Is Working On Relationship Problems the Wrong Way to Go?

Relationship problems are real attention grabbers.

It's hard not to figure that if I could just work this or that thing out, get her to stop do this, start doing that, maybe even do some starting or stopping of a few things myself (or maybe not), then life would be good. Wouldn't it?

Well, maybe, maybe not, but probably not. In fact, I am convinced that hashing out problems the way most of us go at it is a dead end. A miserable dead end at that.

Why? There are different ideas on that that you can check out here.

But the general idea is that relationship problems, like ideas of compatibility, are a good indication that something is wrong. It's just that trying to solve them rarely works (never? nothing never happens, but almost never).

Advice on Relationships

Advice for relationships is everywhere. When it comes to being in a relationship, advice (wanted or unwanted) seems to come with the territory.

Turn on the TV, pick up a magazine, listen to the radio, read a book, talk to family or friends and for anyone willing to listen, there is free relationship advice.

Not only that, if you don't end up with more different "right things" to do than advice givers, you're lucky.

Fortunately, we all come with a built-in advice evaluation meter that is always turned on. It is simply how close and safe we feel with our partner.

Imagine what your life would feel like if you followed a particular piece of advice. Would you feel warmer toward your partner? More comfortable about being with them? If the answer is yes, then it is likely to be good advice for you. If not, be careful about putting it into practice, no matter who told you it was the right thing.

In general, it is safer to look for tools with which you can craft your own solutions than to seek or follow advice.

Relationships and Compatibility

In places where you need a reason to file for divorce, incompatibility is often one of the reasons you can use.

Makes sense. "We just don't like the same things, value the same things, act the same way."

The logic breaks down at the same place that the logic about gender differences being a cause of relationship failure. Same sex couples don't all stay together forever in perfect harmony and opposite sex couples don't all fall apart. Likewise, couples who are compatible in many ways still don't all stay together and ones who appear wildly incompatible can have very strong, rewarding, lasting relationships.

So what gives with the idea of compatibility?

Watch yourself and people around you for the times when one or both people in the relationship are saying "We just aren't compatible." Notice how often this conclusion shows up when things aren't going well in the relationship and the person saying it is discouraged and not sure what to do about it.

For myself and those I can observe, this appears to usually be the case. The place where we go off track, I think, is forgetting how distorted our abilities of thought, analysis, and problemsolving are when we are feeling down.

I know that if I can "cool my jets" until my general mood is more positive, that incompatibility usually returns to refreshing difference. Right where it ought to be in a healthy, loving relationship.

For more on this you can look, here.

Beware of Communication in Relationships

Conventional wisdom would have us think that good communication is what it takes to have good relationships. That's partly right, but it depends.

What it depends on is what we communicate. If we are effective at letting our partners know that we appreciate them, support them, feel good when we are around them, then that builds the relationship.

Actually, couples who are having problems are often very good at communicating how bad they feel to each other.

Communication, then, isn't usually the problem, it's what we choose to communicate that either builds or tears down to feelings of closeness and safety necessary for a good relationship.

Unlike many lifestyle changes, keeping what we communicate to our partners positive and supportive changes things right away. As seniors it seems like we're deluged with things we should be doing, the results of which we may not feel for weeks or months or perhaps never. It's nice to find one that kicks in right away.

Managing Conflict In relationships

If you find yourself carrying anger and resentment in your relationships, the situation can become a powder keg. The only real question is how long the fuse is. The destructive power is certain.

For me, getting my head around the fact that my own feeling of anger and resentment is not about the person right in front of me has taken a while. Even after I read experts on the subject make their cases that it is something programmed in a long time ago that is being set off now, I didn't really get it.

When the penny finally dropped was when I read some articles by Steven Stocsny and looked into his "HEALS" program. (He's trademarked the word HEALS, I just can't figure out how to get a little bitty tm after it.) It's really excellent.

If you have trouble managing your anger in relationship conflict, this fellow's stuff is worth looking up.

Beliefs, Assumptions, & Provincetown

Assumptions will get us in trouble faster than we can say . . . . "but I just assumed."

A visit to Provincetown, MA was a bit of an eye-opener in that regard. P-town is famous for the freedom it offers the glbt community. BUT, the degree to which people there seemed to be assuming that I was critical of them and/or their lifestyle was quite amazing.

I guess everyone has their own stuck places and the people in P-town have certainly come by theirs honestly, still, it was disappointing. Straight refers to more than sexuality I think.

Divorce Busting and Divorce Is Not The Answer

I see that Michele Weiner-Davis has written a follow-up to Divorce Busting entitled Divorce Is Not The Answer which might explain why George Pransky re-issued his 1990 book Divorce Is Not The Answer and now calls the new version The Relationship Handbook.

