A couple sits across from me, and I can feel the exact weight they've brought into the room.
It's not anger exactly, though I've heard them fight so I know there has been plenty of that. What I'm noticing is something heavier. It feels like the exhaustion of people who have tried, repeatedly, and can no longer tell if they are fighting for their relationship or fighting to get out of it.
​
One of them says, "I don't even know what I want anymore."

She's talking about being in the relationship, and I hear that more than anything else.

It's an honest thing to say. It takes courage to say it out loud, especially to your partner, especially in front of a stranger.

Not knowing is not the same as not caring. It usually means you've been so busy surviving the dynamic between you that you've lost the thread back to yourself.
Relational Life Therapy is built for this.

Terry Real's RLT model doesn't assume that staying together is the goal. It assumes that clarity is. What I want is two people showing up fully, telling the truth without weapons. Then we can figure out what is actually possible between them. Sometimes what's possible is a transformed relationship. Sometimes it's a conscious uncoupling, done with care and dignity instead of carnage. Both require the same work.

What RLT gives couples on the edge is a container rigorous enough to hold the the actual question.

I've watched people arrive at my door certain they were done, and discover through the work that there was something they hadn't yet tried, some version of themselves they hadn't yet brought to the relationship. I've watched people arrive hoping to be convinced to stay, and discover instead that the kindest thing they could do for themselves and their partner was to leave well.

Neither of those outcomes can be rushed. And from where I sit, neither can be decided from the outside.

Somatics teaches us that body knows things the mind hasn't caught up to yet. A clenching in the chest when your partner reaches for you. The way you breathe differently in their absence. Numbness you've gotten so used to you stopped noticing it. RLT and somatics work with those signals, not just the story you've been telling about what's wrong.

In relationship therapy sessions, I give couples the same invitation again and again: put down the case you've been building against each other, just for now. I don't say this because the case isn't real, but because building it has already cost you years, and it hasn't resolved anything.

What would it mean to get curious instead? What would it mean to let your partner see what is actually happening inside you, not the defended version, not the one that has learned to wound before being wounded?

RLT cultivates what Terry Real calls the Wise Adult. Not a spiritually bypassed version of adulthood that never gets angry or afraid. The kind that can feel all of it and still choose how to respond.

Some couples do this work and recommit with a clarity and honesty they didn't know was possible when they walked in. Some couples do this work and part. They part having said the true things, having understood each other at a level the fighting never allowed. Their kids, if they have them, feel the difference.

If you are sitting with the question of whether to stay or go, you don't need someone to hand you the answer. You need a space honest enough, and rigorous enough, to let you find it yourself.

If you are ready for clarity, reach out and let's talk, honestly. I can help you find your way through, instead of staying stuck. 

