Intimacy and Intensity - Not the Same

Relationships might be very intense, but that doesn’t make them healthy. You can find yourself in an interaction that involves powerful jealousy, huge fights and amazing make-up sex. Nothing may make you feel as horrible or as terrific. You can find yourself flipped between two extremes. When it’s good, nothing is better. When it’s bad, it’s really, really bad.

Some relationships can be like a drug.

You might find yourself saying and doing crazy things in this relationship. You may have a hard time imagining life without this particular insanity, but that doesn’t make it love.

The love in fables and stories can be pretty weird, if you’re trying to live a functional, productive life. It can be hell on the children, if kids are involved. All relationships involve conflict—and hopefully working through that conflict to find a healthy resolution—but not all relationships involve this kind of turmoil.

Being intense, doesn’t necessarily mean it’s good.

Relationships can seem to go from zero to eighty in a matter of minutes. You might have felt an amazing, instantaneous connection. In this kind of interaction, you may feel this person knows you better than anyone ever has. You can feel known, without being known, though. Immediate intimacy is an oxymoron. Intimacy can't be immediate, it takes development.

The person you just met might not know the name of your fourth grade teacher, where you went on your very first date or who you voted for in the last presidential election. He doesn't really know much about you, but you might still have the emotion of connection, even when there is little actual connection.

Love involves knowledge. This doesn't mean a knowledge of facts. After all, a dossier of facts doesn't convey knowledge of a person, but real intimacy requires you to know the other person and them you, before you can get to the place where you actually love one another. While it is very true that you might have friends and acquaintances, who know the data of your life and who you wouldn’t even consider dating. But real, lasting, functional love involves knowing the loved one. You can have knowledge of the other without love, but you can’t really have love without knowledge.

You can’t get around this.

If love on the grand scale involves fostering the love one to be the best he or she can be, some actual understanding of the person is required. This may not be the stuff of books and movies, but this is how the real life nuts-and-bolts of relationship works.

This doesn’t mean that functional relationships are boring. They aren’t. Real relationships involve working through conflict. That process has fire-works of it’s own. You may argue until you’re both blue in the face.

There will probably be times you won’t feel loved. Workable, fulfilling relationships, though, help you to become a better person. In order to be in the relationship, you have to look at yourself seriously and come to terms with the changes you need to make.

Intensity can feel both magical and scary. Be careful that your particular intensity is helping you be the best you.

Arguing Over Stupid Stuff

Sometimes you argue with your mate about important, life-changing things, but sometimes it seems like you fight about nothing! Lots of couples can’t say exactly what they fight about. They get into big arguments and bicker, but when asked what they argue about, they can’t say. Many will claim they mostly argue about stupid things.

Arguments that end in harsh words and hurt feelings don’t have to be about important things. Sometimes you’re just trying to get a point across, you make a comment or you’d simply like to talk about something that’s bothering you. It may not start off as a fight, but things just blow up.

Don’t feel bad about arguments that start out silly. The fight is important because your mate’s important to you, if not you probably wouldn’t even bother to fight. Communication is a big part of any relationship, though. You need to learn to talk to each other. If you’re having small things turn into big fights, maybe the problem isn’t with the topic, but with the way to talk and listen to one another. It may be a process thing, even more than a situational thing.

If you think your mate dismisses you or doesn’t listen to your concerns, you’re less likely to listen to whatever he has to say. Whenever you guys are fighting, you need to think about how you feel in that moment. Other than angry, do you feel hurt? Disregarded? Does it seem like your mate thinks you’re stupid or don’t know what you’re talking about?

If so, it’s only natural that you’d bark back at him.

You may think he’s crazy when he says he doesn’t want you to go out with your friends or when he says he thinks that guy at work as a crush on you. Whether you agree with him isn’t the most important thing, though. Listen to his concerns—listen to his feelings. Emotion is the most important part of any argument. It can be the hardest part to get to. It’s not important what he thinks you feel, but what he feels.

You need to work on conveying to him your emotion, too. When he tells his sister about your bad dating decisions and the diseases you caught (or whatever else he tells his family members that you’d rather he not tell them), how you feel about this is most important.

Don’t talk to your mate about her being a bitch to you or acting like a princess. Talk about how you feel when she snaps at you or ignores your feelings.

You don’t get to expect him to always do what you want. Don’t think you're ignored just because he doesn’t do what you want him to do. He still gets to make his own choices, but you have a responsibility to talk about how you feel when he spends a half hour on the phone with his female co-worker at night. You need to talk about your emotions.

These emotions are at the bottom of “stupid” arguments that can sink a relationship. Talk about your feelings. Listen to her feelings. And don’t forget to confirm out loud the importance of the relationship to you.

Productive conversations start with putting your feelings on the table. It may seem silly, but it’s important.

Telling Your Kids Lies (You Want To Believe)

It’s not that you’re deliberately dishonest with your child. You want everything for him. You want him to be happy, to find just the right job, the right mate, and to be happy with the life he chooses.

You may still by lying. Truthfully, parenting lies can look so harmless.

There are the lies you’d like to make come true. You can be anything you want to be. If this were true, we’d all play major league baseball and have recording contracts. Being truthful about limitations can be difficult because you want to encourage the child. Don’t good parents tell their kids to go for it? Maybe he could do great things with a little push. (Think of Michael Phelps and his mother.)

It’s true that all significant endeavors take work and big effort, but not all kids will reach the top. Nor does reaching the top mean actual happiness.

Then, there are parenting lies you don’t realize are lies. Do really well in school and go to the best college(even if you rack up big loans in the process) and you’ll automatically get a good job. Then, you’ll never worry about money. This is the thinking behind the insanity behind Advanced Placement coursework in high school. Advanced Placement(AP) classes prepare students to take tests that can gain them college hours. If the student enjoys the subject, this can be a good thing, but this huge effort that goes into AP classes can also slant them toward an achievement-at-all-cost mentality. All it takes is a “poor” grade (anything less than stellar) in one class or a failure to earn a high enough grade one one AP test, and the kid’s already a miserable failure. Or feels like one.

This kind of pursuit doesn’t necessarily bring life success. Besides, worrying about money isn’t limited to people who didn’t finish high school (or those who graduated high school, but just went to community college).

Don’t tell your kid that attaining a specific goal—even one she says is most important to her—is the most important thing. It’s how she lives her life that matters most.
It’s more important to stress the process. · Go after what you want.· Pay attention to your actions in relationships.· Learn to put your heart into those things that are worthwhile to you.
These are the things that count in life. Don’t focus on what your kid can attain. The really important thing is who he becomes—the kind of person he is. Your values determines the direction of your life. This is true for your children, as well.

Help them learn values. Tell your children they can make mistakes, that they will make mistakes. This is one of the greatest gifts a parent can give a child. Life involves mistakes. The learning process includes poor choices, as well as, good choices. As a parent, you just hope the hardest lessons don’t alter their lives too significantly.

Hopefully, if the child doesn’t reach the pinnacle, he’s still had a darn good time in the pursuit. If he doesn’t get into the trendy college of the moment or earn a gold medal in his sport or make a million…he can still be a quality person who lives a deeply satisfying life.

That’s really what matters.

Hung Up Relationships

Relationships are hard. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. If theirs isn’t hard now (and it probably is—they’re just lying), it will be eventually.
If yours is tough sometimes, It’s not just you.

The hardest of all relationships is a sneaky kind that looks really easy, in the beginning. You may feel like you speak the same language. You might feel like soul mates. You probably feel more understood by him than you’ve ever felt before.

Beware. Relationships built on similar personalities are the hardest kind and, in this case, harder doesn’t necessarily build character or make you a better person. Individuals who are similar in outlook or personality might be initially drawn to one another because there seems to be less conflict. If you don’t worry about money, you might feel more comfortable with a woman who doesn’t worry about money, either.

You might, on the other hand, want a mate who is never in debt, because debt is to you a sign of a weak character. You may be drawn to a man who doesn’t take crazy risks. He not only comes home every night, he comes home at the same time, likes eating dinner at the same time and has the same routine every night before he goes to bed.

Same can seem safe and secure. If you like routine, you might choose someone who doesn't flirt with danger, someone who sees the world in the same way you do. Or you might want same in choosing someone who is as eager to live on the edge as you. Same can seem to be a kind of validation, but if a relationship doesn't challenge you to see different perspectives, it's not really good for you. At least, not when we're talking personalities.

Choosing a mate who shares your same personality tendencies might short-change you. Differences, while irritating sometimes, also bring you into having to balance yourself. If you live on the edge, you might need someone hanging onto your hand and dragging you back. If you hide in your closet, you need someone adventurous and open to new things.

All this makes for conflict…which feels bad. But conflict in relationships—when worked through and resolved—is what makes us grow. Individuals who marry mates who share the same perspective are choosing to hide in the security of same. Doing thismight seem reasonable and comfortable, but it's an attempt to avoid relationship conflict. While fighting with your mate isn’t fun, its functional. If you do it right, conflict can help you be a better person.

Relationships are like playing on the teeter totter. Both of you sitting on one side makes this a lot less fun. You need someone at the other end, balancing you out, pulling against you, making your life hell. Making you a better person.