Not a bad idea. A couple of other people also list Divorce Is Not The Answer as the title of their books on the web too. Just as well.

Hate to see Pransky giving up on his old title though. It hits the nail right on the head. He could have played around with something asking what the question is or something.

The theosophy angle on relationships is just interesting and off-beat enough that we need it.

Weiner-Davis's Solution Oriented Therapy based work is a bit off the conventional track too I guess. If more people get something that works, all the better.

Divorce Is Not The Answer

Using what he calls Psychology of Mind, George Pransky PhD has developed a kind of couples therapy that he says works better than traditional approaches.

In his book Divorce Is Not The Answer: A Change of Heart Will Save Your Marriage he lays out the whole process from underlying beliefs to case examples of how they apply them in their program at Pransky & Associates, in La Conner, WA.

**There are several books with the same title. Find Pransky's. It's different enough and apparently logical enough that it is worth a look.

Relationship Problems and Heart Disease

In a just released study that followed over 9,000 British civil servants for more than 12 years it was reported that people in couples with relationship problems were more likely to develop heart disease.

Do bad relationships equal heart disease? I don't know.

Take a look at the study itself which was in Archives of Internal Medicine, Volume 167, Number 18, October 8, 2008, page 1951 - 1957.

Actually, there are studies that point in the other direction. And, of course, the other from that one.

Bottom line question, I guess, is "How do you want to live, whether it gives you heart disease or not?"

Erectile Dysfunction and Relationships Over 50

Who wants to have to talk about not being able to get an erection and how that is affecting their relationship? Especially, if no one else is talking about it either and you're quite aware that you're getting older and you figure this is just one more indignity of aging.

TV commercials for the drugs are a start, but in fairness they are to sell the drugs and the degree to which they provide public health education is good, but not their job.

So, what do you do to get the word out about all the ways this thing can mess you up? Some websites have pages on how ED affects relationships and things to do, including mine, but you have to find them.

Now a physician in the UK has collaborated with a playwright to do a play about a couple in which the man is experiencing erectile dysfunction.

Given the sensitivity of most of us on this topic, is seems that this is a great idea for getting more of the facts out.

And, this way I don't have to get heavy or serious. I can just make my wife happy by going to another play about relationships and let whatever sinks in happen.

With some luck ED will be a side issue in an action flick soon and some really cool tough-guy will talk with his partner about it and see his doctor between car chases and killing people. Maybe. Some day. Roosevelt Greer was on Sesame Street afterall.

A Relationship Is A Relationship Is A Relationship

Every so often I hear someone say that they don't have relationship problems because they are in a special kind of relationship from religiously based, to philosophically based, to sexually fetish based. There's something that doesn't seem right about that.

I am glad that these people are happy with their relationships, but I think that they are either selling themselves and their partners short or they are denying the problems that exist. I suspect that there are some in each description.

When two people can successfully stay in a close relationship over an extended period of time and they describe it as a positive one, it seems to me that they must be doing something right even if they don't know what. And, I'm not completely convinced that a little denial is all bad either.

(How much denial is too much? I don't know. Other than the smart aleck response "more than I do", I just don't know.)

Managing Conflict: I'm Rich! I'm Poor!

Managing relationship conflict seems to have some of the characteristics of managing ones emotions in business situations.

Some years ago in a course on how to trade commodities futures contracts the presenter described trading highly leveraged commodities as a roller coaster ride of emotions - "I'm Rich, I'm Poor". The problem, she noted, is that good, clear thinking is pretty hard to do both when we're elated and when we're bummed out. And, that is exactly what's between the theoretical returns of a trading system and what most people get out of it.

At least in the world I see around me, there seems to be a similar "I'm loved/loveable : I'm unappreciated/I'm unlovable" roller coaster ride going on in intimate relationships with similar results. (And it is commonly estimated that 90% of commodities traders lose money.)

Some traders remember their system and follow it almost all the time. I suspect it's the same for lovers. Have you found anything particularly helpful in smoothing out the emotional roller coaster for better living and loving? You'll find some here.

Senior Sex Study Report

American Seniors’ Intimacy And Sexual Health Studied
August 26, 2007 at 10:16 am · Filed under Medical News, Seniors / Aging


The first comprehensive, nationally representative survey on the prevalence of sexual activity among older Americans provides a portrait of the intimate lives of people ages 57 to 85.

A majority of older Americans are sexually active and view intimacy as an important part of life, despite a high rate of “bothersome” sexual problems, according to a new report in The New England Journal of Medicine. The findings come from the National Social Life, Health and Aging Project, research supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The findings shed new light on the intimate social relationships and health of people ages 57 to 85, informing health care providers and patients about sexual norms in the older U.S. population.

