Weekly Marriage Tips

Heart to Heart

Tips for Thriving in your Marriage

“Imagine three gatekeepers standing between you and the actions you want to take…Each of these gatekeepers represents one question:  Is it kind?  Is it necessary?  Is it true?  I check in with these gatekeepers when I’m unsure about my course of action.  If it doesn’t pass one of these gatekeepers, I know I need to rethink my decision.”

- Suze Orman

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Some number of clients have told me they like to use a set of questions such as those Orman talks about when making decisions.  These questions provide moral and personal clarity.

So let’s apply them to the topic of nagging.

Is it kind?  I would argue ‘no.’  In fact, it is unkind to both the ‘nagger’ because it puts him or her in an awkward, unlikeable position and to the ‘naggee’ because it is demeaning and controlling.

Is it necessary?  Though many would say they have resorted to nagging because it is the only way they can assure the completion of a task or get their partner’s attention, the reality is that nagging is NOT necessary.  It is simply one choice for getting a partner to complete something.  A different (and better) choice would be to express what you need to your partner and work with him/her to figure out how to get that done constructively.  (In ADHD impacted couples, this usually includes better treatment of ADHD symptoms…)  In fact, nagging is not only not necessary, it is very destructive to a relationship.  The more you nag, the more your partner tunes you out.

Is it true?  This one may be unanswerable for nagging…proof that not every system can be applied in every instance!

© 2012 Melissa Orlov

Heart to Heart

Tips for Thriving in your Marriage

“Kids with Learning Disabilities are smart.  They just Learn Differently.”.

- Newspaper quote my daughter had on her bulletin board growing up

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My daughter is now 21 and fabulous.  But growing up with both ADHD (inattentive) and a math learning disability meant that she experienced her share of struggles.  Some of the pressure came from other kids – “why can’t you add or multiply better?” and “why can’t you remember to turn in your homework?” and some came from teachers.

We were lucky – she was diagnosed early, and we had many years to work with her to help her understand that she is not just her symptoms – that she was/is smart and talented, and that her symptoms could be managed so they didn’t impede her ability to follow her dreams.

People with learning disabilities (including ADHD) really DO learn and “do” differently.  In order to thrive they often need to set up a system that helps them overcome their symptoms in a way that a parent or a spouse simply can’t imagine because it wouldn’t be logical or work for them.  When I tell adults with ADHD “don’t try harder, try differently” this is what I’m referring to.  You ARE different.  You DO learn differently.  Trying harder in ways that work for others might not work for you.  So set up reminder and planning systems that are logical for the way your ADHD mind works.  Doing it in whatever way works best for you can make all the difference when you want to show the world how smart or talented or special you are because you really do learn – and do – differently.

© 2012 Melissa Orlov

Heart to Heart

Tips for Thriving in your Marriage

“Attend to business another day, nurture your love life.”

- Chinese fortune cookie

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I love it when I get a fortune like this one!  (Further proof that the small things in life can make you happy!)
Let’s face it, there’s a never ending list of tasks that qualify as the “business of running our lives” – laundry, mowing the lawn, filling out health insurance forms, writing a business report, paying bills, repairing your house or watch or blouse or…

While these things aren’t unimportant (the bills do need to be paid eventually) when it comes to marriage, NOTHING is as important as nurturing your love life.  The mistake that’s too easy to make is to pay attention to the “business” because it is so tangible, while letting the nurturing go when we run out of time because it has no deadline.

I encourage couples to think of nurturing as a critical activity – and if they need to schedule it and create deadlines for it to make the nurturing happen, why not do so?  Put it at the top of your “to do” list for just one month so that you have some happy nurturing time together each day and see what great things happen to your love.

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© 2012 Melissa Orlov

Heart to Heart

Tips for Thriving in your Marriage

“Making your emotional well-being dependent on what someone else says or does creates a vicious trap for both of you because you now have someone to blame when things don’t go your way.  From this point forward you have virtually volunteered to be a victim in your own life.

A better strategy for helping rather than hindering a healthy relationship is to accept full responsibility for everything you think and feel.   Past a certain point it hardly matters what your partner says or does unless you are able to be an effective shepherd of your own thoughts and emotions.  The likelihood that you will enjoy a satisfying long-term partnership generally depends less on your relationship with another person and more on your relationship with yourself.   While this may seem like a simple concept, it’s one of the most challenging and ongoing tasks you will ever face.”

- Bill Herring, therapist

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When I work with couples, one of the first things I try to do is get them away from thinking about how much their partner is contributing to their troubles and towards their own contribution and actions.  This isn’t done because I think their partner isn’t an issue – when a relationship breaks down both partners always play a role.  The reason I focus spouses on themselves is that the only person they can change is themselves.