Relationship Conflict That Works

Aside from the make-up sex, arguing with your mate really sucks. The sad part is that the fighting doesn’t usually get anywhere. Most people don’t know how to argue effectively. Conflict can work for you. You just need to know how to do it. Resolving conflict can empower a relationship. Just think about your favorite movie—the hero and heroine face a huge problem and, after a major battle, they win.

Conflict can make you feel strong, if you work your way through it. Try this…

Don’t Name-Call

You might think you have to call him names to get his friggin’ attention, but this is a really bad idea. It makes for a vicious fighting experience that wears away your affection for one another over time. Don’t call names. There are better ways to get your loved one to see that you’re seriously upset.

Listen to Your Mate

Listening is really hard—particularly when you don’t feel listened to yourself. Most people will say they’re listening, but the person they’re arguing with doesn’t feel heard. Important—Listening doesn’t mean you agree with everything she’s saying.

You still need to hear her.

Individuals tend to hear what they think the other person is saying and then they try to explain why they did (or didn’t do) whatever. Explaining doesn’t work if the other person doesn’t feel you’ve listened to him.

You need to listen—sit quietly and concentrate on what the other person is saying to you—even if you disagree. Don’t interrupt. Don’t explain. Take mental notes like you’re going to be tested on this information. You’re listening to her perspective, her view on the situation.

Tell Him How You Feel

When your significant other has said all he wants to say, it’s your turn. Not your turn to say what you think(not yet). Instead, you need to repeat back to him what you heard him say. “So, you felt ignored when I didn’t call you. It seemed like you weren’t all that important”—or whatever.

This may not have been at all what you meant.

Still, repeat it back to him so he knows you’ve heard him and what he’s feeling. Repeat back what you’ve heard him say. If you heard wrong, he’ll tell you. That’s okayGive it another go. Listen even harder, then tell him what you’ve heard.

After all this—after you’ve heard how she thinks things are and listened to her feelings—then you tell her how you see the situation. Don’t use blaming language. Start your sentences with “I feel….” Don’t tell her what you think she ought to do or how she ought to see it differently or why she’s so messed up.

Tell her how you feel.

By this point, the two of you are talking and caring about each other and communicating. Resolving problems gets a lot easier when you can hear each other. If you’ve not gotten to a point of being able to communicate about the issue, you’ve probably not been successful with the first few steps.

Try again. Arguing sucks, but working things out feels great.

Failure's Message

It could be that you’re just a screw-up, but that would mean that everyone who ever failed at anything is also a screw-up. History is littered with huge successes that failed miserably for a while before hitting it big. Everyone messes up. Don’t kid yourself, it’s not just you. The real challenge is in finding what the failure means. What it means about your function, your endeavor, your risk.

Don’t miss the message. Failure is telling you something important. There’s a vital message in your failure. It’s saying to you “…next time, try a little to the left….”

You may be headed down the wrong road, but even the right road has bumps, sometimes big bumps. It’s really important to look at your situation as objectively as possible. This can be difficult. The struggle to attain a personal goal can be very challenging. If you’ve been The Golden Child in your family, you might feel the pressured to always do well. This is a big strain since no one is perfect. As hard as it may be, give up any attempt to reach perfection.

You will fail. Everyone fails. Just make sure you see what the failure is telling you. You need to think of failure as a corrective tool. Something to learn from. There’s valuable information in the experience, even if the feeling is awful. If your working toward your goal leads to you falling short, you need to figure out why. Even if you give up the goal, you need to see the learning. Most individuals think that screwing up means you need to give up.

Wrong. You just need to do things differently.

The goal may be mistaken. Maybe it’s someone else’s goal for you to be a great pianist or earn a graduate degree. Perhaps you’re pursuing this goal because you think the attainment of it will make you feel better about yourself. You might be going after this goal because you’re trying to follow a successful parent (or trying not to follow a successful parent) or because, for whatever reason, you think you ought to seek this.

The path is probably long and difficult. You need to pursue goals for the right reasons—for you. Because you like the process (not the failure part) or because achieving the goal feels like part of who you are.

You might need to mull over why you’re going after this goal, but risking failure should never keep you from seeking.

The only way not to fail is to never try anything. That leads to a sad, sad life (which is really the ultimate failure). Failure results from trying and not reaching. No matter what ball you're trying to hit, you're going to miss it first. Failure is a fundamental part of success and it needs to be viewed as giving corrective information, not as a reflection of self-worth.

Go ahead. Chase a dream. Just make sure you use failure as a tool, not a judgment of you.

Breaking Up

Never say “if it’s this hard, it probably wasn’t meant to be” about your relationship. Don’t kid yourself. Relationships are hard. In fact, they’re probably one of the hardest things you’ll do in your life. Of course, relationships can be rewarding, fulfilling and a lot of fun, too. But they’re not always easy. If it seems like yours is easy, just wait.

Okay, so the arguing sucks.

You fight and it’s ugly. Maybe you’ve been fighting more and more. It may seem like you just get over one fight and your partner picks another fight. Maybe you’re breaking up, and even if you really don’t want to—you don’t want to do this anymore.

There are some things (that most people do) that you shouldn’t do. Don’t threaten to leave. Threatening is pointless. Maybe you’re just trying to show her how mad you really are. Maybe you’re seriously pissed, at the moment. Maybe you’re just tired. Saying you’re going to leave may seem like pulling out the big guns—just another war strategy.

Don’t do it. Don’t threaten to leave until you’re really ready to leave. Leaving should be reserved for when you’re done with the relationship. Finito. Through. Outta here.

Be done or don’t say it.

Don’t leave until you’re really through with the relationship, either. Don’t do that back-and-forth, on-again, off-again thing. It’s draining and exhausting and it doesn’t make anything better.

But even if you don’t, your partner may leave. If you’re faced with a separation you don’t want, be careful. How you handle this can either make or break any hopes you have for getting back together. There are specific things to do, though. First, go to therapy and listen. This may be hard. Talking to a stranger about your personal life is weird. Do it anyway.

Go by yourself, if your significant other isn’t interested. This is important. Go by yourself. When you’ve got a relationship break-up, it’s clichéd to offer to go to therapy. Kind of seems phony and desperate. She may think you just want to do this because she’s really, really mad. She thinks you’re just saying you’ll go with her to therapy because she’s talking about ending it. She doesn’t think you’re serious about changing things. If you want to really show that you’re open to see what you can do differently, go by yourself.

Don’t stalk and pester your partner. Believe me, this isn’t sexy and it doesn’t put things back together. This only makes your mate think you’ve lost your mind and maybe she should take out a restraining order. You may be thinking about her all the time. You want her to know, but don’t call her a million times a day. It’ll only make things worse.

Don’t dismiss her concerns and complaints. Don’t argue that you haven’t done whatever she's saying you did or you haven't done it that much. If she didn’t have an issue with whatever she’s concerned about, it wouldn’t be under discussion.

Above all, listen. Really listen. If you have a hard time with this, get your therapist to explain what your partner’s saying.

Don’t kid yourself. Relationships are hard work…and they can be worth all the effort. This can really be good for you. You can learn to make your life better.

Don't Forgive Too Fast

Everyone gets hurt—damaged by someone else’s actions or offended by comments that shouldn’t have been made. Some individuals are the victims of a major breach in their relationships.

This can leave you gasping in pain, particularly when the injury comes from your mate, your mother or your best friend. These are individuals to whom you’ve given your deepest trust. People you thought loved you. When one of these individuals commit an offense against you, it goes right to the quick.

Forgiveness is a big buzzword. Experts say you have to forgive for your own well being and to be in alignment with positive karma. But nothing is said about understanding why this offense happened. You have to forgive.

But don’t be too quick to rush to say it’s okay. Don’t forgive too quickly. It isn’t healthy.

When an offense occurs in a relationship that matters—one you want to maintain, you may jump into forgiveness just so you can get beyond this painful place. You may say you forgive this horrible action. You want this behind you. You may want to keep the offender in your life. You may even feel—just a very little bit—noble in your forgiveness.

Painful, difficult things don’t go away just because you say you forgive.

And while forgiveness if supposed to heal all, false forgiveness doesn’t make anything better. Particularly if the offender never really asked for forgiveness or if the situation that caused your pain has never been effectively addressed. For forgiveness to make sense, something has to change. Relationships—between mother and child, those between friends and relatives—intimate relationships, these are difficult and complex. Sometimes offenses are not intended or foreseen

Still, when you get cheated on or lied to or deceived, offering forgiveness without change doesn’t help the situation. You may have contributed to this situation, you may have been less than honest yourself. Your need to own up to your own behavior, the things you’ve messed up.

But this doesn’t mean you need to overlook the other person’s actions.

Forgiveness doesn’t need to be given easily. If you’re too quick to offer it—if you don’t deal with the problems in the relationship—you’re offering an empty nothing. You’re trying to make everything okay, just by saying it’s okay.

True forgiveness just doesn’t work this way.

Love Bi-Polar

No one just leaves a relationship, anymore. They torture each other for a while first.

Most people don’t have a clue about how to break up or to do the reverse—fight productively. They don’t actually get anywhere, really. You’d probably like to be in a relationship where the two of you always get along and never fight. Relationships always have conflicts, though, so the arguing and fighting typically results in some unhealthy yelling, name-calling and hurt feelings.

In the middle of all this, someone breaks-up with someone, saying that they’re outta here. There are usually tears and maybe something gets thrown as someone heads out the door.

