The Couples Tool Kit
Working together as a team of three — by Jill Edelman, M.S.W., L.C.S.W., Specialist in Couples TherapyTone, Look, Word (TLW): Stop the Poison Communication
A Volley of Gunfire Or A Conversation: Negative Communications. There are endless reasons why couples find themselves choosing tones, looks and words that insult, mock, tease and demean their partner. Hurt and angry feelings are no strangers to any relationship. The sarcastic tone, rolling eyes, mouth twisted in a smirk, and words that sting, all pack a wallop that overtime and repeated use, will rip apart the fine threads that weave two people together.
The Banal Becomes Lethal: Seemingly benign exchanges, such as “Remember to pick up a container of milk on your way from work tonight” or “Where were you when I called today?”, can sail through the air with the lethal speed and content of a bullet. Pow! “What’s for dinner?” can be an inquiry or a challenge. “I see your mother stopped by today.” can be an observation or an accusation. It all depends on the choices of tone, look and word.
How To Stop the Poison: Listen to your tone, sense what your face is doing, notice what words you choose to communicate with your partner. Be honest with yourself and you may see that these veiled messages would be better delivered directly and clearly. Spend some time figuring out the true nature of your feelings and the words that best represent them. Then ask your partner to have a “conversation” with you, to listen and to share. They may be using tones, looks and words to send messages that damage as well. With both of you acknowledging the danger in these choices, you can agree to find honest words that truly represent what you feel and what you need your partner to understand.
Prevention: If you can no longer make this conversation happen, seek help. Tell your partner that you are having trouble saying what you need to say and ask them to join you in finding someone to help you do that together. With the help of an expert, you will find that truthful exchanges cut out the ugly tones, nasty looks and demeaning words that over time erode what was once a good relationship.
Don’t Wait: Though it may mean admitting that you are imperfect, or that you are vulnerable, the common thread in all of us, you are better served by humbling yourself a bit and taking some risks to make your relationship viable once again.
©jill edelman, M.S.W., L.C.S.W.
Shining Boots, Shifting Staff and Book Clubs: 9-25-12
Thirteen Months and Twenty-Four Days: That is how long our daughter has lived in her new home. And today the Ability Beyond Disability team, along with the Connecticut Department of Developmental Services case manager, met with our daughter and her parents for her DDS annual review. The residential coordinator opened up the ceremonies by saying to our daughter, “This meeting is all about you,” and with that announcement, invited her to begin the meeting with a presentation of her recent accomplishments and the goals for the coming year. She did appear a bit subdued, likely nervous speaking to thirteen people, but she perked up by the time the meeting ended. During the hour, her cell phone rang – which she considered an act of rudeness on the part of the caller, despite the fact that it was she who forgot to turn the phone off. Perhaps this attitude was to cover her embarrassment. It was her boyfriend. Somehow she felt as if he should have known that she was otherwise engaged. Special needs are still special needs, even with great progress, which she has certainly made in the last year.
Her View: The accomplishments she cited were weight loss (fifteen pounds), portion control, increased focus and attention on the job and a steady and enjoyable exercise program. What she identified as goals for this next year were continuing to improve in these areas.
Shining Boots and Grooming Kitties: From the team’s perspective, one of the more outstanding accomplishments of the last year has been our daughter’s increased ability to stay focused on tasks both in her volunteer work settings and at home. This was accomplished in part by prescribing Focalin, a medication to enhance concentration and recommended strongly by the behaviorist on the team. By increasing our daughter’s ability to concentrate and complete tasks, the medication has reduced her anxiety as well. “I feel less overwhelmed” is how she described the effect of the pill. I notice that when something does upset her, she is able to let go of it sooner.
