Advice
ADVICE: Burned by past relationships, gay man stumbles repeatedly
Becoming comfortable with yourself is first step in being good dating material
Michael,
I was in a great relationship with Stuart for four years. We were living together and engaged. He had been a heroin addict but was clean when we met. It all blew apart when he relapsed. I had to end the relationship and was heartbroken. A few months later Stuart died of an overdose.
I was so lonely and despondent.
About a year after Stuart died, I met Boyd at a friendās house. He was cute and flirtatious. For the first time I felt there might be a future for me. We dated for six weeks. I thought Stuart was completely amazing and loved being with him, even though part of me knew I was under some kind of spell because I felt like he was rescuing me from total misery.
Then he dumped me. He said I was too needy.
That was about two years ago. I decided Iād never again let myself come across as needy so I wouldnāt scare anyone else away.
Now Iām dating Brent and Iāve been doing my best to play it cool. I waited for him to initiate sex the first time because I didnāt want to seem desperate. When we donāt spend the night with each other, I wait for him to text first in the morning because I donāt want to come across as thinking about him all the time. Usually I wait for him to suggest getting together, although I definitely make it clear that I like being with him.
Last week heād been talking about going to a concert together on Friday night. On Thursday he still hadnāt said it was definite, so I made plans with another friend. I didnāt want Brent to think I was just hanging around waiting on him.
Then Brent called me on Friday morning to firm up plans. It turned out he had gotten the tickets the same day he told me about the concert. When I said I wasnāt available, he told me that I had really hurt his feelings. Now heās mad at me.
Iāve been trying to come across as self-sufficient with lots of friends and a busy life so Brent would see me as a strong person and want to keep dating me. Instead he thinks Iām thoughtless and Iām afraid heās going to dump me.
I feel like Iām going crazy. I lost one great guy by letting him know I was really into him and now by holding back I may lose another great guy.
Iām miserable and to top it off Iām furious at Stuart again. Itās been more than three years and I canāt stop thinking that if he hadnāt relapsed, weād be married and having a great life. Instead Iām in these humiliating situations hoping to find someone.
Michael replies:
Iām sorry about your having lost Stuart so tragically. Given that loss, it makes sense that you would have come across as needy when you were dating Boyd. I hope you can forgive yourself for having behaved in a very human and understandable way.
Part of the healing from losing your relationship with Stuart will be to actually become a stronger and more resilient person, rather than just trying to look like one. You need to do this mostly so that you can have a decent life, even if you donāt find a partner. That said, doing this work is also likely to help you in your quest to be partnered. Every one of us is better relationship material when we can comfortably stand on our own when there is no one there to stand with us.
Right now, youāre keeping yourself in a weak and needy position. By trying to come across as something youāre not, youāre acting out of desperation. If you are to become a strong and solid person, you need to figure out what it means for you to behave in a way that you respect rather than putting on a performance designed to keep your current boyfriend interested.
Whether or not Brent likes who you are should be almost beside the point. Aim to behave in a way that you like and respect.
Regarding your behavior toward Brent, I think you are confusing being needy with being vulnerable. There is a big difference. Vulnerability means opening yourself up to someone and being willing to tolerate the pain that inevitably, at times, comes with such closeness.
Being a strong person has to include letting yourself be vulnerable with someone you care about. Things may not go as you hope. But if youāre strong, you can survive. Right now your dishonesty toward Brent is creating all sorts of complications. If you like him, stop playing games and let him know who you really are and where you stand.
Michael Radkowsky, Psy.D. is a licensed psychologist who works with LGBT couples and individuals in D.C. He can be found online at michaelradkowsky.com. All identifying information has been changed for reasons of confidentiality. Have a question? Send it to [email protected].
Advice
Tips for strengthening your relationship
On Valentineās Day, recommit to tackling challenges together
Working as a couples therapist, Iāve had many people tell me over the years how difficult they think it is to have a happy relationship. āThe divorce rate is over 50%.ā āItās so much work.ā āIf itās this hard, something must be wrong.ā
Hereās some very good news: The high divorce rate and the number of failed relationships you see around you need have no impact on the success of your own relationship.