Then, they both start to miss one another, get amnesia about the bad times, dwelling on the good times and how sweet their significant other can be (sometimes). Then, inevitably, someone ends up texting or calling someone. What follows is almost as inevitable--because something drew you together in the first place--you make up and live happily until the downward spiral that starts it all over.

You might end up doing this over and over. Of course, it’s all much more complicated if you’ve been together a while, have children together or are legally married. You’ve got an investment. It may seem crazy to just throw all that away and you might start thinking about what you’ve contributed to the mess. Maybe you weren’t totally and completely right. Maybe you said something you shouldn’t have or did something you shouldn’t have. Suddenly, you’ve changed from blowing cold to being very hot, again.

It can wear you out.

The relationship may have massive, deep flaws that leave you wondering why you keep coming back. This is actually an excellent question. You really need to know why you feel pulled back into this relationship. You need to know what you’re getting out of this interaction, whether you stay or you go. This is info that’s very valuable.

You need to know the good stuff. If you get to the point of leaving again, you need to remember what kept you in it as long as you’ve been there. This may not be enough to keep you from walking out the door. The bad stuff may still out-weigh the good stuff, but stay until you’ve really had enough. Even if you get totally mad. Even if you want to scream and throw things.

Don't leave and then turn around and come back. Stay until you're done.

If you’re still hooked in this thing, stay. Don’t do this if there’s risk to your person, of course. Then, you need to get the heck outta Dodge and figure out how the relationship has worked for you(don't tell me it didn't work for you in some twisted way) from a safe distance. You do need to figure out what’s been working. What worked in the beginning… And you need to be very clear about what's not working.

If you keep waffling about this relationship, ask yourself: What is this power he or she has over you?!? The answer is important—not that it means you should get back in—but for you to understand what’s going on with you.

It’s always safest to know what’s going on with you.

Does Everyone Cheat?

We’re almost getting used to hearing about politicians who cheat on their wives. It seems crazy for them to do this when they have so much to lose. Yet, they continue to cheat.

It’s not just politicians, either. Cheating is rampant. You probably know friends who’ve cheated…or been cheated on. Maybe both. You may have cheated. Whether physical or emotional, cheating is on the rise.

For whatever reason, the largest percentage of the population still has expectations of exclusivity in intimate relationships. We still want fidelity. We’re just not good at it. Some estimates put 80% of relationships as having one or both mates cheating. This may be arguably a high figure and, understandably, hard numbers aren’t easily yielded. Still, the big question is why?

The wronged individual almost always wants to know this. Why did the infidelity happen? Why did this person cheat? Some people wonder if they’ve caused their spouses to step out on them. Are they, in some way, responsible? Did they not do something they should have done? Or do something they shouldn’t have done? Both the need to understand this kind of breach and the difficulty doing so is haunting.

Infidelity leaves a stain that’s hard to remove.

There are a bunch of answers to these questions. Most of them are intricately individual, but some things are universal. Cheating is a sign of prior trouble in the committed relationship. To some, this feels like blaming the victim. Others think this is offering an excuse to the cheater. Neither implication is true. However, if there weren’t trouble, of some sort, in the relationship, the cheater wouldn’t have cheated. Most people don’t want to believe this. They are so hurt by the betrayal that they struggle to look objectively at the condition the relationship was in before the cheating happened. Please don’t misunderstand, I’m not saying that the cheating is in any way excused by the relationship having issues. Relationships always have issues of some sort. It’s the character-building part of relationships. Many folks deal with these without getting into an emotional or physical interaction with someone else. Relationship conflict is not an excuse.

But cheating doesn’t occur in happy relationships.

It sometimes occurs in relationships that the cheated-on mate thought was happy, but they’re usually misinformed or uninformed. Their significant other wasn’t happy. People who cheat use phrases like “it just happened” and “we weren’t looking to get involved” when they’re talking about the affair. They’re just as delusional as the cheated-on mate. Somewhere, someone made a choice.

Cheating is a sign of prior trouble in the committed relationship. Individuals in emotionally-connected relationships, where conflicts are resolved, don’t cheat.

Again, this is not an excuse. But relationship conflicts can be resolved, although no one is saying the process is easy. You can even survive an affair with the relationship intact, if everyone is invested in making this happen. You can. Only, not if you don’t deal with the issues that weakened the relationship initially. If you just try to forgive and hope it won't happen again, you're fooling yourself and just limping forward, with nothing learned.

Learn from the trauma. The hard part about this process for the betrayed mate is talking about how he or she contributed to the relationship estrangement. When you’re wronged, it’s hard to look at how you contributed to the problems before the infidelity. After all, you weren't the one getting naked and talking dirty to someone other than your mate. But you have to look at what wasn't resolved before this. You need to see your part in whatever was happening in the relationship. This is your power in this mess. It's what you can change, if you decide to stay. This is the only hope of getting the relationship on a healthy track.

Cheating is never, ever, a good answer, no matter what the relationship problems. But, one way or the other, you can survive.

College Smart

So, you’re supposed to get a college degree in order to make a decent living. Right? If you don’t want to work at McDonalds—nothing against those folks(they’re saints to put up with what they have to put up with)—you’ll need a profession. General opinion is that you need to go to college to get, at least, a two-year degree.

A college degree in any field was once considered a ticket to working for big bucks. This is no longer the case.

This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t go to college. Higher education provides you with more choices and, statistically, more income. Go to college, but be smart about it. There are individuals who are artists, performers or really great plumbers. College isn’t probably as vital for them as, say—someone who wants to do research in neuroscience. Most people need some kind of training in order to achieve their professional goals. College is the logical choice.

It’s important to ask college recruiters questions, but the most important person for you to interview is yourself. There are current college myths you need to recognize. You need to think about what your college education will prepare you for.

What career will fit you best? This isn’t always obvious. You probably have relatives, friends and teachers weighing in on this one. It’s easy to be blinded by the perceived prestige and power of a profession. What you really need to ask is will you enjoy the work that this career will entail everyday. Will you go happily off to work as a lawyer, arguing for a living? You may make serious money as a litigator, but lawyers handle tons of paperwork and phone calls, too. Will you enjoy that? Will you be happy doing this job?

Will you make enough money? Is this kind of job going to enable you to live the kind of life you want (and afford to put your kids through school, as well as, save for retirement)? It’s hard to know what’s enough money for each individual. This is a question you must ask yourself. Then, you need to be honest about what you’re willing to do to earn that income. And, again, will you be happy? You might make a mint in business, but this will be meaningless, if you don’t like your job.

Will attending a prestigious college help you? Once you decide what you want to be, you have to ask yourself if spending the money for a degree from a big name school is worth it. Will going to this school really help you get to know the “right people” and thus, end up making your professional life easier? You need to weigh whether these advantages are worth the college loans you may have to take out. There is a lot a debate on this subject.

Then, when you graduate, will you be able to live comfortably and pay off your loans? This is a really important question. You might be drawn to the prestige of a degree from a name university, but you need to ask yourself if your eventual job—teacher, social worker, theater stage director—will earn you enough money to pay off your college loans and still manage to live. A social work degree from Boston College gets you the same job as a social work degree from a state school. You may argue that the education is better, but that’s generally not the case.

Never think this college thing is simple…and that’s not even including tough professors and 8 a.m. classes. College is a pretty big endeavor. You’ll spend your days reading dense textbooks, writing papers and learning math. This is great if you love math, and not so much if you don't. You’ll have to earn this degree(diploma mills aside). You want the degree to be in an area you enjoy.

The last big question you need to ask yourself--Are there jobs available for your degree in the field? This is a really important thing to explore. You may love psychology and find the classes fascinating, but a four-year degree in psychology prepares you for little besides graduate school. Some degrees are just the first rung on the ladder. Others, such as history and sociology, may offer tremendous insights, but have to be used in a creative way. There’s no obvious jobs for some degrees.

Then, again, you could teach. The world needs enthusiastic, engaging teachers. Make sure that’s the kind you’d be.

Never Give Up

You can change your mind and decide chasing a dream isn’t worthwhile, but giving up because you doubt yourself is failure on a large level.

Just recently, Randy Pausch, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University, and author of The Last Lecture, died of pancreatic cancer. One significant advice in Pausch’s final lecture was the recommendation to go after your dreams with a spectacular effort. He even awarded his students—who’d strived the biggest and failed—an award. It’s not necessarily reaching the goal that brings the greatest rewards. The striving-after is the important part. We discover brilliance in ourselves in this kind of pursuit.

Never doubt, however, that this can be a challenging, complicated and even, brutal, undertaking. Attempting to make your dreams reality adds depth, texture and quality to your life. It teaches you vital lessons.

The first lesson might be how to decide when to give up. Sometimes letting go of a dream can help you move forward to even more satisfying endeavors. No one can tell you, though, when to give up on a dream. This is an incredibly personal decision and should not be made out of despair. Before changing your direction, you need to ask yourself if the pursuit of your goals adds to your life, even though you've not yet reached these. Frustration and despondency are reasonable feelings in the midst of chasing after longed-for goals. The biggest decisions in life need to take emotions into account, but decision is best made on a logical assessment.

