Quote of the Week

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There is no more lovely, friendly and charming relationship, communion or company than a good marriage.
               – Martin Luther
                 German priest, professor of theology and iconic figure of the
                 Protestant Reformation
                 1483 – 1546

How To Tell If You’re A Terrible Spouse

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How can you not know when your spouse is not happy?  You can go into a room, not know anybody in there, just look around and you can tell who’s happy.  It’s not hard – look at the body language and facial expressions.  But when you are living with somebody, how do you know if they’re happy or not?  So many times you hear women say:  “I had no clue; he never said anything.” 

He had to say something for you to know? 

So, here are a few things to consider and see if any of these describe your life:

* Your life centers around your kids, your job, and/or your hobbies.  Maybe that’s making him unhappy. 

* You burn your candles at all these ends with everything but love.  So you’re totally exhausted and there is no time for each other. 

* Your home and your life seem to move from one small crisis to another and that’s about it.  You figure, “Okay, we’re going to interact, and we’re going to romance each other, but we’ll save it for the weekends.  Then the weekends come, and “Oh my gosh, there are so many chores to do!”

* You do this thing in your head:  it’s either the kids or the spouse.  Well, you don’t love them both the same way.  Those are different loves.  Living a balanced life doesn’t require you choosing between them at all. 

* Your lives are very fragmented.  You spend your time running hither or thither and doing this and that and loving each other is just not a priority.  Even when you are together, you are in your own little world.  You are both easily irritated by the other.  Your disagreements and misunderstandings become more frequent. 

* Several months pass before you realize you haven’t even sat down and talked to each other nicely.  You haven’t made love; you haven’t done a fun thing together.  Sit down and look at the time you spend on things.  “I have no time.”  Yes, you do.  There is stuff you could trim, but instead, you are trimming him.

This is why I talk so much about being your kid’s mom, being your husband’s girlfriend, being your wife’s boyfriend — these are very important.  You need to focus on being each other as girlfriend and boyfriend.  That has to be a major focus of each day.  Aside from which, the kids need to see that.  It makes them feel secure and it gives them hope for their future.  I mean, do you spend any time connecting each day?

I had a call one time where this woman found out that for nine years, her husband left the house in the morning and spent 15 minutes, five days a week, in the back of a van with the same woman.  For nine years, they would have sex every morning, every day; that’s how they would get their work day started.  I said, well if that had been happening in your home, it wouldn’t have happened in a car with another woman.

So, when is the last time you schmoozed and tickled and rolled around and snuggled and kissed and hugged and were playful, huh?  Do you take care of yourself — your hygiene, your presentation, your health — so you have something to give?  Or, is it all about, “I just don’t have anything to give?”  You have to learn to say no to errands and chores and social activities and overtime and volunteer work and meetings, if it is interfering with your love.

 Don’t read the full newspaper everyday, don’t read Twitter or your emails — don’t read all that stuff.  They steal time from where you could be being cute and adorable with your spouse.  Send emails to each other, leave love notes around the house. Make the most of every moment you have together.  Make it an issue and a priority so I don’t get a call from you on my program where you’re saying , “I have no idea whatsoever why my husband and the father of my kids just said ‘I am out of here.’”  What an insult that is! Men don’t fare as well as women after a divorce emotionally, physically, medically.  Women handle this stuff a lot better, believe it or not.  So, for a guy to face going through the court system which is going to give her everything, for him to make a move like that, he had to be really unhappy.  And if you are truly willing to stand by the statement “I have no idea why he would be unhappy,” then you’re a terrible wife.

Work Habits That Work

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A lot of you are struggling with making sure you keep your jobs in this economic climate.  I think the qualities for making sure you keep your job are closely related to the ones you need even if you want to get a promotion, much less keep your job.  So I did a little research on the types of behaviors that keep you employed and possibly even get promoted. 

