AHA Student Work

COUPLES SOLUTIONS: Embracing Growth in Relationship
By Alison Poulsen
Tuesday, September 20, 2005
Can a person’s continued education become a threat to the marriage? Sometimes it can, especially when the partner of the student feels threatened and becomes defensive as a result of it. An unspoken agreement exists in many marriages—“Don’t change. Don’t surpass me.” We want to stay in a comfort zone that we imagine means safety, but instead may result in diminishing the relationship and stifling both partners.

Suppose Maria decides to take a class or get another degree, John, her partner, may start feeling inadequate and worry about the security of their relationship if he compares himself to Maria who is learning and growing. As we can see, it is not the learning that constitutes the threat, but the fearful perception of the relationship.

Our tendency to judge and compare ourselves to others stems from the emphasis our culture places on competition. While competition may motivate and inspire us, it can also defeat our attempt to develop in our own unique way. Unfortunately, comparisons can create feelings of inferiority or superiority that can greatly affect our interaction with others. If Maria were to feel superior to John because of her studies, her arrogance and condescension would prevent vital and mutually loving interaction. If she were to suffer from feelings of inferiority, her feelings would also dampen the energetic connection between them.

When comparing ourselves to others, we deny our own human qualities and uniqueness, which cannot be measured or compared to others. Everyone is different and special in their own way. When we stand apart to rank, categorize and pigeon-hole ourselves and others, we are no longer our authentic selves. Only when we’re in our own skin, so to speak, can we truly link with others. While objective analysis is helpful in science and technology, in human relations we need an awareness of the energy between others and ourselves. The very heart of a relationship lies in that intangible zone of energy, where meaning comes from the tone, the look, and the feeling far more than from the level of people’s education and skills.

There are great benefits in encouraging a spouse to pursue their own path, whether it involves further education or other interests. First of all, there is nothing more loving and irresistibly attractive than having someone support us and believe in our endeavors and efforts. It builds our confidence when we take on challenges. It also may promote a reciprocal desire to encourage the partner to pursue his or her interests or find his or her own way of self-fulfillment, thus enriching both lives. Recall how Jack Nicholson in As Good as it Gets won over Helen Hunt by his sincere compliment, “You make me want to be a better man.”

Recent research shows that “a married man is significantly more satisfied with his life when his wife becomes more satisfied with hers, and vice versa."* British researcher Nick Powdthavee found that in married couples, happiness can overflow from one spouse to the other. Happiness can be contagious in marriage, even for a partner facing difficulties. The research shows that “married people become more satisfied with their life over the years merely because their spouses have become happier with theirs," says Powdthavee. Interestingly, the same results weren't seen among unmarried couples who lived together.

Education empowers people by engendering in them the ability to think with more nuance and complexity, an ability that can be transferred to different areas. Like any power, it can be used for good or for harm — to dominate people who know less or to empower people and enrich life.

Being with someone who has more knowledge in a certain area is like playing tennis with someone who plays a better game. He can either demolish you on the court or help you play a better game yourself. Similarly, the expert tennis player will enjoy the game more when the weaker player does not feel embarrassed and awkward, but appreciates the challenge and pleasure of having a talented partner.

Therefore, let us enjoy the ways in which our partners excel and let us support their growth, while we pursue our own interests with equal gratitude. The more we embrace the capacities and unique paths of friends and loved ones, the more our own world becomes infused with the fullness of their lives.

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COUPLES SOLUTIONS: Revelry and reason: Balancing Apollo and Dionysius
By Alison Poulsen
Tuesday, August 16, 2005
The Greek gods of mythology are archetypes of human behavior. Apollo represents order, light, music, and rationality, while Dionysius (the god of wine)represents revelry and release of inhibitions. Our culture is founded on Apollonian values of order; yet, we see Dionysian eruptions of excessive release. Conscious awareness of both the benefits and risks of excessive Apollonian order or Dionysian freedom allows us to navigate our lives through the pitfalls of excess. Each archetype has value, but taken in excess, can cause harm.