Worries No More: Ironically, the vocational component of our daughter’s new life, which initially had worried me most, has turned out to be one of the strongest links in the Agency chain, a chain replete in strong links. Not only is our daughter in two animal care settings, but also ABD started a new collaboration with Pegasus, the therapeutic equestrian program that our daughter so loves. Now, in addition to her weekly riding class, she returns to the Brewster, New York riding complex to work at the Rider’s Closet, founded by Georgina Bloomberg, where donated riding apparel are available for students. Our daughter’s job has been to shine boots and sort through the donated clothes for stains and missing buttons
A Keen Eye for Fluff and Stuff: I heard this from the Pegasus program director; our daughter has become an awesome boot shine. With careful training from her ABD vocational life skills staff and Pegasus she now adds a gleam not only to the eyes of all who know her, but also to their boots. She has whipped through the donated boots in the Rider’s Closet so swiftly and thoroughly that the Pegasus crew had to move her over to spot checking clothes for stains, missed buttons and other unseemly elements, an excellent choice for a girl who can spy the smallest of insects in a bag of rice… and a teeny bit of infinitesimal fluff emerging from an almost new toy elephant. Last week we delivered more than thirty such stuffed souls to Goodwill (“I don’t have enough room for all of them.”) each one scrutinized for an imperfection, a leaky seam, a smudged or tattered limb.
Truly it would be hard to fathom someone more skilled in identifying the smallest of imperfections in a product than our daughter, but who would have thought that this skill could be harnessed as a work-related asset. She was about four when she pointed to the teeny bug in the bag of rice on the shelf of the Middle Eastern store in the next town, and though the owner was appalled, I was awed.
Same Old and Critical: A critical concern that has not abated at all is safety. Our daughter remains at risk in any vehicular situation, negotiating parking lots, street corners, all settings where spatial awareness in a travel environment is required. This skill has remained outside our daughter’s reach, despite years of travel training at her boarding school. I suggested that staff review a comprehensive evaluation completed two years ago by a specialist, which they will do. Also, from my perspective, though our daughter was trained over and over again to stop at crossings and look both ways, integrating what she is seeing – a complex, two- or three-step process that her brain has not incorporated successfully – has eluded her. Alas.
Time, Money and Measurements: Our daughter used to cook, omelets mainly. She could whip a sandwich together in no time and heat up her spaghetti in the microwave, though I would set the time. In boarding school, cooking became a supervised and teacherly event, as it is at her ABD apartment, and over these years our daughter has become increasingly wary and reluctant to take care of her food needs. Staff try to teach her to measure and help prepare components of the meal, a very difficult task for her. She has lost all interest in food preparation, though she remains passionate about eating. Time, money and measurement challenges produce anxiety and as a result become paralyzing entities for our daughter. Here is where one wonders what the fine line is between facilitating learning versus creating learning blocks. Time is less scary. She can read her digital watch and knows that her Focalin is taken at 8 A.M. and 2 P.M. I see more hope for time awareness. But this is where special needs defines a person’s future. If you cannot travel safely, make a meal or pay your bills, can you be safe on your own in the world? Nope, you cannot.
Shifting Staff: Something that I was concerned about and anticipated when Ability started to take over the management of our daughter’s life was the likelihood that staff changes would be a part of the experience as well. In the first couple of weeks after our daughter moved into her apartment the vocational life skills staff person departed unexpectedly. I wrote of this in my post Pregnant, Tired, Fired, No Just Gone. Over a year ago, when we were novices in this “adult special needs” world, that loss scared me and troubled the girls. However, since then, there have been staff changes for reasons such as going to graduate school for one residential staff member; for another, moving up the career ladder. All good reasons and all with sufficient notice. And through these various changes, the ABD team has covered the gaps with familiar faces and seasoned members of the agency. And though the apartment-mates are pretty bonded with their staff, they weather these changes with barely the flutter of an eyelash. Why? For one, there is a solid core group of professional staff that are reliably available and pretty savvy about how to make the young ladies feel safe. Another is the presence of a residential staff member who is mature, mothering and steadfast. And finally, and very significant, both young ladies had been at boarding schools for years prior to their new life and witnessed the comings and goings of staff so that these changes, though individually significant, are in fact familiar and endemic to the system. In both our daughter’s boarding school setting and now with ABD, the changes are handled well by the “governing bodies.” Both young ladies have their families living within a stone’s throw (by car that is) of their apartments, which offers a dependable backup at all times.