The hard part is deciding the reality of a pursuit, really assessing the possibilities. You may have a dream that doesn’t depend on your efforts. If your goal involves something completely random—like winning the lottery—your success at this will be very much out of your control. You can pour lots of money into buying lottery tickets, but even this doesn’t significantly increase your chance of winning. The attainment of some dreams, though, depend a great deal on your efforts. The summer Olympics are just ahead of us. These athletes have made achievement in their sports their overriding priority. They have been driven. They’ve devoted their lives to this.

Of course, talent also plays a big part in getting to this level.

You may not strive this high, or in this arena, but maybe you’re pouring effort into earning a college degree. This may be complicated by your holding down a full-time job and raising kids. Your dreams are very personal to you. You’re striving for a specific position at work or to run a marathon or write a novel.

Pursuing dreams is a vital part of growth.

You may want to redirect your pursuits. Deciding to pour your focus into being really good in your purchasing job or developing your ballroom dance skills to your best level, dreams and goals are about striving for personal growth.

Without hope, we perish. Going after your goals and dreams keeps you alive spiritually. It may not seem like the challenges that come with your endeavors are healthy and survivable(failure feels crappy). Sometimes going after what you want seems foolish. Other days, it gives you a reason to reach higher. It's important not to give up on yourself. You can achieve, even though doing so is hard.

You may change the direction of your efforts, but don’t stop striving.

Taking the Drive-Thru Hostage

Let’s talk about passive-aggressive power. Lots of people feel powerless and angry about it. To be honest, powerlessness breeds anger. Whether with your supervisor at your job or in your relationship with your mate or just in general, you can feel like nothing you do makes a difference.

This is often the thinking behind destructive, illegal behavior. If nothing you do in a positive vein seems to change your life experience, you tend to do the negative thing that gets you the most bang for your buck. This is why inner city youths stray to the dark side. Everyone needs to feel they have power in some way. If you can’t be the best, you’ll find a way the best way to be the worst.

Look around you, most of the human behaviors that drive you nuts can be traced back to the individual’s feeling of powerlessness.

I was once held hostage in a fast food restaurant’s drive-thru, not with a gun, but with a car that blocked the way. If you’re one of the millions who occasionally gets food from McDonalds or Taco Bell or Jack-In-The-Box, you probably know the structure of the drive-through. A lane with a curb on both sides runs along one side of the fast food restaurant. At the beginning of the lane is a speaker—a squawk box—into which you speak your order. A pimply kid inside the restaurant takes your order, tells you how much it’ll cost you and directs you to drive around to the pick-up window.

On the hostage occasion, I once sat two cars back—blocked in by curbs and landscaping and the cars that kept pulling up behind—while the person at the front of the drive-thru refused to move. Maybe they hadn’t been given mustard. Maybe they were over-charged. Apparently, there was something about their order that wasn’t to their liking. For over thirty minutes, the driver refused to move, blocking the drive-thru. Trapped, hungry people behind him fumed, occasionally honked their horns and swore dark consequences on his head.

I’m sure the fast food manager and the employees were going nuts. The driver blocking the drive-thru clearly wanted to force them to hear him, to pay attention to his complaint.

Have you ever driven down a side street, only to have to slow to a stop when an individual--obviously aware that you were there--strolled slowly across the street? This is a form of passive aggressive power. The individual crossing the street, ignoring the traffic right-of-way, is gambling on a near-certainty. You’re not going to run him down. You’re going to sit, fuming, while the jay-walker enjoys a brief moment of power.

It’s probably all he or she has.

Human beings need a sense of personal power. You need to feel like something you say or do makes a difference. Even when the situation is very, very small. People who feel powerless engage in bizarre, seemingly-pointless displays that they can impact others in some way.

Power.

It is a vital need and can lead the seekers after power to do despicable things…like going below the speed limit in the left hand lane while cars pile up behind.

The next time you find yourself tripping over an individual making a passive-aggressive power play, before you give that person a middle-finger salute, remember this may be the only way he feels he can impact the world.

Feel some compassion while you're swearing at the delay.

A Sense of Their Limitations

As parents, we want everything wonderful for our kids. And they are amazing. They say the funniest things. They figure out tough situations that we’d never expected them to be able to deal with. They get great grades in math when we suck in math. They are beautiful, intelligent creatures.

But we lie to our children if we tell them they can do anything.

The desire to remove limitations is understandable. You may not have achieved your desires…possibly because some adult told you to “get serious” about your future. Maybe you majored in accounting when you wanted a career in music or you settled for a path in business because someone told you that biology was too hard. You’d never make it through medical school.

Maybe you’ve been there for your kids (like grown-ups weren’t there for you). You want to believe that this has made a big difference. You want your children to struggle less than you have. But don’t let yourself believe they won’t struggle in life. Struggle is a part of the human experience, an admittedly sucky part, but still a reality. If you are human, you will struggle. No matter how good your parents were or whether you drove a decent car and went to a good college.

Kids particularly can’t be certain of achieve something that depends on others, as well as they’re own efforts. Some things they can't make happen, no matter how much they want them to. Relationships, for instance, can only be successful if both individuals put forth significant effort. This is just a reality. Personal development involves recognizing personal limitations and areas that need growth.

This kind of growth is a life-long endeavor. We’ll never run out of ways to improve ourselves. It is the effort, the putting forth energy toward developing oneself that needs to be prized, not the reaching of goals. Sometimes you can’t make a situation or a relationship work. Sometimes there are limitations.

It is understandable to want your kid to pursue their dreams. If you did go after what you wanted and ended up achieving it, you may also tell your children they too can achieve their greatest goals. It's the going after goals that will enrich their lives, not necessarily the attainment of them all. Striving for something desired is a good and healthy thing. Knowing they might not reach their goals is invaluable knowledge. Knowing this failure doesn't make them lousy people and that life can still be good--maybe will be the better for what they've learned through failure--this is the important stuff.

Many things can be achieved through hard work. Just don’t forget to mention the hard work part and that, no matter how hard they work, some things will not be achieved. This doesn’t mean life is worthless or not fulfilling. Some dreams are a disappointment, once reached. Some people have unrealistic goals.

Kids need to see that striving for something doesn’t mean automatic success and they need to recognize that failure in a pursuit doesn’t mean worthlessness. They need to keep plugging away.

Don’t lie to them. Life is challenging and frustrating and can be very fulfilling. Failing is a part of being engaged in the process.

When Infidelity is the Answer

If you’ve ever been cheated on, you might want to answer “Never!” to this question. But a lot of people are being unfaithful to their partners and they’re not all terrible people with no morals. Some are just confused and making unfortunate choices. In some situations, cheating can seem like the best thing to do. But it will most likely lead to heartache, life disruption and tremendous guilt.

Short-term relief leading to long-term regret. So, why are so many people cheating. Infidelity must seem like the answer to some people in some situations.

Leaving just doesn’t seem possible right now.(You don’t really want to leave. You just want to feel desired.) When you’re in a committed relationship, a marriage or a long-term dating situation, and there are issues, you can feel unhappy a long time before you’re ready to walk out. “Just walk out the back, Jack” (as Paul Simon said so clearly) can seem harsh, but feeling unloved and conflicted leaves you vulnerable to sex-on-the-side.

You don’t really want your marriage to break-up, but there are problems. When there are unresolved issues in a relationship, and they’ve been that way awhile, you tend to feel disconnected from your mate. Then, having someone else who thinks you’re hot/smart/funny can seem really refreshing. You may end up doing the dirty with an extra-curricular person without planning it. Most people don’t plan to cheat.

You have a life you don’t want to leave (kids, position, money, in-laws you love, all of the above) Divorce disrupts everything. Even your work can get thrown off track when your personal life goes to hell. Even if you don’t feel really loving towards your spouse, you like parts of the life you’ve crafted together. Things you don’t want to give up. But that doesn’t necessarily mean you can’t find something that feels like love on the side.

If you left, your mate would kill himself. (At least, that’s what he’s said when you’re fighting) When life with your mate has gotten complicated, unhappy and hard, you might want out. You want someone different who listens. Someone who doesn’t make you want to scream. Still, break-ups can be difficult, particularly when one half of the couple threatens to take his life. Guilt can keep you in the shell of a relationship, but it doesn’t always keep you out of someone else’s bed.

You love your spouse—you don’t hate your spouse—you’ve always seen the two of you together…but things have been bad for a while now (or there’s a lot of sizzle with the other man/woman. You haven’t felt this hot for someone in a long time) Relationships fall apart from the inside and sometimes you get used to really dysfunctional patterns. You get used to your partner not understanding you or screaming that you don’t understand him. The new guy at work likes you and thinks you’re funny. You find yourself thinking about him a lot and texting him all the time. Soon, you find yourself making out with him. It just happened, you say, like you were magically transported—naked—into his arms.

It doesn’t mean anything. Just an itch to be scratched. It won’t hurt your mate unless he/she finds out. Only it does mean something. It means your current marriage isn’t working. It means you’re avoiding dealing with issues. That’s what infidelity is—avoidance on a major scale. Cheating doesn’t fix anything. It only complicates an already difficult situation. You may tell yourself you’re staying for the kids…staying because your mate needs you. Heck, you may be waiting for your spouse to finish college, your kids turn eighteen or until his psychiatrist announces him cured. Whatever you tell yourself, infidelity only makes the waters murkier.