In fact, good couples therapy is all about:
1.) getting each individual to clearly see their own their weaknesses and strengths;
2.) creating a shared vision of the future and
3.) creating a plan to fulfill that vision. 

No one says they wish to create a future in which they are miserable or dependent upon their partner, so taking the steps for improving your relationship with yourself is always part of the plan we create.  I write about the process I used to do this in the “Setting Boundaries and Finding Your Own Voice” chapter of my book.

Herring’s words are wise…and well worth pondering as you think about your own life.

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© 2012 Melissa Orlov

Heart to Heart

Tips for Thriving in your Marriage

“We don’t see things as they are, we see things as we are.”

- Anais Nin

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It is human nature to assume that the world around us exists as we ourselves see it and experience it.  What other perspective would we have?

This gets us into trouble, though, particularly when we start making assumptions about how our spouses will react – to us, to things we do together, and particularly to how they feel.  Something that makes you really happy might be completely boring to your partner and vice versa.  A comment that seems neutral or even helpful to you might feel very hurtful to your partner. 

What to do about this?  First, listen carefully to your partner’s words and probe (politely) to better understand how your partner feels about, and experiences, things the two of you share together.  Second, make no assumptions.  ASK your partner whether she prefers a concert over a movie on a particular evening or enjoyed being with your family as much as you did.  Ask your partner if he is confused or hurt or happy.  Third, be open about what you want and what your experience is, thereby helping your partner to better understand your preferences and feelings.  In other words, be as transparent in your relationship as you can be.

As always, when doing this, make sure to remain respectful.  Transparency is not a license to dump your hard feelings on your partner in an angry or hurtful way.

Transparency won’t change the fact that we all see things through our own particular lens.  It will, however, help us make fewer mistakes when figuring out how to happily live together.

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© 2012 Melissa Orlov

Heart to Heart

Tips for Thriving in your Marriage

“Most of us have had at least one ugly experience being on the receiving end of someone who just had to “speak his or her truth” – and who also seemed intent on making us wrong, guilt-tripping us or hurting our feelings in the process.  We’ve all been in situations where someone says something totally unkind or inappropriate and then uses, “Well, it’s true!” as an easy excuse.”

- Cat Thompson, Experience Life Magazine 4/12

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During the period of time in which my husband and I were most angry at each other he used to practice what I called "the truth at all costs."  Perhaps I did, too, though what I remember most vividly was being on the receiving end of some of his harsh words during this period...and how much those words hurt (and also stuck with me).

You may be having trouble in your marriage, but it helps you NOT ONE BIT to be cruel.  Don't tell her she's fat, ugly or unattractive even if you think so.  Don't call her a c*nt or b*tch or dog, even if you're really mad.  Don't tell him he's a complete loser, even if he has lost his most recent job again and you're scared about your finances.  Those words may be how you feel in the moment...or perhaps expressing that high emotion may be how your family acted as you grew up.  Nonetheless, cruelty is a hard thing from which to recover since it is such a breech of trust - and the shock of being on the receiving end of a marriage partner's cruelty seers itself into your memory.

If you are experiencing cruelty in your relationship, seek professional help.

© 2012 Melissa Orlov

Heart to Heart

Tips for Thriving in your Marriage

“We don’t actually have much control over the way our kids turn out.  Genes do a lot of the deciding, and the owner of those genes does most of the rest.  Some kids let parents have a great deal of influence; others don’t.  Either way, people blossom when we love them, not when we worry about them.  Worry just teaches worry.”

- Martha Beck

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Though this quote is about raising children, it applies equally to adult relationships.  The word “worry” comes from the word “wyrgan” (Old English) meaning “to strangle.”  And that is just what worry does.

Here are some of the mistakes that your worry might encourage in your relationship:

• Your partner notices you are anxious about her being able to follow through on a task – this raises her own anxiety, leading her to blow it.
• You worry that your partner doesn’t always remember things correctly, so you leap to correct him before he finishes what he is saying.  He resents this, and clams up.
• Based on past experience, you worry that your partner will continue to not be as involved as you would like in your relationship.  He’s trying new methods, but at the first sign of a slip up you let your anxiety out.  He concludes that he’ll never get it right and stops trying.

I’ve seen all of these responses in couples I’ve worked with.

Worry is natural, but it is not neutral.  If you are a worrier, try to focus your energy on showing love and support.  “Self-talk” to yourself that “this worry isn’t getting me anywhere…what can I do right now that will alleviate my worry?” 

