Kobe Bryant: Can Warriors Kiss Babies?

June 4th, 2010

This morning I watched an interesting debate on ESPN News. The male anchors expounded psychological theories of gender roles, the warrior code, and men’s ability to compartmentalize. Of course, they thought they were just talking about Laker Kobe Bryant’s pause to kiss his daughters at half time during game one of the NBA finals last night.

Most of the ESPN talent chalked up Kobe’s “transgression” (an act of tenderness mid-war) to the privilege of celebrity. They argued that a franchise player without a camera on his heels would have been reprimanded by coach Phil Jackson and called “soft” by his team mates.

Then they went on to ask how Kobe’s head could be completely in the game if he took time to act like a loving father while wearing the armor of a warrior at battle. After all, minutes before hand, he’d been oblivious to Chris Rock’s monologue beside the Laker bench. And now he was kissing babies?!

Well, gentlemen, let me break it down for you. A male brain is unique. Men have a very unique ability to compartmentalize, that is, go so deeply into a mental compartment that they tune out other stimuli. Studies have shown that when men watch sports, their wife’s voice in the background sounds a lot like the adults in a Charles Schutz “Peanuts” cartoon, “Waw-aw. Waw-aw. Waw-awn.” One fascinating study asked men and women to listen to two audio stories simultaneously yet follow only one. One narration fed through a right earphone and the other a left. Women, who tend to be multitaskers, found their brains scrambling to follow both stories and often got confused. Men were more easily able to key into one story and tune out the other. Now that’s compartmentalization.

The other thing men can do is slip pretty easily from one compartment into another when they perceive that it is safe to redirect their attention. Thus, a man can juggle calls from work, his mistress, and his wife when there is little threat of being caught. Should his wife, mistress, or boss enter his office, however, he will be quick to focus and eliminate the two other stimuli.

So, while Kobe couldn’t hear Chris Rock during the game, his stress responses were lowered with the half-time bell and the Laker’s comfortable lead, making it was easy for him to morph into “Daddy” on his way to the locker room.

But the bigger question had to do with masculinity and tenderness. Can a warrior be tender? Of course he can. And he always has been tender behind closed doors. And now he can do it publicly. Thank you Kobe.

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Posted in Celebrity Relationships, Gender, Parenting | No Comments »

Three Women. Three Glasses of Wine. Three Stories of Betrayal.

June 3rd, 2010

Being a Doctor of Psychology I can make academic sense of how successfully and without conscience many people lie. The best of them can go into a little mental compartment where they even believe their own lies as they flow out of their mouth.

I have seen Joran van der Sloot the suspect in the Natalee Holloway murder tell three separate stories about what happened in Aruba five years ago. In my opinion the only word of sordid truth he ever uttered was in Dutch when he referred to sweet Natalee as a “bitch.” The truth is that this young man has extreme anger toward women.

Lying to authorities to save your hide is one kind of deceit but what about the average person who lies to their closest intimates? Just last night, while sipping at a neighborhood wine bar, I heard three stories about men who lie to obtain sex, ego stroking, or even a woman’s trust. And as a woman (not a doctor, now) I have to say, what’s up with that?

In one story, my best friend’s longtime, on-again-off-again boyfriend was found to have fathered three children during the same years they whispered secrets between the sheets. Except he forgot to tell her that one secret — that his sperm, his time and his resources were going another direction.

In another story, a neighbor of mine was reeling from heartbreak after a broken engagement to an NFL football player (Read: He can afford bobbles.) In her loss and misery she thought she might console herself with a little recession era recycling so she marched her three carrot diamond ring to a jeweler, only to discover that a man she had once deeply trusted had given her a three carrot cubic zirconia.

While we continued to muse in disgust about how some men can feign intimacy and trustworthiness so well, the name of one of my old paramours came up. He’s been used as an example of a bad-boy in both my books (The Boyfriend Test and The Girlfriend Test) because this guy is the ultimate player. Over the course of our seventeen year “friendship” he has uttered the “L” word to me but he has also used my heart, my body and my money for his personal gain. He’s good, trust me. I have been out of his mesmerizing clutches for a few years now. Whew! But just a few weeks back I say him hiking with yet another beauty and shook my head to see that he’s still lying and juggling even at the age of, my God, could he be 53 by now? Anyway, my wine partners informed me that he had recently married his assistant. I laughed out loud, saying there is no way his marriage would have slowed down his appetite for frequent new sexual conquests. They assured me he is behaving as a loyal married man.

So I texted him a little “hello.”

And he quickly texted back. What he wrote were words that no married man should ever write to an old flame. My heart broke for his wife.