The project is the first comprehensive, nationally representative survey to assess the prevalence of sexual activity, behaviors and problems in relation to health status among people in their late 50s and beyond. The study provides information about a number of important aspects of health and sexuality with age, including sexual problems in relation to specific chronic health conditions such as arthritis, diabetes and hypertension; relationships between physical health problems or limitations generally and sexual activity; and physician communication about sexuality at older ages. Physical health, the researchers found, was more strongly associated with many sexual problems than age alone.

The study has implications for health education efforts to prevent sexually transmitted disease in older people. Although data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggests stability in HIV diagnoses among Americans aged 50 and older, the number of older people diagnosed with AIDS and living with HIV is increasing, as individuals who were infected with HIV at younger ages are living longer before progressing to AIDS. However, sexual activity among older adults poses risks for new cases of HIV, as approximately 15 percent of newly diagnosed HIV infections are among Americans over age 50.


Led by Stacy Tessler Lindau, M.D., who conducted the study with Linda Waite, Ph.D., and others at the University of Chicago, the research was funded primarily by the National Institute on Aging (NIA), a component of NIH. Additional funding came from NIH’s Office of Research on Women’s Health, Office of AIDS Research and Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research and from private-sector sources. Data collection was supported by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago. Georgeanne E. Patmios of NIA’s Behavioral and Social Research Program is program officer for the project.


“Despite the aging of the population, little had been known about the intimate lives of older adults,” said NIA Director Richard J. Hodes, M.D. “This study expands our knowledge by reporting, on a national scale, data about sexual functioning and health among older adults.”
Dr. Lindau expects the study to help open a dialogue between older patients and their doctors as older Americans were very receptive to the survey and its questions. This openness suggests that, when asked, many older people want to talk about this part of their lives. “We found, despite the high prevalence of problems, that most older adults have never discussed sex with a physician. From a medical and a public health perspective, we have an opportunity and an obligation to do better patient education and counseling about health-related and potentially preventable and treatable sexual problems,” Dr. Lindau said.

The researchers gathered information from a nationally representative sample of 3,005 men and women ages 57 to 85 years, asking about each person’s marital or other relationship status, frequency and types of sexual activity during the past 12 months, physical health, and communication with a physician about sex. They also queried sexually active respondents about the presence of sexual problems.

“This study breaks new ground in social and behavioral research,” said Richard Suzman, Ph.D., director of NIA’s Behavioral and Social Research Program. “Its portrait of this aspect of older Americans’ lives suggests a previously uncharacterized vitality and interest in sexuality that carries well into advanced age, which perhaps has not been appreciated as an important part of late life.”


The study found that many older adults are sexually active, but about half of the men and women surveyed reported at least one sexual problem and about a third report at least two problems. Specifically:

* In general, older adults are sexually active. A large portion of respondents said they were sexually active in the preceding 12 months, but the percentage declined with age — from 73 percent of those age 57 to 64, to 53 percent of those age 65 to 74, to 26 percent of those age 75 to 85. Older women, however, were significantly less likely to report sexual activity than older men and less likely to be in intimate relationships, due in part to women’s status as widows and the earlier mortality, on average, of men.

* Healthier people are more likely to report being sexually active. Eighty-one percent of men and 51 percent of women reporting excellent or very good health said they had been sexually active in the past 12 months. Of those in fair or poor health, a considerably lower percentage (47 percent of men and 26 percent of women) reported activity in the previous year. Diabetes and hypertension were strongly associated with some sexual concerns.

* About half of sexually active older adults report at least one “bothersome” sexual problem. Thirty-seven percent of sexually active men said they had erectile difficulties. Women most often reported low desire (43 percent), difficulty with vaginal lubrication (39 percent), and inability to climax (34 percent).

* Most older adults have not discussed sex with their doctors. Despite the high prevalence of sexual problems, only 38 percent of men and 22 percent of women said they had discussed sex with a physician since age 50.

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Great information. Thanks to the NIH and the New England Journal of Medicine for getting the word out. You can't get much more mainstream, prestigous than that.

That part about not talking to our doctors about sex certainly jumped out at me.

Sexual matters usually feel pretty personal and private. When the doctor comes flying into that little, windowless, flourescent lighted room, fully dressed while I am waiting there, undressed, the last thing I am feeling is personal, safe, and private.

It is a problem and I think the medical profession ought to give some serious thought to what they can do to make it feel safer to talk about sexual issues that fall within their area of expertise.

Yes Dr. Lindau, "better patient education and counseling" would be nice. But, if the physicians that I have seen lately are in any way representative, perhaps you had better start with better physician education and counseling on engendering trust and openness in older patients.