Some ideas include: 

• Make a plan to address what worries you then take action against the plan;
• Practice deep breathing or some other sort of self-calming;
• Reach out and share your worry with others to lessen its ability to ‘run amok’;
• Go exercise (this reduces stress and anxiety).

© 2012 Melissa Orlov

Heart to Heart

Tips for Thriving in your Marriage

“Instead of fretting about getting everything done, why not simply accept that being alive means having things to do?  Then drop into full engagement with whatever you are doing, and let the worry go.”

- Martha Beck

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Here’s the truth of it – we couldn’t possibly get everything done that we have hanging over our heads, no matter how organized we were.  And this comes from me, a very organized person (though admittedly less so as I age…!) 

So you will ALWAYS have more to do than you can possibly handle.  Which means the goal should be to get only what we REALLY care about done.  And let everything else go.  One way to do this is to let things just “fall off the list” as we never actually get to them.  Many people with ADHD actually use this method by default and it can create real problems in a relationship because this method doesn't insure that the most important things get done (for example - easy things or immediate things that happen to be "in the now" might get done before important things that are not top of mind.)

Another way to sort through too many things to do this is to discuss priorities with our partners and focus in on only the top items.  I find that this latter is particularly helpful for the couples I work with.  It makes sure that you have buy in from each partner about what the top priorities really are.  And, by circling back weekly (or daily) to coordinate around what’s most important – and then putting those items at the top of the “to do” structure (whatever that looks like for you) – you can make sure that what is left behind in those many projects really is something you don’t care about.

However you choose to approach it, though, understanding that you can’t do everything, as Beck suggests, can help lift some of the oppressive obligation you may feel around having too much to do.

© 2011 Melissa Orlov

Heart to Heart

Tips for Thriving in your Marriage

“30% of U.S. workers sleep less than six hours per night, according to recent data from the National Sleep Foundation”

- Time Magazine

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Sleep has an incredible impact on whether or not you are able to use all of your brain optimally, or only access part of it.  And we need much more sleep that we think.  The myth, particularly for those with irregular sleep patterns, is that some of us just need much less sleep than others.  Research shows that in reality, it’s just not so.  In controlled experiments, scientists demonstrated that only a very, very small proportion of folks can do with less sleep (under 5% if I remember correctly) and the rest of us need about 8 hours a night to perform optimally.  Even with just 7 hours of sleep a night – a figure many of us would think was ample – there was a significant and noticeable negative impact on processing speed, time of response and other measurements of mental functioning.  Want more information?  Read this article in the New York Times.

For those of you with ADHD, the news gets worse.  Though many with ADHD suffer significant sleep problems, including a higher than normal incidence of sleep apnea, lack of sleep makes ADHD symptoms WORSE.  Uck.  So it’s particularly important to address lack of sleep if you have ADHD. 

You can do something to reach your full potential – get enough sleep!  Create a calming bedtime routine and a regular schedule around when you go to bed and get up.  For many, putting sleep at the top of the priority list and putting aside nighttime work, email, movies (and video games) is all it takes.  But if you continue to have sleep problems, go see a sleep clinic.  It’s important for your health.

© 2011 Melissa Orlov

Heart to Heart

Tips for Thriving in your Marriage

“Well done is better than well said”

- Carlsberg Brewery T-Shirt

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There is often a disconnect between intentions and actions – in all couples, but particularly in couples with an ADHD partner who has recently been diagnosed and started using medication.  That partner may experience a new calm and focus that is new and delightful – he or she sees a huge difference in how their brain works and feels, yet their partner is not privy to this improvement.  The result is a disconnect in which the ADHD partner feels things are much better, while the spouse feels left out of the progress.

Things are better for one partner…but the rubber hits the road in relationships when what’s going on inside the head of the ADHD partner is translated into action.  So my advice is this – pick a meaningful activity (A chore?  Spending more time together?  Getting organized?) then apply the newly found “inside the head” focus to creating an “outside the head” result and measure your success.  For example, if you decide to spend more time together, you might decide to share every Saturday afternoon from 2-4pm with each other, doing something new.  Write it in the calendar.  Set an audible reminder on your cell phone.  Don’t schedule other things at the same time.  Go have fun.  After a few weeks, measure your success.  Did you spend the time together every Saturday afternoon or not?  If your answer is anything but “yes” figure out what got in your way and change your plan about how to spend time together accordingly.  It is at this point that the non-ADHD partner reaps the benefit of the improved focus…not before.

In marriage, well done is truly better than well said.

© 2012 Melissa Orlov