Don’t cling to the delusion that you’ve found your soul mate. Relationships that stemmed from one or both partners cheating have an even higher divorce rate. Maybe once a cheater, always a cheater is too narrow a view. But once you’ve broken vows, it becomes easier to do it again…unless you’ve dealt with your personal issues and/or those in the relationship.

Work on the relationship you're in. Deal with it, one way or the other. Don't stray out into darker pursuits because it only makes matters worse.

When You Hate the Kid You Love

Don’t tell your kid, you’ll never be disappointed in him. You will be. You are. When the child you’ve nurtured, the kid with a limitless future and a hundred joyful gifts, sells himself short, you’ll be upset, sad and angry. When he doesn’t go for the goal he wants because he’s convinced he can’t achieve it, you’ll be disappointed. When he gets in a relationship that only brings him grief, you’ll be frustrated and saddened.

Loving someone doesn’t mean always liking him.

You want only the best for your child and while life unavoidably brings bumps, some bad, ugly things can be avoided. You’ve lived long enough to know this. You may not have had people watching out for you the way you watched out for your kid. You’ve invested yourself in a thousand ways. Was it all for nothing? Did it matter at all?

A heart-warming card on Mother’s or Father’s Day just isn’t enough. You want the kid to take care of herself, to respect herself. All those lessons you taught her can’t have been a total waste. It’s not the kid’s thanks you’re looking for (although that’s nice to hear). You want her to live well. Make smart choices. Take care of herself.

You have hopes.

Then your kid does something really stupid, makes some choice you’d thought he was too smart to make. Some choices bring massive pain. Who would want their child to make those choices? Who wouldn’t be disappointed?

It’s not about a lack of love. You love this kid with every fiber of your being. When the kid hurts, your heart cracks open. The more you love, the more you hope for that person …always for the child. You want him to be smart, to see the choices that will lead him down painful roads in life. You’d thought he would have learned from his earlier experiences. The ones you carefully let him have when he was younger.

In a loving relationship, knowing how to let go is terribly important. Your child gets to determine her own course. Read the Unsolicited Advice Column that defines What Real Love Looks Like —letting your child discover her own path is more loving than telling her how to live.

Sometimes he’ll get it; he’ll believe in himself. He’ll realize the relationship he’s in has only more bad stuff ahead. He’ll realize he’s not giving himself the best shot professionally. Good things will happen, too. But don’t lie to yourself…failure is an option. Your kid may fail, may make—probably will make—foolish choices.

You won’t like the kid then. You may not get how she can make those choices.

You just hope the kid learns from it, wrings every ounce of learning out of those unhappy choices. All you can do is hope, because telling your child what to do—when she or he is an adult—just puts up walls. Don’t do it. Don’t think your kid needs to be told what to do. Even if he’s making stupid, foolish choices—spending more money than he has, not investing in your grandchild the way he should—don’t tell him what to do.

Even if you don’t like your child, you have to let her figure life out herself. Hopefully, she will. And then you’ll like her again, but maybe not now….

Failure - Just a Corrective Tool

You never know how to hit your goals if you don’t have some feedback when you miss the mark. Think of failure—even crushing failure—as a voice telling you “a little to the left.” Screwing up and blowing situations is part of the path to success. A bump in the road. Don’t ever believe you can do really well at anything without messing up in your earlier attempts.

Maybe you blow a presentation to a major potential client. You don’t respond to a boss’ warning. You may mess up a date with a really hot guy. You say something stupid. You do something that, as you look back, was idiotic.

This is how you learn. You’ll most likely not make this mistake again because you don’t like the consequences. Failure sucks. It feels bad and you don’t like it. Some people live their lives on what they think are safe, sure paths or with mates they think will never leave, never cheat, et cetera. All to avoid failure.

But failure is life’s very best corrective tool. It works. This is how you learn.

Don’t think that avoiding failure is a functional life goal. You’ll be limiting yourself and your experiences. You’ll be choosing to live a stunted life. You’ll probably also have a really boring time. I’m not suggesting that you throw yourself into new pursuits, new jobs or new relationships with no regard to the possibility of blowing it. Failure still counts. But you need to take the message and interpret it correctly.

Don’t think that this is just a warm, fuzzy pat on the back. I’m not attempting to make you feel better, although that's good, too. It's important not to miss the functionality of failure. Don’t walk past a tremendously helpful tool. Failure has lessons to teach you. Did you choose your goal well? Were you committed to doing what it takes to achieve this goal, or did you just give it your minimum? Just show up? Why did you fail? This is a hugely important question and don’t think the answer is that you’re useless or stupid. That’s not going to help you learn the lesson this failure has for you (and it’s very likely untrue).

Ask yourself—and any other informed person—why you failed.

What is there to learn in this experience? You need to know if the achievement of your goal will take perseverance and persistence—some goals require just that. You need to assess yourself as objectively as possible. Beating yourself up about failing really doesn’t help. It’s counter-productive. A waste of energy.

If you’ve set a goal for good reasons (another excellent question) and this is something you really, really want to achieve, then take your failures and learn from them. Learn.

Use the tool. Fail and fail again, if necessary. Just don’t do it blindly. And don’t live your life thinking failure will kill you. It won’t, even though failure feels pretty bad. It has lessons for you. Be smart enough to listen.

What Real Love Looks Like

Most people are confused about what’s love and what isn’t. You may have a rush of heat when a man walks in. Maybe love’s scary and exciting, like sky diving. Or safe and comforting, like a fire in the fireplace on a cold night.

Not everyone wants the same kind of love.

There are some constants, though. When you truly love someone, some actions and motivations will always be there, no matter who you are or what kind of relationship you want. In his book, The Last Lecture, Randy Pausch leaves this advice for his toddler daughter: Look at the guy's actions, not what he says. Knowing he won’t be there when she’s teenager entering the world of dating,a dying Pausch recommends his daughter take words of love with a grain of salt. Behavior, though, that tells a truer story.

When you are loved by someone, that person will generally place your best interests at a high premium. In other words, while he may not always put you first, the one who really loves you isn’t going to do what’s bad for you. It’s not love when another person acts out of his own fear and yells at you or hits you. That’s something other than love, no matter what you did.

A person who loves you will—most of the time—like and enjoy you, too.

This is tricky because sometimes the people we love do stupid, self-destructive things. It’s hard to like them then. But, overall, when you’re in a relationship, your significant other needs to like you…find you amusing and intriguing and interesting. All that makes relationships easier. There will be difficult times in all relationships. Liking one another makes it less difficult to work through conflicts.

The most elusive aspect of a loving relationship is that it makes you better. If the relationship you’re in drags you into bad, destructive behavior, you need to question the foundation of the interaction. Love makes you better. This isn’t to say that it’s always easy. Growth can be painful, frustrating and infuriating…but it helps you deal with stuff you need to handle.

It’s really important to realize, too, that love isn’t one-sided. This isn’t all about him or all about you. There needs to be a balance—a benefit to you both—or this isn’t good for either of you. You need to be challenged to grow, face your fears, believe in yourself. Your partner needs the same.

If you find yourself in a relationship that encourages you to sever connections with those who’ve been important to you—if the relationship only thrives when the two of you are isolated from others--this isn't love. You might need to end some destructive, bad relationships, but most likely, not all your other relationships. You can’t live a life with only one person in your world.

Does being with your lover make you better? This is the bottom line. Love enhances. While it doesn’t always make life easy, love helps you become who you want to be. Before you jump into a major life change, make sure the relationship you’re in is good for you.

"He's So Controlling!"

Some people need to be told what to do. At least, that’s what he says when you protest his dictating to you. Or maybe that’s what you think about him. When you’re in a relationship, you are affected by the other person’s behavior. Your partner is impacted by your choices, too, so he gets to tell you what to do, doesn’t he? Shouldn’t you have a right to say what your partner should do?

Maybe you should, but you don’t.

Generally, this issue comes up in intimate relationships or between parents and children. Every now and then, a person seems to want to manage everything about everyone. You might have had a boss like this.

Like so many of your relationship conflicts, it doesn’t usually start with wanting to do harm. You probably don't even think of it as you trying to be in charge all the time. But others don’t like being controlled (and those who do like it have other issues, all together). Your loved ones don’t like you telling them what to do. You probably don’t like being told what to do, either.

But the desire to manage your own feelings, can lead to you taking actions that others see as an attempt to control them.

The desire to control another person’s choices and behavior usually stems from two angles: 1.) you want to protect and/or guide someone you care about, 2.) Down deep, you’re trying to make sure you don’t get hurt. Both motivations for controlling someone’s behavior are motivated by a reasonable, some would say loving desire.

You don’t get to tell the people you love what to do. It may seem like you should be able to do this, but attempting to control others only leads to eventual heart break. In the beginning, your partner might see your controlling actions as charming because they indicate that you care. This won’t last. After a while, love gets worn down by attempts to control.

Relationships involve risk, as well as, big rewards. The risk of suffering loss and grief. The possibility of pain. But control—telling the other person what to do—doesn’t remove the risk.

Trying to control the other person implies a lack of trust. Sometimes, it seems like the controlling person doesn’t believe in his or her partner. Like you expect to get screwed. This subtle message has a debilitating effect on relationships. Control can also leave the impression that you think your significant other is foolish or clueless. Neither message makes your love one want to cuddle up next to you.