First of all, constantly look around and see what else you can do.  A lot of people have a sense of entitlement:  “Well my job description is ‘blankety-blank’ so, you know, I’m not going to put more paper in the copier.”  When I first went through all of the qualities I’ll mention here, I thought about all my peeps.  Each of my peeps has a job description, but when push comes to shove, they each act like the company is theirs.  So if there’s no paper in the copier, well their company doesn’t have paper in the copier so they put paper in.  No one (including me) thinks they’re above doing anything.  I am notorious for cleaning up…they’re always going “here she goes again”.  That’s not in my job description; I am the host.  Heck, we’re all in this together and whatever needs to be done, we do it.  That’s a team effort.  And people who have the team effort mentality do better with their bosses and do better with their co-workers.

Now everything I’m going to say presumes you’re not working for a nutcase.  We leave out the nutcases.  If you’re working for a nutcase, get another job.  Nonetheless, 99.9% are working for reasonable people.  If you behave as though you’re part of the team, everybody will appreciate you, including the boss who will find you indispensable.  “This is a person who will put the coffee on, as well as make the PowerPoint presentation for the CEO of this Fortune 500″…whatever.  So that’s really important. 

Next?  Be observant.  Pay attention to the people who seem to be doing well with the company.  I ask that question a lot when people have concerns about what’s going on at work.  “Well, who are the people who are doing very well?   Who are the people who are liked?  Who are the people seemingly getting ahead?  Who are the people who have the eye of the boss? What is it they do?  How do they behave?  What do they contribute?  What are their people skills?  Communication skills?  How do they get along with people?”   So observe.  Drop the competitiveness, drop the cattiness and just observe.  What skills, what attitudes do the people doing well have that you could take? 

In addition to being a team player (this may sound counterintuitive, but it’s not) you have to find a way to stand out.  Make yourself indispensable; be proactive.  On my racing sailboat (and sometimes I’ve got 10 to 12 people aboard), we sort of noticed over the years the people who were proactive – who would  look around and see if anything bad was going to happen.   Look at all the lines, is anything crossed?  How do all the shackles look?  How does this look?  How does that look? Where’s the wind coming from?  While being a member of a team, they’re looking at everything.  And, over the years, I’ve become adept at figuring out early on the people who are sort of lazy and just want to be on a boat as opposed to the people who really commit to the team by being aware and supporting each other, which is an important thing: Looking for problems before they happen.  It’s easier to avoid than to repair. 

You make yourself indispensable by the positive attitude, by being a flexible team player but also looking around, coming up with ideas, and trying to make things better for everybody.  You need to know how and when to have the right conversations.  So, for example, you go to your boss, your manager, your supervisor and you say, “In 3 to 6 to 9 months what would you like to see me doing?” or “What do you imagine for me?” or “What could I work toward?” or you have a friendly conversation (not a threatening, demanding one) where you say, “What do you see?  What could I do for you that would be better?”  So that you’re open to what a lot of people take as criticism without being sensitive.  Use it as information to run with. 

Bottom line, if you seem hell-bent on just getting a promotion, getting power, you’re missing the bigger picture.  You’ve got to focus in on every aspect of your being at work and relationships, because basically going to work is a relationship experience.  You need to know how to get along with people.  And the best way to get along with people is to be solicitous, non-competitive and supportive.  Ask them for advice and their opinions so they feel important to you.  It’s a give-and-take on a very positive level — it is not a family.  It is NOT a family.  Family has certain expectations and people get awfully emotional about that.  But be very aware of showing respect, asking for their input, and offering them help instead of being competitive.

There are lots of practical things to consider. If you come up with something brilliant for the company they can use, that’s great.  But for the most part it’s attitude, positive people skills, and support. A lot of people get into trouble at work when it all starts to get competitive.  To the contrary, the best thing to do with someone who seems already to be in that mode, is from time to time, say to them, “You know, I was thinking about ‘such and such’.  What’s your opinion on that?”  They stop being competitive when they feel somewhat valued because being competitive is insecurity.  So if you feed the insecurity by fighting, it’ll go south.  If you feed their insecurity by instead bolstering their sense  they are important to somebody, that’s going to work really well.