Apartment-Mate Absence: Recently I was curious to see how our daughter would feel about a ten-day separation from her apartment-mate. The ladies are very close and bonded. When not together they text and FB each other. But last week the apartment-mate travelled south with her family. Staff reported that our daughter seemed quite content throughout the separation (3 days of it were spent with our family at a reunion in Maine) and apparently relished the one-on-one attention for the seven days she was the solo consumer. Her daily routine remained unchanged, a key ingredient. I did not hear a grumble or groan out of the gal for the duration of their separation. In fact, the two ladies are choosing to spend a bit more time apart during the week by separating out attendance at day service options, apparently both realizing that sometimes too much intimacy can be constricting.
Book Clubs: And finally the book club suggested by our daughter to her day services programmers, not six months ago, is a mainstay of the day program for several of the attendees. And for the mom, the “mother’s group book club” that I have been a member of since our daughter’s first months of life (almost 23 years now) held our September dinner Monday night coincidentally at the same restaurant we attended a year almost to the day when I published my post: All About Me: 9-26-12.
This post described my experience as a parent of a special needs child who month after month, year after year, sat amongst the moms of our daughter’s chronological peers while they chatted about the sports, dances and classes that their children shared in. Most of the women in this group do not subscribe to my blog or read the posts. Only one or two have read last year’s piece. But I am quite sure that all will read my book Parenting Adult Special Needs: One Day At A Time that will be published later this Fall and is an edited version of the collected posts.
These are women whom I treasure and who treasure me. But when you are a member of the parenting special needs club, you make choices about how you share what it’s inside you. And often those choices lean toward protecting that special child, at least from your perspective, from the judgment of others, and protecting yourself from pity. It never seemed tempting to shift the focus of an entire group from their relevant conversations about their normal children, (though it certainly happened at times) about whom they had plenty of concerns, to the uniqueness of my particular situation. For that I turned to my husband, other special needs parents and the individuals in the institutions that supported us through our journey. These women saw me as strong and confident, celebrating our daughter for what she was and not for what she could not do. The truth is much more complicated. But then it always is, whether special needs, typical or flavored with any other complexity.
Last night I had no pain, and perhaps less worry than many of my book club moms, at least about my youngest child. She has for now all that she needs for her young adulthood, and that’s mighty amazing, indeed.
©Jill Edelman, M.S.W., L.C.S.W. 2012
9/11
9-11-01: Eleven years ago today our son was in the second week of his freshman year of high school, our daughter a fourth grader, their grandma marked her 83rd year of life and the world we all depended on ended.
Battery Park: I heard the news on the radio driving back from a walk in the park with the dog. I raced into the house to switch on the television at the same moment I heard my niece’s voice on the answering machine, calling from her family’s Battery Park apartment. I grabbed the phone. A thick coat of something was covering their windows and my brother-in-law had turned around on his walk to the dry cleaners on his way to work, when folks running away from the first tower’s bilious smoke warned him to venture no further. Our phone connection broke off. I felt sick.
Shared Panic: My first patient was already in the waiting room. Her niece was living in an NYU dorm way downtown. We rung our hands together and decided to abort the session. Later she kindly called to inform me that she had heard Battery Park was to be evacuated by tugboats. No longer able to reach my niece by phone, I emailed that news hoping somehow she would receive it. She did, her laptop still had some remaining battery power.
Our family was evacuated to Liberty State Park. Within days we learned that an alumnus from our high school, his wife and two-year-old daughter died on one of the planes. Two years later we learned that the brother of the owner of our daughter’s special needs camp, which she hadn’t as yet attended, was amongst the heroes on the plane that went down in a field in Pennsylvania.
A Visit To Ground Zero: I forced myself to go to Ground Zero shortly after the tragedy but I have no recollection whether it was a week or ten days later. All reports are true. Fumes, sirens. I witnessed a fire at the site and wrenching notes and faces of the missing were plastered everywhere. All our hearts were pierced and remain so today. Most of all, our children’s world and our role as their parents took one of those historic turns that sociologists and psychologists will study for eons to come.
In Memory Of All Whose Lives Were Stolen Eleven Years Ago Today: And in honor of their loved ones who have had to develop the courage to face each new dawn without them. We are with you today and every day. Everyone knows that any one of us could be you.