Order and freedom are two of many deep-seated needs that often conflict with one another. Thus, people tend to favor one to the exclusion of the other. Those who favor order may experience that need in terms of their physical surroundings, requiring that everything in the home and the office be clean, neat, and organized. Some may adhere strictly to a financial budget and require that every dollar is accounted for. Some experience the need for order in terms of schedules and careful planning. Others are concerned that their roles in relationship are well defined. Finally, order may be experienced as a need to clearly understand the world around us. For instance, rather than simply going out and skiing, the order seeker may be driven to understand everything about the technology of the equipment and the sport first.

Having order in one's world benefits a person by making life predictable, safe, and comfortable, while appeasing the fear of chaos and turmoil. Good planning and organization allow for more efficiency and getting more done. Yet, excessive emphasis on order drives out freedom and vitality. Too much order can lead to rigidity and lifelessness.

On the other hand, those who favor freedom value creativity, spontaneity, and reject being encumbered by rigid structures of schedules, budgets, house-cleaning, or conventional rules. They may prefer intuitive thinking rather than academic study. They prefer to be moved by inspiration rather than time constraints. They don't mind having a friend over if the house is messy. They might want to be generous or buy something because it delights them despite the condition of their finances. Their biggest fear is that life may become rigid, lifeless, and boring from too much control.

While freedom from structure allows for vitality and unpredictability, excessive freedom leads to chaos and frustration. When others can no longer count on you, their disappointment saps some of that sought-for joy of life. Too much freedom with spending can lead to financial ruin; too many missed appointments leads to loss of work and friends. Too much of anything life-enhancing can become harmful.

When both partners favor freedom excessively, the relationship may start with great fervor and passion, but over time, can disintegrate into chaos and disappointment. When both partners favor order excessively, the relationship may look good from the outside (nice house, good jobs, money in the bank), but it may become sterile and lifeless on the inside. When partners polarize, favoring opposite values, there is either great dissension or passive resignation to their differences.

Ideally, each partner in a relationship makes the effort to grapple with the tension of the opposite needs for order and freedom within their own selves. It's always helpful to integrate opposite qualities in small doses. If you are used to buying dinner for everyone and buying what you like on a whim, try restraining yourself now and then. Another benefit of integrating both values is that it's easier to understand and communicate compassionately with your partner. For instance, when one person understands the depth of the need for order and the fear of chaos underlying the desire for a spotless house, she can approach her partner with understanding of that need, while attempting to point out her need for a little looseness and relaxation.

The ideal balance of Apollonian and Dionysian energies is not a happy medium between the two. At work, for instance, being on time for appointments is generally preferable to a come-as-you-please attitude. On a date, however, sticking to a 10PM bedtime when the full moon is out and a romantic breeze is blowing might be a bad idea. Life ebbs and flows, and the appropriate proportion of control and release, which depends on all the surrounding circumstances, is in constant flux.

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COUPLES SOLUTIONS: The Compassionate Heart
By Alison Poulsen
Thursday, September 08, 2005
Compassion is at the very heart of good communication and meaningful relationships. Being compassionate entails imagining being in someone else’s shoes and desiring to ease their suffering. Suffering is the sorrow of having lost someone or something of meaning to us. Paradoxically, suffering is intimately linked with joy, for inherent in every moment of joy lies the potential of loss. Since the hours of joy are fleeting, they are tinged with the shadow of sadness. On the other hand, suffering also may retain some of the joy we once experienced, just as Blues music expresses suffering so beautifully. Witnessing suffering may bring meaning to the pain and can help move a person to the other side of suffering.

To be compassionate does not require fixing problems or agreeing with others. It only calls for giving someone your full attention and presence. If your partner feels that you’ve ignored him, you might not agree with his perception, but you can feel compassion for his state of mind. That does not mean listening to endless gripes and complaints, which can be exhausting and unproductive.