Resentful of My Couch Potato Husband

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Resentment is difficult to get past, particularly if it’s because your husband hasn’t supported you in the raising of your children.  Is it better to have a couch potato husband than no husband at all?

Read the transcript

Or watch other videos at youtube.com/DrLaura

Competitive Kids

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Is competition good for kids?  I’m going to give you the short answer and the long answer.  The short answer?  After about 8 years old, it’s absolutely necessary.  Before 8 years old, most kids are not really ready to process competition and what it means, and what the rules are and what’s fair, and what failure means and the rest of that.  So, for the sake of argument, I’m going to be talking about kids over 8 – when competition is absolutely necessary. 

Failing is an essential part of growth and that’s why you have to let your kids struggle and fail.  Remember the 4 minute mile?  It seemed nobody could run a mile in less than  4 minutes.  Then someone did and everybody competed against that time. 

Have you ever seen kids trying to climb something for the first time?  One usually says, “Oh, I can’t climb that high.”  Another starts scooting up and suddenly the first child is climbing too.  Competition makes you dig deeper into what you probably can do.  Endurance, persistence, perseverance, self-control – these are things your kids have to learn in order to be successful in life at anything: a career, hobby, even relationships.  And most of this they get from competing. 

There needs to be a balance between competing and cooperation.  For their first 8 years, you teach them a lot about cooperation, but you can’t avoid competition even then.  It is kind of a natural element.  A lot of people think you have to learn to compete, but I disagree.  I believe you have to learn to compete WELL, but that competition is inherent.  It’s inherent in just about every animal you see on the face of the earth – from their coloring and plumage, to their mating calls – even how they swim or strut.   

Competition is a natural, normal part of life for resources, opportunity, reproduction, everything.  And teaching your children to do it well is a responsibility you have – even though it’s painful to see their sad, little, puckered faces when they didn’t win. 

And when they lose, instead of hearing them say, “I’m a terrible person…I suck…This is too hard…” teach them to analyze what happened because then they grow.  Again, children need to learn failure is part of growth, even if it’s a little annoying.

Competition encourages growth and pushes a kid to excel.  They learn about their own abilities, and they learn about their limitations.  And oftentimes, without competition, you can’t tell what you can do.  I like to play tennis with people a hell of a lot better than me because it pushes my abilities. 
Competition teaches your kids to set goals, develop skills, solve problems, and try out new things.  It also teaches them to learn rules, perform with other people watching and work with other people as on a team.

Competition is a very strong motivator, but parents who put too much emphasis on winning can harm a kid.  Before I took an exam in college, my dad would always say to me, “Give ‘em hell!”  That meant “do your best”.  Whatever that is, that’s all each of us has.  And my best may be better than your best at something, and your best may be better than my best at something else.  We’re all better at some things and not as good at others.  And that has to be the mentality you teach your kids.  No matter how good you are at something, there’s somebody better or there’s somebody better at something else. 

And of course it’s up to you to make sure they can treat triumph and defeat the same…with class. 

Kids who are not ready for competitive activities are usually kids who are more insecure, immature, selfish, spoiled or irresponsible. They may be too pressured from their parents, can’t play in teams, can’t handle frustration, haven’t developed patience or tolerance and they often throw tantrums after being overwhelmed by competition.  They have trouble sleeping, get headaches, have nausea, get depressed, lack energy, and create ailments and excuses to avoid activities… So if you do have one of these kinds of kids use your judgment and understanding when making decisions about competition.

You’ve also got to pay close attention to the ethics of competing:   right and wrong, losing and winning.  The Foundation for a Better Life has a great video on this. Watch:  Basketball    It’s how you want to teach your kids.  Competition is important.  Support your kids’ participation.  But ethics are more important than anything.