Control is the result of fear and anxiety. You can be loved—and can tolerate the risks in loving—without relying on putting a bit in your lover’s mouth. You can have faith, in both yourself and your mate.

Sadly, trying to manage another person to diminish the possibility of being hurt, actually has the opposite effect. You may be causing your own crisis.

Perfect Kid

First of all, there is no such thing. No matter how much energy you put into your parenting, no matter how smart and beautiful your kid is: Perfection isn’t a possibility. If you think your kid doesn’t screw up, doesn’t make ridiculous mistakes and bad choices, you’re not paying close enough attention.

The truth is that perfection, in this life, isn’t a possibility. Striving for it will narrow your world and hound you with the fear of—and the likelihood of—catastrophic failure. In fact, if you live a “perfect” life, any failure will feel catastrophic and failure isn’t avoidable. For you or for your kid. In fact, you need to make friends with failure yourself. Screwing up doesn’t feel good, but the avoidance of reaching out and not achieving will make for a sad life. You’ll find yourself not reaching out unless you can be assured of success and when does that happen?

You may have surrounded your kid with the best, given her everything you didn’t have. Been there for her despite not having had a parent stand by you. You’ve probably put a lot into your parenting. Heartache and money. You’ve tried to give your daughter or son everything within your power. You may have lavished time and money on him. Maybe you even gave him too much, but he never went without(like you may have).

But perfection isn’t achievable. It’s not even a smart goal. You won’t get there and neither will your kids.

Your kids are no more perfect than you. Like you, they screw up sometimes. Some of their mistakes will seem understandable to you. Not that big a deal, really. The kid may be crying and wallowing in remorse and you’re shrugging. (Actually, the more remorse a kid has, the more easy you’re likely to feel.) Still, there will be mistakes that shake you.

Your child may steal from a friend or classmate when you’ve always prized honesty. He may lie to you when all you’ve asked is for him to tell you the truth. She may choose friends you know immediately are trouble. She may drink and drive as a teen. You probably say you don’t expect him to be perfect. You know he needs some learning experiences. Sadly, learning experiences don’t come to anyone without leaving a few scuffs.

Just expect your kid to screw up. Sometimes in a big way. You can minimize this by stressing the ability to make choices. You’d be surprised how many kids don’t see their own power. This is one of the hardest parts of parenting, but you really want your kid to have some experiences that come only through making mistakes. You want them to strike out on their own and make bad choices. Don’t rescue them from their consequences. They really need these to learn. And you want them to choose these bad choices earlier, rather than later. The consequences of earlier bad choices are smaller than the choices people make as they get into adulthood.

The kids you see on news magazine stories—the bright and wealthy youngsters who make really, really bad choices—they didn’t think about the outcome of their behavior. You want your kid to get a specific link between action and consequence. Don’t rescue them and don’t distract them from their consequences by yelling and screaming more than you can help. You don’t want them to miss the consequence and just remember that you got mad.

Don’t aim for a perfect kid with a perfect, unmussed life. Instead, try to be the best you. Parent as authentically as you can. Look at your own struggles and learn from them.

Your kids are watching. Hopefully, they’ll get helpful messages.

Love Without Pain

The problem with loving another person is that you automatically care what happens to them. You care what they do or what others do to them. They matter to you.

They are significant to you. Where there is significance, there is the possibility—let’s be honest—the probability of emotional distress. Pain. The old saying that you only hurt the ones you love, may be just part of the range of possibilities. But if anyone’s gonna hurt, it’ll be someone who cares.

It’s only natural to try to minimize this. Some individuals believe that keeping a grip on loved ones is a good defensive maneuver. After all, who doesn’t want some power in a relationship? Most people will say they look for a partner who’s trustworthy. One they know will never hurt them; someone who will always behave in a loving way. None of us want to get involved with people who’ll cheat, lie about money or fail to commit to the relationship.

But lots of people end up in just this situation.

Sometimes there is no huge betrayal. Sometimes you just can’t make a relationship work. There is no way to guarantee that love won’t involve loss and pain. Still, even when you’re just trying for self-preservation, power can seem like a dirty word. Kind of like control. If you’re running the risk of being hurt, shouldn’t you be able to tell your partner who to talk to and what they can do?

Sadly, no. If you love another person—be it a partner or a child or your sister—you put yourself in the position of feeling pain when they’re hurt. When they hurt themselves or when they forget to make your experience a priority. It sucks, but it’s pretty non-negotiable. When you try to control the other person’s behavior, like not allowing your partner to drive a motorcycle or bungee jump, you interfere with their choices. You also run the risk of your loved one coming to resent you.

Resentment is relationship poison.

Many people believe that relationship confers the power of being able to tell the other person what to do. Usually the argument goes that the other person gets to tell you what to do, too. But even then, this doesn’t work. People feel unfree and resist being told what to do or you don’t realize everything you needed to tell your partner.

Loving another person means putting yourself in a vulnerable position. You love, you care. The tricky part is that you cannot control another person, in order to protect yourself, without negative consequences in the relationship. If you try to tell your loved one how not to hurt you, you run the risk of introducing major complications into the relationship.

You get to decide how you function in the relationship--and functioning well can be a challenge. Handling your personal issues is a big job. It's what you need to focus on, however. The only control you really have over the other person's behavior is your power to decide whether or not you're in the relationship. If you are a loving individual, there’s a good chance that the person in the relationship with you—partner, child, sibling, whatever—will care about the relationship. They will not want to impact you and will hopefully be aware of how their choices impact you.

There is no guarantee, however. Your loved ones may choose foolish, stupid, thoughtless things. They may take actions that leave you shaking your head and leave your heart feeling bruised. You may try talking to your loved one and still nothing changes. Sadly, at this point, you can stay and watch. Or walk away.

This may sound harsh, but it is ultimately your only ability to manage the impact on you. You have to decide. If you have a sibling whose life choices are self-destructive or a parent who refuses to care for himself, you might be best served to put distance in the relationship. You don’t have to cut them out of your life, but you need to accept their choices and put some distance between you to buffer your own heart.

Distance in a relationship can feel wrong. This kind of situation can hurt like nothing else and it is a choice only you can make.

Love fills up and enriches life. It also brings vulnerability, but walling yourself off in a self-protective, relationship-avoidant mode hurts worse. Actually hurts your health. All you can do is love and accept…sometimes, that’s really hard.

You Can't Always See the Results

Every action has a result…it just may not be immediate. Some people struggle with seeing the consequences when it comes to choices they make. One definition of insanity is to repeat the same actions, thinking you’ll get a different result, but what if the result isn’t clear right away. The tendency for many is to keep making the same choices. Individuals tend to keep trying things that are comfortable for them, but it’s important to recognize the power of these actions.

Every action has a reaction; every choice has a consequence. You just might not see it right away.

We learn through consequences following choices. Some choices result in good things—showing up on time and doing a good job generally results in the boss valuing the employee. (This may not always be true, but it is more often than not.) Smile at ten strangers in a day and chances are you’ll get more people smiling back than not.

Your behavior has consequences.

Actions lead to reaction. Stealing from the company, generally results in being fired and, maybe, prosecution. Incarceration is a likelihood for those who break the law. Running out into traffic usually ends in getting hit by a car. Cheating on your income tax gives you a higher likelihood of owing penalties to the IRS.

Choice and consequences.

We get confused, though, when the consequences of an action are delayed. Eating poorly, getting no exercise and smoking will result in diminished health and a greater likelihood of an earlier, uglier death. But you don’t die from one puff of a cigarette or one very fatty meal and, besides, people who eat disgustingly healthy and run marathons can die of a heart attack, too. But statistics tell us it’s much less likely.

Some choices are incremental, small steps that, if continued, will lead you in a specific direction. Just not quickly. We can't always see what we're choosing. Immediate consequences are so much more clear. Stick your hand in the fire, get burned. Now that’s immediate.

Delayed consequences can be just as harmful as ones that follow right after an action. But you might not see the results. You might get tempted into thinking that the choice doesn’t lead to a specific outcome. There are spouses who cheat and never get caught. There are cheaters who’s marital partners decide to look the other way, for a variety of reasons…. But cheating is a leading cause of disrupted relationships. Cheating ends marriages. Maybe you don’t get caught the first time you stray, though. You might get away with it, and then you might think your actions in this area have no consequence. But even if a wronged spouse looks the other way, the relationship suffers. Emotional dry rot.

Think hard about the choices you make. This is your power. This is how you exert some control over your life. You’ll probably have things you don’t like happen in your life, things that are not a result of any choice you make. You don’t have absolute control, but that doesn’t mean it makes sense not to use the power you do have.

Choices. Certain actions lead to specific reactions. Choose what you want.

Strive for Spectacular Failure

You’re not always going to be right or act right, no matter what. That’s just a reality of life. But avoiding failure at all costs, costs way too much.

In The Last Lecture, a new book by Randy Pausch, a computer science professor diagnosed with terminal cancer, the author talks about going for your dreams. He advocates pursuing the things that really matter to you, even if you’re not sure you can reach these. Even if you’re afraid you can’t reach them. He’s even given awards to his students who have reached for—and failed to reach—high goals.

Failure isn’t lethal, but not trying anything new and risky may kill the life in your life.

There’s no denying that it feels bad to fail. The fear of this experience is pretty much universal. Most of us hate failing. You can’t live an engaged, successful life, though, by staying in bed with the covers over your head.