In the book, “101 Lies Men Tell Women, and Why Women Believe Them,” Dr. Dory Hollander claims that the root of all romantic lying is that women seek emotional connection and men mostly seek sex. The number one lie she sites? “I Love You.”

The saddest thing about my three stories of betrayal and the hundreds of stories in Dr. Hollander’s books is that so often we blame women for believing the lies. I was shocked to see the firestorm of criticism of Rielle Hunter, the mother of former presidential candidate John Edwards‘ fifth child. Somehow the media saw fit to place the bulk of the blame on her as a home wrecker. As the target of many, many lies issued from a male mouth, I can promise you that Mr. Edwards lied through his teeth to poor Miss. Hunter. First of all this slick rick wasn’t even playing in his own intellectual sandbox so getting her to believe his fabrications was probably a cake walk. I can just imagine his best promise to her, “Honey, you’re the one I love. My marriage is a sham to get me through this presidential campaign. Once I am president we can raise our baby in the White House.”  Trust me. His story ran along those lines.

The blame should never be on the recipient of a lie. Gullible people are innocent. Yes, I’ve removed the gender now, because some women lie as well as most men. But the culprit is the liar and his/her the lack of moral reasoning and inability to have compassion for others. The blame lies only with the deceitful person, not the one who trusted. What do you think?


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Posted in Crime Psychology, Emotions, Love, Marriage, Relationship Tools, Sexuality | 2 Comments »

Gore Divorce: A Forty Year Marriage is Never a Failure.

June 2nd, 2010

This morning I sat up straight when I heard an NBC reporter referring to the divorce announcement by former Vice President Al Gore and his wife Tipper, as a marriage that “failed.” How could forty years of supporting each other, raising children, surviving grueling political campaigns, and welcoming grandchildren, be called a failure???? If that’s a failure, I can only imagine what the rest of our relationships could be called!

In truth, back when the “til death do us part” section of the marriage contract was inserted (some say in Ancient Greece) death itself was pretty imminent. Life expectancy was short. Plagues and war took many lives and nearly 50% of women died in childbirth. So promising to stay together until death was a fairly safe bet.

Today serial monogamy trumps lifelong unions, and for good reason. We live a whole lot longer. The qualities required of a partner to say, get us through college and embark on a career, or to have a stint of child raising, or entertain a peaceful retirement may be quite distinct, that is, we may choose someone entirely different for each of those tasks. I am only of the opinion that a marriage should last as long as the projects it creates, thus, until the kids are raised or the house reno is complete.

Now having said that, do I believe that too many couples today throw in the towel way too early? Yes. Too many people bail when sexual feelings and romantic fantasies give way to the hard work and boredom of long term monogamy. Or they simply have so few relationship tools that divorcing feels like the only option. These couples have much to learn.

But this is not the case with the Gore’s. They have done their learning and ridden out the bumps. They should be popping champagne to celebrate. They had a forty year successful marriage. Here’s to your next relationships, Al and Tipper!

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Posted in Divorce, Marriage | 2 Comments »

Relationship Tool: Expressing Gratitude Better Than Promising an I.O.U.

May 25th, 2010

We all know that relationships are a system of interdependence. Partners provide back-and-forth give-and-take on a daily basis. Now new research shows that expressing gratitude both verbally and behaviorally acts as a booster shot for relationship health.

The study was authored by Dr. Sara Algoe and is published in this month’s issue of “Personal Relationships.” In it, sixty-five couples were studied who were in ongoing, satisfying, and committed relationships. The researchers followed the day-to-day fluctuations in relationship satisfaction and connection for each partner and found that little, everyday, ups and downs in relationship quality were reliably marked by one person’s feelings of gratitude. The positive effects on the relationship were noticed even the day after feeling the gratitude was expressed. This study supports the idea that that even everyday gratitude serves an important relationship maintenance mechanism.

But the authors warn that expressing “indebtedness,” a need to repay the kind action, did not have the same affect. I’m wondering if an expression of “I owe you one” implies a scoring system where equal contribution is the expected outcome. Kindness has the most value if it involves a sponteneous sacrifice by the giver, not an I.O.U.

When I think of this concept, I am reminded of the relationship I have with one of my closest girlfriends. Over the course of our twenty year friendship money has changed hands in a very fluid way with an unspoken rule: Whoever is flush picks up the check. And should either my girlfriend and I utter the phrase, “I owe you one” it is quickly responded to with, “No you don’t. It all comes out in the laundry.”  Thus, our friendship is given the booster shot of gratitude far more often than any calculation of debts.

