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Browsing All Posts filed under »Love«

Agape Love

August 15, 2020

“The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.” G. K. Chesterton I remember when “Can’t Buy Me Love” by the Beatles was a hit. I was just a kid at the time. Though I liked the song, I didn’t know what a “cambami love” […]

Critical Mass

August 6, 2020

One of the tricky points of conflict to handle is when one partner is distressed about the other’s weight (that is, when one is critical of the other’s mass). It is even a thorny issue to write about. I will try to do it justice in 1000 words or less. First, you can’t control your […]

Is He/She Worth It?

July 27, 2020

Way back in 1983, Billy Joel released an album titled “An Innocent Man.” The title track was a ballad in which the singer is committing to being a safe and healing person for a woman who has been badly wounded from past relationships. Essentially, he recognizes that how she guards herself in the relationship is […]

College of Marriage Online

July 20, 2020

College of Marriage is now available online at https://www.rbcommunity.org/event:5o9W3vqBIEYRbYt90GJrGu College of Marriage is a 15 week marriage enrichment curriculum written and presented by my colleague, Carolyn Klusmeier and myself. The lecture portion of the classes is now available on video. You can also download the Powerpoints and the exercises. The classes were 90 minutes, but […]

Reassuring the More Vulnerable Partner

July 13, 2020

We all go into close relationships with two basic questions: 1) Am I loveable? 2) Are you safe for me? Humans, not being binary but somewhere on a continuum between extremes, are somewhere between a “yes” and a “no” on these questions. If we took an internal family systems approach, we might say that there […]

A Farmer Looks at 60

July 5, 2020

Humorous references are a lot less amusing if you have to explain them. I originally conceived this post around the time of my 59th. I thought the reference to “A Pirate Looks at 40” by Jimmy Buffett was pretty obvious. I figured every boomer on the planet knew that song. I asked a couple of […]

A Mission of Discovery

June 29, 2020

This post came from working with some couples who are recovering from some significant violations in the relationship. There are occasionally couples who are able to get to a place of forgiveness and functionality, but don’t have the same romantic feelings for their partner that they did before. This can also happen even if there […]

Permission

June 16, 2020

You’re an adult. You can do what you want. You don’t need permission. Many partners bristle when they feel that they have to get permission from their mate to do things they want to do. I wish we had a better word than permission. It seems to imply a parent-child sort of relationship. I don’t […]

Complaint Department – Upstairs

June 9, 2020

I was listening to a sermon over the weekend about complaining to God. Essentially, the pastor was comparing and contrasting David’s pouring out his complaint in Psalm 142 with the complaining of the Israelites during the exodus. His point was that there is not a problem with complaining to God and, in fact, that can […]

Delighted In

May 25, 2020

“He will take great delight in you; in his love he will no longer rebuke you, but will rejoice over you with singing.” Zeph. 3:17 The majority of my clients are fellow Christians who sought out a Christian therapist because their faith is an important part of their lives. Between my role as a therapist […]