Dr. Jordan's Blog

Controlling Lovers

Control in a love relationship is always a bad sign. It simply means there is an underlying insecurity in the person who tries to control the partner who could hurt him/her. One implication is that the controller knows what hurt is and is trying desperately to control the potential source of future hurt. It is understandable why this happens, but it never works very well. Most if not all people resent having their freedoms messed with. Freedom is essential to human living. We are all at our healthiest when free. What I have discovered is that people eventually get sick when that freedom is taken away.

Unfortunately control endures in a love relationship because the victim of control does not have the self-esteem necessary to challenge it. In fact, the only real hope the relationship has is that these things will be challenged so that something new can develop. Control over time leads to either submission and sickness or resentmnt and escape. When a person feels good about himself/herself, the freedom to be onself is mandatory. With a little humility, some frustrated controllers get a chance in time to experiment with personal vulnerability. At first glance, vulnerability can appear less attractive than power, until you realize the bonus is love.

Free Love-Life Clinic

An old friend once said to me that New York City needs a free, or not so free given expenses, Love-Life Clinic. She thought people off the street could benefit from love-life advise, no commitments, just sound love-life advise and guidance. Since it is entirely possible to make the same mistakes over and over again, I can see how valuable her idea might be. Imagine a Macy's superstore with all the information you might need to fix every kind of love-life problem. Why is such an idea so ridiculous? Check the newspapers out or listen to the radio news if you don't believe that love-life problems are the number one reason people go crazy. Most of the time murders take place between familiar people. And oh yes there is that manslaughter situation where one man messes with another man's woman or another woman's man. It goes all back to your love-life. Nevertheless, it is the least talked about part of our lives as far as learning something new goes. Maybe its pride. We all want to believe we got right the first time growing up. No need to change anything about how I conduct my love-life, right? Wrong. A little bit of humility goes a long way here. Human being need to keep growing. Love-lives need to keep growing. Don't be so naive as to think you got it right for all time when you were 19 years old. The best thing about being human is our capacity to evolve, repair, improve, change. Because of this everybody's special.

Prepare For A Love-Life

After you've been married awhile you realize that your spouse knows when you are not being yourself. Certainly a valuable piece of information worth using to progress your love-life. Problem is, many people don't think of their love-lives dynamically as something living that needs information to keep growing. Filled with 'e-motion' our love-lives are moving (motion) and require the personalized information necessary to keep them from getting stuck. Listening to what Victoria (my wife) has to say about me without getting defensive is the task. So easy to feel like I know it all. So easy to justify not being vulnerable and open. Life is too short to waste being defensive and afraid. Best thing to do is to get it in my head that I better keep working on my love-life, what better goal to have in a life. If you make fun of this you are freaked out about living open. Sort of like a psych test for defensiveness. You are probably wasting your energy taking me apart rather than facing your fear. We'll keep talking about this until you feel ready.

Questions? Comments?