So, gratitude is the way to go. According to the author of the study, “Gratitude triggers a cascade of responses within the person who feels it in that very moment, changing the way the person views the generous benefactor, as well as motivations toward the benefactor. This is especially true when a person shows that they care about the partner’s needs and preferences.”


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Posted in Emotions, Marriage, Relationship Tools | No Comments »

What’s Killing Our Relationships? Fear of Dependancy.

May 22nd, 2010

Everyone seems obsessed with relationships these days. When men and women share their relationship stories with me I see one big epidemic in our culture — fear of dependancy.

For instance, last night I was at a dinner party and when word got around that I am the Ph.D. who studies relationships, an inevitable mini group-therapy session broke out. The stories abounded about our curious relationship landscape. And alcohol-fueled questions popped out that amounted to “why am I like this?”

With few social rules forcing people into traditional relationships, many people are beginning to understand that their relationship style whether it be dominated by promiscuity, serial monogamy, an emotionally avoidant marriage, or preference for solitude, lies on them. With few family and friends forcing us into a legal, heterosexual, monogamous union, we are free to live out who we are. And that’s the problem. Many of us do not want to live out our “natural” attachment style and actually long for a closeness that will help us feel secure. Or we long for a relationship that will help us procreate and create healthy offspring.

Time and time again at these ad hoc therapy sessions, I find myself explaining “fear of dependancy.” Because, in my opinion, that’s what most relationship strife boils down to. In order to have a healthy relationship, we have to trust someone, we have to trust love and believe it will be consistent. And partners have to learn to depend on each other. All these beliefs about love are programmed in infancy and early life.

So when pop-psyche writers like myself identify someone as being comittment-phobic or a bad-boy or a cougar, we are actually looking at a behavior that is the outcome of a mistrust of love. A fear of being dependent on another.

For some reason, our culture places great value on independence. It’s one unfortunate downside of capitalism. My suspicion is that large, intertwined family systems are a threat to commerce and politics. But too much independence is a killer of romantic relationships. A healthy relationship is also not a kind of co-dependence where no one can remember who’s problem is whose. Instead, a mutually supportive relationship involves interdependence, where partners takes turns leaning on each other. And like that game of trust where one closes his eyes and falls back into the arms of a trusted friend, are you really convinced that you will always be caught? Because that’s exactly what’s keeping you single or disconnected in your marriage.

Posted in Dating, Divorce, Emotions, Hooking Up, Love, Marriage | 4 Comments »

Politician Preaches Abstinence — Except for Himself!

May 19th, 2010

The video is priceless. Picture this: a staged interview with Indiana Republican Representative Mark Souder, about the importance of teaching sexual abstinence. Tracy Jackson, the young female aid doing the interview smiles coyly as her hand nervously slides up and down her pen. The tape was created for a Christian radio station. But the inside story is this: That Republican rep, a married father and grandfather and self-proclaimed evangelical Christian resigned today after it was discovered that he was NOT abstaining from having sex — with his aid, Miss Tracy Jackson!

Yep. Another cheating politician. And this time, one who campaigns for sexual restraint. Why can’t some politicians keep in their pants? And what does it say about us as a country when so many of our leaders are LYING CHEATERS?

The answers are simple. We have become a country that has undergone a no-rules relationship revolution in our media. Granted, marriage vows still have deep meaning for some and when the going gets rough (read: sexually boring) many married couples remember their intellectual commitments. Long after the sexual hormones have done their work of creating a bond and a nuclear family, many smart folks simply choose to focus sexual energy on the task at hand, that is, raising healthy children in a crazy world. One recent article in Psychology Today said that 80% of married couples are happy with their sex lives but they are probably happy with less. And that’s normal.

So, what about the other 20%? Have they bought the media falsehoods that sex is free from consequences and that more sex means more happiness? By the way, I’ve never seen any study that connects promiscuity with general feelings of happiness. And they also seem to have no guilt when it comes to lying. The only defense I can make for those who sexually betray their partner is that they fell victim to a tried-and-true rule of sexual behavior — sex with an obstacle is always more exciting than completely safe and permissive sex. The more risk, the more arousal.

One other nifty thing about the huge explosion of sexual content in the media (this blog included) is that it is really difficult for married celebrities or public servants to keep their affairs under wraps, because sexy stories bring eyeballs to news programs. So, on one hand, the media glorifies sex without boundaries and on the other hand it acts as a watch dog.

Sorry, Representative Souder. Your video came back to bite you. In a news conference in Fort Wayne, the beleaguered rep said, “I am so ashamed to have hurt the ones I love. I am sorry to have let so many friends down, people who have worked so hard for me.” His resignation is effective Friday.