© Jill Edelman, M.S.W., L.C.S.W. 2012
Note To My Ex: What To Do With All That Stuff
Bitter Twitter: On August 22, the highest trending tweet was #NoteToMyEx. Thousands of tweets spewed across the Twitterverse with such as:
I can be happy without you and I’m doing so much better then when I was with you.
let’s clarify: you were LUCKY to have me. I was the one settling. So shut up.
when you see me I want you to recognize what you had, regret what you’ve lost, and realize what you’re NEVER getting back !
You always told me I deserved better, so I finally took your word for it :))
I never get jealous when I see you with someone else, cuz my parents always taught me to give my used toys to the less fortunate.
The flavor of the tweets was decidedly bitter. A major venting moment for many. Why? My observation over the years is that relationship endings, divorces particularly, leave a trail of ooze – much like a snail does as it moves from one moist green leaf to chew at another – that is hard to remove. And my impression is that the oozing isn’t only from those who were left, but also from those who did the leaving. In other words, relationships may end, but if they were powerful the remnants often remain twirling around in the brain for years to come and may provide fruitless hours of rumination and self-justification that lead nowhere, just recycling old refrains.
A Purification Process: There needs to be a process that purifies the heart’s brain or the brain’s heart, when a meaningful Coupledom comes to a halt. Like a fast car or a speeding bike, you need to slow down first, then stop. Otherwise it is quite jolting to the system when you end the ride. Yet it is the rare Coupledom that finds the mutuality or the means for a gradual slowdown. So you are left to decompress either with friends, therapists or hosting numerous interior dialogues with the absent partner in the mind’s theater, attempting to set the record straight, redeem your dignity, readjust the ego, or examine the self: “Am I really that bad or was it they who screwed up the whole thing?”
A Ritual of Goodbye: In a previous post entitled A Divorcing Option: A Gracious Ending I referenced an article by Abby Ellin in the New York Times Untying the Knots, and Bonds, Of Marriage in which the author describes rituals of goodbye designed for the terminated relationship, ceremonies that mark the finality of a marriage or a relationship with grace. Does it do the work of an exorcism that many seem to long for, a ritual designed to drive the evil spirits out of the individual, which in this case are the poisonous and bilious leftovers of a failed Coupledom? Does a ceremonial goodbye put a halt to flashbacks, regrets or hurts that smear a formerly cherished bond with the mucky stuff that clings and stains…the stuff that got spilled onto Twitter? A format such as Twitter invites you to write a “Note to My Ex,” and wow, an explosive venting in an abbreviated format ensues, inspiring a vision of a mob event at Grand Central Station, its vast floor space and domed ceiling filling up with venting hordes screaming out “note to my ex” all with the accompanying syncopation of a live band. According to Ms. Ellin’s article, a shared ritual of untying is a means to find closure by dignifying what you once had and together releasing its hold. Can a tweet do that too?
What Do These Tweets Reveal? The question someone raised with me is this: were the tweets a venting of never spoken words or were they spoken words that were never heard? Or both. Tweets are clearly not conversations yet they may speak volumes. What would those tweets have looked like as a conversation between partners before the relationship dissolved, a tweet cleaned up a bit and earnestly delivered as a “Let’s talk”? My hunch is that many tried to talk but weren’t heard. That others kept their feelings close to the chest, did not have the tools to convert emotion into communication, or didn’t even know what they were feeling and instead turned to “acting out” subconscious feelings into behaviors such as affairs and addictions that seemed to say it all and take it all away.
Venting Is Fun: It is great to vent. Venting is necessary, and Twitter is probably a venting free-for-all that doesn’t cost much, materially or emotionally. But unless you learn something new, something that shifts you out of stuck and into free, you will just have to vent again, and again, and again. Sometimes a new love that really takes and settles in for several years can actually ease the venting need. Happiness is a great antidote to unhappiness. Everyone hopes for that solution to the dilemma of what to do with the bitter leftovers of a failed love. But that takes time, too, and has some risks: the potential new love may not want to hear the vent. Or the new lovers may initially bond over their mutual venting about ex-spouses, but beware the bonding of perceived victimization. It sours like old milk.