In the 30-plus years since my tire-screeching departure after grabbing my diploma from the sweaty hands of my high school principal, Northeastern Ohio has changed only in that it is now even more conservative.
At 18, I drove away from oversized hair and stagnantly closed minds, determined to try my luck anywhere but the Midwest.
I have no place here in Ohio and never did.
I’m spending the week helping my 80-year-old mother, from whom I am mostly estranged, care for herself after knee replacement surgery.
It is 560 miles between my current mountain home to the burdened land where my ancestors have squatted for generations.
I’ve covered those miles by driving North in my rickety camper built the year I graduated from high school that I euphemistically call “vintage.
Every day I'm there, I leave my mom's farm and drive to town to gather supplies.
Each trip results in long stares and raised eyebrows from the Trump-loving locals.
I rarely feel unsafe as a visibly queer and trans person, but here I do.
The vitriol on the white Christian faces has driven more than one queer into the embrace of sin, AKA San Francisco.
It’s a long week.
As I ready myself to leave, I realize I don’t have to be home for another two days.
The time spreads out in front of me, golden and sweet.
I need this time to process the week with my mom.
I text a friend, “I can’t tell if I am completely okay or totally disassociated.” My friend texts back, “Maybe it’s both.”
A solo-road trip sounds excellent, winding slowly back down south.
I whisper my intention at the gas pump, “May today bring me exactly the magick I need.”
In the Southwest corner of present-day Ohio exists the Great Serpent Mound.
It is the largest effigy mound in North America at 1,348 feet in length, 25 feet in width, and three feet high, complete with seven curvatures and a triple spiral tail.
This holy mother was constructed approximately 2300 years ago by Native cultures whose names are reconstructions: the Fort Ancient Culture and later the Adena Culture.
Doing my homework, I learned that the snake surrounds an egg and was built on an ancient meteor impact site called an astrobleme.
This meteor impact occurred during the Permian Period, about 248 to 286 million years ago.
In the center of the structure, sedimentary strata have been uplifted several hundred feet, resembling the central uplifts of lunar craters.
I’m curious enough about the snake effigy to linger in Ohio.
I drive for hours, leaving the highway for the two-lane country roads replete with pick-up trucks and Dollar General.
Arriving at the mound, the park is closed for the night.
I’m too nervous about sneaking in.
I decide to wild camp in my rig and arrive at the mound first thing in the morning.
I scout a good location, up a dirt road, in the middle of an empty field near the serpent’s head.
Traveling in Scotland, I was enchanted by their “right to roam” law which strikes a balance between the right to access land and water and owning private property.
Basically, you can visit and camp on the land, swim in lakes and rivers, hike, and explore historic sites, even if they are on private property.
This is a good law.
Because, after all, how can one really “own” property?
Can you pick it up and take it with you?
No.
The land is here for all of us to live on.
We are made of it.
Perhaps my anarchist sensibility runs too deep, but the concept of private property as applied to land is a weird construct.
I’m tucked in for the night, and the late dusk softens the world.
I am aware that there are “right” ways to be in relationship with new and old places.
How one approaches a new place matters.
When first arriving in a place, it’s polite to make a land offering to the local spirits and guardians, thanking them for having you.
I decide to do this in the morning.
This was a mistake.
I crack a beer and am lounging in my camper when a car horn blares and won’t stop.
Decidedly jarring, I pull on pants and stagger into the unrelenting high beams of a car pointed directly at me.
A voice begins to yell at me, even before I can see it.
I know this is most likely not going to go well, but I think it is probably best to deal with it head-on.
I approach, and in a big truck is an irate older woman, screaming her head off at me.
Her words are barely decipherable.
She is so enraged.
I see an older man sitting in the passenger seat, and he looks confused.
I can hear “MY PROPERTY!” and “GET THE FUCK OUT!” “MY PROPERTY!”
I gather from those words she would politely like to ask me to gather my things and go.
I feel a bit scared but also taken aback.
This woman is so triggered, and I am clearly not a threat.
I say authentically, “I am so sorry. I will go.”
It wasn’t my intention to disrupt her evening, merely to find a place to rest.
How true my apology feels surprises me.
Nothing in me wants to fight with her; I am just sorry.
The truck waits as she guns the engine while I prepare to leave and do.
She follows me a mile down the road, flashing her lights and honking.
I drive slowly, trying to decide what to do next.
I realize that my reading glasses are lost in the back of the camper and that I have no cell reception anyway.
I’m going to have to navigate by feel.
I’ve already scoped the location near the mound, and know there is nowhere good to camp, so I head down a dirt road, then another, and another.
At each turn, I feel into it.
Which is the right way to go?
As a child, my mother had several impactful talks with me about my “conscience.”
These usually occurred after I had done something terrible: put the cat in the fridge to see what would happen or poured water all over the floor to make it slippery.
From what I could gather as a child, my conscience was something inside me that helped me “feel” what was the good thing to do and what would piss my mother off.
It’s not precisely my conscience that I’m using to decide my route, but it is a felt sense.
I follow my nose through the pitch-black night amidst curving winding roads.
It’s late by the time I pull into the ATV state recreation area, thinking this might be a good place to rest.
It’s private, and I hope no one will bother me here.
I lay down to rest, but my body won’t relax.
I’ve done many sketchy questionable things when I travel.
Still, I realize that the information I’m receiving from my body jives with what my brain knows.
I’m in rural Ohio, but I don’t know where.
No one knows where I am. I’m trans.
I’ve told my partner I’m safe for the night.
I have no cell reception. I have no glasses.
I’m hidden from view in an area well known by locals.
Probably it would be okay, but I shouldn’t risk it.
I’ve got to find another place to be.
Again, I hop out of the camper and reconnect the battery terminals so the thing will start. Yes, it’s that janky.
I start driving again.
I had a good activist friend in college who doled out this good anti-authoritarian advice: When you don't know which way to go, go left.
Left it was as I pulled out of the ATV park onto the darkened road.
Another 30 minutes of fields, curves, and occasional darkened farmhouses.
It’s so late, and my eyes are weary.
I start to pray out loud, to my ancestors, to the spirits of this land, to whoever is benevolently listening.
“I need some help, y’awl.”
Miles go by.
Many turns.
More prayers, “Like, a campground. That’s what I need. Can you please guide me towards a campground?”
Suddenly, a bright green blaze crosses the sky over yet another field.
An emerald blur from the right side of the field, down low to the left.
It’s burned low to the ground.
​
If it were light out, I would have tried to find where the meteor landed.
My attention is drawn in the direction it fell, and there it is: a sign, faded and worn, with an arrow and one word, "Camping."
The brakes squeal as I make the left turn too quickly.
More miles and miles of road.
Five.
Ten.
Fifteen.
I pass a cemetery.
Decide not to sleep there.
Again, I speak out loud, “Y’awl, I have faith, but I am starting to doubt this story will end well tonight. A campground? Please?”
And then there it is.
On my right, I see the dim outline of an RV. A gravel driveway.
I pull in.
Almost all of the spots are available.
Finally, I rest.
When I wake in the morning, the sun is golden.
The late spring green of the sacred world glows, and the breeze is warm.
I eat my yogurt and berries slowly, savoring the morning.
As I pull out, I blow a kiss to the ancestors, the guides, and the land.
Later that morning, as I wind and wind towards the direction I think is home, my heart cracks open.
Too tired last night to consider the miracle of the green flash, the morning brings contemplation.
I was guided.
That is clear.
But why was going to the Serpent Mound not the right thing?
I’m fighting with the lady from last night in my head.
She appeared like a middle-aged conservative white lady.
Probably Christian.
Why are conservative midwestern Christians so hypocritical?
Why is their god so desecrated?
What about love and acceptance, kindness to strangers, offering succor and respite to weary travelers?
Christian charity?
Ooh, I hate hypocrisy.
And why am I fighting with someone who is not even here?
Why was she so full of hate for me?
Because it did feel personal when she screamed, “Why did you ever think it would be okay for you to be here???”
What did she see?
Did she see a middle-aged person, like herself, who was unafraid to travel alone?
To take risks?
To read as queer and trans and other, amid a culture that kills its own if they are in the littlest way different?
What was the trauma that had her read me as a threat?
As I ponder, I soften.
I don’t know anything about her and her life, what dreams she may have had, or who she may have lost.
I have received a gift from her: be soft with strangers.
Be gentle, be loving.
I’m glad I said none of the ugly things I could have.
I appreciate the healing that has made my heart soft enough to be in a good way.
I can feel the land here, thrumming with life.
When the tears come, I start to understand something new about the pain of colonization.
I’m driving and crying, which is a favorite combo.
When the grief gets stronger, the words “I’m so sorry” are what pour, repeatedly, from within.
The same thing I said and meant to the lady from last night.
Except now I’m saying it to the land and the original inhabitants.
I am so, so sorry for what my ancestors did to you.
For what we continue to do.
From the marrow of my bones, I feel the wrongness.
My deep felt remorse was precisely the same as I had spoken the previous evening: I am so, so sorry.
At that exact moment, as I round a hairpin turn in the country glow of morning, I realize: I didn’t make an offering to that land where I squatted.
While part of what I met in that lady was a traumatized, raging, and entitled white lady, another layer was the rage of the untended great mother serpent.
The unacknowledged rape of the land.
The native tourism I had been about to participate in because I hadn’t checked in with my conscience and thought it would be cool.
Understood through that lens, the wrath I had experienced was deserved. In fact, it’s a gift.
Queerness offers you a unique sensitivity to the world.
Often painful, yet there are moments when you can be so grateful for the exquisite sensation of sensing your conscience.
I appreciate feeling the difference between what is right and what will piss your Mother off.
​​