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Posted in Celebrity Relationships, Marriage, Sexuality | No Comments »

Can Love Grow Through A Keyboard?

May 17th, 2010

With the explosion of online connections, cyber introductions, and old-lover google searches, it seems that the whole world is in a digital love frenzy. But can text and email really grow a healthy love connection? The answer is a bit complicated: Sort of and No way.

First of all, what is a healthy love connection? I would say it is a relationship built on trust, honesty, and intellectual commitment. And it usually gets ignited by sexual passion.

The internet is certainly a great place to find sexual passion, since it takes barely a visual whiff or the promise of excitement and/or love, to trigger a sexy juice flow in most people. After all, arousal and orgasm are the sole domain of the individual psyches. We each have an individual pattern of arousal that is triggered by sight, smell, voice, and touch, all related to some early-life events that stimulated us. For instance, years ago I remember, one man examining my manicure closely on a first date. Months later, he shared a distinct memory that in middle school he had had a spontaneous erection at the exact moment that a teacher with a pretty french manicure placed a hand on his desk to emphasize a point during her lecture. In fear of being discovered, he stared at her hand while experiencing a confusing arousal. Even at the age of 35, this man was checking dates for pretty french manicures because the two events had now joined in his mind. While his story is a concrete example with a linear connection to his sexuality, most of us have a Picasso style of arousal, made up of bits and pieces of our memories. And online lovers are a great place to project those patterns, because no one is there in person to dispute the our fantasies.

But there lies the problem with Cyber Love. It is a dance with ourselves. It is a perfect place to imagine the perfect mate. Now, one nice thing about digital communication is that people who are a bit timid about revealing their most secret intimacies in person or via phone, find IM’s. Text, and Emails a safer place. On face value that is true, especially for men, who often have trouble verbalizing feelings. But the danger is two-fold. Text is also a boundary-free world where lovers often disclose too much too soon, before real trust is established. And that can set the relationship up for a pressured first-meeting. I mean, how terrifying to have so much emotional intimacy before one has even walked hand-in-hand with someone. The other serious danger with typed intimacies is that they become a document that can live forever, and what was once an innocent flirtatious remark can be used as a weapon later on.

So my big advice to would-be cyber lovers is to move to telephone chat long before too many secrets have leaked out onto your keyboard. Then when you feel safe, meet in public with friends around. If your relationship continues to grow, use text as an enhancement not as the primary communication. Love and intimacy must grow with eye contact, vocal tone, pheromones, and touch.

Posted in Relationship Tools, Technology and Relationships | 4 Comments »

The World’s Most Powerful Aphrodisiac? It’s not what you think.

May 14th, 2010

5692_124593686833_115788661833_3029554_5722933_nYou’ve heard about oysters and caviar. How about champagne and a warm bath? Trust me none of these have been proven as a true aphrodisiac. In case you need a definition, an aphrodisiac is a substance that supposedly increases sexual desire. The name comes from Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of sensuality and love. Throughout history, many foods and drinks have had a reputation for making sex more attainable and/or pleasurable. However, from a historical and scientific standpoint, the alleged results are mainly due to a belief by their users that they would be effective. Yep, a placebo effect.

But there is one thing that works most of the time. I attest that the world’s most powerful aphrodisiac is one simple word. It is the word “No.” Spoken loudly or quietly, spoken in behavior or lack of behavior, the word “no” makes a sexual suitor sit up and take notice. The principal behind such wisdom is this. A psychologist’s mathematical formula for great sex is simply

Arousal + Obstacle = Erotic Sex

Some historians believe that the Catholic Church populated the planet with that equasion. The Church told people to say NO to sex for pleasure purposes and then out-lawed birth control. The result: Catholics in every corner of the globe.

Now think back to your most exciting sexual encounter. Was it intergenerational? Interracial? Was one person unavailable in some way? Nothing like an obstacle, be it a cultural or personal taboo, to get our juices flowing. Or, was it someone of a higher social status who was unattaianable in some way?

My advice: If you want to have wonderful sex, say NO to easily attainable sex.

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Can “Miracle Boy” Ever Truly Heal?

May 13th, 2010

An eleven-year-old Dutch boy, the sole survivor of a plane crash, reportedly smiled at his aunt and uncle who flew to his bedside when they recognized him from television pictures. He hasn’t been told yet that his parents and brother died in the crash.

The boy, identified as Ruben van Assouw, suffered multiple fractures in his lower limbs when the Afriqiyah Airways Airbus A330-200 crashed Tuesday at Tripoli International Airport killing 92 passengers and a crew of 11. Ruben is the sole survivor.

