipper, I guess. And blue seemed too cold. So green it was, and I settled on “Herbal Green,” as you can see below. The office feels so much better—more color, of course, but also more energy, more liveliness. I’m really ready for the warm green months of the year!

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