“I love all the divine feminine energy here. It’s so important. They are trying to tear us apart, but we won’t be divided,” she leans in, her wispy voice, disrupting the conversation I had been having with my best friend, Theo Mae.
We are sitting on the lawn at The Chicks concert.
In the background, Cherry Bomb by the Runaways blares, projected onto multiple 25-foot screens.
We were enjoying our snacks, waiting for the band to take the stage, when this white waify purple-haired woman sat down on the grass between us.
At first, she was on her phone, invading our personal space, but she seemed harmless.
But then she started talking, all goddess this, womyn that, feminine feminine feminine.
Eye-gazing.
Lavender hair tossing.
Trying.
To.
CONNECT.
Theo Mae and I rolled our eyes at each other and shook our damn heads.
Both non-binary, we are no strangers to hearing how incredible our “feminine energy” is.
Let me be clear.
I love women.
I am down with how people want to describe their experiences.
Usually, I pick my battles about gender.
I often ignore comments like these.
After all, I will never see the person again.
But this lady wouldn’t drop it.
Amping up, she went on and on about the glorious feminine moon, the goddess energy of the crowd, the field of the feminine emanating from us all.
Finally, I had had enough.
I turned toward her and said, “I’m not trying to bust your groove, but you are talking to two non-binary, trans people. The language about the “divine feminine” you are using doesn’t work for me. It is alienating and off-putting. You are gonna need to stop with that if you want to hang out with us.”
Clear. Kind. Boundary.
In my head, I’m putting my money on her doubling down. It seems, for a brief moment, that she will stop.
I’m still bracing for it.
“Oh yes! I honor you so much!” she replies, chatting about the music for a minute.
Great, but my guard is up.
“But really, fighting the patriarchy takes ALL of us.”
Uh-oh.
And then.
“Okay, but you don’t understand. Your feminine energy is so beautiful! You are so powerful!”
And there it is, folks. The ole double-down.
Here’s what the Google has to say: “The phrase “double down” means to put forth the additional effort or risk in a situation or argument, even if you know the outcome will be a mistake or will be negative.”At this point, Theo Mae sees my disgust. They lean in, bless them, and bravely give purple hair Gender 101.
For five minutes of their precious life on Earth time, it’s all smash the gender binary, celebrate the glittering gender multiverse, and try to help this woman learn.
I admire Theo Mae’s fortitude.
Their educational interlude gives me time to think about what I want from this situation.