While building and maintaining a healthy relationship takes effort, doing so is possible, and the ongoing challenge of finding creative and loving ways to handle tough challenges can actually be fun.
In the spirit of Valentineās Day, here are my top suggestions for steps you can take to have a great relationship.
Please keep in mind that while these steps are simple in concept, they are not always easy to practice. So donāt get discouraged. And remember that if you consistently work at doing your best in your relationship, doing so will likely get easier over time.
- Strive to always have a sense of humor about how difficult relationships can be. Weāre all different in big ways, so of course itās hard to share your life with someone at times. If you can keep this in mind instead of thinking āthis should be easy,ā you will actually have a much easier time navigating the challenges of being coupled.
- Avoid wanting to be āright.ā By this, I mean both trying to prove to your partner that you are right, and simply maintaining the belief in your mind that you are right. Wallowing in this belief gives you a sense of superiority, competition, and grievance, all of which are corrosive to your relationship. In addition, if there is a winner in the relationship, there is a loser, and thatās a terrible dynamic for a couple to have.
- Aim to be generous: Be open to saying āyesā to your partnerās requests whenever possible; endeavor not to keep score on who has been more generous; and make it a priority to support your partnerās happiness. And at the same time:
- Have a boundary when necessary. When you say āno,ā do so from your integrity, not from scorekeeping or spite. This means understanding why something is important to your partner, while at the same time being clear that something different is even more important to you that requires saying ānoā to your partnerās request.
- Accept that disappointment is inevitable in every relationship. Because we are all different, we will at times see, understand, think, prioritize, and behave in ways that are very different from our partners, including on important matters. Therefore, itās inevitable that we will occasionally be gravely disappointed in our partners, just as they will be gravely disappointed in us. Thatās life. Accepting this truth can make it easier to bear.
- Advocate for what is important to you. Two caveats, though. First, you donāt want to weigh down the relationship with too many requests. Second, be prepared to not always get what you ask for. It is not your partnerās job to meet your every want.
- Donāt wait for your partner to make the first move when you want something to happen. If both of you are waiting for the other person to go first, nothing will happen. This includes (but is absolutely not limited to) apologies, initiating sex, planning vacations, and starting hard conversations.
On a related note:
- Focus on what you can do to improve a situation, rather than on what your partner is doing, is not doing, or should be doing. We donāt have much power over the other person, but we have a lot of power over ourselves.
A special note for gay men: Open relationships appear to be practically the norm these days, but they are tricky to conduct well. (Yes, monogamy has its own challenges.) Jealousy, messy boundaries, dishonesty, and trust issues get easily activated. If you want to build a strong open relationship, be aware that doing so takes a lot of skill, a lot of honesty, a lot of acceptance, and some ways of keeping your primary relationship special.
Also keep in mind that being a gay man doesnāt automatically provide skills such as:
- The solidity of self to be trusting and generous.
- The ability to sense how far boundaries can be pushed without doing too much damage.
- The capacity to transcend feelings of jealousy and pain.
- The strength of character not to idealize outside sex partners.
Wishing you a happy Valentineās Day!
Michael Radkowsky, Psy.D. is a licensed psychologist who works with couples and individuals in D.C. He can be found online atĀ michaelradkowsky.com. All identifying information has been changed for reasons of confidentiality. Have a question? Send it toĀ [email protected].
Advice
When one half of a couple wants kids and the other doesnāt
How to navigate the biggest decision spouses will make
Dear Michael,
Iām wrestling with my fiancĆ© about becoming parents and itās delaying our getting married.
Weāve been dating for three years and would like to spend our lives together. But the issue of becoming parents has always been a source of disagreement for us.
Will says he has never been that interested, while Iāve always wanted to be a dad.
Will says he is willing to do it if itās important to me but heās really concerned he will be resentful. He doesnāt want to give up having an active social life that includes going out a fair amount, drinks, dinners, and vacations with our friends, lots of time at the gym, etc.