Should you have compassion for someone who is angry at you? Absolutely, even though it may not be easy! Once you look behind the anger, you may find fear and unmet desire. For example, if your partner is angry because you’re absorbed in your own activities, becoming defensive simply continues the cycle of anger and you may remain unaware that he or she feels somewhat abandoned and is unable to admit it. Once you truly see the hurt or fear driving the anger, there’s a good chance of communicating effectively about what really matters to each person.

Similarly, we need to be compassionate toward ourselves. Understanding the dynamic that leads us to lose our temper, for example, is more effective than harsh self-criticism. Looking for the fear or hurt beneath our temper allows us to find a better way to address it. Ruthless self-condemnation, on the other hand, simply buries the hurt or unmet need deeper until the situation is ripe for another explosion.

Compassion recognizes the humanity in all people, and accepts that all of us have our weaknesses. Yet, compassion does not mean condoning or tolerating abusive behavior. You can have compassion for someone who has hurt you or others, while still holding them accountable for their actions. If your spouse has had an affair, for example, although you might try to understand how that situation developed, you don’t need to accept the behavior. In fact, you need to protect yourself from further harm.

Compassion restrictors:
1. Communication without compassion imprisons us in a world of judgment. Judgment uses language that implies wrongness or badness. “You’re lazy.” “She’s selfish.” “He’s narcissistic.” Blame, insults, and labels don’t enhance life, they alienate it. It’s tempting to judge things as good or evil, right or wrong, or black or white, but we do so out of fear or contempt. No one’s needs, least of all our own, will be met that way.

2. Compassion can be blocked by using comparison as a form of judgment. Compare your own musical accomplishment to that of Mozart and you’ll feel thoroughly demoralized rather than inspired. But luckily, people are not alike, even though we are all human. We all have our own strengths and weaknesses.

3. The most dangerous barrier to compassion is the denial of responsibility for our actions. We all remember the Nazi system of invoking higher authority, which authorized normal people to commit horrendous crimes against humanity. When we deny responsibility for our actions, we enter dangerous territory and distance ourselves from our humanity. Even if we may be tempted to say, “she makes me unhappy or he makes me angry,” we need to take responsibility for our expectations, feelings, and actions. We can handle disappointments with understanding and compassion, and at the same time adjust our future expectations of those who continue to disappoint us.

You may email a comment or question to alisonpoulsen@cox.net.

An excellent book on the topic: Rosenberg, Marshall B. Ph.D., Nonviolent Communication, Puddledancer Press, CA, 2003.

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COUPLE SOLUTIONS: Pleaser vs. Receiver
By Alison Poulsen
Tuesday, August 02, 2005
Herman Hesse wrote in Narcissus and Goldman that in art and love, giving and taking become indistinguishable.

A common dynamic seen within couples is that one partner tends to please while the other tends to receive (the giver and the taker). These opposites attract each other, because they are complementary and each partner needs to develop some of the qualities of the other side. If each partner becomes more one-sided and excessive in giving or taking, the relationship becomes more and more oppressive and unsatisfying.

Ideally, both partners give and receive whole-heartedly for the right reasons without any strings attached.

What's wonderful about a pleaser (the giver) is that he or she is considerate, thoughtful, and has the other person's well-being and happiness in mind. Such a person is compassionate and able to feel into other people's needs and desires. Yet, if the pleaser becomes one-sided and excessive in doting over the partner, the partner can feel overwhelmed and stifled, feeling a burden of guilt toward the pleaser. The partner may sense that there is an underlying need to be needed and thanked, which causes him or her to withdraw. While it's normal to enjoy appreciation, excessive need for gratitude is draining and uncomfortable.

Sometimes when people split up, you hear "how could he leave her? She did everything for him?" As unfair as it may seem, that may be precisely the reason he left. It can feel belittling and overwhelming to have someone do too much for you.