1. I want it to stop.
2. I want to have a good night.
3. I want to be kind.

Until.
This bitch puts her hand on my arm! “I just want you to know I honor everything about you, your….”
I knock her hand off my arm.
“Don’t touch me,” I growl.
I mean.
When was the last time someone tried to manage me physically?
Now I’m mad.
Is she tripping? She might be.
I still have care for this human, misguided as she is.
I say, “Look, I know you want to connect, but I’m here for the concert, not to educate you. I asked you to stop, and you didn’t. We are done here.”
She tells me that because she honors me, she is going to leave.
“If you really honor me, here’s what you can do. After the concert, go home and get on Google. Research gender identity. Research non-binary. That’s how you can honor me,” is how I reply.
This is reasonable, considering all the shitty and mean things I could have said.
Here’s her parting shot: “I’m sorry for all the people who hurt you and made you the way you are.”
She runs, I mean RUNS, off, forgetting her wallet in the process.
I look at it lying there, unwilling to do anything with it.
But Theo Mae is nicer than me and sprints after her to return it.
They return, laughing, “Now she’s gonna think trans people are so evil.”
And she likely will.
Bullshit like this happens all the time to my black friends, transfeminine peeps, fat folks, disabled friends, and all the other folks existing at the edges of what is considered ‘normal.’
But something about this episode made me question the doubling down thing.
Like, why double down?
Why did she believe her intention to be understood was much more important than the impact I expressed to her?
More important than the boundary I set?
This is a meme, right? The doubling down?
What did that lady think was gonna happen if she kept insisting on my feminine energy after I set a boundary, saying how she honored me without listening to me and kept nonconsensually touching me? (She did it again!)
Does anyone ever soften because you’ve convinced them you are right?
or…
Have you ever been convinced by someone’s intentions that the impact you feel doesn’t matter?
I think about embodied strategies a lot.
Strategies are attempts to meet needs.
You can ask, “What is this strategy trying to take care of?” especially when it seems nonsensical.
Doubling down is a strategy; my best guess is that it is trying to take care of belonging.
That lady wanted to belong with Theo and me, and for that to happen, she felt we had to understand her perspective.
It makes sense to me.
However, how she went about belonging didn’t work for us, and ultimately for her.
If she were my client, I would suggest implementing a new narrative and strategy for belonging.
Stop and listen when someone gives you feedback that something in your behavior isn’t working.Every week in my dance community, we read our community agreements. Here are the relevant bits:
“If you receive feedback from another dancer that they were uncomfortable with something, here’s what to do:

1. Stop.
2. Listen.
3. Reflect back to them what you’ve heard.
4. Ask questions to make sure you understand the impact they are sharing with you.
5. If you get stuck, seek a supporter.
6. If someone offers you feedback, they give you the gift of believing in your capacity to learn. Take the opportunity.”

Seriously.
It doesn’t seem that difficult to me.
Sure, it’s hard to hear you unwittingly impacted someone, but it was an accident, right?
So why not just listen, and say something like, “Oh so sorry! I hear that language doesn’t work for you, so I’ll stop.”
That would have been the coolest thing, and then she could have hung out with us all night.
What is the necessary work that gets us all to the place of being able to hear the impact we inadvertently caused without taking it as a personal affront we must defend against?
If I hurt you, I want to know about it, so I can make it right.
That starts with listening and making sure I understand the impact.
Hurt happens in all relationships.
Repair from harm deepens all relationships.Being the angry trans person isn’t my jam.
It’s no fun.
I often have so much spaciousness for people’s learning.
Case in point: Three weeks ago, I came out as NB to my 75-year-old silversmithing teacher.
It was the first time she met someone NB or encountered the concept.
I explained it to her, then she got excited and hugged me, saying, “Happy Binary! Happy Binary! I love you!”
I knew exactly what she meant.
Now we are having conversations, and I’ve given her permission to ask all her questions.
This feels good to me.
I love this work.
She is so excited to learn and to understand and confront the limits to her understanding.
When she makes a mistake, she readily admits it, “Oh shoot, I messed up your pronoun again!” and we move on.
It’s just not a big deal.
Last thought on this: I wanna double down sometimes too.
Being misunderstood sucks.
The thing is, I didn’t misunderstand the purple lady.
I didn’t think she had bad intentions.
Her intentions of connection were clear.
What else was clear is the learning she still has to do around gender, boundaries, and listening.
As do I, as do you.
Doubling down feels like “But…!” in my body.

• “But you don’t get what I’m saying!”
• “But I didn’t mean it like that!”
• “But if you really got it, you wouldn’t feel like that.”

I think the corrective here is to consider that the impact someone is sharing is the impact they experience.
You don’t know what that feels like to be them.
This week, I am practicing listening to the impact I catalyze in others without defensiveness or trying to convince them of my rightness or good intentions.
I’d be delighted if you’d join me in this practice.
Down with the double down, up with Connection!