A Proposal: I would bet that a significant number of women hunched over their iced teas or Pym’s Cups, lattes or beers at any number of coffee shops, bars or bistros around the country are talking about their exes. And a somewhat smaller number of guys are alluding to the trials, tribulations and financial losses from their previous wedlock too. A good number are venting and blaming; an equal number are probably grieving and being comforted. But none are really getting anywhere soon. My proposal, which I have offered to divorcing couples in my office, is that at any moment, now, later, next week or next year, they, the separating or divorcing team, can talk, listen and grieve together about what was once their family, their puppy, their apartment, their friends, their life that they have made together and now have to mourn and say goodbye to. Some have agreed to do this work with me. Most say, “No, if he’s done, I’m done.” Or, “No, I can’t be in the room with that person again.” Except when they have to appear in court. Or, “It is too much money for something that has too little value to me now.”
Someday they may change their minds. And my office doors are always open. Or they may wish to do what Abby Ellin’s article suggests, design a ceremonial goodbye, maybe along the Great Wall of China, or on the banks of a river, where words can finally be spoken, and threads of a former life thrown into the current, to pass alongside rocks and rapids that replicate the not-so-smooth journey of that shared life. Tweeting and venting are fun. But saying goodbye to the good, the bad and the ugly takes more than that. It takes some mutual cleansing too.
Just a proposal.
©Jill Edelman, M.S.W., L.C.S.W. 2012
Sexual Pain Or Impaired Performance: No Shame, No Blame
What Is Not Spoken: As a couples’ therapist I am accustomed to learning from my patients that they have not experienced sexual intimacy for months or years leading up to their visits with me. Numbers of years. What is equally significant is the common admission that paralleling the absence of physical contact has been the absence of conversation or problem solving efforts along the same timeline. Attempts to discuss sexual matters often are derailed because “there was never a good time” or blaming battles ensued before a true exchange could occur, or “I didn’t want her/him to feel bad.”
The Nemesis of Good Coupling, Avoidance: The nemesis of good coupling, avoidance, tends to be the preferred defense in dealing with sexual intimacy issues, either by one or both parties in The Coupledom. It is hard to have a conversation of any kind if only one person is talking. Yet the problems of sexual intimacy, though sometimes complex, can also be very simple, treatable, and eliminated by conversation and education. What tends to be complicated is the sorting through and overcoming of the emotional byproduct of years of distancing and avoidant behaviors, years without the intimacy of honest communication, perhaps most damaging of all.
Solutions, Not Shame or Blame: Jane Brody, The Personal Health Columnist for the New York Times, published an informative article entitled Persistence is Key To Treating Vaginal Pain. Ms. Brody offers her readers a pragmatic and concise guide to an important element in sexual compatibility for couples that often is unspoken, vaginal pain. Avoiding conversations about this difficulty surely leads to a pile up of misunderstandings over the years. Not only menopausal women but women of all ages can experience vaginal pain and discomfort from intercourse, the causes of which are succinctly outlined by Ms. Brody. Unfortunately many of these women, young, middle-aged or older, may fear that their pain or discomfort represents a sexual defect, when actually there is always a reason for pain – and accompanying solutions to “fix it.” Their partners, hurt by the apparent lack of pleasurable response in their wives or lovers, may have tried to counteract a feeling of inadequacy in themselves, and hurt from perceived rejection, by placing blame on their lovers, suggesting that they are “cold, uptight, frigid or sexless.” Ouch!
The Male Energizer Bunny: Similarly men, who are expected to be the Energizer Bunny of sexual batteries, always ready, never sated, can experience sexual difficulties at any age, also stemming from varied causes. Sometimes their line of defense against embarrassment and shame can be a preemptive strike, that is, rejecting their partners for not being sexy enough to arouse desire. Some may pressure their wives or lovers to wear “hot” lingerie or get breast enhancement surgery, when the true cause of the unsatisfying sexual intimacy might rest with their own performance anxiety due to a physical and treatable condition. Whether it is premature ejaculation or erectile dysfunction, lessened libido, lowered testosterone or masturbation dependent orgasm, the penis is just not up to the culturally expected conventional standards of always on and ever powerful. Ouch again.