Some individuals grew up as “the good kid” in their family. Maybe another sibling got in trouble a lot. Maybe their parents gave them a preferential role. Regardless, there are some who are very attached to always being seen as doing the right thing. This can be a handicap because the process of making choices involves the possibility of making a choice with consequences you don’t like. This is how human beings learn. No risk means limited learning.

The important thing is to reach for what you want. Try big, new things. If you’re paying attention, you’ll find the lessons in your failures. Don’t ignore these. Take your failure and look at it as objectively as possible. Use it. With the information you can gather, you have a better chance of aiming more accurately next time. Any large endeavor will naturally involve learning. Learning brings with it the possibility—the probability—of failure. You will fail. You need to process these experiences in order to have a chance of reaching for and finding your dreams.

If you’re going out on a limb, make it a spectacular limb. Go for the gusto. Reach for your own dreams and know that these will evolve as you go. If you’re involved in pursuing what you want, you’ll get clearer about what you really want. Failure can help you with this.

Don’t be ashamed of failing. The greater loss is in not going after what you want.

Traumatized? The Unrecognized Reality

If you’ve ever witnessed a crime…ever been the victim of abuse, sexual or otherwise…ever served time in a combat zone…or been involved in a natural disaster, you may be suffering a post-traumatic reaction and not know it.

Traumatic situations leave a lingering stain on your psyche. This can lead to abusing alcohol or drugs and can make relationships difficult. You may struggle with depression or anxiety. Close associates might tell you that you have anger issues. All these feelings can be overwhelming. You might just think you’re crazy.

Maybe. Maybe not.

Traumatic events in your life might be having more of an effect than you think. The rapidly expanding field of neuroscience is discovering the process of brain development and how early childhood trauma can disregulate a child to the point of extreme dysfunction. These children are typically prone to respond to stress by shifting into a hyperarousal or disassociative state. This generally results in a higher than normal heart rate and other physical symptoms. Misbehavior is common. Traumatized kids may live in stress states. If they’re not understood, they can be labeled with a variety of inaccurate psychiatric diagnoses.

Exposure to traumatic events can have a significant impact on you, even when you’re an adult. Trauma survivors develop symptoms, in an attempt to find normal lives, that can be both distressing and harmful. Survivors tend to want to forget their horrific experiences and move on, but forgetting isn’t easy…and isn’t actually helpful.

Soldiers returning home from war have clearly been exposed to horrific images and terrifying events, but trauma can be just as dreadful when it’s closer to home. A larger percentage of individuals have suffered through traumatic episodes than previously recognized. If these events impact a large group of people (wars, bombings, etc) and gain a lot of media coverage, individuals usually know they’ve had some impact from the disturbing events. When the traumatic experience is less public---physical or sexual abuse as a child or adult, being involved in a significant traffic event, witnessing the violent or unexpected death of a loved one---some individuals swallow their distress and try their best to soldier on.

The result can be post-traumatic stress disorder that’s unrecognized and untreated. Like an internal injury, the impact on function is still present. Relationships can fall apart. Individuals may feel like they don’t know why they’re behaving the way they are.

There is help. With understanding and support, you can incorporate the event and move forward to live an unshadowed life. With knowledgeable professional intervention, individuals who’ve self-medicated through various means, or adopted other self-destructive habits, can be helped to heal.

Never think you can’t move forward. Sometimes, though, the crutch is more destructive than the original injury. Left untreated and harbored in the darkest parts of your mind and memories, traumatic events will do you harm. Talk to a knowledgeable professional. Don’t give up on yourself.

Donkey vs Elephant

This tumultuous time in the U.S. political process is showcasing democracy at it’s best. While the current climate seems divisive and even scary, conflict that involves everyone getting to have a say, is good for the health of the nation.

It’s also how relationships work best.

It is important to remember the validity of perspectives that differ from our own. The conflicts raging in the political arena demonstrate that both sides of every debate hold some truth. Whether in the larger political arena or in the context of an intimate relationship, this kind of conflict can become polarizing. This is sad and limiting to those who cannot see the other view. When individuals retreat into hurling abuse at others who hold positions different from their own, everyone loses.

Even opinions that are very different from yours hold a measure of validity. Being able to hear and acknowledge this enhances both your reasoning and the strength of your position. Whether from a political perspective or across your own breakfast table, hearing a differing view of a situation enables you to achieve a better balance. Those who are very conservative, need to hear the concerns of the very liberal. The liberal need to see that some aspects of a conservative view make sense. Both sides have important priorities.

Considering differing views helps us to keep from getting solidified in a closed mindset.

The greatness of our country was built on the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, but we need individuals like Martin L. King to point out inequities. We need to recognize the value of diversity. The democratic process requires people to challenge the status quo and we need to listen to differing voices.

Let’s remember during this time of change, although maddening and frustrating, it is important for everyone to participate in the process.

How To Break-Up

Most people don’t want to do this at all. Breaking-up sucks…unless you’re so beaten down in the relationship that getting out sounds like a huge relief. Or unless you’ve already moved on and you’ve found a new love that won’t ever treat you this badly(you’re sure). Relationships are complicated.

So, this whole thing isn’t fun. But there are ways to break-up that make it even worse.

If you have any caring left in you for your soon-to-be ex, and most people have some, regardless of how bored they are or how badly they’ve been hurt in the relationship, things get complex. There are several scenarios in which it sounds good to stay friends. If you don’t want the relationship to end, staying friends can be your way of maintaining contact and keeping your foot in the door. It seems to provide you with a caring context for any future contact and you don’t totally lose the one you love. This kind of contact enables your lost lover to return to you and the relationship you once had, if he or she realizes what you had together.

If, on the other hand, you were the one who left the relationship, you may want to stay friends, partly out of guilt. You don’t want your former partner to hate you and you don’t hate him or her. Maybe it just seemed like the relationship had “run it’s course” or flickered out or you no longer met each other’s needs. Whatever. Maybe you’re with someone else now who seems to understand you better. Maybe there are things you get from this person that you still want. In this scenario, you probably like your former lover as a person. You still want her or him in your life, just not in a romantic context.

The friend thing, though, doesn’t really work. At least, not right away (and I’m talking years down the road). If you don’t really want the relationship to end, staying friends just puts you in a purgatory, of sorts. You can’t really move on with your life (I know, you don’t want to move on with your life. You want the relationship back) and you can’t deal functionally with the issues that ended the thing in the first place. While it feels horrible to cut off your former mate’s offer of friendship, that’s actually what you need to do. Hatred and bitterness between the two of you isn’t necessary (although you’ll probably feel this at times, if you’ve been left).

If you’ve been left, you need to grieve, to find some understanding of what happened, and move on. (Not suggesting you hurry to find someone, anyone, to replace your loss.) Live your life, even though it may hurt just to breathe during this time. Moving on may feel like you’re giving up, but sometimes it’s necessary and reasonable to give up.

If you’re the one who ended things, for Pete’s sake, let your former mate move on. Hanging on to aspects of a former relationship, either because this is still comfortable for you or because you share kids (excuse) or because you don’t want her to hate you, is selfish. Caring for your former partner means letting go, if you’re not going back into the relationship.

Civil contact to exchange the kids or talk money for the kids’ needs (tuba lessons and orthodontia!) can be done without exchanging personal information. Staying intertwined in each other’s lives is confusing to former mates and to the kids. If you’re splitting up, that means giving up on using one another as a sounding board. If you’re ending the thing, just end it.

Sex between people who’ve broken up usually means you have issues—both personal and relationship—that haven’t been resolved. Don’t keep doing this. If you want sex on the side, get it somewhere else, don’t muddy the waters further. When a relationship ends, you need to stop seeing one another, stop talking, stop texting. Just stop. Get all your stuff and move into another domicile. Don’t call to see how he is.

It’s like the old Paul Simon song Fifty Ways To Leave Your Lover says, “Just walk out the back, Jack.”

How To Ruin Your Children

Few people love doing without. We tend to crave comfort and all the accessories that come with that. You want all that and more for your kids. It's natural to want to provide for your children. You love them. You want them not to feel embarrassed in front of their friends. You want to rescue them when they screw up because you want the best for them and because you hurt when they hurt. Sometimes you want to make sure your kids have what you didn't have, whether that’s cool clothes or an intact family.

You want your kids to have everything. No speed bumps allowed. If there’s an obstacle in their way, you want to remove it. They seem so young, so weak and so unable to cope with life alone. They need you. Whether they have a teacher who’s out to get them or a friend who writes ugly things about them on the internet, you generally want to champion your kids in ways you weren’t championed. You want to smooth out the road, as much as you can.

Good intentions...bad result?

Maybe your kids would be better served by learning they can handle the rough spots. In their determination to do the best job, parents can sometimes overlook the opportunities difficult situations offer kids. Is an easy road the best one? Sometimes kids need assistance; sometimes they don't.

Sadly, the news is full of young people who look like they had it all and subsequently made bad—sometimes illegal—choices. Can we say that all their parents were bad? Does the quality of parenting actually determine a child’s experience? If you agree with this, you’re saying individuals don’t really determine their own fate. Does having perfect parents make a perfect kid?

Life isn't always fair. Admittedly, there are far few challenges for the kids born in the states than those born in Darfur. But if you believe individuals are in charge of their own actions, you have to refrain from dealing with your kids as if they are powerless.