One of the worst things I ever did to another human on purpose was to scrub the toilet with their toothbrush, then put it back in the toothbrush holder.
The recipient of this disgusting treatment was my then-husband.
What's worse is that he had a whole thing about toilet germs, which I knew about.
We were in a fight, and I was furious.
At the moment, it felt like the perfect retaliation.
I'm sure it does not surprise you in the least that relationship eventually ended.
We had so few tools to communicate with love, so we took out our pain on each other.
I'm embarrassed when I reflect on that less-than-shining example of how I handled conflict.
That was where I was then, but I wish I had had better skills to communicate my feelings and needs.
What happens to you when you get into a conflict with a friend or partner?
Do you ever do or say things you later regret?
If you are like many people, your body has a response.
You may go on autopilot and then later, like me with the toothbrush, wonder what caused you to behave that way.
When I met my current partner, I was determined to learn how to use conflict to fuel connection instead of break it.
I wanted this relationship to last, so I better learn how to fight better.
So I went to school for conflict resolution.
I read everything I could find about conflict theory.
I took classes like NVC to learn how to communicate my needs.
I studied somatics to understand the body's fight-and-flight responses and how to work with them.
And sure enough, I got better at conflict.
You probably already know that conflict can be painful, but did you know that it is also a force that can be generative?
It helps you out by pointing out what needs to be addressed.
Sometimes you conflict over something straightforward.
You forgot to pick up an important package you agreed to pick up, and your partner is pissed.
But I've learned in my study of conflict that most of it happens below the surface.
What we think we are fighting about is rarely what we're fighting about.
For example, suppose I fight with my partner about whose turn it is to do the dishes.
What we are really fighting about could be unmet needs for fairness, reciprocity, equality, etc.
Or it could be about something else entirely!
Old unresolved past issues, resentments, longings, or even a desire for connection.
All this stuff is under the surface, and we're fighting about the dishes. I bet that's happened to you.
When I get into conflict now, it happens in slow motion.
We move and speak at turtle speed.
I don't want to say or do something I regret later and have to apologize for.
So I go slow.
Probably less than half the crap that comes through my brain comes out of my mouth, which is a good thing because oooh-weee.
The impulse to retaliate has significantly lessened as I've learned to tell my partner what I feel and need.
Their toothbrush is safe with me!
I feel proud of how my partner and I show up in conflict.
There is respect between us.
Do we still get triggered?
Uh-yup!
Sure do, because human!
However, embodied practices have saved my butt countless times.
Instead of reacting out of my fight impulse, I take a pause.
I take a break.
I breathe.
All of this, hard as it is in the moment, saves me countless hours in therapy processing my fuck-ups.
Attending to my body during conflict is a gift I've learned to give myself.
Yes, good conflict skills are 100% learnable.
You don't have to be at the mercy of your conflict patterns for the rest of your life.
You can train to fight with respect and care.
Professional fighters train to build skill and grace.
Conflict skills are learnable, and I teach them, and you can learn them.

If you keep having the same fight with your partner, no matter how many talks you’ve had, you’re not broken. You’re stuck in a painful dynamic.

I practice Terry Real’s Relational Life Therapy, which is transforming how I help couples stay connected even through the necessary growth moments in their relationships.

The great thing about learning and practicing relational skills is they benefit ALL of your relationships, for the rest of your life.

Pretty great self-investment, amiright?

Why You Keep Having the Same Fight​
​Repeating conflict cycles are the bane of most couples.For example,

• The more you get angry, the more they pull away.
• The more they pull away, the angrier you get.

Or:

• The more they get blamey, the more you withdraw.
• The more you withdraw, the blamier they get. ​

Relationship Life Therapy calls these cycles "The More, The More."The more, the more is a dance of our wounds colliding, on repeat. I bet you know what I'm talking about!
Many of us think, "If my partner would just act differently, I wouldn't feel (insert bad feeling.)"

We outsource the solution to them. But guess what?

They are thinking the same thing!

If YOU would just change, they wouldn't feel the bad way they feel, and there wouldn't be this stupid repeating conflict!
Or maybe you are an internalizer, and blame yourself.
If only you could keep it together, you wouldn't take your partner to this negative place.

It's common to feel hopeless, despairing and trapped when trapped in cycles of conflict.

My couples' clients often say things like, "Ugh, I can't believe we are here again."
Conventional relationship therapy often focuses on the problems instead of solutions. 

But what you focus on increases.
For example, if you want a more trusting relationship, do the practices that will increase trust rather than endlessly reinforcing where trust was broken.

When I work with couples, I give them the same choice again and again.

1. "We can spend our time in sessions processing the hard things that happened between you, if that is how you want to spend your time and money."
2. "Or, we can focus on practicing what you long for in your partnership."

It’s a paradigm shift.
​
So how do you get out of "The More, The More?"