Pleasers need to learn to ask for and receive what they desire from others. There really can be no true giving unless givers take care of themselves and are able to receive as well. They also need to develop the ability to let others take care of themselves on occasion, and to make sure their giving has no sense of reciprocal obligation or neediness attached.

Receivers are able to fully enjoy receiving from others, which is wonderful for both partners. Receivers feel self-contained and independent, and often don't feel they have to do a lot to please others because they feel quite satisfied in themselves. In order to be someone who can receive, you have to feel worthwhile and good enough about yourself to accept others' giving.

However, if someone simply takes and takes, without an ability or desire to give back, then there is a devouring quality in the receiving rather than joy and appreciation. A person who only receives and doesn't give to others has a sense of entitlement based on deficiency rather than self-worth. He or she seems selfish or greedy, and incurs resentment in those who continue to give. Similar to the Grinch who stole Christmas, such people seem to fear that they will become empty or lose part of themselves if they give too much. So instead, they tend to hoard what is brought their way.

Receivers, therefore, need to experience the pleasure and joy of thinking and doing for others. They will become more whole and full by giving to others. There is a sense that when you give from the heart, you also receive the joy of giving, and when you receive from another fully, you are giving them a gift in return.

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COUPLES SOLUTIONS: Time for Two
By Alison Poulsen
Tuesday, July 26, 2005
It’s important for couples to talk about work, parenting, money issues, and the practicalities of life. Yet, it’s also important for couples to spend time together simply enjoying each other’s company as they did when they first met. The busyness of life, particularly when there are children, makes it difficult to purposely make time to relish being together without a particular agenda or purpose.

When you spend all day being a responsible parent, planning schedules, giving advice, or dealing with controversies at work, it takes deliberation to switch into a connecting mode. If that conscious choice isn’t made, then couples tend to relate to each other as a responsible parents, for example, and the partners will respond as either a good child or as a rebellious child. Either way, it’s a parent/child relation. Or partners may relate as co-workers, which doesn’t do much for the magic in a relationship either.

The reason divorce rates are so high when children leave home for college or work is that couples don’t sustain their relationship as couples but relate primarily as co-parents, co-workers, or housemates. So, the powers of attraction and energetic connection—the Goddess of Aphrodite—have been left to wither in the cold. When the children leave home or life becomes less busy, the void and the longing for passion become obvious.

People complain that they’ve fallen out of love as though they have no choice about the matter. “Love” is often viewed as a feeling. However, “love” actually involves more than just fleeting feelings that come and go. Love requires an action over which we do have some control. So there is something we can do about sustaining love in a relationship.

The act of love involves choosing to have an attitude of appreciating our partner including their differences as we did when we fell in love. We fall in love and get a feeling of wholeness when we see someone who carries some qualities we lack in an attractive way. When we first fall in love, we’re in a state of awe and wonder regarding our partner, which coincidentally inspires our partner to feel confident and open—two appealing qualities. Later in relationship, those same contrasting qualities often drive us crazy. But the irony is that the more we criticize and try to change our partner, the more our partner carries those qualities in an annoying way. In contrast, the more we appreciate our partner, the more he or she carries those qualities in an attractive way, and thus, the more likely we are to get that loving feeling. It all starts with our own conscious choice to appreciate the differences, without denigrating our own different way of being, of course.

Practical steps to promote the connection between a couple include taking some time whether it’s 15 or 30 minutes a day to be together, having fun, being romantic, listening to music together, or having an adventure, as long as somehow time is taken to enjoy being together. Every week or so, a couple should spend a longer period of time together and consciously invite into the relationship the spirit of awe and mystery of being intimate with another human being.