Never Defective, Just Human: But this is never about “defectiveness.” This is about discussing a problem and finding a solution. There are useful articles such as WebMD’s Men’s Health on the Internet that are designed to inform, not scare or insult. And while the man is preoccupied by the worry that he is sub par, the woman is convinced that she is no longer desirable to him. To reduce her vulnerability to this perceived rejection and humiliation, she may shut off her desire for him so that both parties wind up lying side by side in bed each night, frozen by fear, iced over by shame. “He doesn’t want me. Well I don’t need him either.” Either partner may eventually fall prey to the come hither of someone outside The Coupledom who “does desire me.” Oops and Ouch! Now we have a far more challenging problem to solve than sexually imperfect performances.
Same-Sex Coupledoms: There is nothing uniquely heterosexual about sexual intimacy challenges. Whether you are engaging in same-sex relationships or heterosexual relationships, the rules are the same: open acknowledgement between the partners that something just doesn’t seem right and a search for information and solutions.
Shame Stalls Solutions and Avoidance Creates Alienation: It is just that simple. Courage, at the heart of real intimacy, requires that we tell ourselves the truth and then share that truth with our partners. And if your fear is that your partner will use that acknowledgement to “blame or shame” you, then this is another challenge to face straight on. “Why are you blaming me or shaming me for something that I cannot as yet control and am willing to work on fixing? It took enough courage to own this problem. Don’t shame me for it. Help me with it. It is for both of us, after all.”
Sexual Knowledge Is Surely Sexual Power: Keeping sexual matters closeted empowers shame and weakens the core of the self by feeding it negative falsehoods. Once the door is opened and the “secret” shared, then your partner has a chance to show that they can be caring and perhaps even part of the solution. Seek out an expert to guide both of you toward that solution. This is the twenty-first century, and though we may pride ourselves as a culture on our sexual openness, a good part of that so-called openness is a glamorized version of intimacy. Real intimacy is founded on a shared honesty, not the individual perfection of a performance. Leave that requirement to the Olympics.
For more on this subject, please also read my post, Sex In The Coupledom: A Powerful Absence.
©Jill Edelman, M.S.W., L.C.S.W., 2012
The Red Couch Is A Year Old: 8-9-12
The Red Couch Is A Year Old: The Ability Beyond Disability services manager, mover and shaker of our daughter’s residential component, invited the two moms and the residential staff to lunch to mark a year since the ladies moved into their cozy duplex/CRS (Continuous Residential Support) on August 1 in Ridgefield, Connecticut. The atmosphere and conversation were strikingly different from group exchanges twelve months prior. The three staff and two moms had literally weathered two big power outages, “dramas in the duplex”, a couple of staffing changes and DDS (Department of Developmental Services) challenges to get to the calm and conviviality of the grilled salmon over lettuce luncheon upon which most of us dined. In fact, we were more than halfway through our time together before we actually focused on the two young ladies whose special needs adulthood brought us all together.
Slimming Down and Growing Up: A year ago both moms were in the infancy of building trust in this ABD team that is the vital force and anchor of our girls’ adult lives today. We spoke of that process of trust building at the luncheon. Though the staff are sensitive to the journey, only the other mother and I know how far back trusting challenges date; from the “experts” who we were told to trust, but actually disappointed and hurt us; to the bruises from encounters with school systems and the occasional personal friend whose attitude reflected ignorance or indifference; to the well-meaning souls who just didn’t have sufficient knowledge or expertise. Trust is earned in all relationships, no matter the reputation of the physician, the teacher or the potential spouse. Though our family’s experience was far more abundant in trustworthy souls, still the gift of trust is handed out very carefully and selectively as it should be. Only with time and observation of the passionate dedication to our daughter’s welfare and happiness and by witnessing the expertise and skill of the ABD team was I able to suspend my vigilance and lessen my grip. And what do I see now, looking at my daughter twelve months into this new life under their care? I see a powerful petite (and slimmer) package of self-confidence, greater focus and accomplishment, pride and self-respect, with more self-control over emotions and empathy towards others. Her apartment-mate, too, matches her in all these growth and slimming down areas.
