https://www.mamaliangs.com/collections/all/products/liangs-village-crewneck-sweater-black

https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/of-prisons-and-pathos/202107/the-parentified-child-in-adulthood

Anxiety remains a highly common feature of the experiences of parentified children, as they were faced with understanding and managing difficulties too complex for their developmental levels and thus typically developed a sense that the world was difficult and dangerous, and that no one else would be able to provide support or help, thus resulting in a sense of fear, isolation, and helplessness.

https://watch.grasshopperfilm.com/films/human-surge-3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lbZDX_J3nOE

https://murisllc.gumroad.com/l/UCtPk https://murisllc.gumroad.com/l/rzykh

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-new-yorker-interview/love-is-not-a-permanent-state-of-enthusiasm-an-interview-with-esther-perel

And when did you start working with couples? Why was that a focus? I was interested in issues of immigration and identity very early on. I studied cultural relations and religious identity, the formation of identity. How does it change in terms of voluntary migration or forced migration? And, particularly, with an interest in looking at Jewish identity and how it evolves differently depending on the national context. What is the difference between Jews in America, in Australia, in South Africa, in Germany and Argentina, in Israel? So I got into studying how relationships shift with big cultural changes. I spent twenty years, before any writing about sexuality, working on culturally, racially, and religiously mixed families and couples, here and abroad. My book “Mating in Captivity” was a complete accident. I had no idea I would ever write about any of the subjects that I’ve been talking about for the last few years. And couple’s therapy came out of family therapy, because in the past people came to therapy because a child had problems. That was the legitimate reason for which you could come as a family. Often, the child was the symptom-bearer of issues that were actually located in the relationship. And, gradually, you would try to bring the people to come. Couples therapy is the most difficult. It’s often the most useless. But it’s the best theatre in town. I find it captivating. Well, so do we! You have a podcast called “Where Should We Begin?,” in which you do a session of couple’s therapy with a couple that’s never come to you before. We hear a couple being totally honest with each other—or not honest, in a lot of cases—totally raw, either way, in this very, very intimate setting. So the idea to do this show, I think, is insane! How did you decide to do it? I was the consultant on the Showtime series “The Affair,” on the first two seasons. And June Cohen, from TED, came to a conversation with Audible and with Jesse Baker, who is my executive co-producer. They wanted a kind of a podcast that would be “he said, she said.” And I said, “That’s not at all the way a couple works, actually. It’s what I say that makes you say the opposite of what you actually originally intended to say, that then makes me say the thing that I’m going to regret afterwards, or that I’ve been meaning to tell you for all of God knows how long.” It’s much more circular. And I said, “If you want, you should come and listen in on a session, and see if you think there is material.” And it has become, without my thinking of it, almost like a public-health campaign for relationships. You don’t feel it as much because you’re saturated with content here, but in countries where there is nothing, it’s an incredible thing for people who are coming out of situations where there are no narratives that they can embrace for how they want to live their relational life. And that’s when you start to really see the impact of such a thing that a book could never, ever do.

I have never really participated in the notion that men don’t talk, men can’t talk about their pains. I mean, they have a different way of going about it. Sometimes they need more time, and you just have to shut up and wait—be quiet. And if you don’t interrupt, it will come. And then you have to provide a compassionate environment that allows them to experience their experience, whatever it is. You know, everybody’s talking about vulnerability. And I’m not sure that “vulnerability” is necessarily the best word to use when talking with men. I talk about “integrity,” and I talk about “honorable.” Meanwhile, they’re sharing plenty of vulnerability, but it is a word that feels more masculine to them. But would that maybe reinforce a certain sense of cultural coding? We all know that “honor” is considered a masculine quality, and isn’t the idea of being “honorable” the same? No, no. Because “honorable” is about how you behave and how you feel that you are maintaining a sense of integrity and pride in your behavior. “Honor” is the counterforce of shame. It’s O.K. to use language that makes sense. If I like art, you’re going to work with me and use metaphors that are related to art. And you don’t feel like you are playing into a code because you’ve used language that speaks to me. I’m not afraid of that. What is important is the experience itself. I didn’t make this man cry; it was waiting to come out. So you just need to make room and stay out of the way. Am I missing something in your question? I think it’s a hard question in general. We’ve seen over the past year how deep some of these assumptions about what masculinity is, what femininity is, go, and also how painful and destructive they really can be when they don’t go questioned. I’m not busy feeling like I’m reinforcing a status quo. I think that, at this moment, there is such a sense that every word is fraught and every word can lock you into something. To me, most couples come because they’re stuck. They’re repeating the same thing over and over again, and they really think that if they do it one more time, it will finally yield some better results. Of course, it doesn’t. So what you do in couples therapy is like crust—you just try to loosen it first. That experience of him actually talking like that to her allows her to see him very differently. Then you watch to see if her response to his new behavior is going to be adapted to what she’s seeing, or if she’s going to continue to do the usual without noticing that he’s completely different in front of her. And what you’re aiming for is flexibility and adaptability, so that these two people can engage in multiple different configurations with each other, and not all the time the same thing.

Do you have a working definition of love? It’s a verb. That’s the first thing. It’s an active engagement with all kinds of feelings—positive ones and primitive ones and loathsome ones. But it’s a very active verb. And it’s often surprising how it can kind of ebb and flow. It’s like the moon. We think it’s disappeared, and suddenly it shows up again. It’s not a permanent state of enthusiasm. I’m thirty-five years in a relationship, I practice. And I have two boys—I practice. It’s not just romantic love. I think that definition today of love—“you are my everything”—where you really see it, this complete exaltation, is in wedding vows. Have you ever noticed? I mean, it’s, “I will wipe every tear that streams down your face before you even notice it’s going down.” I think a realistic vow is “I will fuck up on a regular basis, and, on occasion, I’ll admit it.”

https://jofirestone.substack.com/p/january-week-2-5a8

Caleb: “I am passionate about thinking of dog names. My current dog is named Brochure, and I named him after a word I wanted to say more. People tend to love that there is a dog named Brochure and I even have a short anecdote about how I didn't realize I would be saying "Bro" this much in my life. I got Brochure in my early 20s and I am now in my late 30s, this means Brochure is also old (my man turns 19 in August!). Needless to say, I've felt pressure for naming my next dog more recently and the list is always ballooning. I'm not gonna count but there is some scrolling and a system of asterisks to indicate the names I like more. Also shout-out to Loaf, who has a top-tier dog name themself!”

https://thecreativeindependent.com/people/writer-amanda-petrusich-on-showing-up-with-genuine-curiosity/

What else helps the “getting started” process? I’m going to say this at the risk of making a lot of writers want to punch me in the face, but I just love writing. That part of it has never felt as much like a struggle. There are other parts of this job that are hard, but writing is the best part of my day. When I don’t do it, I feel discombobulated, sad, mentally and emotionally disorganized. Writing is a sense-making process for me. I don’t know what I think about anything until I start to write it down. There are moments where there’s just no gas in the tank. Where you’re sick of yourself, the thing you’re writing about, or the job. Begin anywhere. You don’t have to start at the beginning. You don’t have to write in a legible, coherent, chronological way. I rarely do. I free myself of the idea that I have to write my first sentence first. I never, ever do that. I also don’t write my last sentence last. It’s very disorganized until the end where it’s all sort of put together. I love the work of chiseling a line. I’m a line nerd, I get a particular rhythm in my head for how I want a sentence to be balanced and what I want it to communicate. I love that work of cracking away until it has the topography and shape I want. I find it more fun and satisfying than anything else in the world.