1. Name the pattern when not activated. While only one of you needs to see it to have leverage, it is helpful if both of you share an understanding of the dynamic
2. Watch for it happening in the wild.
3. See if you can name it while it is happening. (This works really well for my competitive clients; they want to be the first one to see and name it.)
4. The act of naming it while it's happening is often a total gamechanger. The smallest of interruptions can get you back on the same team.
5. Seek support for changing dynamics, not just processing negative emotions. Find a couple's counselor who is willing to help you keep your eyes on the prize: a thriving relationship, not endless venting. We are going after true change!

​
I am currently accepting a small number of new relationship clients.​

Let’s map your unique pattern together and discover how to interrupt and bring back joy and connection → Book a free call

What does it mean if you feel contempt in your relationship?
(Read until the end to get your free resource.)

I recently heard the phrase "Normal Marital Hatred" in my RLT training.
When I heard this I thought, "Yep, I know that feeling."

I've written elsewhere about my two marriages, but in the story I'm going to tell you, I am 29. I've been married for four years. We have a small home we've built together. It is a shoes-off house.

There are two steps leading up to the front door of the house. My then-husband has a habit of leaving his shoes in the middle of the steps. So that I either have to move them, or step over them.

I arrive home first from work. And on this particular day, I've had it. My students were a pain in the butt, my lessons didn't work, and my boss was micro-managing. I just wanted to come home, have a nice dinner, and chill.
I'm entering the house, and as usual, his boots are in the way, but in my urgency to enter, I don't see them. I trip, and fall through the threshold.

A swoosh of rage rushes through me. Why can't he put his fucking shoes on the fucking shoe rack that is RIGHT NEXT TO THE DOOR???

Instead of responding as an adult, I react from my adaptive child. I pick up his boots and throw them into the snow-covered yard, in two different directions.

After, I'm standing in my kitchen fuming. What an inconsiderate asshole. He doesn't think of anyone else but himself. Selfish. Entitled.

What I didn't know at the time is that I was stewing in my Core Negative Image of my partner.

I remember thinking, 'Ah, this must be marriage then. You just hate your partner, and keep going.'

At the time, it seemed clear that this was just the trajectory of relationships. And truly, the married people I knew all seemed to hate their partners, even if just a little bit.

My then-husband came home puzzled and annoyed that I'd thrown his boots in the yard. He didn't stop leaving them on the steps. I didn't have the tools to explain what I needed (consideration) and what I was asking for (please put them on the shoe rack.)

And so the contempt trajectory continued, until it reached its obvious conclusion: divorce.

Fast forward 25 years.

My current partner and I were going through a challenging season.
When I started to feel contempt, my lips would turn down. I didn't want to look at him. I felt gross inside.

Something in me went "Uh oh. Oh no."

I recognized the feelings. I got quiet, and sought what was beneath that feeling.
What I found surprised me: deep yearning for mutual cherishing.

I yearned to cherish, and be cherished.

There was an ache, like something had gone missing from the place it had always been.

The goodwill and warm positive regard I had felt for years was just... gone. I felt grief, and deep concern.

This time, instead of accepting contempt as a normal phase of a relationship, I challenged myself: maybe this was a warning sign. Not something to wait out.

A huge problem with contempt and resentment is that you are the one holding them.

The poison is in you, slowly eroding the love and care you used to have. And to be honest, they are fairly come by. You don't start hating your person in a vacuum.
There is a backlog of unrepaired wounds. The triggers have gotten grooved.
They are too predictable, and you know too well the path the fight will take. But you are the one living with the unmetabolized pain. It's hurting you and your good life.

(I'm imagining standing on a pulpit preaching about the value of love and relationship) But there is a way back from contempt!

It starts with deciding you love yourself too much to live with it.

Surprised?

So now what?

Decisions, decisions.

• Is the relationship salvageable?
• Will you keep on keeping on, misery intact?
• Will you leave? And take your own bullshit with you, even as you escape theirs?​

When I felt contempt in my current marriage, I knew exactly where that road led.
So I got my ass into therapy with a Relational Life Therapist who could help me clean up what was on my side of the street. (I'm the one who hurls boots, remember?)

I have recovered my warm positive regard for my partner.

I do not feel contempt anymore.

I work regularly to replace my core negative image of my partner with a better version.

My marriage now feels like the marriage I want to be in.

Feeling contempt was the warning sign that made me take action instead of sitting passively and letting things unfold.

Here's the counterintuitive good news: if you hate them, it means you still care. There is still room to do the work.

My Relational Life Therapy teacher, Terry Real, says it's possible to live a contempt-free life. I believe him, because I'm living it.

If any of this landed for you, I made something specifically for you.
It's called The Contempt Audit: A self-assessment for when you're done pretending you don't hate your partner a little. Free PDF guide and audio recording, if you're sitting with feelings you haven't quite named.
​
Grab your free guide

I love Valentine’s Day, and my partner thinks it’s completely pointless.
That difference easily turns into hurt feelings, unspoken expectations, and conflict.
Holidays like Valentine’s Day often expose an uncomfortable dynamic: one partner feels they are carrying more of the emotional labor of the relationship.