I like doing those things too but Iām feeling that Iām at a stage of my life (Iām 31) where I can put a fair amount of that behind me in order to focus on creating and raising a family. I wish he would also be willing to do so, but I know I canāt change his priorities.
I am hopeful we can work this out. For starters, I think that since he wants to go out more than I do, I could stay home a fair amount of the time and take care of the kids when heās doing what he wants to do.
Also, we are both pretty successful and could afford a fair amount of child care (especially as we advance in our careersāand weāre not going to be having children right away) so Iām thinking we could have a nanny who could take care of the kids when we want to stay out late or go away for a weekend, or even come with us sometimes when we travel so that weāre able to also do whatās important to Will and not just be with the kids at every moment.
Iām thinking we can have the best of both worlds.
Willās not as optimistic as I am and this worries me. I think Iāve come up with some good solutions and would like him to be supportive and on board. He says he doesnāt think itās that simple but when I press him for what that means, he wonāt say.
I donāt feel like we can get married until weāve figured this out. What are your thoughts for how we can get to a place of agreement on this?
Michael replies:
If you and Will are going to build a successful long-term marriage, you both will need to develop your ability to discuss hard topics, including your differences of opinion on important matters. Otherwise, you will have a lot of resentment, anger, and misunderstandings over the years.
Your current gridlock is an opportunity for both of you to work on tolerating hard conversations and the possibility of tremendous letdowns. This isnāt fun, but itās an essential part of being in an intimate relationship.
My hunch is that Will wonāt give you a straight answer because he doesnāt want to let you down. You canāt force him to tell you what heās thinking, but perhaps you can get his answer by letting him know that you want to know what heās thinking, even if what heās thinking may gravely disappoint you.
For you to have this conversation with Will, you will have to mean what you say: You must be prepared for him to tell you that he doesnāt want to be a father.
Unless Will is willing to parent with an open heart and without resentment, going forward with parenthood would be a mistake. The resentment would be corrosive to your relationship and would damage any children you might have. Children should never be made to feel that they are a burden or annoyance to a parent.
Letās look at your thoughts on making parenting more palatable for Will.
With regard to your idea that the two of you could frequently go out and travel, while leaving the kids with a nanny: Good parenting is time-intensive. Especially in the early years, itās vital that you consistently convey to children through your presence and actions that you are there for them, that you love them, and that they are your top priority. This is how children develop a āsecure attachmentā ā the bedrock of strong self-esteem, a sense of security that comes from inside, and the ability to form healthy relationships.
I certainly donāt mean being present every minute ā obviously, most parents have jobs, rely to some degree on childcare and babysitters, and need some time to occasionally have at least a bit of a life apart from being a parent. And I canāt tell you exactly what āenoughā is, other than to say that parents should generally be the ones to wake their children up, feed them at least some of their meals, take them on adventures, bake cookies together, just hang out, read books to them, do the bedtime routine, and be there in those middle-of-the-nights when a child needs comforting.
Your idea of staying home while Will does his thing seems like a quick road to resentment. Do you think youād be happy wishing him a fun night on the town while youāre staying home for the umpteenth time with a sick or wound-up toddler who refuses to go to sleep, or simply stuck doing the bedtime routine solo, yet again? Moreover, it would be awful for your child to have a sense that one of his or her parents is somehow distant or unreliable. You want to aim for your kids to feel like they are the apple of your eye.
Here’s an idea: You are apparently doing all the work to figure out how to make parenting easy on Will. How about asking Will for his ideas on what it would take to make parenting something heād be willing to do? Perhaps if the two of you collaborate, you could find a way forward that works for you both.
On a related note, talking with parents (gay and straight) of young children about their experiences would be helpful and eye-opening to you both in all sorts of ways.
Michael Radkowsky, Psy.D. is a licensed psychologist who works with couples and individuals in D.C. He can be found online atĀ michaelradkowsky.com. All identifying information has been changed for reasons of confidentiality. Have a question? Send it toĀ [email protected].