So, what lies ahead for the young victim? The good news is that his body is projected to have a complete recovery, however, his psychological injuries may persist for the rest of his life.

The most obvious danger is persistent Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) when one is witness to death or potential death that can cause lifelong feelings of anxiety, depression, detachment, distressing dreams or “flashbacks”. In children repetitive play may involve acting out the trauma over and over.

One major symptom of PTSD is “Survivor’s Guilt” and it adds symptoms of depression and low-self esteem that follow the belief that somehow their survival caused the death of the others. The sad thing about survivor’s guilt, as seen in the families of Holocaust survivors, is that is can be a multi-generational disorder.

Finally, Ruben may suffer painful Attachment Injuries because his primary attachment figures were suddenly eliminated. The child can grow up to have a powerful mistrust of love and relationships, or in a very anxious way, cling to new attachment figures even when they don’t provide a healthy return.

The road back to mental health is long, though very possible. Intensive grief counseling might be combined with family systems therapy to help him bond and attach to his new caregivers. Once Ruben is able to view himself as a sufferer, not one who caused suffering, he can mourn and continue with life.

The most amazing thing about the human psyche is it’s ability to heal after trauma. His biological predisposition to anxiety, depression, and feelings of abandonment will be a major determinant of his future mental health. Some people recover from horrific events very well, while others can become dysfunctional by even minor emotional trauma. That’s the fascinating thing about psychology — it happens at the intersection of biology and environment. Our prayers go out to Ruben.

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Posted in Emotions, Infant Attachment, Uncategorized | No Comments »

The Sex Lives of Your Children Are Written on the Wall

May 10th, 2010

Social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace can be a treasure trove of information for parents. Reading your kids’ status updates is a great way to check in on peer group dynamics, level of media exposure, and school politics. Now research shows that your child’s cyber “wall” can even be an eye-opening place to discover if your adolescent is going to be sexually active anytime soon.

A recent study published by the America Academy of Pediatrics, suggests that displays of sexual references on teens’ Facebook profiles is associated with their intention to initiate intercourse. The study followed 85 college freshmen with public Facebook pages and found a strong association between sexual references on Facebook and real-world intentions to initiate sexual intercourse. Although the study looked at college freshmen, a separate 2007 study conducted by the Center for Disease Control showed that by ninth grade, 33% of adolescent had sexual intercourse, so it’s not far fetched to assume that sexual material posted by younger teens could also reflect real-world intentions.

Prior to this Facebook study, the same researchers, Dr. Megan Moreno of from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Dr. Dimitri A. Christakis of Seattle Children’s Research Institute, found that 54 percent of MySpace profiles contained high-risk behavior information, with 24 percent referencing sexual behavior. Of course, these on-line postings might indicate real-world risky behaviors or simply adolescent grandstanding, but what parent wants to wait to find out?

By tenth grade, the percentage of sexually active teens is just shy of 50% and this number does not include middle schoolers who engage in oral sex, which apparently is not considered sex despite the fact that one can acquire a sexually transmitted disease from it. Oi! And, parents, if you haven’t caught your breath yet, here’s a sobering statistic from the Center for Disease Control: One-third of American teenaged girls get pregnant before the age of twenty. That’s one in three, ladies and gentlemen.

So when is the right time to talk to kids about sex? That answer is simple: As soon as they start asking. When I was pregnant with my second daughter, my four-year-old asked me how the baby got in my tummy. I briefly flirted with the idea of giving her the pat answer my mother had provided me as a child, that “God put the baby there,” and then decided to tell her the truth. The director of our preschool gave me a delightful children’s book that helped me tell the whole story — yes with artistic sketches that showed “the act.” From that point forward I became the source of sexual information for my kid. Now that she’s in the complicated world of middle school, I am thrilled that she keeps asking and I get to provide biological information laced with my own moral teaching.

So, is it ever too late to start taking about sex with your child? NEVER. Teens may roll their eyes or plug into their iPod but, trust me, they listen to any source of sexual information, even when it comes from a parent.

Social networking sites can be a helpful way to be a virtual parent. Make a family rule that parents must be “friended” on kids pages. Before you know it, you will become lost in your child’s sea of online friends and sooner or later they’ll forget that you are reading their wall. Take postings seriously and use them not as an opportunity to admonish but as an chance to educate.

Bottom line: Know your own sexual morals and messages and find a way to guide your children before our highly sexualized media does it for you.

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Posted in Parenting, Sexuality, Technology and Relationships | No Comments »

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