Quote of the Week

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Behind almost every great man there stands either a good parent or a good teacher.
               – Gilbert Highet
                 Scottish-American academic, writer, and literary historian
                1906-1978

The Harsh Reality of Obsessive Exes

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Over the years, every time I have told somebody they are in danger, they don’t want to hear it.  But it happens.  And so I’m going to impale it on your minds even more.  Here are just a few stories from the recent past:

1. A woman in Amsterdam was accused of stalking her ex-boyfriend for allegedly calling him 65,000 times in the past year.  After he filed a complaint with the police due to the excessive calls, the police arrested the woman and she argued she had a relationship with this man and didn’t see her calls to be excessive.  The man denied them ever having a relationship.

2. A British man bombarded his ex-girlfriend via email and Facebook messages asking her to take him back.  He set up a series of blogs warning people about her.  He was finally jailed for admitting he violated his restraining order.

3. A dumped lover in the Bronx hired his own cousin to kill his teenage girlfriend and tried to cover it up as a botched robbery.   He paid his cousin $1,000 to shoot the teenage girlfriend.  The ex-boyfriend warned if he couldn’t have her, then nobody could.  The girl was found shot dead with their baby in a car.

Those are just some of the thousands of stories.  When people get vengeful, they get obsessed; the ego can’t take the bruising and they want to control.  There are some people who are unable and unwilling to let go after a breakup. 

At first it seems they are, obviously, emotionally hurt.  That’s understandable.  They call, they visit, they keep arguing and try to reconcile.  Well that all sounds reasonable.  Then they’re following, stalking or threatening.  Then they vandalize belongings, which escalates to personal violence, and maybe even killing the partner’s pets.  If this isn’t dealt with and gets extreme, there can be kidnappings and killing of children, as well as murder and/or suicide.  This “obsessive-ex” syndrome is rampant.  Media usually report it by breaking it up into little pieces describing individual incidents only when they reach an extreme, instead of acknowledging the overall picture.  This obsessive-ex syndrome is not gender specific.  It usually doesn’t just go away.  Over one million women and 300,000 men are stalked annually in the United States. 

Stalking by definition is not a onetime act.  The course of conduct may involve a whole bunch of criminal acts. Taken one at a time they’re annoying but there definitely is a pattern.  Here’s a list of some of the stalking behaviors for you to look out for:

1. Assaulting the victim
2. Violating protective borders
3. Sexual assault
4. Vandalizing your property
5. Burglarizing your home
6. Threatening you
7. Killing your pet
8. Sending “forever” cards and gifts
9. Leaving telephone or email messages for you again and again and again
10. Disclosing to you personal stuff that they have found out
11. Telling a lot of people personal stuff about you
12. Following you
13. Going to your work or school…Just showing up
14. Sending photographs of you without consent
15. Monitoring your Internet history and computer usage
16. Using technology to gather images and information about you

This can be potentially fatal for you.  One of the reasons they do this is because they perceive you as weak and they say they want you back,  but really it’s their ego that needs saving.  It’s too dangerous.

Women Who Love Prisoners

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There’s an increasing population of women who want to date, have sex with or marry death row prisoners.  Some women actually find that sexy.  So I did some research in trying to understand more about why a woman would be turned on by that. 

We all know women are turned on by the bad guys. Most women are turned on by bad guys because we’re biological organisms, we’re mammals, and a bad guy is strong (or perceived to be that way), and able to protect her because he’s dangerous.  The worse a guy is, the more attractive he may become to a woman.  Remember the musical “Grease”?  Sandy is a nice girl and she falls for Danny who is a bad boy rebel.  So there’s a huge physical aspect to the attraction; it’s animal.  A lot of times the women who seek out these inmates suffer from a variety of psychological problems like depression or poor self-esteem and they seek out the unconditional love of someone who has less than they do to make themselves feel validated.

Women also become fixated with these pieces of scum because of the popularity the media gives them.  I mean, Ted Bundy became a celebrity.  So did Scott Peterson — it was all Scott Peterson all the time on television for a while. A lot of these women just cannot find love, so they pretend this is love.  And a lot of women don’t want to have to deal with a guy every day. 