And the red couch? How has it fared? Well it has taken a teeny bit of a beating but with our goof proof plan guarantee, one day the staff will pull out the contract from Bob’s Discount Furniture Stores, read the small print and put the call in to report on the chaffed edges of the red leather blend cushions that our daughter has scuffed while happily watching TV in the cozy living room and make arrangements for a replacement. Scuffed edges are a small price to pay for days of cozy comfort, and as the only casualty of the twelve-month cohabitation, that is pretty darn good.
How Long Does Bliss Last? We are all at the mercy of events, not just special needs adults. No life is static no matter what level of “bliss” it may have attained. Fate, family, funding, illness, weather, politics domestic and global, planetary alignments, all can bounce and trounce our daily lives in a nano second. Yes, I know that. But there is something quite specific about a life funded by the government that is (understandably so) constantly being reviewed to assess “need” with the intent to reduce funding aspects of that life whenever possible. And so DDS is in the process of reviewing the ladies’ life together with an eye to proving less need. ABD is our ally in this challenge. What is so interesting/ironic is that “doing well” – as in thriving in their new lives – signals not its true meaning, that their new life is working well. No it translates into something far less intuitive – that the ladies don’t need that life anymore. How long will bliss last? I am prepared at all times to scrutinize signs of future trends to locate the optimal existence for our special needs adult daughter who is so worthy, and gives back to society in so many ways. And as she improves her vocational skills and acquires new agility with the outside world, who knows what might be possible. But for now, the changes that would signal a profound shift in need, are nowhere in sight. Will DDS see the obvious too? I think so.
My Book: On another note, my book on Parenting Adult Special Needs: How Did We Get Here? One Day At A Time (tentative title) will be out early this fall available both as an e-book and in print. The book, which comprises the collected posts that covered the period prior to our daughter’s aging out through several months into her new life, is illustrated with our daughter’s collages and will have a list of resources. The book also weaves in the twenty-one years of preparation leading to the successful launch of our daughter’s adult special needs life to provide a glimpse into the process for other families who are on this journey. Stay tuned for more information as we draw closer to publication.
©Jill Edelman, M.S.W., L.C.S.W. 2012
What Can We Learn From Katie Holmes? Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow
Katie Holmes: What can we learn from Katie? She is clearly a girl who never stopped thinking about tomorrow. She married a big star, apparently with an ironclad prenup that didn’t rust, and she never gave up her day job. Though some might question the Katie Holmes reference, I am using her to make a point. According to all sorts of tabloids, amongst them People Magazine and The Huffington Post, Katie is walking out of her marriage not just wealthy but prepared to live well with whatever career points she accrued during her short five-year marriage and not much bloodletting on the way out. Katie never stopped thinking about “her tomorrow” and I find that unusual amongst a certain population of women. True Katie was and is a celebrity before, during and likely after Mr. Cruise, so she has a leg up on your average American female. But I think Katie has something else: Vision and Imagination. Katie clearly had the vision to imagine her life, both pre-Tom and post-Tom, as a life in which she could depend upon herself, always. And that is something I have found missing in some of the women I have encountered as a psychotherapist, that ability to both imagine and envision a life on your own, something I consider essential for all women.
Dependent on The Ex: For many years I have observed a recurrent theme amongst my female patients that never seems to fade, no matter the decade, or the current fashionable ethos: the theme of female financial dependence on men. This is particularly striking to me as my professional training dates back to the early 70’s, a time when women around the country were recognizing the dangers of that financial dependency, and were taking up the battle for equal opportunity and equal pay with men which continues to this day. Yet, almost forty years later, I meet with women who willingly gave up their working lives once married and with children only later to find themselves financially dependent, professionally “out of date” and beholden to the kindness of a “stranger” who, once their intimate, is now their “ex.”
Crystal Clear: I must acknowledge that I am working within a limited socioeconomic sample of mostly middle and upper middle class, primarily Caucasian women, usually college educated, which is why, in some ways, this dependency trap is particularly striking to me. One might assume that these ladies would know better. But they don’t. What were the messages that floated out of the college dorms of the 80’s and 90’s? In the late 60’s and 70’s some of us knew that 1.5 children was tops for saving the planet, birth control was our job, and that it would be dangerous to be totally dependent on a man for anything, especially money. Was it the increasing affluence available to families in the latter part of the twentieth century and the first few years of the twenty-first century that clouded female thinking, or the shift to a more child-centered mindset with the ever-increasing reports on how to raise happier and more successful children, that obscured what earlier seemed so crystal clear: that no matter what, women needed to be able to take care of themselves?