My story, when my partner didn’t show up on Feb 14 bedazzled with hearts and candy and romantic gestures, was that I care more about our relationship than they do.

As a couples therapist, I see this dynamic show up frequently.
​
The core problem is the pursuer-distancer imbalance: one partner experiences relational inequity, or the perception of it.

Let's talk about the Relational Life Therapy (RLT) model of “The More, The More.”

The more you pursue, the more they avoid.

• Their avoidance increases your anxiety, which leads you to pursue more.​

Feel Familiar?

Pursuing and avoiding do not create relational safety, nor joy. Over time, the connection suffers.

Relational Joy is the point of relationships: the soothing ease, contentment, and delight you experience when you and your person have stepped out of the dance of pursuit and avoidance.

Many of my clients can understand this cognitively, but applying the corrective is more difficult.

What do you even do?

Here are two things to chew on, for the sake of your relational joy.
1. Attention
Attention is the currency of a relationship.

• Do you respond to my bids for affection?
• Do you hear my pain, or are you listening through your defensiveness?
• Can I soften how I share feedback to not push you away, but bring you closer instead?

Attention Action: Send or say one appreciative message today.​
2. Prioritization
I worked with a couple once, and when I asked one of the men, “What are your priorities?” he said, “My husband is my priority.”
His husband had been complaining about not feeling attended to, so I didn’t buy it.
“Prove it,” I asked, “Show me your calendar.”
His calendar was full of work meetings, friend activities, and family events.

Not one mention of his partner!

Here's the thing.

The primacy of the bond must be intentionally nourished, and it starts with your calendar.

Intentional time together, and attentional time together, where you are engaging with one another.

A date night that involves a movie may be nice and relaxing, but is it connective? Do you feel closer?

Prioritization Action: Schedule one protected hour together this week and focus on connection.

Not feeling connected
?Feeling like you care more than your partner?I am opening a limited number of Relationship Reset calls this month.

In this session, we identify your pursue-avoid pattern, map what keeps it stuck, and create the first concrete shifts you can start using immediately.

If your relationship matters to you, do not wait for the pattern to fix itself (it won't.)
​Book your call and begin shifting the pattern now.

At 15 years into my second marriage, I suddenly realized we were on the brink of divorce.
We still loved each other deeply, so this surprised me.
My first marriage was at the tender age of 25. Signed up for the traditional gender roles, monogamy package, factory-installed.
That marriage ended in a blaze of glory: hot, painful, violent. So much shame, blame, yelling, and aggression.
I thought that was how all marriages end.
So imagine my surprise that there had been none of those nasty ingredients in my current marriage.
Instead, it had been a quiet drift, a walled-off silence, a slow misattunement that lasted years.
Let me be clear: my current partner and I love and respect each other. A lot.
But our adaptive children were getting in the way of us actually connecting.
Once I started seeing it, I couldn't unsee it.
If you've ever been in a relationship for long enough, you probably know the moment your kid self starts to drive.
Your adaptive child is both wise AND destructive.
My teacher, Terry Real, says, "Adaptive then, maladaptive now."
Our adaptive children used strategies then that worked to help us survive, but now harm our love.I know you know what I'm talking about!
That moment you stop being a wise, present, and skillful adult, and start being, well, an asshole who is really just hurting and needing love, but acting out at the same time.
In my current marriage, we were both lonely, quiet, and hurting.
But because there is so much love, it was hard to notice that we were at the doorway threshold of ending.
I’m writing this today for those of you living lives of quiet desperation, where the rift is not loud and ugly, but you feel the deadening, the lifeforce draining out of your love.
In my first marriage, I have many clear moments of memory: standing in the kitchen and realizing that the misattunement I just experienced from my partner was a “little death.”
Even in that loud, explosive relationship, the ending did not come from one final blow. It came from a thousand tiny deaths.
And I can see now that the same thing was happening in my second marriage, just more quietly. Misattunements. Small withdrawals.
Losing strategies block connection.
A thousand tiny deaths.
In retrospect, I suppose that most relationships get to the verge at least once.
Being a couple's therapist didn't stop mine from going there.
“The true work begins now,” our current couples therapist tells us, "Now is when you can become adults in love."
Can we work to rein in our adaptive children, to prevent them and their losing strategies from running the show?
Can we learn to let our wise adults guide us, hold those wounded and acting-out little kids, and find our way into a boundaried, adult love?
I'm deep in the work of learning to be a Relational Rife Therapist, the work of Terry Real.
Terry teaches that there are five losing strategies our adaptive children use.These can be mapped onto the fight, flight, and fix responses.
They all have a child’s logic to make them make sense.
Five Losing Strategies:

1. Being Right​
   a) Arguing about whose view is more accurate
   b) Fuels self-righteous indignation
   ​
2. Controlling Your Partner​
   a) Can be direct or indirect manipulation
   b) No one likes being controlled. It leads to retaliation and payback
   ​
3. Unbridled Self-expression​
   a) Saying whatever is on your mind with no kindness or respect
   ​
4. Retaliation​
   a) Offending from the victim position
   b) "I’ll make you feel what I feel!"​
   c) Can be overt or covert (passive-aggressive)
   ​
5. Withdrawal (AKA Stonewalling)​
   a) This is different from taking a responsible time-out or responsible distance taking
   b) Comes from resignation or retaliation.