I found some information on some two sisters who did this.  Two middle-aged, Christian sisters, Avril and Rose, left long-term, boring marriages for men in prison.  One man had been convicted of a string of minor property offenses and the other man had killed his previous wife.  His new wife, Rose, said, “I have faith that if you’re genuine with the Lord, you’re a new person.  A lot of people have said I should be worried about him because of what he did in his background, which is pretty awful and violent, but I have no fear.”  Despite the women’s faith, both relationships ended tragically.  A week after his release, the thief blungeoned Avril to death with a hammer.  The other husband ended up back in prison after trying to cut off Rose’s ear and trying to pull out her teeth with pliers. 

One of the realities of women being attracted to these men isn’t often expressed, because it’s not politically correct, but it happens to be a reality: hybristophiliacs.  These are people sexually excited by violent outrages performed on others.  These women often send porn pictures of themselves to the prisoners.  These women are not necessarily “sit back and just get horny” about violence.  A playwright, Veronica Lynn Compton, began a torrid affair with one of the Hillside Stranglers.  You remember those guys?  They were two cousins who abducted, raped, and mutilated very young women and then they ritualistically displayed their corpses on hillsides in Los Angeles in the 70s.  Yeah. 

As part of an elaborate defense strategy, one of the stranglers, Kenneth Bianchi, asked Compton to kill a woman using his M.O., because then he could say, “See.  It wasn’t me.  I’m in here.”  DNA evidence was not available then. Only the blood type could be determined from the fluid samples, so he asked her to sprinkle the dead body with his sperm and passed her a sample in a rubber glove.  Compton tried but bungled the attempt to murder the woman and the prospective victim got away.  By the time Compton was in prison for attempted murder, Bianchi had married somebody else.  And then Compton found another sexual, serial killer to romance.  One year he sent her a photo of a decapitated female corpse as a Valentine’s Day card. 

Vicarious murder is sometimes a motivating factor.  It’s easier for these women to overlook the violence that offends all the rest of us if they have seriously considered it themselves.  Even while the woman is the creep’s culpability, it is his ability to murder that attracts her.  He acted out on his rage.  The woman just couldn’t get around to doing that because, “I don’t know, I just can’t…I just can’t murder.”  But what a turn on that he can!  “I can live in the glow of his being able to let go of that inhibition when I can’t.”   Pretty sick…pretty scary, pretty sick.    

As I’ve always said, there are always women around to embrace evil.  There are infinite numbers of stories you’ve heard of women who stay with their husbands after the husbands have molested the children or somebody else’s children.  They will defend them and they will send their own kids off to go somewhere else to keep that man.  I remember one call in particular (thank God I cannot crawl through a phone line).  She called to see if it was okay now that her husband  (the step-father who molested both her daughters severely) was getting out of prison, if she could take him back because she “thinks he’s learned his lesson”.  They deny what they don’t want to know so they can have what they want.  There’s something sleazily erotic for these women.  It’s not just “they’re dainty and scared”.  Wow.

I guess a lot of women use these situations as an escape route.  It’s tough to be something, to be someone, to build…that’s tough.  There’s a lot of failure, frustration, and loss along the way.  Success requires a lot of work, and some people don’t want to work hard, so they join gangs and they steal and kill or push dope.  And the women gain a sense of power and position by being associated with this sort of stuff.  You become important and powerful by proxy. 

So, it isn’t about compassion.  It isn’t about really believing they’re innocent…they know they’re not.  It’s about getting off on it emotionally, sexually, psychologically…it’s about those 15 seconds of fame.  It’s about somebody so trapped in a prison he can’t fool around on you.  You’re safe and you own him, and all you have to do is show up with cigarettes.  It’s drama…it’s sick.  It is seriously sick.  And I feel the women who do this are evil.  Not pathetic, not pitiful but equally evil.  They want to make an allegiance with evil because it’s like being reborn with the position and power, the strength and importance and total control.  But it’s still evil.