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The Child of Wolves

Flames leapt from the small fire to frolic silently in the swirls and eddies of the night breeze, catching against the bare winter-stripped twigs of an elm to flutter brief passionate lives as fiery leaves. Turning their colors in mere seconds, they left only a faint settling of ash against windswept snow and a single unburned page on the grill. She sat the gaze of her eyes on the picture it bore—a red-cheeked curly-haired girl in hood and cape, toting a basket, confronting a handsome young man with the legs and the tail of a wolf. Cupping her hands, she made a small shelter for the match that she brought to life between her sloped palms and took to meet the untouched scene. The girl’s cloak went up in flames that quickly devoured both her head and the wolf’s, and then went on to deal with both of their bodies. She watched the fire treat its palate and cleanse her of her past once again. The story had come too close to the truth.

It had been luck that led her to stumble upon it, a slim book brought home in the hand of a child, the letters and numbers of a library’s white sticker assembled in code on its binding. She brushed a loop of her hair behind her ear, where it hung long, straight, and red down her back, and aimed her chin at the moon, which dangled pregnant and ponderous, a beacon of light in the night. She had witnessed too many atrocities committed against her brethren to dismiss the story as just another adaptation. It had been written by someone who knew her tale, who had seen and could expose her for who she was.

Images banished behind the unconscious veil of her mind began to drift their way back through, wandering without direction, caught up together in an explosion of loss and pain. Her husband, roasted upon a spit, protesting his innocence until his dying breath proved him liar, reverting his shape to that of beast. Her children’s mewling cries as their throats were mercilessly slit before her, their pelts stolen by the village’s knives just as surely as were their lives. She alone had been spared, always spared, instead made helpless prey to the wolves of the village, men whose natures resembled those of beasts far more than did those of her family. Within a month she had escaped, as grotesquely engorged in her vulpine form as the moon was in the sky the night of her flight.

Soft flurries of falling snow settled upon her face and she thrust her tongue out at the heavens, fishing for gentle brushes of wetness, recalling the time that she made her fateful decision and chose passion, chose bestiality. She met the wolf on the way to her grandmother’s house (they all got that much right), but she wasn’t frightened, wasn’t as naïve and innocent as they liked to make her out to be. He had appeared as a man, naked as the snow they stood on. She offered him her shawl, and he touched her crimson hair. He offered to carry her basket, and she touched his pale bare skin. They never made it to her grandmother’s house, never mind the path of needles or path of pins, and they dined on the basket’s contents as they lay on her shawl in the snow, bundled in her long, thick hair, munching biscuits and jam. It was thought of hot tea and a warm fireplace that had roused her, sent her from the wolf’s side without a qualm about her encounter and on to her grandmother’s empty-handed. Pleasuring in the tender touch of the drifting snowfall as she walked among great pines and evergreens, she forgot her shawl and her neck was exposed to the old lady’s horrified eyes, the twin punctures of wolves’ fangs unmistakable. And so the friendly flickering of the fireplace was transferred onto a brand and made to forbid her re-entry into her old life. The wolf was waiting for her with shawl in hand as she came fleeing back down the path, her hair streaming red as a river of a bloody tears behind her.

He had waited. He had marked her, but he had waited. Her husband, the big bad wolf, had only taken what she had given freely, and then he had waited, had shown more humanity than the beasts that would burn him alive. And because the story got it right, because the wolf was shown as the man he truly had been, because she was shown as the little seductress she had been, the story had to go, had to burn before her child read it. Because he would recognize the tale as hers, would ask about the other children that had never been mentioned in the other stories, would have to be told that he was the child of village wolves, and not of the man that waited.

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Emotion
Unexpected bursts or uncontrollable feelings,
Possibly treatable but hard to understand,
Strong intangible forces that consume you and your senses,
emotion hides in the back of your mind,
And occasionally flood,
It plays an important role in life,
A role that comes with power and strength.

Koolaid
Colorful cool refreshing drinks kids enjoy,
Assorted artificial fruit flavors,
Calories combined with colors,
Dispicable Dyed Drinks.

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