No Choice: Two-family incomes have increased over the decades, so many women have gotten the message that being a wage earner is important, perhaps because they have no choice. Their lifestyle and its day-to-day financial pressures requires two incomes. But many of the women with whom I have worked over the years were living in single income households, with the male as the sole breadwinner. They recount to me how, together with their spouse, they decided to stay home to raise their children, forsaking a full-time job without replacing it with a part-time substitute, and often abandoning cherished career goals and accomplishments. When their marriages failed, these women had not earned even a modified income for often as much as two decades. Despite holding responsible volunteer positions in their communities, which required great skill and competence, they had nothing to show to the job world that would be viewed as employable material or job worthy. And more alarming, they often let professional certifications expire, forsook completing graduate degrees, let lapse professional licenses or eschewed continuing training in their fields, a form of self-inflicted obsolescence.
Identity Lost and With It Much Else: No matter how mutual the couple’s original decision to go down the one-income path with the stay-at-home mom, no matter how “mutual” the money earned may seem, ultimately everyone knows who earns it. And a side bar to this theme of female financial dependency is often the loss of identity that many of these women feel, the loss of the image of that working self, and with it, self-respect and self-esteem. Coupled with that is the child/parent imprimatur that can accompany the process of the male wage earner as if “doling” out his earnings to the financially dependent aka “needy” wife/child, joint bank account not withstanding. And if the marriage starts to implode, and often the very roles that each member finds themselves in with this scenario play a significant role in the marriage’s deterioration, then the woman really feels like a fool! “I let this happen and now what am I going to do? How can I take care of myself, have a decent quality of life, when I have spent all these years outside of the work force?” This harsh wakeup call is devastating for these women. On top of feeling that they have “failed” at marriage, they also feel stupid, frightened, unprepared and humiliated for not protecting themselves better.
Even Rich Working Men Can Begin To Resent The Stay-At Home Spouse: There is an additional potential outcome of this female financial dependency: the husband’s perspective. Ironically many of these husbands who may have supported the “stay at home” wife solution “in the best interests of the child” gradually begin to harbor some resentment for what they perceive as their spouse’s life of ease or just an easier life, compared to the demands of their work hours, mortgage responsibilities and rush hour commute. Even the fabulously wealthy male who has no need of an additional income earner in the family “to take some of the pressure off,” may start to denigrate his wife’s lifestyle choices, judging her activities as trivial, self-indulgent or unstimulating. If he is returning from Shanghai, and she is returning from a round of a doubles set on the tennis court, there can be a serious disconnect indeed.
Suggestion Box: Well, I do have some. First never stop thinking about tomorrow in personal/individual terms. The shared life – the “we” – is wonderful but it should never subsume the me/I under it. Every woman has to have vision and imagination to prepare and protect and be all she can be. No man, any man, or child, justifies abrogating the need for developing and sustaining the ability to care for oneself in adulthood. Men know that as boys and never seem to forget it. What happens to some girls? Did they forget that essential learning point or were they never taught it? And female self-responsibility relates to other areas as well, birth control, career choices, balancing parental responsibility and devotion with the need for self-respect, and creating for oneself both stimulation and self-sufficiency independently as well as in connection with others.
Katie Holmes is in some ways a very cool lady. She slipped out of the clutches of what appeared to be a life bordering on institutional control, and out of the hands of a man with great financial power and fame, while still remaining emotionally and financially intact and apparently with primary custody for her child, all in the span of a few weeks. Obviously a great deal of preparation and forethought went into this rather smooth dissolution of a marriage. But what I am recommending has a different slant: put preparation and forethought into planning for your adult female life, and continue that thinking when married and in fact, throughout your lifetime (including the possibility of a prenuptial agreement, even if you are not about to marry a wealthy man) and never stop thinking about tomorrow, your tomorrow. No one else can do that for you.
©Jill Edelman, M.S.W., L.C.S.W. 2012
The Couples Tool Kit 