When you read these, which is yours? We all have at least one.
My top pick is being right.
There is no shame in having a losing strategy, and it's good to know what you do when you get activated.
My RLT therapist says, “When you find yourself about to use one of your losing strategies, the best thing to do is the absolute opposite.”
So for me, the opposite of being right, justified as it may be to my adaptive child, is to allow myself to be wrong.
To not have certainty, to not believe the story I've made up in my head about my partner.
Sometimes you are not with the right person, and the relationship clearly needs to end so you are both free to become more fully who you are.
Sometimes, though, you are with the right person, but your adaptive children remain hypervigiliant and unconvinced. You question the relationship endlessly.
You whip out the losing strategies.
I'm so grateful that my partner and I are in RLT therapy and are learning to wrangle our adaptive children.
The flow that is present between us, Eros and love and excitement and curiosity, which had nearly dried up, is gushing again. It feels wonderful to fall back in love with a long-term partner and realize you never really stopped.
This isn't a sales pitch.
It's just me, in the trenches with you, reaching out from my very real relationship.
If you still love them, fight for it. There's a way back.

During my time in India, I noticed how many Indian and South Asian families are rich in connection, responsibility, and loyalty.

At the same time, emotional expression is often limited or discouraged.

Conflict is avoided, pain is minimized, and feelings are managed quietly.

What appears to be harmony on the surface often hides too much silence.

Silence in Indian families isn’t accidental. It’s learned early and passed down through generations.

How Emotional Silence Starts

Kids quickly figure out what’s safe to show.

Tears get met with parents who say things like, “Be strong.”

I've watched parents tell their angry child that the kid is being disrespectful. 

Vulnerability and sharing of feelings is seen as drama, and not the good Bollywood kind.

Even joy, pride, or affection can be muted so no one seems arrogant, needy, or attention-seeking.

Over time, many Indians internalize a simple rule: keep feelings to yourself unless they protect the family’s stability or reputation.

Parents usually don’t teach this on purpose. They’re passing down the survival strategies they learned themselves.

Historical and Cultural Roots

Emotional suppression in South Asian communities comes from real pressures: colonization, displacement, caste violence, economic instability, migration, and survival-focused living.

In those conditions, holding feelings in often made sense.

Showing distress didn’t always bring support. Staying in control felt safer.

Collective values reinforced it.

Protecting elders from discomfort, avoiding public exposure of family issues, and maintaining social reputation—these mattered more than individual emotional needs.

Endurance was valued over self-expression. 

The Cost in Adult Relationships

Unfortunately, feelings don’t just disappear when suppressed. They come out sideways. In couples, this often looks like:

• Avoiding hard conversations until resentment builds
• Emotional distance even when partners care deeply
• Sudden outbursts after long silence
• Anxiety, exhaustion, or tension with no clear cause
• Throwing yourself into work or achievement to dodge vulnerability

Many couples blame their “communication skills,” but the real issue is emotional permission.

If neither partner learned to safely feel and express emotions, both stay guarded.

Redefining Strength

Strength is usually seen as control, endurance, and keeping going no matter what.

Relational strength is different. It’s emotional literacy: naming feelings, tolerating discomfort, speaking honestly without collapsing or attacking.

I wouldn't suggest you to be emotionally exposed with everyone.

You do need to recognize what’s happening inside you and communicate it clearly when it matters to your partner.

Saying “I feel hurt,” “I feel afraid,” or “I need support” isn’t a personality trait. It’s a skill most people were never taught.

Why Culture-Aware Support Matters

Couples work works better when the cultural context is understood.

As a Western-trained couples therapist, I will never completely understand your experience of being in an Indian family and marriage. 

There will be things I miss.

And, there are other things I can see more clearly from outside the system.

For example, how emotional suppression in Indian and South Asian families isn’t just an individual issue. It’s tied to intergenerational expectations, migration stress, hierarchy, and collective identity. Ignoring that makes people feel misunderstood and guarded.

Working with someone who understands these dynamics allows couples to explore honesty without feeling that their values, traditions, or loyalty to family are under attack.

Moving From Silence to Connection
Change doesn’t start with dramatic disclosure. It starts with small steps:

• Noticing your feelings before reacting
• Letting discomfort sit instead of shutting it down
• Naming one emotion instead of none
• Showing your partner uncertainty, not just certainty

Many people were taught how to succeed, provide, and endure. Few were taught how to feel together. Emotional openness isn’t a rejection of cultural strength. It’s an expansion of it.

Take Action

Breaking this cycle of emotional suppression is possible.

Bring your partner to therapy—for your own well-being, for the health of your relationship, and for your children.

Learning to feel and express together creates a home where honesty, connection, and trust can thrive.