Advice
How to keep your hands on the steering wheel of your life
Pay attention to yourself and strive to pause before you act
What do you do when your partner snaps at you, big time, after youāve already had a hard day? Do you snap back, which may feel great in the moment, but might lead to a rotten evening? Or do you find some way to calm yourself and see if you can stay connected?
What do you do when your friends all seem to have a strong opinion about something important to you and you strongly disagree with them? Do you speak up and risk their censure? Or do you stay silent, go along with the crowd, perhaps keep your friends, but betray your beliefs?
What do you do when someone close to you presses you to take some action that you wouldnāt respect yourself for doing? Do you disappoint them, or disappoint yourself?
Many of us lack any sort of plan or guiding philosophy for how we would handle character-defining moments under pressure. Instead, we react, out of fear or anxiety or anger.
My view is, our lives go better when weāre thoughtful about how we respond to the hard stuff. When we do what we believe is right, even when doing so is difficult, we tend to respect ourselvesāand like ourselves better.
Thereās a name for this approach: Differentiationāthe ability to hold your own shape and behave in a way that your respect even when thereās outside pressure not to.
Holding a differentiated stance means staying as calm as you can in tough situations. It means standing up for what you believe is important even when there are consequences. It means operating with integrity. Differentiation is a necessary ingredient for any solid relationship, including romantic relationships, friendships, being a parent, and being adult sons and daughters to our parents.
Aspiring to hold a differentiated stance is always worthwhile, though it is not always achievable and is definitely not a steady state. Something or someone (often someone close to us) will frequently press our buttons and throw us off. Thatās just the way life goes. My advice when this happens: don’t get discouraged. Differentiation is more a journey than a destination.
How can you get better at keeping your hands on the steering wheel of your life? You start by paying attention to yourself and striving to pause before you act. Yes, it is almost that simple.
Viktor Frankl wrote, āBetween stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.ā
In that pause, ask yourself why youāre having the reaction youāre having. When you have some understanding of whatās going on inside, you have more power over your response.
Also in that pause, strive to calm yourself as best you can. This will give you some bandwidth to focus on how you would like to respond, rather than simply reacting.
Of course, calming yourself is hard to do when youāre anxious or angry. Yet there are many ways to calm down even a little, including taking a short break from the interaction to collect your thoughts, or taking some slow, deep breaths. One powerful way to get a grip is to remind yourself, āIām likely to respect myself a lot more if I can do what I think is right.ā
Now your mind may be calm enough to think about how you want to respond. Yes, screaming may sometimes be the way to go, but escalating a personal conflict usually takes us nowhere good.
Hereās a question to ask yourself, not only in these moments, but all the time: āWhat would it mean for me to be a spouse/parent/friend/person whom I admire?ā Answering this question gives you a standard you can aspire to reach and that you donāt want to sink below.
A related point especially for couples, but with wide applicability: Many people come into my office certain that itās the other personās fault that things go awry. I always tell them that no matter whom they think “started it,ā it is each of their jobs, individually, to hold themselves together and respond from the best in themselves.
This means striving to avoid being the āwinner.ā Hereās an alternative: Be generous whenever possible; while also maintaining a boundary when itās important to you, and accepting the other personās having boundaries that are important to them. And remember: We all have to tolerate, be close to, and live with people who are very different from us in important ways.
Striving to be well-differentiated helps us develop into stronger and more resilient people. The more we work at responding in ways that we admire to our challenges and difficulties, the better we get at dealing with all the stuff that life throws at us, which makes this ride more tolerable, interesting, and even enjoyable.
And when we can look at the challenges we face as giving us strength and helping to give our lives meaning, our challenges may become easier to bear.
Wishing you a good new year.
Michael Radkowsky, Psy.D. is a licensed psychologist who works with couples and individuals in D.C. He can be found online atĀ michaelradkowsky.com. All identifying information has been changed for reasons of confidentiality. Have a question? Send it toĀ [email protected].
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