Giving kids everything they want—everything you wanted when you were their age—can backfire in a big way. By giving your children everything, you may be robbing them of the hunger to achieve. When a too comfortable life—nice house, nice car, plenty of spending money, parents who rescue them from any tight spot—are offered to individuals who are able to take care of themselves, they tend to stop striving. They coast.

Maybe parents need to value the hunger.

Achievement isn’t fueled by excess or expectation. It’s fueled by hunger. By a determination that can’t be built without figuring how to handle small obstacles. Individuals who find healthy ways to cope with challenge are building a sense of self. I can deal with what comes. In order to reach this level of belief in oneself, individuals must find success. Their own success, not that which is handed to them.

If you want to ruin a child, give her everything she wants, immediately. Hand everything to her and rob her of her own opportunities for achievement. Parents want to argue that their children’s grades in school are an achievement, but if parents nag and nag a child to get those grades, how is that about the kid?

Maybe children need to fail sometimes to learn that failure feels yucky. Giving your child a safe world helps him to grow. Kids deserve life necessities. They don't deserve, however, all the frills just handed to them. But parents must step-back as children grow older. They need less of your protection and insight as the develop more capacities to handle life. You don’t have to be harsh, just don’t rescue them without thinking long and hard about it.

You love you kids. You want them to succeed. If you give them everything and rob them of longing and personal achievement, you may still have a kid who finds a way to feel and be successful. Individuals do have a choice in how they deal with the world—parenting doesn’t determine how children will grow up. But parents have a tremendous power. You can help or hinder.

You are hugely significant to your children. Give them the most important thing—believe in them. Believe they can work through difficult situations. Offer help, but don’t take over. Kids need to sort through some challenges to be aware that they have the power to handle life.

You love your kids. Don’t give them everything.

We're Not Through Killing the Marriage

Some relationships start crappy, others take years to reach this level. The really sad thing is that sometimes individuals don’t want to stop the bad, comfortable habits until it’s too late. Most don’t seek professional help until the next step is calling a lawyer.

If you found your soul mate—or a very close fit—you happily snuggle in and set about building a life together. For some people this means unmarried cohabitation, for others a wedding is involved. In the beginning, you can’t imagine living your life apart from this person. You hurry home to see him or her. Your mate is the first person you turn to for comfort when you’re upset.

Then, you set about killing the relationship. You fail to deal with conflicts or find a way to reach resolution. There are lots of distractions in relationship-land. Jobs, school, kids. Heck, even buying a house or the car you always wanted can be a distraction from the trouble sprouting up in the relationship. If you try hard enough, you can manage to ignore relationship issues until they are large and almost insurmountable.

Love within a relationship is killed in small, daily disappointments. Frustration that builds up like corrosion on exposed metal. You tell yourself that you “got over” being mad; you are sure your mate’s forgotten the argument you had last week. After all, the two of you had sex several days after the big blow up. You’re fine. Everything is back to normal and on we go.

Couples dealing with "small" relationship conflicts frequently fail to recognize the road they’re heading down. Big change in how you talk and interact takes big effort and most people don’t want to make these changes if they don’t absolutely have to. It’s not that big a problem, you tell yourself. But if you have conflicts that come up over and over, you have trouble brewing.

Frequently, individuals will say that the conflicts in their relationship are unsolvable. There’s just no fix to it, they often say. So, they soldier on, disconnecting from the issues that make them mad…and disconnecting from one another.

If this goes on long enough, it can lead to estrangement and even to the kind of physical or emotional infidelity that ends many relationships. Cheating is bad for relationships and bad for you personally, but more people cheat than ever before. This doesn’t happen because you’re just basically a bad person. Even good people find themselves in bad situations. If the conduit of emotional connection between two people in a relationship is clogged, feelings get diverted, like water in a broken pipe. In this kind of situation, your need for warmth and fun, for close emotional connection, can lead you into an involvement with a person to whom you’re not married. You can get into an affair before you realize it.

This is a reality for many relationships, but as much massive damage as an affair can cause, it’s really a symptom of the problems between committed couples. Infidelity doesn’t happen like catching the flu—someone breathes bad “cheating” germs on you and suddenly you’ve got to engage in a mattress tango with someone other than your spouse. Infidelity only happens when the emotional connection between spouses is broken. This kind of break typically occurs when individuals aren’t working through their issues.

Of course, not everyone who's relationship is in trouble cheats, but relationships still die when trouble isn't resolved.

Deal with the conflicts. Talk about what makes you mad. Listen—really hard—to your mate. And if you don’t feel like you’re making progress(actually, BOTH of you need to feel like you’re making progress), get into a therapist’s office and get some lessons on working out the conflicts.

Don’t kill your marriage for the lack of attending to the problems soon enough.

All Hollow

Love parties? Always have a bunch of friends texting you and wanting to go out? Believe it or not, being out-going can leave you at risk.

Extroverted people are comfortable meeting new acquaintances and adapt pretty well to new situations. There’s a downside, though, to being externally focused. Life requires some ability to know your own thoughts and beliefs. If you don’t have access to the internal you, you’re left vulnerable. Being extroverted means you need to work harder to think about what you believe, as opposed to what others believe. You’re really good at knowing what’s popular and what will work with the group in which you socialize. You also need to know yourself…and that can be harder.

Extroverts are prey to some specific fears. You might feel uncomfortable when you’re alone. Some people fear this and will seek others most of the time. This can lead to some fairly pointless interaction and may involve some “relationships” you later regret. It’s good to be able to be alone, even if you don’t prefer it. Every individual goes through time without a healthy partner option. This is just a reality. Accepting a poor fit or a bad partner situation because you don’t have someone else lined up means you’ll do almost anything to keep from being alone. Some will always have the television on or an Ipod going or the radio turned up loud. Technically, there’s nothing wrong with any of these pastimes. It becomes a problem when you’re using external sources of stimuli to block out getting to know yourself.

Alone is not a bad thing.

Some people—surrounded by kids, a mate and family that sometimes intrudes—will say they crave alone-time. Most, however, mean they crave being able to decide what to do with their time, usually, not spent alone. They just want to hang out with who they want to hang out. And who can blame them? The problem with always seeking an external focus is that you might not know yourself very well.

Some extroverts really—when they think about it (and you have to make them think about it)—believe there’s nothing inside of them. They fear they are hollow like a chocolate bunny, yummy on the outside, nothing inside. Some think there’s something inside, but believe themselves to be bad or negative. Some just feel depressed when there’s no external stimuli.

Research indicates that all people grow more introverted (aware of their internal thoughts and feelings) as they get older. We live in a culture that seems determined not to age. But what you do with your wrinkles may not be as important as being able to internalize life’s lessons. It’s good to learn from past mistakes. Being aware of missteps helps keep you from repeating them. Self-awareness is an internal thing.

Think of it as having both an external and internal hard drive—you need to be able to use both.

By all means, make friends. We all need others to populate and amuse our lives. When things get rough, your friends can help you hang on. You also need to spend time getting to know what you need and who you are. Alone is not a disease. Embrace it.

Go Ahead, Screw Up

Life is more interesting if you make some mistakes occasionally. Perfection is not a possibility. If you’re out in the world, you’re going to goof up. Advice on making the “right” choice is all around you—from your friends, your partner, your mother. You can find lots of advice on how to style your hair to fit your face and be in fashion, and how to dress right at the office and still be hip. You can find lots of do’s and don’ts in the office, at a barbeque with friends and on how to handle your Valentine’s gifts.

This doesn’t mean you’re supposed to be perfect. Messing up is a reality.

For most people, new endeavors involve shaky beginnings. Like when you first learned to walk or first rode a bike, new adventures are necessarily ungraceful. You might get your hair messed up. You’ll probably fall down. That’s not the point. Getting in the action is more important than always looking good.

Relationships are one of the most complicated things we humans attempt and bad decisions don’t come labeled that way. You may look back and blame yourself for certain actions. Taking responsibility is a good thing, but beating yourself up for your mistakes is a waste of energy. No one—let me stress—no one avoids relationship errors. Having regrets and thoughts on what you’d do differently is an indication of intelligence and of taking responsibility for your own actions.

Whether we’re talking mating or careers, being too conservative can be bad. Choosing to major in accounting(because you’ll always be able to find a job), may not be right for creative or very extroverted people who don’t get a thrill out of balancing numbers. Even if you can do a thing, it doesn’t mean you should.

No matter what life decisions you’re grappling with, don’t expect to be right all the time. If never screwing up is your biggest goal, you’ll live a very narrow life. You’ve got to take the risk of being wrong to find the life that fits you best.

Looking perfect and always saying the right thing isn’t an achievable goal. No matter how hard you try to do and say the right things, you sometimes get it wrong. But being wrong isn’t the death-sentence some people think. Even the smartest people are sometimes clueless. Don’t live so carefully that your biggest goal is to never be wrong. It may feel good for a while, but soon you’ll get bored. Safety is over-rated.

Like turning a car’s steering wheel, life goes better if you’re in action. New activities usually involve some wobbly times. Don’t wait until you think you have it all together and know just what to do. Jump in and get wet. Making mistakes doesn’t feel good, but there’s a point to tolerating this aspect of the learning curve. You have to screw up. It’s required in order to engage with life and move forward.